Shanamadele’s Coffee Break
Pet Peeve #162Archive for random thoughts
Book review: Protecting the Gift
Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe by Gavin De Becker
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Easy-to-read book on hard-to-face subject. I appreciate that the author takes care to emphasize where victims/survivors took action, even while pointing out how they might have escaped injury/victimization by acting differently earlier in the encounter. I also like the concern he shows for teaching violence prevention as a way of helping people be less anxious and more open generally.
He talks about some of the myriad reasons we–the big society We–tolerate violence and fail to see it. He does not address issues such as how racism and classism affect our intuitions. On the other hand, he uses both statistics and stories to underscore his thesis that much of what we think we know about who is violent and how we can avoid violence is wrong.
NPR Overload
If I hear the Get Smart Nudnick Shpilkis joke on NPR one more time, I may ban NPR from my home permanently.
That is all. I hope a real post is coming, soon.
Cat-free Living
With the death yesterday of our beloved Sydney, Pumpkin and I are experiencing cat-free living for the first time in about nine years. We are very sad. There is not much else to say.
Our other cat, O.C., got out of our house about two weeks ago. We have spotted him repeatedly in our yard and in the neighborhood. Although he is very friendly and affectionate with us at home, now that he is outside of our house, it is as if he never knew us. He runs from us, and we can’t get anywhere near him. So far, our attempts to trap him have been fruitless.
The last time he got out of our house was right as our other cat was diagnosed with chronic renal failure — and she died quickly after the diagnosis. It’s probably just a coincidence, but it makes me wonder if this cat can tell when another cat is near death and needed to get away.
Presidential Declarations
Has everyone heard enough re-statements of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address recently to remember that near the end he says, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”?
As I recall from my high-school journalism class, Lincoln’s address didn’t even make it into the Baltimore Sun. The paper reprinted the entire speech of some general, and simply reported that the President also made an address.
There’s a lesson in here, somewhere, about the power of reflection, but I don’t have time to flesh it out.
