Our heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you, who contributed.

WE REACHED OUR JUNE 30 GOAL !!!

Because (5) . . .

A child who is a veteran of past trauma needs to live in a present moment, that is free from trauma.

Past trauma infects the precious right now with dark memories.

Past trauma distorts right now with life-killing images of defeat, destruction and loss.

One strategy to help a child counter the overwhelming negative effects of a traumatic event is to create a better present.

A better present becomes a better memory.

Ronald

Ronald’s family needs $4,000 to finish the house the family is building. Ronald's uncle, David, was killed and is no longer around to help.

But we can help and so can you.

Help us help Ronald and his family get to $3,000. A friend will contribute the final $1,000.

Look at the thermometer on the right:

We are close to our goal.

Please help with what you can.

Don’t let yourself be left out of the healing process.

Use the PAYPAL contribution link (ABOVE)

OR send a check to:

David Urias Fund

c/o R Cook

PO Box 411

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Visit this blog for information and to track the progress of this campaign.

And thanks.

Because (4)

. . . a horrifying death brings us face to face with the unthinkable, the unspeakable. 

But a horrifying death become thinkable in the moment we learn of it. We immediately domesticate the news and manage it by ranking it alongside all the other news.

Strings Attached*

Sitting there in comfortable clothes

looking at my two dogs who don't know

David was murdered the other day

walking to his home where his mother

waited for him with her dog who did

not know David was already dead

and also would be killed

a second message to get the Hell out of there

stop with whatever it is they don't like.

Ataduras*

Sentado cómodo en mi sillón

Mirando a mis perritos que no saben

Que a David el otro dia lo mataron

El na’ mas caminaba a casa de su Mami

Ella con el chucho esperando al cipote,

tampoco sabia el chucho que David está muerto ya

y que al chucho mismo lo matarán,

segundo aviso que te larga de aquí

quita cualquier pendejada que no les guste

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Perhaps less formally under our criminal laws, yet in our imaginations, we still live by this ancient symmetrical creed. This is how we domesticate a horrifying event that has happened to someone else.

To manage horror, we look for something equivalent, something that can be delivered against the perpetrators in our name. Symmetry requires equivalent suffering be inflicted on the perpetrators of the evil act.

We want quick justice. We want to balance everything out.

We imagine we hear killers scream, as they suffer quid pro quo, just like Ronald’s family screamed, when the body of David Urias was discovered and the news of his death was carried into the home. But the honest imagination should also overhear the mother of the killers scream just as David’s mother screamed. Can we let ourselves imagine that?

Staring into the grinning, unrecognized face of evil, we demand recognition. We want to make an identification that reduces someone else's loss to a project. This is not a bad thing. 

A project that limits the damage is the equivalent of “the observer effect”** in physics - we want to think that our bystander participation is transformative of a past event into an item we can wrap sympathetic hands around.

NOTHING WE DO 

CAN UNDO 

WHAT IS DONE

We want to inflict equivalent death for the same reason firefighters believe in a controlled burn.** We think equivalent pain will limit the damage, eliminate the threat, keep the evil from reaching out to touch or inhabit us.

But, if it is true that we hanker after vengeance, it is also true that the balancing formulas we want to apply are useless against the grotesque event of deliberate pointless killing.

My ancient cousin, Ann Putnam, was a young girl in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, when she joined other adolescent girls in denouncing some of her poorer, and non-conforming neighbors as witches. Ann’s and other childrens' hysterical reports of spectral visitations prompted formal proceedings and the executions of  twenty-one people. The grave findings of fact included such matters as an unexplained torn garment, someone walking past a house when animals took sick. Finally, after the governor of Massachusetts intervened, the lethal proceedings were stopped.

A secondary tragedy inflicted in Salem, Massachusetts was the ruin of the life of young Ann Putnam. Mislead into childish but lethal hysteria by powerful, manipulating adults, Ann could not outlive her role as witness for the prosecution in the Salem Witch Trials. She never married and lived in tiny Salem as a recluse.

In 1706, Ann Putnam was made to write a confession of repentance, and to sit before an assembly of her flagging Congregational Church while her statement was read. Ann died young, unlamented and wrecked.

David

No harm we inflict on another can return David’s voice to his mother or his protective presence to his sisters or his jovial masculine modeling to his nephew, Ronald.

Our wishful reckonings for simple justice are as pointless as the medieval mixings of the alchemist, stupidly trying to turn ordinary metallic combinations into gold.

There is no making sense of wanton killing. There is nothing we can balance against that.

WHAT CAN WE DO? 

WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

We should do what is practical by any measure - reach out to the survivors of the horror.

So long as there is left to us a bit of strength and a bit of light, we can do a bit of lifting of the burdens that weigh upon the grieving.

Ronal

Like a penitent dipped in the baptismal river, rising into a changed world, little Ronal has been dipped in sadness. He has risen not into paradise but into a bleaker, darker place. He is an unwilling catechumen, placed on a stony path toward an uncertain salvation.

