Some Thoughts on the Tragic Shooting of Children in Connecticut
The recent and tragic shooting in Connecticut draws out of one a number of thoughts, most of which are of no utility. This is as it should be since such incidents are the type that really should touch a person’s emotional system much more than ones intellect. Of course, at some point in one’s reaction the question of what could be done to make a second such incident impossible rises as a challenge. The first thoughts, for most of us, are something a bit like a fairy tale. Next time, the schools should protect the children better. Someone should have known and we should have listened better. Such “solutions” are tempting, but of course, by themselves they lead to nothing of any value.
After a while, our thoughts get a bit more strategic and we might think of things that really would work, if only we lived in a very different world than the one to which we are consigned. That sort of thinking leads to what is probably the most popular line of reasoning. We need to stop allowing violent people to obtain guns. If we are particularly careful we might add “like those used in this tragic incident.” So we see an effort to keep assault rifles from the hands of violent people. But, that too is a bit too open ended and it might occur to us that we are not very likely to ever identify all the violent people with whose hands the assault rifle should be kept from holding.
Making any of these strategies work would require a level of control that far exceeds our ability to exert. Will we ever identify every violent person? Will we really ever be able to eliminate the existence of all the assault rifles? Not very likely. Identifying all the violent people would require including lots of people who are not violet but share some characteristics of those who really are violence prone. Only in the excesses of the identification can we hope to include most, but even here not all the people with the propensity to do something so horrible as happened in Connecticut.
In other words, one of our immediate problems is that to even approach success we need to commit our own set of excesses. Perhaps our sins would not be nearly as bad as the potential that we are trying to forbid, but still they are troubling, especially to the ones we lock up for their unrealized potential. So, one of the difficulties we immediately run into is a basic truism of most of our actions which is that there are always unintended consequences to our efforts to be good. One might argue that if we simply ban all assault rifles that would eliminate the deaths from Assault rifles. If one is not terribly thoughtful, this solution provides a good deal of hope and seems to not incur much in the way of negative consequences.
One of the problems, though, is the all too common confusion between policy and intention. In other words, we ban the sale of assault rifles in the confusion with our intent, that assault rifles will no longer be in existence and therefore will not be available for use for such tragedies. Banning assault rifles may very well decrease the number in existence in the future. This reasoning is somewhat like that used by our government to save money. We are saving money by reducing the rate at which we borrow as though that were the same as actually saving money. It is not and we are not likely to develop a way to accomplish our goal of eliminating the existence of assault rifles by reducing the rate at which they are acquired.
That the ban will not eliminate the offense from ever happening even by the cause of the misuse of assault rifles is one thing, but of course our goal is not to eliminate the murder of innocents by assault rifles, but what we want to do is eliminate the murder of innocents by any means available. If the problem is posed thusly, it has the sobering effect of making it crystal clear that we will never succeed in that goal.
There is a very useful saying that comes into play at this point, which is that perfection should not become the enemy of the good. Maybe we should be happy with decreasing the number of new assault rifles in the future and recognize that eliminating them is not possible. The application of this aphorism leads to the question of whether the problem has to do with the access to the assault weapons and whether a ban would actually decrease their availability. Maybe it would in several hundreds of years. Flintlock weapons are certainly harder to possess now, than they were when first invented. But, of course, they have been replaced by numerous more modern weapons, including the assault rifle. What will come on the market in 5 or 10 or a hundred years from now? We can only guess, but in any case it will not be a pleasant, of that we can be pretty sure if the past is any guide to the future.
Of course, that begs one of the difficult questions that assault rifles are not even the most likely weapon, let alone the only weapon that might be used for terrible actions. Africans in Rwanda, for example know that one does not need modern weapons to kill hundreds of thousands, let along 26. So, we are lead to considering other approaches or perhaps multiple approaches to at least lessen this problem. The obvious consideration might then be given to turning the problem around. Suppose we consider not how the violent ones commit their crimes, but how the victims might be given the chance to not be victims.
