Transcript of President Obama’s speech at the Sandy Hook prayer vigil

This morning I wrote a long (over 1400 words) blog post about guns and freedom in America. I haven’t published it, and I probably won’t, because it’s so difficult to put into words what I feel and what I think about all that has happened recently.

Then I read the transcript of President Obama’s speech last night. There is nothing I can say about the situation that he did not say better, and in time I trust that his call to action will become clearer and more explicit about what exactly must be done to prevent similar tragedies in the future. But for now, I will let the President’s words speak for me.

Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, Governor. To all the families, first responders, to the community of Newtown, clergy, guests — Scripture tells us: “…do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away…inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults. They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school; in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.

Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief; that our world too has been torn apart; that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you, we’ve pulled our children tight. And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide; whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown — you are not alone.

As these difficult days have unfolded, you’ve also inspired us with stories of strength and resolve and sacrifice. We know that when danger arrived in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary, the school’s staff did not flinch, they did not hesitate. Dawn Hochsprung and Mary Sherlach, Vicki Soto, Lauren Rousseau, Rachel Davino and Anne Marie Murphy — they responded as we all hope we might respond in such terrifying circumstances — with courage and with love, giving their lives to protect the children in their care.

We know that there were other teachers who barricaded themselves inside classrooms, and kept steady through it all, and reassured their students by saying “wait for the good guys, they’re coming”; “show me your smile.”

And we know that good guys came. The first responders who raced to the scene, helping to guide those in harm’s way to safety, and comfort those in need, holding at bay their own shock and trauma because they had a job to do, and others needed them more.

And then there were the scenes of the schoolchildren, helping one another, holding each other, dutifully following instructions in the way that young children sometimes do; one child even trying to encourage a grown-up by saying, “I know karate. So it’s okay. I’ll lead the way out.” (Laughter.)

As a community, you’ve inspired us, Newtown. In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other, and you’ve cared for one another, and you’ve loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered. And with time, and God’s grace, that love will see you through.

But we, as a nation, we are left with some hard questions. Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around. With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves — our child — is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice. And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child’s very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them. They’ll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments. And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.

And we know we can’t do this by ourselves. It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize, no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself. That this job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation. And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.

This is our first task — caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.

Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America — victims whose — much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.

But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try.

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators — in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

All the world’s religions — so many of them represented here today — start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain; that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame, or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that no matter how good our intentions, we will all stumble sometimes, in some way. We will make mistakes, we will experience hardships. And even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.

There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have — for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace — that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves, and binds us to something larger — we know that’s what matters. We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that.

That’s what we can be sure of. And that’s what you, the people of Newtown, have reminded us. That’s how you’ve inspired us. You remind us what matters. And that’s what should drive us forward in everything we do, for as long as God sees fit to keep us on this Earth.

“Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them — for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.

God has called them all home. For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on, and make our country worthy of their memory.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort. And may He bless and watch over this community, and the United States of America. (Applause.)

Source: NPR

What is freedom?

I’ve struggled with the decision to write this post. But since I cannot wipe these thoughts from my mind, nor can I continue to tweet incessantly on the topic until someone does something about the problem, I know I just need to get these thoughts out, and then maybe I can do something constructive with them.

First, some background. I don’t like guns. I’ve never liked guns, even toy guns as a kid. I’ve never held a real gun, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen a real gun in person.

I recognize the luxury of my position. I grew up in an era without military conscription. There was no war that I was sent off to fight in, voluntarily or otherwise. Though my upbringing was modest, it was comfortable, and I excelled academically, so I was able to attend the college of my choice on scholarship; enlisting in the military wasn’t a necessary choice for me after high school.

I grew up in a small town, but my childhood was definitely a town experience. I was not a rural kid. I spent very little time in the country, and hunting was the furthest thing from my mind. I have never lived in conditions where I needed to hunt for survival, nor been involved with the portion of our society that does it for sport.

I grew up with the privilege of being white and middle class. I did not live in conditions where I was likely to encounter violent crime, and I have continued to live in relatively “safe” places, by choice but also by privilege, as an adult. I have never felt the need to own a gun to protect myself or my family. (Maybe I am naive in that thought, but so far experience has borne it out, and with luck and prudence that will continue. At any rate, I do not believe my owning a gun would make me or my family safer.)