At his young age, this child must undertake a journey toward a light that has dimmed but has not been entirely snuffed out.

The child enveloped in sadness needs practical things from us. For such a child, the objects he can see and feel and touch and wear, lie down on, shelter under - these items are what matters.

We can, if we chose, become guardians along the path this child must walk.

The family needs $4,000 to finish the house they are building.

If you can help us raise $3,000, an anonymous friend will contribute the final $1,000.

Please help with what you can. Use the PAYPAL contribution link (ABOVE)

OR send a check to:

David Urias Fund

c/o R Cook

PO Box 411

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Visit this blog for information and to track the progress of this campaign.

And thanks.

* The poems, Strings Attached and Ataduras, appear in the book of poems, Dad Was Taken to Watch a Lynching by Richard Baldwin Cook (Nativa, 2014) available at lulu.com

** The metaphor of punishment as a “controlled burn” belongs to Leslie Jamison, in her bo0k, The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press, 2014, p. 187). Jamison also makes similar use of the ‘observer effect’ metaphor (p. 194).

Because (3)

Ronald is holding up his end.

Ronald is doing his best.

Ronald does not intend to live under the losses he has suffered. He wants to move on.

But Ronald is a child and he needs a hand up, just now. Right now.

In 2012, an horrific act of brutality shook the world of Ronald and his family. 

David Urias, Ronald's uncle was murdered. 

David Urias

David was nineteen when he died. David was killed when some people held David down while someone dropped an enormous rock on his head.  

David's family, which is also Ronald's family, is building a new home. They know that Ronald needs a secure place where he can grow up in safety.

Last year, 2013, friends raised enough money for the family to buy materials for the project. This year, construction is stalled until they have enough money in hand for the labor to complete the job.

If you can help us raise $3,000, an anonymous friend will contribute the final $1,000.

Please help with what you can. Use the PAYPAL contribution link (ABOVE)

OR send a check to:

David Urias Fund

c/o R Cook

PO Box 411

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Visit this blog for information and to track the progress of this campaign.

And thanks.

because (2) . .

Ronald needs security returned to his life.

Ronald needs the comfort of a roof over his head while he grows up.

Ronald needs a safe, comfortable bed.

Ronald

Ronald needs to grow up in a household that is not permanently darkened by the murder of his uncle.

Ronald needs to know that his friends, near and far, will not abandon him and his family to the dangerous uncertainties of life in rural El Salvador. 

You can help.

David Urias 2012

In an horrific act of brutality that shook the world of Ronald and his family, David Urias, 19, was murdered. Some people - high school kids? neighbors? - we don't know, but some people held David down while someone dropped an enormous rock on his head. David's was left where his mother was sure to find the dismembered corpse of her only son. 

David’s mother, Ronald’s grandmother, Lidia, is disabled by severe arthritis. But she is still active in a local campaign to oppose a gold mining company that wants to dig and flush ore out of the volcanic soil of El Salvador. (Is this why David was killed?)

Ronald with his Grandmother Lidia

The family needs $4,000 to finish the house they are building.

If you can help us raise $3,000, an anonymous friend will contribute the final $1,000.

Please help with what you can. Use the PAYPAL contribution link (ABOVE)

OR send a check to:

David Urias Fund

c/o R Cook

PO Box 411

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Visit this blog for information and to track the progress of this campaign.

Thanks.

. . . because . . .

Ronald's uncle David was stoned to death. 

David Urias is gone forever out of the life of this child. David won't be there to mentor Ronald, or protect him on the long, poorly graded, mostly unpaved road leading down the mountain, the road in the department of Cabañas, El Salvador, where David met his own death.

Ronald, on Grandmother Lidia's hand-powered cart

Today, Ronald, age six, is waiting for his grandmother's house to be finished, so he'll have a place to live.

In June, 2012, David Urias was murdered as he walked home from the bus stop after a week of classes at the National University in San Salvador. 

Some people held David down and crushed his head with a huge rock. They left his body where his mother would find him.

David Urias, 2012

David, 19 when he died, was the only son of his mother, Lidia, who, like young Ronald, must now get on without him.

Lidia, partly disabled by severe arthritis, is an activist in her community, Palo Bonito. Before David was killed, Lidia had been denouncing mining interests that pose grave environmental threats in El Salvador. (Is this why David was murdered?)

Ronald and Lidia, 2012

In 2013, friends in the US helped Lidia raise money to buy construction materials to build a new home. This year, Lidia intends to finish the job and we intend to help.

Right now, Lidia needs $4,000, so the house can be finished.

If we can raise $3,000, an anonymous friend will contribute the final $1,000.

Please help with what you can. Use the PAYPAL contribution link (above)

OR 

send a check to:

David Urias Fund

c/o R Cook

PO Box 411

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Your gift to help the family directly is not tax deductible. 

An accounting of how your gift was spent will be posted here and - at your written request - sent directly to you via email.

For more information, please send a note to: cookrb1@gmail.com

Thanks!