Emmitt Till

Mood: See below
Hair: Fully conditioned, blown-out and actually under control!

OK, so on the way to work this morning I had NPR on. As I pulled into the library lot, they were discussing the reopening of the Emmitt Till case from 1955. At that point, just background noise. Then an interview with his mother came on, in which she describes--very dispassionately--what her 14-year-old son looked like when she finally got his padlocked and sealed coffin box opened in Chicago.

No mother should ever have to see her child die before her.

No mother should ever have to see that someone removed both her child's eyes from their sockets.

No mother should ever have to see her child's head cleaved in two by an ax.

And no mother should have to live long enough to describe that, and more, without the slightest trace of emotion in her voice.

Unfortunately, because the world sucks, a lot and frequently, mothers (and fathers) do see their children die before them. There is a host of personal indignities ingeniously created by fertile human minds are out there destroying people. Kind of makes me want to go find Opus for a dandelion break this morning.

Instead, I'm doing a Placeware course through the State Library called "Using the Client Interface to OCLC Connexion." Which is good, because right now I can't stop thinking about my son being only 3 years younger than Emmitt Till was in 1955.