This line of reasoning turns us to consider protections that might be instituted. We are not likely to think that arming the 7 year old child with a carry permitted weapon is the answer, but we might consider providing armed guards at our schools, for example. We know that will not be foolproof, because that has failed before, but perhaps it will be a good solution, if the school is the place where the attack is going to be lodged. We might also consider training several people in each school to serve as defense. Guns could be locked away in several places in a school and school officials who normally work in each area be given appropriate training to respond as needed. Some airline pilots have been trained to be ready in case of an effort to take over their plane and the same idea might be instituted in the schools.
Anyway, we soon get to the point of asking ourselves why this problem is so hard to solve in a way that is really effective. Having a large number of armed “good people” seems to be a solution on the way to being good, but it is not complete or perfect, and after a while it appears obvious that we will never come to a completely effective, perfect solution. One of the reasons why this and all such problems are difficult is that we do not have a very clear and simple notion of the causality that underlies the tragedy we wish to avoid. In other words, we do not and cannot identify the cause as some simple, correctable effect, because there is no simple cause for us to find. For example if you go into a room that is dark and you wish to cure that problem, it is reasonably easy to think that a light might be the answer to eliminating that problem of darkness. So, we install a light with a light switch or if there is no source of electricity, we carry a flashlight that provides light and its own source of power.
Another difficulty that arises is that looking in the direction of the mental health issues becomes greatly more complex than focusing narrowly on the gun involved. Most problems are much easier to approach if one stays with the immediate and the concrete. Moving to abstract and delayed solutions is neither nearly so attractive nor so easy to think about. Putting into place a mental health system that does not duplicate the problems that John Kennedy hoped to eliminate when he virtually destroyed the mental health system in America presents a huge challenge. So, those with a great motivation to do something are likely to focus on the concrete and immediate, again, banning assault weapons, without much attention to the level of success this will result. The fact that such an approach will not likely have any serious impact on the problem that is the elimination or at least major reduction in violent deaths is not nearly as easy to consider, to grasp and to resolve.
So, to summarize, we can try several approaches and hope they will each have some rate of success. We can try to regulate guns out of the hands of violence prone individuals. We do that now, but perhaps that effort can be improved. We can arm and train more people who are good and willing to try to intercede when the need arises. We can look more closely at the problem of identifying those with the desire and willingness to (and often a history of) committing violence and take steps to prevent them from carrying out their intentions by blocking their efforts. We can also remain concerned and caring in the face of the inevitability of such horrors. We must not get to the point where we accept that such action is never going to be fully eliminated. We can continue to be observant and to report any indication of a propensity for violence and we can demand that mental health assessments be provided and acted upon when judged to be a real risk, while holding such actions to a high standard of proof.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Eulogy for Frank Jaklitsch, friend
March 19, 2012
I am honored to be permitted to speak about Frank Jaklitsch. He was a person I greatly admired and a friend of mine. He lived an exemplary life and he faced death with the same courage that he demonstrated when his health was robust. Frank was a man of honor. I have been lucky to have not faced such a circumstance very many times in the past. Of course, my parents, and my wife’s parents and our grandparents have all died, along with a few older friends. There is something about a death in the generation ahead of us that is reassuring in a strange way. That is the way it is supposed to be and I could say my turn won’t come for a while yet, because I am younger. The older people die and the young take their place. That is the way it should be and we should not be able to change the reality of that, but sometimes nature or agent orange or some other tragedy changes that reality. Of course, what one can do about this is to change the way one looks at such events although that is getting harder now that I am among that group of older people. I have become convinced that the age at which one is certified as older is much younger than it was when I was a teenager.
We can anticipate going to heaven or perhaps enjoying a rebirth as a more evolved person. I like the latter idea, myself, as long as I am allowed to skip the teenage years and the terrible twos. Frank asked me what I thought would happen when he dies. Of course, we do not really know exactly what lies ahead. What should we say to such a question from a person we care about and want to comfort and a person who knows he is going to die. What came to my mind was a conversation between the two central characters in the movie “Meet Joe Black” which was based on the novel “Death Takes A Holiday.” The man targeted for his coming death asked the collector of souls whether he should worry about what will come next. The collector said that a man like him does not need to fear what comes next. I told Frank that and I really meant it. A man like Frank does not need to worry about a judgment of his life. Any measure of Frank’s life will show him to have been an exemplary human being and I told him that was my professional opinion. I am a professor. I am not a real doctor, but I do know such things.
