When did it change?

Somewhere in my education I was taught that the true justice was about rehabilitation. When did our society flip over to pure punitiveness? Some states allow children as young as seven years old to be tried as adults and sentenced to life without parole. American incarceration rates far exceed any other industrialized nation. As spending for prisons has increased money for rehabilitation has shrunk. Studies show that harsh penalties have little deterrent effect. Punish, punish, punish....with little thought about how a perpetrator came to be what he/she is and not about how to rehabilitate him/her. For my nickel punishment is not justice!
This rant brought about by reading the newspapers.

The Pileated Woodpeckers....

Slowing down for a red light I saw a Pileated Woodpecker on an Ash tree beside the road. It was only about twenty feet from me across the right lane of traffic. I stopped about thirty or forty feet behind the cars in front of me so I was parallel with the Woodpecker. A second one soon joined the first. They were about five feet off the ground busily pecking into the tree with their long beaks. The wood chips flew and they seemed totally oblivious to the car traffic passing less than ten feet from their perch.
Keeping an eye on the red light ahead and on my rear view mirror I tried to motion to the van driver behind me to look to his right. Either I failed, or, he wasn't a bird watcher because he zoomed around me to occupy the space between me and the car ahead. As I moved ahead as the light went green the two woodpeckers were still pecking at the tree. It was my first close sighting of Pileated Woodpeckers.

Sweet

Quandry...

When Pres. Bush decided to invade Afghanistan after 9/11 I said "Didn't he learn anything from Viet Nam?" When Obama made Afghanistan a focus during his campaign I wondered but was hopeful. Now that he is requesting more troops I've been skeptical.
Then I re-read THREE CUPS OF TEA and was reminded again of how terrible the Taliban are and how many promises Americans made to Afghanistan. When we helped the Afghanistanis against Russia we promised aid after the war which we never delivered. When we attacked the Taliban after 9/11 we promised aid for rebuilding but then did not follow through because we attacked Iraq and shifted the resources to that conflict.
Now what? How long will it take? It appears that the Afghan central government is corrupt. Can we successfully do nation building? If we leave it appears that the Taliban will quickly resume control. Will the war in Afghanistan do to President Obama what the war in Viet Nam did to President Johnson? If the Russians, whose proximity to Afghanistan is much closer than America's, could not prevail can we?

How quickly I forget!

It's been a couple of years since I read THREE CUPS OF TEA, the story about Greg Mortenson and his work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I'm almost finished re-reading it for our neighborhood book club discussion on Sunday. It's as inspiring on the second read as it was on the first.
I very seldom re-read books. There are just too many good books to read that I seldom dedicate the time to re-reading. Perhaps that's a mistake. At least I'm startled by how many of the details I've forgotten in a couple of years. For example I'd forgotten that women's centers were a part of the program. After Mortenson completes the first school he's approached by the women of the village who ask for a women's center. The success of that venture leads to the inclusion of women's centers in every village where a school is built.
If you haven't read the book what are you waiting for? If you have read it....well you decide!

A couple of new pics

My favorite subject.

Practice in dying....

Three months were up, it was time for mom to go back to work and dad's paternity leave had been delayed. Grandma and Grandpa were called in to do child care. Leaving your baby for the first day of work is traumatic whenever it happens.
It reminded me of something I once read. I think it was by a Quaker by the name of Douglas Steere. He described such moments as leaving your baby when you go to work, taking your child to school for the first day, walking your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day, as 'practice in dying little deaths'. His larger point was that we never really have anything that we don't let go.
Fifty years ago I knew a mother who was determined not to let her son go. Enough time has now passed to see the unfortunate results of her unwillingness to relinquish control. Perhaps tragedy is too strong a word but at least unfortunate would be the description of a very bright person who never developed emotionally.
Family systems thought, of which I'm very fond, talks about letting go as 'differentiation'. That borrows from physical science the idea of cells differentiating from each other. In family systems the idea is that one differentiates, i.e., lets go, but stays in touch. Speaking personally I often find it easier to differentiate than stay in touch.
Some thirty years ago Thomas Gordon wrote a book, PARENT EFFECTIVENESS TRAINING. In it he introduced some basic interpersonal counseling techniques that parent's could use in raising their children. It is still worth reading. One of the ideas that proved very helpful to millions of parents was the concept of figuring out "Whose problem is it?" For example, if my child is unhappy at school whose problem is it? It is closely related to the idea of differentiation.
With all that said, let's stay in touch! :)

Life's learning.

While I was waiting for Cathy during her Gamma Knife treatment this morning I finished the book BROTHER TO A DRAGONFLY by Will D. Campbell. Will is Baptist pastor from Mississippi who worked for the National Council of Churches in race relations during the 50's and 60's. The 'Dragonfly' is his older brother about whom the book is a biography yet also in many ways an autobiography. It is filled with spiritual and practical insight and, yet, on one level blindingly naive.

Working for civil rights during that volatile time it finally dawns on Campbell that the members of the Ku Klux Klan were also human and suffered their own form of enslavement. In 1963 speaking to a group assembled by the U. S. National Student Association to watch a documentary on the Klan produced by the Columbia Broadcasting System Campbell said "My name is Will Campbell. I'm a Baptist preacher. I'm a native of Mississippi. And I'm pro-Klansman because I'm pro-human being. Now that's my speech. If anyone has any questions I will be glad to try to answer them."
Those words almost caused a riot. After describing the reaction he writes "But it took time to get my little band of radicals settled down enough to point out to them that just four words uttered-'pro-Klansman Mississippi Baptist preacher,' couple with one visual image, white, had turned them into everything they thought the Ku Klux Klan to be-hostile, frustrated, angry, violent and irrational. And I was never able to explain to them that pro-Klansman is not the same as pro-Klan."
It reminds me of a learning from the years when I was living in Davenport, IA. that a life changing realization came home to me. That learning, that every issue we encounter in life is at first an internal one, is critical to the way we relate to the world. For example, if we don't recognize the racism in ourselves we cannot effectively combat racism in society, or if we don't see the violence we harbor we cannot be valuable agents of peace. I remember sitting in a peace group and sensing that there was enough innate hostility in the group to start World War III. The learning came from reading Elizabeth O'Connor's books about the work of Church of The Savior in Washington, DC.
Unless we learn the lesson that every issue we encounter in life is at first an internal one we project our own unresolved issues out on to whatever issue we claim to be addressing. It is easy to project our own inner violence unto whatever person or group symbolizes for us the antitheses of what we believe, e.g., liberals on conservatives and vice versa. