Last month, we took a long drive across the American Great Plains for my Holmsten family reunion. It was a few days of Midwestern family food and storytelling that refreshed my well of happy memories of growing up in a large, extended Swedish-American family based in Minnesota. We met at cousin Carolyn’s in Iowa, coming in from Minnesota Illinois, Florida, Montana, Texas, and New Mexico.

Sitting out in Carolyn and Dave’s backyard as the sun went down on that Friday evening, we were treated to a light show. Fireflies!  They were an important part of my childhood summer evenings. I hadn’t seen them for decades. And there they were, lighting up as they flew in and around the thick bushes and trees out beyond the patio.

We would chase fireflies down on summer evenings, and capture them in our cupped hands. They tickled me as they crawled around in the circle of my palms. Then—into the jar we had prepared ahead of time in anticipation of the Firefly Hunt.

We used a nail to puncture air holes in the lid of glass jar so we wouldn’t smother our captured magical lightning bugs. We brought the jar inside to watch the light show continue as our captives flew around inside the glass and continued their project of making light.

In the morning, I was always surprised to find the jar empty. Where had they gone? Were they hiding in dark corners of the house and would they reappear during the darkness of the next night when I least expected them? They never did.

The light from these small creatures never ceased to fascinate me. And there they were again, bringing the magic back into my life for one lovely summer evening.

This “My View” piece was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican on Friday, May 19, 2023. I wrote it in response to the tragedy in Farmington, New Mexico, that happened on Monday of that week. My husband and I lived in that town for thirty years, and only recently moved to Santa Fe.

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Mass shooting in Farmington. My friends there are calling this unthinkable—“We’re a small, quiet town. It’s not supposed to happen here.” And then on Monday morning, it happened. What we know is that an eighteen year old with three guns walked through a neighborhood and fired at houses, cars, and people. Three women were killed because they were driving in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two police officers were wounded. More people were injured.

I lived in Farmington for thirty years. This week it was heartbreaking to watch from two hundred miles away as the details of the tragedy unfolded. I texted friends there to make sure they could answer, and spent time scrolling on social media looking for more “marked safe” notices from my wider circle. I was relieved to find they were all safe, and then felt guilty about the families and friends of the victims who did not escape the gunfire.

Farmington is a community where the majority of people seem to believe in God, guns, individual liberty, hard work, the energy extraction industry, heterosexuality, fast food, and patriotism. Elsewhere, I am fairly moderate. There I was an outsider, a flaming liberal who did Peace Corps service, kept my last name when I got married, and spent too many years in graduate school. I hated the politics there even as I never hated my friends and neighbors who disagreed with me. It was complicated place for me.

Farmington is also a community where people know their neighbors. Everyone in town might not have known the victims personally, but everyone in town knows someone who knew them. The connections are tight and will help the community through this crisis. There are many good things about this community and we are seeing it now as people pull together to support each other.

But I hope for more for Farmington and for all of us. I hope for an awakening that enough is enough. I hope this for all the communities who have suffered this senseless violence, indeed for our country.  No one outside the military should have an assault rifle. People with mental health issues and records of violence should not be allowed to own guns. We keep writing to the newspaper. We march. We sign petitions. We call and write to our representatives in Washington, DC. Nothing seems to make a difference.

Mass shootings can happen anywhere. None of us can truly mark ourselves safe until something changes. What will it take?  I hope and pray we can figure it out and stop the anger and craziness before it kills more of us.

My mother schooled me in the art of opening new books when I was very young. I never heard this referred to anywhere else in my lifelong relationship with books until it popped up in my Facebook feed a few days ago. Thank you, writer friend Del Sheree Gladden.

This brings back memories of the school book fairs at The Lane School in my hometown where I was allowed to pick out two or three books to take home. When the books came home, Mom sat down with me and showed me how to “open the book.”

We read many of these books together, a chapter at a time, usually before an afternoon nap or bedtime. I can hear Mom’s voice reading me the stories of Winnie the Pooh and his Expotitions with friends, magical tales from Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, and adventures with Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows.

This was the message–books are treasures to be respected, protected, and loved. I haven’t opened a new hardback book in this way in a long time, but the lesson that opened my relationship with books stays with me.