Cultural Commentary,  O, Humanity!

Don’t Judge Las Vegas, the People or the Place


“From a distance, the world looks blue and green …”

“From a distance,” the lyrics go, “there is harmony and it echoes through the land.”

The image above shows the view from my window seat on a flight as it landed in Las Vegas, one of several trips as an adult I have made to visit a place where for years I lived as a child.

My dad helped build the original Las Vegas Convention Center. My mother held important jobs, including personal legal secretary to State Senator Mahlon Brown.

Real people live and work in Las Vegas. And yes, go out to play.

My daughter-in-law greeted me yesterday morning with these first words.

“There was a S-H-O-O-T-I-N-G in Vegas last night.”

Her eyes formed big O’s as she spelled to spare her preschoolers this tragic news. She and her husband had returned home earlier that day on a flight from Las Vegas to Housotn. My husband and I traveled from Lubbock to keep our grandsons while they had a weekend away.

Don’t judge.

Sin City and Broad Strokes

Las Vegas may have earned the title “Sin City,” but what city can exempt itself from that broad designation?

Writing a letter to Romans in the first century, Paul wrote “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

But that’s not my point.

Prior to my trip to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion perform––a gift for my 50th birthday––a coworker sniped, “I would never go there.”

That same judgmental, sanctimonious attitude has launched a thousand shots across far too many a bow so that now we the people find ourselves in a sea of troubles.

Divided and divisive, people arm themselves to shoot at their own kind.

“We have met the enemy and he is us,” words cartoonist Walt Kelly put into the mouth of his comic strip character Pogo.

This is not funny.

Photo also shot from my window seat. Shooter of innocents from a room in the Mandolay Bay, he should not be named. Another cipher to forget. Remember names of those who saved others.

“God is watching us … from a distance”

The media adds to the insanity. Keep people riled up about something. Anything. 24-7.

America is coming apart at the seams. Or so it seems.

Still, some people instinctively rush in to save others. And heroes emerge in unlikely places.

“It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of peace, it’s the voice of every man.”

Promote the common welfare to form a more perfect union, the Constitution admonishes citizens.

We the people must unite. Or break apart from within.

“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Somebody’s somebodies live in these houses, and we all live in houses that break with sticks and stones and guns.

And yes, even words do hurt.

2 Comments

  • Sheridan Harnly

    Thank you for your words of wisdom & reminders. It is America & affects so many, but especially “connects” when you have ties to that community. How grateful I am for God’s care and mercy for each of us in these difficult times.

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