Up to Date

Fiorella used to be a news hound, but no more.  Actually, she's bored with daily reports--they're always the same.  Politicians are misbehaving, movie stars are misbehaving, Jennifer Aniston is pregnant, Angelina Jolie is having another body part removed, another Duggar is having another baby, people are killing other people, athletes are being signed for obscene amounts of money, the universe is different than previously thought, food that was bad one day is good the next and vice versa.

So Fio reads the comics and works the anagrams and occasionally the scrabblegrams, then settles down to create her own world, in which everything ends happily.

Anyone with Access

The jury's in.  It's impossible to tell who's going to pick up a gun and start shooting.

Some of the school shootings have been blamed on the victims--they must have bullied their murderers somewhere along the line.  Others have been blamed on the shooters' parents--they must not have brought their children up right.  Some have been blamed on the shooters' own unique psyches--they must have been resentful outsiders. But the shooting in Washington state belies all of these pop psychology explanations.  The shooter, who targeted his own relatives, was an insider, a popular football hero, and his family was supportive and loving.

Who will the next shooter be?  Anyone with access.

Why, Why, Why?

Fiorella is very upset about the callous murder of those three schoolboys coming home from religious school in Israel.  It was a heartless, deliberate provocation, and Fio's first reaction is DRONE PALESTINE TO CINDERS--which very well may happen because one of the boys was an American citizen.

But why, why, why?  Why this obsession with death and destruction?  Why not live in peace with Israel?  Why not live by the law instead of the sword?  And don't tell Fiorella it's because of Islam. That's just a excuse, like when Christians killed Muslims in Bosnia, and when Catholics and Protestants had at it in Ireland.

Why does anyone anywhere want to behave like this?

Liars, Case #1

We all lie a little, but some people lie a lot.  In fact, they create total false fronts for themselves.

In her past life as a college teacher, Fiorella probably swallowed a multitude of small lies--dog ate the homework, etc.--but she caught on pretty quickly to the big lie of a golden-haired Alice-in-Wonderland beauty with a sparkling smile.  VB had been brought up in an evangelical household and glowed with goodness, but a few things didn't jive.  Like the fact that this sweet, virginal-seeming creature was divorced and had a child.  Like the fact that she heartily endorsed the Nazi extermination of Jewish children in response to one of Fio's "what would you do" final exam essay questions.

A couple of years later, it came out that her preacher-lover had murdered his wife, and VB knew about it beforehand.  Took a while for the police to break her down, though.  Golden-haired princesses aren't accustomed to having their false fronts ripped to shreds.

Secret Guilt

Fio forgot to mention that her maternal great-grandmother died when Fiorella was three, about six months before Fio's maternal grandmother died. For twenty-some years afterwards, Fiorella hid it in her secret heart that she had killed her great-grandmother.

Fiorella remembers the key scene vividly.  She was standing, alone, in the hall next to the front room, with the stairs on one side and an ornate umbrella stand on the other.  An older woman--maybe her grandmother, maybe her aunt--told her not to talk too loudly because her great-grandmother was dying.

And Great-grandmother did die, which meant that Fiorella must have talked too loud.