In Iowa: It’s been a horrible month, and words don’t feel adequate

One of my best friends has family in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, where 28 people died when militants attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery July 1.

One of her family friends, whom she met here in Iowa, had posted photos from that restaurant earlier in the day. Even when they are a world away, these tragedies hit close to home.

Writing has always been how I process experiences, how I make sense of the world around me. But nothing feels as if it can really make sense of so much violence and hatred.

I started working on this column a couple weeks ago, and I had the initial draft finished up. I was pretty happy with it, too.

But then people kept dying, and I tore that column up. The things I'd typed just didn't feel adequate anymore.

Nothing really does. In the face of continued police shootings of young black men and the senseless deaths of police officers, no words feel like enough. When trucks barrel through crowds in France, militants attack bakeries in Bangladesh and extremists target innocent people in a dozen other places, it's hard to know what to say.

I don't have kids, but I see parents posting on Facebook, wondering how to explain so much death to their children.

I see people whose family members are police offers worried for their loved one's safety. I see my friends of color frustrated that black lives still don't seem to matter. I see people's attempts to have conversations about these things belittled and attacked and reduced to screaming matches, both virtual and literal.

What can we say in the face of such anger? A lot of people have said a lot of things, so much of it full of vitriol and snark. From our political leaders on down, it feels like those are the new normal ways of addressing each other.

Even our pastimes get such treatment. I have heard more people making fun of Pokemon Go players in the last two weeks than I can count. Why do people who are having fun exploring the world deserve so much derision?

I'm not a Pokemon Go player, but I went to see the new 'Ghostbusters” movie last weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed it until I saw the number of people leaving nasty comments everywhere I looked online about women daring to step into men's roles in a reboot, and then saw the pure vile racism black actress Leslie Jones faced.

It's a comedy movie about catching ghosts! I'm speechless people are so invested in their bigotry they would bother to care. Is this the way we have to be in the world?

I turn this column in on the Tuesday before it prints. I desperately hope that by the time the Sunday paper hits your doorstep we haven't endured even more atrocities. I hope as a community, as a country, as global citizens, we can do better.

Maybe next month I'll find more to say.