For Inner City kids, life always goes on.

When a 15 yr old is senselessly murdered who's to blame? The parents, teachers, America's culture of violence, our Government for being lax on guns, crime and education reform? I don't know, but it doesn't make me feel any less helpless. The children in the picture above turned tragedy into personal triumph but what a sad and all too common a story. From heavy hearts, a song soars

The choir's unexpected triumph brought needed emotional uplift to a small, close-knit school hit hard by a violent act. It also vividly illustrated the resiliency required to be a student in many urban schools and the sheer challenge that students and teachers often face simply to achieve a sense of normalcy.

This is the harsh reality of life in America's inner cities and very little is done to remedy it since the problem is largely contained and rarely pours into affluent suburbs. There is an added component of pure luck that must be factored into survival for kids growing up in our inner cities. Various factors can tip the scales in a kid's favor, great parents, close friends, teachers that care but in the end it could very well come down to wrong place at the wrong time, so sad, too bad. Its the reason I live happily in exile in Georgia. While I recognize anything can happen, even in my own backyard, its far less likely than in Washington Heights and P.S. 132 or I.S. 187.