 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant. Author's program note. This is the story I didn't want to write about. Didn't want to hear about... didn't want to think about... didn't want to deal with in any way... but all to no avail. This is a story that demands the telling... insists upon our honest rendering... and calls upon us for anger! Outrage! Enmity! Fury! Impatience! Indignation! Ire! Resentment! Gall! And above all for action, swift, thorough, complete, grossly overdue. It is a tale that demands to be told with the unmitigated clarity of Mozart and the masterpiece that carried him from the light of the life he loved unto the unimaginable darkness of darkest death which all approach with awe, resignation, and hope. For this universal situation which touches us all, we need the genius of Mozart who took this great fear called death, the great fact of life, and gave us, always with God's love, absolution; the thing we all desire but only God may give... Thus for this article of sharp, sickening pain and terrible loss, the more terrible because unnecessary I give you the necessary antidote, the Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626), written in Vienna by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 but unfinished at his death in December of that year. Find it in any search engine. Turn up the volume and be glad this work of genius, empathy and compassion eases the universal way into the eternity into which we all progress and forever abide. Amen! The city of promise. The people of Sparks, Nevada, numbering 90,264 in the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau count are the very essence of America. They believe in God... the Great Republic... family... and their right and responsibility to seize the imperfect present and create the always better future. They are proud of the good life they have fashioned for themselves since the city's founding in 1905, transforming the previously searing and inhospitable land called "snow clad" ("nevada") by the Spanish hidalgos who were the first Europeans to tread its immensity. Their civic motto is "It's Happening Here!"... and so it is ... for good and now with bitterness and rue for ill. For the sad fact is an overwhelming majority of these people of the sierras adheres, and adamantly too, to their right to keep and bear arms and to use these arms, thereby paying the terrible price, now regarded as the "cost of doing business". In such circumstances what does it matter if a few children and their teachers are gunned down, dying in their own blood, in their once amiable classrooms? Yes, it's just the cost of doing business after all; a mere bagatelle. The facts. Before the opening bell on Monday, October 21, a student at a Sparks, Nevada middle school opened fire with a 9mm semi-automatic Ruger handgun, wounding two 12-year- old boys and killing a math teacher who was trying to protect children from their dangerous and determined classmate. The still unidentified shooter then killed himself with the gun after a rampage in front of 20 to 30 students who had just returned to school from a weeklong fall break. As news of the shooting got out 150 to 200 police officers responded, including some from as far away as 60 miles. The two wounded students were taken to hospital for treatment and are now listed in stable condition. One was shot in the shoulder, and the other was hit in the abdomen. Students from the middle school and neighboring elementary school were evacuated to the nearby high school, and classes were cancelled. The middle school will remain closed for the week so that the scene of grim carnage may be scrubbed clean and be pristine again... as if that were even possible... or desirable. For we do not need to forget. Instead we need to remember, that is the thing of utmost necessity, for only memory can help us solve this problem, now seen by many as inevitable and unsolvable, no longer a conundrum to be unraveled but an immutable fact of life in our murderous age where there is nothing odd or even noteworthy about a 12- year-old blowing his former friends and beloved teacher to kingdom come. But of course this is not merely odd but a chilling abomination and profound moral outrage. To accept evil as inevitable when it can be eradicated is evil itself, not a fact of life, but a fact of death, mayhem, and our descent from grace. Michael Landsberry not only knew this, not only lived by this but died by this. Thus he woke up Monday a math teacher... but ended both day and life an American hero, the victim not just of the child who pulled the trigger but the larger society which enabled him to do so, failing to act to prevent such predictable and periodic slaughter. "Mr. Landsberry". Just 45, a man in his prime, Michael Landsberry was a contented man, a man respected by his peers and grateful community for his actions in war and peace; loved by an affectionate spouse and even by his two step-children, a success not given to every step-parent; admired and looked up to by his eighth grade mathematics students and by the young people he coached in soccer and basketball with strict guidelines and an unyielding belief that while winning the game was important, playing it with enthusiasm, integrity, heart, and honor was the real objective. This is the true Semper Fi and Michael Landsberry, once a Marine, always a Marine, was its unwavering example and proud ideal. Michael Landsberry, the man who survived war, only to be cut down in the peace that is no peace. This modest and unassuming man was a dedicated and caring leader, his gruff demeanor fooling absolutely no one. He did his bit... more than his bit, including two tours in Afghanistan. Thus when the pint-sized angel of death entered Landsberry's classroom intent on inflicting maximum pain with a gun he had so easily taken from his parents' house, the good teacher did what he taught others to do... doing the right thing, the valorous thing, the most perilous and sublime thing; interposing his own body between gunman and his adolescent targets. In this way did Michael Lansberry die in the most righteous fashion of all. Thus was his bald head, which students loved to touch for luck before a big game, dappled with the blood of a hero. Thus did the man who posted on his drole website his "one classroom rule and it is very simple: 'Thou Shall Not Annoy Mr. L' " expire, the most honorable of men, the noblest of deaths and the most unnecessary for we all know what needs to be done, don't we, though we seem, from the very White House itself unable to change courses, to move a single inch towards the necessary solution... Thus more children, achingly young, must die tragically... more families must suffer and grieve their loss through the long days and longer nights... innocence no shield... the most worthy of professions and the most important of work affording no protection whatsoever. So much pain is sure to come, the unarguable result of accepting "business as usual", convinced by naysayers that what is is what must be, despite the little we have done to solve a problem which was not so very long ago unthinkable, a challenge for the Great Republic to be sure, but surely not too great for our collective mind and capability. Or have we indeed sunk so low that we not only tolerate such a matter but accept it as given, understandable, unfortunate to be sure, certain, tolerable, tolerated, an occasion for a president... a governor... a mayor to send a formulaic message and prattle futile generalities about "an isolated incident", then disengage from the matter as soon as possible, while everyday people leave teddy bears and home made signs about love and loss at the death scene, nothing accomplished, absolutely nothing; no progress made, or even a beneficial discussion about what must be done, at once, with commitments, not platitudes. Thus are we condemned to repeat this maddening process over and over again, less consideration given to this outrage than to the one before; less consideration given to the next outrage than to this one, whilst people, good people, die, along with our high ideals once sacred guidelines for our purposeful endeavors, now flagrant ironies mocking who we were, who we are, and the widening chasm between these glaring, irreconcilable realities. "I fear I am writing a requiem for myself." Mozart, 1791. In such an unsatisfactory, worrisome situation we need hope, we need to believe that things can be better, that we can make them better. We need Mozart who on the very threshold of death wrote a stirring tribute to the glory of life and the possibilities which exist to its very last moment before eternal repose. "I fear I am writing a requiem for myself," he wrote as he worked day and night on his last great labor... and so he was... for himself, for you, for me, and for the victims of Sparks, especially a hero named Michael Landsberry whose work at its unexpected conclusion was as tragically incomplete as Mozart's requiem... left for us, the living, to finish, a matter of the utmost necessity for us and what we owe our honored dead whose ranks are sure and unnecessarily to grow apace if we fail to act as we have failed to act for so long. |
