Well. Here it is Friday... thoughts on Ferguson, Mo.

Evening Street Scene in Ferguson, Mo.

I've spent the week trying to figure out Ferguson, Missouri.  It baffles me. There seems to be a lot of killing of unarmed blacks.  Of course, there is a lot of that stuff anyway, anywhere.  Whites too. Latinos? No one seems to report that but mass graves have been found in the Southwest and they are recent. But in the end, there is just too much killing.

Ferguson brought out some scenes and memories from my university days and the Vietnam protests that at one point started out peaceful and then turned violent.  It took three or four years of killing in Vietnam before that spector came stateside but it did; starting in Madison, Wisconsin and on to Kent State.

Ferguson residents practicing the right of assembly

It has been a long time since I saw protesters confronted by armored vehicles with machine guns and law enforcement in riot gear.  The only thing missing was a snarling German Shepherd on a thin leash.

Close Encounters

What struck me was how disjointed the images were.  The protesters looked at the police as a true enemy much as one would look at a coiled snake ready to strike...not that snakes have a battle plan...but they and the protesters have a right to be where they are and when someone enters their zone, well....hissssss.  Who can fathom what the police were looking at; scratch that....what the police were seeing.  Someone with his hands up "resisting arrest"?

More to the point the police looked unworldly what in their battle gear and menace.  It was a gap between ordinary Joe and Mr. Sheriff that couldn't be understood let alone solved.  The Governor of Missouri did the right thing and sent this alien force packing; replacing it with a more "normal" set of peace keepers who, incidentally, figured a way to bridge the gap.

A bridge to understanding

I don't know how long the "peace" will last but sure as shootin' there will be another Ferguson and another and still more and that isn't why we were put on this earth. It just isn't.