All of this background is simply to help explain how my view of guns in our society has been shaped. I have never seen them as necessary; I have only seen them as dangerous and destructive. And I have never wanted to have anything to do with them.

I am well aware of the Second Amendment. It is probably the only amendment whose text I have memorized:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The exact meaning of that text has been debated since well before I was born. Gun rights advocates focus on the second clause; gun control advocates focus on the first. But the whole needs to be considered to be properly understood. And it’s important to factor in the numerous Supreme Court cases on the matter, which seem to have settled once and for all that the amendment does grant individuals the right to “keep and bear arms.”

I guess the operative word in all of this is “infringed.” Where does regulation become infringement? And beyond that, is the amendment really good for the country? Can it not be altered or repealed? (Remember prohibition?)

I’m getting ahead of myself. With my personal distaste for guns, and my beliefs that a) the “well regulated militia” clause is both key to the amendment’s meaning and indicative of its modern irrelevance, and b) the amendment’s original purpose is not only antiquated, but not at all effective in a modern context, with modern weaponry; it’s time to look beyond this singular fixation on the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment, and start talking honestly and practically about what the proliferation of massive, military-grade firepower into the hands of (a small subset of) the American civilian populace really means for us as individuals and as a nation.

In short, what is freedom? What are rights? And how long can we sustain the dangerous imbalance between the “right to keep and bear arms” — even semi-automatic, combat-grade assault rifles — and all of the rest of the rights We the People are entitled to?

Surely, on a level deeper than any of the specific rights afforded in the first ten amendments to the constitution, are the rights cited in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What freedom can be more fundamental than the freedom to exist? And yet that is precisely the freedom that is being put at risk by the stubborn, illogical adherence to the notion that any and all guns should be freely available to anyone who wants them, and the disturbing trend among state legislatures recently to pass laws allowing these weapons to be carried (concealed, no less) in places like elementary schools.

There are people making (somewhat) reasoned arguments that teachers should be armed in the classroom. I find plenty of counterarguments for why that is absolutely ludicrous, but beyond that debate itself, don’t we need to step back and seriously question how we’ve allowed ourselves to get to a place where that’s even a consideration? Teachers packing heat in the classroom? Seriously?

I think a big part of this problem is the idea of “American exceptionalism.” You may infer that I am not a proponent of this concept, and I am not. It’s harmful in two ways: first, it allows us to be foolishly insular in our thinking. We ignore the rest of the world because we are “exceptional.” We have nothing to learn from the rest of the world because we are somehow, and in ways that go without explanation, superior to them. And second, because we ignore the rest of the world, we both miss out on the opportunity to learn from other countries and we fail to see the many ways in which we are not superior. It’s a cyclical problem, and it leads to the kind of spiraling nightmare we’re seeing with gun violence.

I’ve looked at too many depressing statistics over the past weekend to even begin to try to track them all down and cite them here. Suffice to say, while in most other “industrialized” countries the number of gun deaths annually are in double digits, in the U.S. the number is 1000 times that. And consider this: two of the countries I saw gun rights advocates comparing the U.S. to in defending our gun laws were Mexico and Israel. Not exactly the paragons of peace and stability I think we should aspire to. I prefer to look at countries like Canada or, for a more pointed comparison, Norway. Norway had a gun massacre last year. But instead of anyone arguing that more people needed more guns in more places, Norway did what most other politically stable, industrialized countries like it had in the face of such a tragedy: tightened gun restrictions, with the result of fewer gun deaths.

The numbers don’t lie. If more guns makes for a safer populace, the U.S. should be the safest place on earth. One statistic I saw this weekend said there are 270,000,000 privately owned guns in the United States. That’s almost 1-to-1 for every person (children included). And yet our number of gun deaths compared to other countries is literally off the charts (at least depending on how you draw your charts).

I’m not advocating for repeal of the Second Amendment. That will never happen. (For what it’s worth, I think it should happen not because I think all guns should be illegal, but because I think it needs to be rewritten.) I don’t think we need to take away people’s hunting rifles, and I will grudgingly accept that people may feel the need to own a single-shot handgun for protection (even though I would still prefer if they didn’t). But there is simply no explanation I can accept for why any civilian would need or should be allowed to own military-grade weaponry. Nor should they be allowed to store or carry it anywhere near other civilians. No explanation.

