Flowers & Guns

Posted under VIDEOTAPE

In the past week, we’ve seen conversation vary in color, pitch and tone. Humanity has learned, once again, what it means to mourn online. There’s a brackish tide of emotions washing over all of us from all sides. The seas smack against the rocks. Hate spreads and burns us up. Sadness blankets our thoughts. But the beauty and bother of our interconnectedness are the multicolored, ambi-textured strokes on the canvas of our lives. We are witness to a push and pull of emotion, we mould it and it moulds us. We console each other and coagulate these feelings.

One moment that caught my attention, and my breath, was a video with a French boy and his father. Give it a watch.

French father and son have the most precious conversation in i…

A father and son have the most precious conversation during an interview by french media at the scene of the Bataclan attacks. I saw that it hadn't been subtitled in english yet, so I made a quick edit to show the rest of the world how freakin awesome some of our citizens are. They're my heros. I feel better too now! #paris #bataclan #parisattacksUPDATE: Full segment has been posted with subtitles by LPJ http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3e8rah_paris-attacks-november-2015-le-petit-journal-du-16-11_tvImages and interview are a courtesy of Le Petit Journal . Thank you so much to the LPJ team for this interview and a very touching segment yesterday! Also, thank you for letting this video be accessed by all and not putting it down. Thank you to Angel Le (father) and Brandon (son) for brightening up our day. <3 Original Segment: http://bit.ly/1Lix9L2Original Video (without subtitles): https://www.facebook.com/PetitJournalYannBarthes/videos/1013093998733798/

Posted by Jerome Isaac Rousseau on Monday, November 16, 2015

Flowers. No matter your stance on guns, war, drones, terrorism — in many countries and cultures — we are parents who have to answer to our children about the evil that resides in our world.

“But there’s bad guys, papa.”

“Yes, but there’s bad guys everywhere.”

This father chose to give his son hope. This boy will someday soon know what it means to be afraid again, and what depths we can sink. Until then, we have flowers and candles. We can have hope. We can be unafraid. We will keep building in spite of the destruction and all the reasons we have to hate each other.

“They might have guns, but we have flowers.”

Until the flowers won’t grow any longer, I will protect you, my sons.

On Paris & Parents…

Posted by HowToBeADad on Friday, November 13, 2015

How have you spoken to you children about what happened? What can we learn from these moments?