I first met Frank in about 1979 when he was the 9 year old soccer players’ coach and I was his assistant. We got to run around with the kids and try to have them win games while having a good time. Frank was great with the kids. My job was to give extra advice such as “Aim for the goal when you kick.” And “Kick hard with your feet.” My own kids were on Frank’s team and when I told them Frank had died, they each had the same sad reaction and they each said he was a good man. I asked them why they said that. They each said he was nice to them. He really listened to them and he treated them like he liked them, he wanted them to do well and he respected them. You all probably know the saying that relates to this. It goes something like this: “Whatever you did unto one of the least, you did unto me.” Frank was a man who gave freely of his time, his energy, his good spirit, his kindness and he did so to all who came before him.
Frank had a number of characteristics that I admired greatly. These included his generosity, his capacity for acceptance, his open admiration and support of the success of others, his fairness and fine sense of ethics. You get the idea. He had a stressful job that required great tact and a sense of right and wrong. All the knowledge I had of Frank in that arena showed me that he always advised those above him to do the right thing. Once I asked him if I could get an exception to a zoning requirement so that I could develop 30 acres that surrounded a home in an uppity northern Calvert County community. I got one of the most tactful and kind hearted NOs that I have ever received. I also got a clarification that might have been paraphrased as “it will not happen till hell freezes over.”
Some of you probably know that Frank was an excellent carpenter. He not only had lots of tools, but he knew how to use them and he did beautiful work. If you look around his house you will see evidence of that everywhere. For the purpose of this eulogy, I am going to ignore the really beautiful stained glass windows that are in several places in the house. Diane created the stained glass windows, and they are marvelous. Anyway, a great old tree fell in the woods and Frank not only heard the tree fall but he also realized that tree had the potential to be much more than it had been before it died. He took it to a sawmill and had planks made. He made stairs to the basement from that tree. Beautiful stairs. He was a perfectionist and it showed. He decided one day that his kitchen and the breakfast nook would be nicer if the area was 13 inches larger than it currently was. He then added the 13 inches to that end of his house, and it did look nicer. He was a very passionate carpenter.
I will tell you a story about the time that Frank helped me build some stairs. One day I decided I wanted to build a staircase to get from the second floor to the first floor of my house and from the first floor to the second. Two-way stairs. You could already get up and down using a circular metal staircase that was a bit better than a fireman’s pole. The biggest problem was that our dog had trouble going up and down those stairs, but anyway, I wanted to build a nice oak stairway that would make my dog proud. Naturally, I called Frank to get his help. We had to build a landing so the stairs would come down to the new landing and then take a right hand turn and go down to the floor. It was to be an L-shaped staircase with a big landing. Frank knew how to do that and suggested the plans, which I recognized were good ones.
While we built the landing, which was really a big box, we needed to nail a small two by four on the inside of the box across two pieces of plywood to temporarily hold them together. So, we did the nailing on the inside of the box that was to become the landing and it looked like a landing and we surveyed all that we had made and we declared it to be good. We then built the stringers for the stairs down to the box landing and then we built the stringers from the box landing down to the floor. We cut them out so they were all within an eighth of an inch of each other and they were perfect up and down and in every way that we knew. I knew my dog would be proud of those stairs, not to mention my wife. I was about to declare all that I surveyed to be good, when suddenly, Frank said “Oh oh… we forgot something.” I looked at him and asked what we forgot. He said we needed to open up the box for the landing and get the piece of two by four out of there since it was no longer necessary to hold the plywood together now that we had the box landing built and it was ready to support the stairs and it was now NEARLY ready to be proclaimed to be good, but for that one imperfection. I looked at Frank while I was hanging over the edge of the second floor looking down at the box and the stringers and the unseen fully covered two by four. I was covered with sawdust and I was tired. I asked Frank “Does the piece of two by four present a structural issue?” I could tell Frank knew where this conversation was going. Then I asked him “Frank, is this two by four inside and fully covered by the plywood of the box a cosmetic issue?” He hesitated for a while and finally said that “it was neither, but it really should be removed, anyway.” At that point, I declared all that we had created to be good, and swore him to secrecy and promised him that I would never tell a soul. So I ask everyone here to please keep this our little secret and don’t tell anyone else. This explains why his work was so beautifully executed and why it took a really long time to complete. Frank was a quality person inside and outside. Metaphorically, he built stairs to heaven, while my goal was to get up and down without tripping and make my dog happy.
