Bar None

Used to be the word "bars" meant something sweet to eat, some place to drink a toast  or something not to want to be behind. Now it can refer to something I just put on my bedroom window and patio doors. The bars are decorative, but strong as steel can be. Also used-to-be, we didn't lock our doors, not even at night. Why? Who was going to harm us or steal something? If our neighbor or a relative tip-toed in at night and we woke up surprised to see  one of them on our couch, we made coffee and pancakes. We lived, in those days, without fear. Those days will never be seen again. Hearing of the shooting of an innocent man who merely told a thief to get out of his house makes the world a place that needs bars. And furthermore, to learn that the perp was caught the same night, breaking into another house after murdering the poor family man in the previous one, makes the story read like the bad side of a Batman comic book. Is that our world? Yep, it is. So we protect ourselves with bars on windows and security systems and not daring to take a starry night walk on the street. Getting all hysterical doesn't work. Trying to "fix" people who are out of their skulls on drugs or in a state of insanity or under gang pressure is a waste of time, apparently. Rehab, generosity and the courts don't stop it. We seem to have to protect ourselves by adding bars to our homes. Do bars keep us in or others out is the question? Is it "nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and by opposing end them?" "That is the question" as the bard once wrote - taken out of context, of course. By "opposing", I don't see guns as  protection. That would put us into the same category as the criminals. What we have to do is  keep our eyes open and our minds clear. We need to think about our space and consider its safety. But we also need to look at our society and try to figure out why this change. Does it stem from poverty? Can't be. During the Dirty Thirties, there was lots of that and still, we took in tramps and gave them food and shelter if we had it. Does it come from terrorism? There was that element then, as well: wars, revolutions. Or is it greed? We had worse gaps between the rich and the poor long ago, before unions and welfare. Perhaps the gap was even wider. So what is it that can make Man such a beast in these relatively beneficent and prosperous times? Aye, now there is something to meditate upon and discuss at the corner coffee house.