Hit him back first?

      One year ago today, a young man was shot and killed by a member of a neighborhood watch in the Florida community where he was visiting. A couple of days later, our local university held a Hoodie March, to protest the shooting of that young man -- youth, really -- Trayvon Martin. It was held in response to the … well, lack of response of Sanford, Florida law enforcement officials to the shooting death of 17-year-old Martin by George Zimmerman, the member of that neighborhood watch.

     Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder in the slaying. He will go to trial in June. He has been in jail since his arraignment, but before that, the law allowed him to walk free for almost two months until his arrest.

     Zimmerman says he shot the teen in self defense. He challenged Martin, Martin reacted, and in the confrontation, was shot. It's not so simple, though. Before challenging Martin, Zimmerman called a police dispatcher, who advised him strongly to stay in his car and not confront the hoodie-wearing youth. Tragically, he did not heed that advice.

     Zimmerman, obviously, was armed with a gun; Martin was armed with a cellphone, a can of  iced tea and a bag of Skittles, which he had bought at a neighborhood store and was carrying home on a rainy night, which is why he was wearing a hoodie. It seems the hoodie rendered its wearer menacing, or at least suspicious, hence its significance to protesters as an emblem of injustice.

     But the focus of the killing has now become Florida’s so-called “Stand your ground” law. It repeals the requirement that, if you feel threatened, first, you must retreat if you can. The law expands the so-called Castle Defense beyond the home. You can use deadly force anywhere you feel threatened, not just behind your four walls. And not just to defend yourself, but to defend property.

     It’s a very popular idea, a heroic stance. The law feels like the frontier, those good, old Wild West days where you took the law into your own hands. Face-offs on Main Street, gunfights at the OK Corral, that sort of thing. But now Florida, and a few other states, including my own Pennsylvania, which have similar laws are taking another look. Those laws probably will not be repealed, but may well be amended.

    The difficulty with the law is that word “feel.” Not only is it ambiguous – how, precisely, do you measure that feeling? – it is subjective. One person could feel frightened in circumstances that would not necessarily frighten another. It is not for nothing that laws generally go to considerable lengths to spell out exactly what is meant by specific reactions to specific circumstances. The idea is to avoid ambiguity, to suppress subjectivity, to prevent mistakes that can be fatal.

     We’ve all been in situations that call for quick reactions. Without the chance to think things through, we have to act, and often we are wrong. That’s not too bad when we’re kids and a fistfight results. But with adults and adult weapons ….

     Smythe put his pen on the problem in his Andy Capp cartoon. It illustrates what can happen when you react to a perceived threat or menace based on what you feel is a threat or menace. What if you’re wrong when you “thought-he-was-going-to-hit-me”? The problem then is, laws like Florida’s “Stand your ground” law allow you to, literally, shoot first and ask questions later. And we’re talking bullets, not fists.

     The specifics of the Martin-Zimmerman case are in dispute. Zimmerman claims Martin assaulted him. He claims he was injured. Martin’s defenders insist otherwise. State and federal investigations and his trial may clarify which assertions are true. But one thing is incontrovertible. In great part because of that Florida law, someone is dead.
 
    As with similar laws in several other states, “Stand your ground” is flawed because it substitutes human emotion and subjective feeling for due process – in short, the law. And, remember, we have always prided ourselves in being a nation of laws, not men. Nothing is infallible, not laws, not men. But unlike men, laws don’t make snap judgments, and in matters of life or death, that is a crucial distinction. When guns are in hand, the last thing we should want is a situation where someone is allowed to “hit-him-back-first.”

    

Sign me in, please

     A friend who read the foregoing (Maine-ly Maine) suggested I look around our local area. She thought we might have our own examples of humor or wit in road or other signs.

     We do have one example I’ve seen of  … well, humor, I suppose, although of  an indirect, possibly unintentional sort. Actually, it may be more indicative of a bureaucratic mindset – there’s a form line that must be filled, and we’ll fill it, by golly – or, to give the author credit for wit, perhaps a smidgen with bit of irony larded with a dose of sarcasm.

     Along highways and state routes in recent years, departments of transportation have taken to posting signs identifying the rivers and streams those byways cross. As with the “Mousam River” sign to which I referred in Maine.

     Such tasks aren’t always cut and dried. Sometimes finding the names of those streams can be problematic. I’m reminded of a Reader’s Digest-type item I saw years ago about one such transportation official who wanted to identify a small stream somewhere in the Appalachian South. “What’s the name of that creek?” he asked a local. “That? That’s just the crick,” the local said. So, naturally, the sign that eventually went up over the stream read, “Crick Creek.”

     In Pennsylvania, there is a meaner or maybe supercilious streak in the bureaucracy, apparently.

     Route 402, which runs north from our home county of Monroe into neighbor Pike County, at one point crosses a fair-sized stream called the Bushkill Creek. The sign says so. Not far south of the crossing is a small stream that flows into the Bushkill a mile or so downstream from the 402 bridge. I can imagine the transportation guy asking around about the name of that stream. He must have run into some locals who either didn’t know its name or didn’t think it was any of his business, and probably told him so.

     But, see, there is a line that must be filled on the form. There is a requirement that a sign be placed identifying that stream for the casual or curious passerby. And there may even have been a comeuppance to be paid. So the wheels ground out the larger-than-usual sign that graces the stream to this day:

     “Unnamed Tributary to Bushkill Creek.”

     Oh ye of literal, and stubborn – sardonic? -- minds.

Maine-ly Maine

     I had wanted to start a conversation, and said so. And any conversation has its pauses. But this ... it's months long! C-mon!
     So let's try again:
     Despite their flint-hard reputation, reflected in the rock-bound coast that defines their state, Mainers do have a sense of humor. Dry, yes. But seasoned with the salt that blows in from the sea. Or perhaps a dash of Old Bay.
     Just a small example: Road names.
     I saw a piece yesterday about the tiny town of Embden, Maine. (Tiny? How about population, 993!) Officials run through several hundred dollars a year to replacing their frequently-stolen street sign, Katie Crotch Road, a name the origin of which no one really knows. Maybe a "Katie" family near a crotch or fork in the road. Or a fold in a nearby hill, or maybe even a long-deceased, gnarled, old tree. But no one wants to change the name, so they just keep replacing the signs that others --  college students? -- keep stealing.
    I have my own name to offer as evidence of that Maine sense of humor.
As you travel south down the Maine turnpike, not far south of Portland, you cross a river. The river's name, thanks to conscientious transportation officials and their signs, we know is the Mousam River. How pronounced? "Mouse-am?" Or "Moose-am"? Being Maine, you might favor "Moose." But I think the former, because about a quarter-mile down the road you drive under an over-pass. The road you are passing under? "Cat Mousam Road."
     You can't accept "Moose" with that pun hanging out there over I-95.
     Why the name? Some family names Mousam who lived alongside that stream, probably. But "Cat"? That's the unexpected wry wit.
     Anyway, we don't have to investigate the provenance of either the river's or the road's name. We only have to enjoy the chuckle and the Maine sense of humor.