New Year's sunshine ...
behind my garden Buddha
a rabbit
Added: Three Hundred and Fifty-Ninth Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary
written in response to Bloomberg News, Jan. 18: China’s Censors Vow to Erase "Gloomy Emotions" Over Holiday
as cases explode
upside-down face, confused, sad eyes
shocked and scared emojis
scrubbed clean from the internet --
Happy New Year of the Rabbit
Added:
police cars parked
near the Happy New Year banner ...
rabbit lanterns
decorate downtown streets
where deadly silence rules
FYI: The Canadian Press, Jan.22 : Gunman kills 10 near Lunar New Year
festival in California
The massacre, which sent fear through Monterey Park and Alhambra’s large Asian American communities, was the nation's fifth mass killing this month. It was also the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas...
...An Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S. shows that 2022 was one of the nation's worst years in terms of mass killings, with 42 such attacks — the second-highest number since the creation of the tracker in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four people killed not including the perpetrator...
Added:
the Stars and Stripes
fluttering at half-mast ...
another mass shooting
FYI: CNN, Jan. 23: Three weeks and 36 mass shootings. This is America in 2023.
... Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among people younger than 24 in the United States, according to a study published in the December 2022 edition of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics...
Added: This Brave New World, LXVI
Doomsday Clock
set at ninty seconds
to midnight ...
mass shooting after mass shooting
as the sky turns dark, darker
FYI: Atomic scientists set the "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight than ever before on Tuesday, saying threats of nuclear war, disease, and climate volatility have been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, putting humanity at greater risk of annihilation...
And NBC News, Jan. 24: The U.S. has had at least 39 mass shootings in just 24 days so far this year, data shows