Finally, I want to note that Frank had good taste. He picked a wonderful southern bell for a wife. Diane has been a great helper, supporter, friend, confident, and all the other things with which only a fortunate man can be blessed. Diane and her friends and family helped Frank these last few months in a truly heroic way that few would be able to match and Frank knew that. Frank knew that he was loved by his family and by his friends. Frank will be missed by all of us, and especially by his wife and children. He leaves a space in their lives that can’t really be filled. It is a space that was filled by Frank’s goodness. It was not a space of unresolved issues. He built friendships the way he built stairs.
We will all miss you Frank! We know that Diane knows that she and Frank are loved and that there are many people whom she can count on for help and support. We certainly can’t replace Frank, but we can be a source for Diane to draw upon.
Thanks for letting me try to put form to some of my feelings for Frank.
Bob Lissitz
I am honored to be permitted to speak about Frank Jaklitsch. He was a person I greatly admired and a friend of mine. He lived an exemplary life and he faced death with the same courage that he demonstrated when his health was robust. Frank was a man of honor. I have been lucky to have not faced such a circumstance very many times in the past. Of course, my parents, and my wife’s parents and our grandparents have all died, along with a few older friends. There is something about a death in the generation ahead of us that is reassuring in a strange way. That is the way it is supposed to be and I could say my turn won’t come for a while yet, because I am younger. The older people die and the young take their place. That is the way it should be and we should not be able to change the reality of that, but sometimes nature or agent orange or some other tragedy changes that reality. Of course, what one can do about this is to change the way one looks at such events although that is getting harder now that I am among that group of older people. I have become convinced that the age at which one is certified as older is much younger than it was when I was a teenager.
We can anticipate going to heaven or perhaps enjoying a rebirth as a more evolved person. I like the latter idea, myself, as long as I am allowed to skip the teenage years and the terrible twos. Frank asked me what I thought would happen when he dies. Of course, we do not really know exactly what lies ahead. What should we say to such a question from a person we care about and want to comfort and a person who knows he is going to die. What came to my mind was a conversation between the two central characters in the movie “Meet Joe Black” which was based on the novel “Death Takes A Holiday.” The man targeted for his coming death asked the collector of souls whether he should worry about what will come next. The collector said that a man like him does not need to fear what comes next. I told Frank that and I really meant it. A man like Frank does not need to worry about a judgment of his life. Any measure of Frank’s life will show him to have been an exemplary human being and I told him that was my professional opinion. I am a professor. I am not a real doctor, but I do know such things.
I first met Frank in about 1979 when he was the 9 year old soccer players’ coach and I was his assistant. We got to run around with the kids and try to have them win games while having a good time. Frank was great with the kids. My job was to give extra advice such as “Aim for the goal when you kick.” And “Kick hard with your feet.” My own kids were on Frank’s team and when I told them Frank had died, they each had the same sad reaction and they each said he was a good man. I asked them why they said that. They each said he was nice to them. He really listened to them and he treated them like he liked them, he wanted them to do well and he respected them. You all probably know the saying that relates to this. It goes something like this: “Whatever you did unto one of the least, you did unto me.” Frank was a man who gave freely of his time, his energy, his good spirit, his kindness and he did so to all who came before him.
Frank had a number of characteristics that I admired greatly. These included his generosity, his capacity for acceptance, his open admiration and support of the success of others, his fairness and fine sense of ethics. You get the idea. He had a stressful job that required great tact and a sense of right and wrong. All the knowledge I had of Frank in that arena showed me that he always advised those above him to do the right thing. Once I asked him if I could get an exception to a zoning requirement so that I could develop 30 acres that surrounded a home in an uppity northern Calvert County community. I got one of the most tactful and kind hearted NOs that I have ever received. I also got a clarification that might have been paraphrased as “it will not happen till hell freezes over.”
