Resilience and Heart in Lewiston, Maine

Today on my way to Bar Harbor, at a friend’s suggestion, I visited the Just-In-Time recreation center in Lewiston, Maine. It’s a bowling alley. It just reopened, six months after yet another in the endless string of mass shootings in America. A mentally ill man shot and killed 18 innocent people on October 25, 2023, eight in the bowling alley, and 10 more down the street at a bar and grill. Thirteen others were wounded.

Sometime after the shooting, the perpetrator committed suicide.

The story is both about the worst of America — an epidemic of mass shootings and a political establishment that refuses to do anything meaningful about it — and also about the wonderful resilience of humanity. Just-In-Time reopened quickly to reassert normal life in the second largest community in Maine, after the worst shooting incident in the state’s history.

I spent half an hour in the bowling alley. There are several signs welcoming people back to the recreation center and a wall with 18 bowling pins painted with the names of the victims. Four or five small clusters of people were bowling on this Saturday afternoon, and a handful were sitting at the bar/snackbar, but the large facility was mostly empty.

It will take time.

Visitors from Jupiter — heck, visitors from France or Germany — could only shake their heads in wonder and disbelief that an advanced civilization finds it possible to tolerate mass shootings, now so frequent that they no longer always reach the front pages of our newspapers or the lead on the nightly news.

Surely we are capable of addressing this appalling national disorder in a reasonable way, protecting people’s Second Amendment rights but nevertheless doing what it will take to stop the mayhem. Most Americans have indicated their desire for reasonable firearms restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, rigorous background checks, red flag laws, and some serious restrictions on assault rifles and the AR-15.

What do you think we should do about the problem? Please don’t say, “just enforce existing laws,” because that is no real solution …

I’m glad I diverted my trajectory to visit the bowling alley. If I am wandering America trying to make sense of our national experiment on the eve of our 250^th birthday (July 4, 2026), surely trying to understand the plague of gun violence has to be a central theme.

Here are the names of the people of Maine who were minding their own business and enjoying an evening out on October 25, when they were slaughtered by a man with guns his moral compass could not manage:

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Over the next few months, Clay is shadowing Steinbeck’s 10,000-mile trek around the USA (and making a few detours of his own). Clay’s expedition is a central part of LTA’s big initiative to explore the country and take the pulse of America as it approaches its 250^th birthday. Be sure to follow Clay’s adventures and subscribe to our newsletter.