Taking away your (recently granted, through the 2005 lapse of the assault weapons ban) “right” to own a combat rifle is not taking away your freedom. But your owning one may very well take away mine.

I could go on for another 1400+ words and barely scratch the surface on this topic, but I think one tweet I composed this weekend said it best:

The Post-it note that started it all

My recently completed rock opera, 8-Bit Time Machine, did not begin as most of my albums do, with a list of song titles to serve as inspiration, an overarching concept, and a handful of drum beats or keyboard grooves.

No, it began with this Post-it note.

8-Bit Time Machine chords Post-it

You see, I keep my cheap Fender Strat hanging next to my desk in the studio, so whenever I feel inspired or just need a mental break, I can take it down and noodle for a few minutes. In September I started tinkering with a chord progression, which I had to write down so I wouldn’t forget it, and then I continued to expand on it and rework it, until it became the structure for track 10, “You’re Not That Old Anymore.”

In fact this chord progression ended up serving as the basis for almost the entire album, as it first appears (in its entirety) on a keyboard in the opening track, and crops up again in bits and pieces in other tracks (especially #2, “Daydream of the 8-Bit Time Machine”, and #7, “(No) Meaning in the Machine”), before getting its full realization in the album’s penultimate track.

I kept this Post-it note stuck right on the front of that Strat for over a month before I actually began recording the album. At that point the chords were in my blood and I no longer needed a cheat sheet to remember them. But I kept it anyway as a rare physical memento of the unusual origins of this most unusual album.

Obviously not everything from the Post-it was entirely relevant. There’s nothing on the album in 5/8, for instance, although perhaps that interest in 5 is what inspired the crazy quintuplet drum fills in the loud section of track #8, “Horizontal Hold”.

Introducing my new album… a ROCK OPERA no less… 8-Bit Time Machine!

Anyone who’s following me on the social medias knows I’ve been working for the past couple of months on what is probably my most absurdly ambitious solo music project to date: a rock opera with a retro-geeky theme.

The album is finished. I’m still working on perfecting the masters before I release it for download and get CDs pressed, but you can now immerse yourself in the full 8-Bit Time Machine experience over on the new website I’ve set up for the album:

8bittimemachine.com

The website features a page for each of the album’s 11 tracks, where you can listen to the track while reading the lyrics and notes about the story. (Note: As the audio is in MP3 format, it will work in Firefox. Any other modern browser that supports HTML5 audio will play the tracks automatically.)

Stay tuned for more information about a final release date!

8-Bit Time Machine

P.S. Yes, there is a track (a rather musical one at that) consisting of nothing but sounds from Atari 2600 games.

P.P.S. Yes, there is also one track with full-on autotuned vocals. How do I rationalize this use of one of my most despised audio technologies? You’ll just have to listen to figure it out.

CSS snag of the day: images in tables with max-width set, not displaying properly in Firefox

When did Firefox become such a steaming pile?

OK, that’s not how I intended to start this. Just kinda had to get it out there. Anyway, a client brought an unusual bug with their website to my attention today.

Since embracing responsive web design last year, I’ve become quite fond of using this little bit of code to make images resize dynamically to fit their containers:

img {
  height: auto;
  max-width: 100%;
  width: auto;
}

Most of the time this little bit of CSS works magic. But in this particular case, it did not. The client has put together a table on a page to present a set of photos of board members. In most browsers, the table looks great and is fluidly scaling down the images. But in Firefox, we found it was clumsily overflowing its borders, rendering the images at their full sizes.

After working my way through a few surprisingly unhelpful posts on Stack Overflow, I found my way to this, which seemed to hold an only-too-simple answer:

table {
  table-layout: fixed;
}

I don’t know about you, but I never use table-layout. I’ve come to realize there’s a whole realm of CSS that I just basically never touch, because it’s (usually) completely unnecessary to the way I build pages. But every once in a while, these things come in handy. Turns out, table-layout: fixed was exactly what I needed to — BOOM! — fix the problem with the too-large table images in Firefox.

And, suddenly, CSS was magic again.