“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Charles Dickens 1812-1870

I thought of this quote while absorbing the news of yet another mass shooting, this time in Thousand Oaks, CA. I realized we live in one of those times, like the decades prior to abolition, civil rights movement, etc., when the future readers of history will wonder “Why did it take so long to make reasonable and necessary changes in laws and attitudes?”