Some of you probably know that Frank was an excellent carpenter. He not only had lots of tools, but he knew how to use them and he did beautiful work. If you look around his house you will see evidence of that everywhere. For the purpose of this eulogy, I am going to ignore the really beautiful stained glass windows that are in several places in the house. Diane created the stained glass windows, and they are marvelous. Anyway, a great old tree fell in the woods and Frank not only heard the tree fall but he also realized that tree had the potential to be much more than it had been before it died. He took it to a sawmill and had planks made. He made stairs to the basement from that tree. Beautiful stairs. He was a perfectionist and it showed. He decided one day that his kitchen and the breakfast nook would be nicer if the area was 13 inches larger than it currently was. He then added the 13 inches to that end of his house, and it did look nicer. He was a very passionate carpenter.
I will tell you a story about the time that Frank helped me build some stairs. One day I decided I wanted to build a staircase to get from the second floor to the first floor of my house and from the first floor to the second. Two-way stairs. You could already get up and down using a circular metal staircase that was a bit better than a fireman’s pole. The biggest problem was that our dog had trouble going up and down those stairs, but anyway, I wanted to build a nice oak stairway that would make my dog proud. Naturally, I called Frank to get his help. We had to build a landing so the stairs would come down to the new landing and then take a right hand turn and go down to the floor. It was to be an L-shaped staircase with a big landing. Frank knew how to do that and suggested the plans, which I recognized were good ones.
While we built the landing, which was really a big box, we needed to nail a small two by four on the inside of the box across two pieces of plywood to temporarily hold them together. So, we did the nailing on the inside of the box that was to become the landing and it looked like a landing and we surveyed all that we had made and we declared it to be good. We then built the stringers for the stairs down to the box landing and then we built the stringers from the box landing down to the floor. We cut them out so they were all within an eighth of an inch of each other and they were perfect up and down and in every way that we knew. I knew my dog would be proud of those stairs, not to mention my wife. I was about to declare all that I surveyed to be good, when suddenly, Frank said “Oh oh… we forgot something.” I looked at him and asked what we forgot. He said we needed to open up the box for the landing and get the piece of two by four out of there since it was no longer necessary to hold the plywood together now that we had the box landing built and it was ready to support the stairs and it was now NEARLY ready to be proclaimed to be good, but for that one imperfection. I looked at Frank while I was hanging over the edge of the second floor looking down at the box and the stringers and the unseen fully covered two by four. I was covered with sawdust and I was tired. I asked Frank “Does the piece of two by four present a structural issue?” I could tell Frank knew where this conversation was going. Then I asked him “Frank, is this two by four inside and fully covered by the plywood of the box a cosmetic issue?” He hesitated for a while and finally said that “it was neither, but it really should be removed, anyway.” At that point, I declared all that we had created to be good, and swore him to secrecy and promised him that I would never tell a soul. So I ask everyone here to please keep this our little secret and don’t tell anyone else. This explains why his work was so beautifully executed and why it took a really long time to complete. Frank was a quality person inside and outside. Metaphorically, he built stairs to heaven, while my goal was to get up and down without tripping and make my dog happy.
Finally, I want to note that Frank had good taste. He picked a wonderful southern bell for a wife. Diane has been a great helper, supporter, friend, confident, and all the other things with which only a fortunate man can be blessed. Diane and her friends and family helped Frank these last few months in a truly heroic way that few would be able to match and Frank knew that. Frank knew that he was loved by his family and by his friends. Frank will be missed by all of us, and especially by his wife and children. He leaves a space in their lives that can’t really be filled. It is a space that was filled by Frank’s goodness. It was not a space of unresolved issues. He built friendships the way he built stairs.
We will all miss you Frank! We know that Diane knows that she and Frank are loved and that there are many people whom she can count on for help and support. We certainly can’t replace Frank, but we can be a source for Diane to draw upon.
Thanks for letting me try to put form to some of my feelings for Frank.
Bob Lissitz
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