No one knows better than I do -  that avoiding the mirror is, sometimes, much easier than looking into it.
 Photographers hear this all the time  " hey Bill, hey Bobby, hey Maddy, please get my good side when photographing me..." , and that pre-supposes that we HAVE a good side. Now I certainly believe that most of us DO have a good side, it's the other side(s) that trouble me.

What do we see when we peak,glance,look or stare into the mirror ...as individuals AND as a nation?

The Trayvon Martin killing should cause us some deep introspection . AS SHOULD  the many murders of young and not-so-young people. Trayvon has become a symbol, a symbol of different thoughts to different people. I had hoped that the all too early death of Trayvon Martin could cause a true coming together of us,U.S, instead of what it has become - another chasm, another divide of us pushing apart from one another.

After all of the legalities , the fact remains that a young, a VERY young man's life was cut short.

We're fond of the saying :" it takes a village to raise a child" , but in this case, it's take a village, a country to kill a child, by our actions and inaction, abusive,neglectful or NO parenting, weak, self-interested, private party(Republican AND Democrat), lobbyist-infected legislatures who talk the talk but do the walk--away from the issues killing us,US.   . We've become angry,paranoid and frightened of one another.

As a child of this nation's 60s, an "aging flower child", coming out the Martin King era, I felt a coming together of races, of people...I could not have envisioned the great divide that exists today. ...but back to  the children, black, white,yellow,brown and red, the children that we should ALL be protectors of, but we're not. Over the course of time since Trayvon Martin's death, too many children have been molested,beaten,abused and neglected, while our system of justice in MOST cases doesn't dispense true justice that we in this nation, purport to the rest of the world..and to each other.

 We needn't look to Chicago - the little boy in THIS community who's life was ended with a bullet thru his eye and into his brain, the teenager shot in the back and killed in East Youngstown just a few years ago, children shot in 'drive-bys', the kids who , hands bound, plastic bags sealed over their heads , placed in a car which was set aflame..and where was that 'village raising the child' when little Teddy's feet were freezing to frostbite, or the heat of the coals he was forced to walk on burnt him to his very soul, all while his mother and other family members had knowledge, the knowledge that Teddy needed to be saved, but wasn't..where was dad,grandma,grandpa,and his aunt?..where were the schools, children's services and ....where were we? Maybe we were too busy remodeling our man-caves with a new big screen TV so we could be ready for the trial in Florida? Maybe we were too busy for these kids, too busy being proud of ourselves, after all, THIS IS AMERICA , THE country that loves,nurtures and educates OUR children !!! Aw, crap there's that damn mirror again, just when we thought we could look to Florida and have George Zimmerman wash the blood from our hands, just when we thought we could have George Zimmerman die for our sins.