Daniel Lovell has won more than two dozen awards for his columns, editorials and investigative journalism. He is actively addicted to the Internet, soda and New York Yankees baseball.
Forgive me for being so very absent for so very long. The past month or so has been a bit of a whirlwind, and I think time got away from me.
But I've been thinking a lot.
Mostly I've been thinking of all the things that might have been, with just a slight change of circumstance. And I've been thinking about how little we really know or understand this crazy world we're supposed to survive.
I've been thinking about Imani Jennings, a mere baby, beaten to death here in the city just a couple of weeks ago, reportedly by a 15-year-old who used his fists to teach her how to use a toilet instead of a diaper.
What might Imani Jennings have become had her life not been cut so tragically short? And what might have been had someone -- anyone -- noticed that the adults in her life were leaving her, unattended, in an apartment for eight hours a day, with a plate of chicken nuggets and a glass of milk on the floor for her to eat? I wonder who she would have been if she lived through all she had endured in her terribly short life.
But I wonder what horrors she would have endured had she survived the beatings and continued under the only "care" she knew.
I'll say a prayer tonight, as I do every night, for the children who suffer. And may God have no mercy on anyone who would harm a child.
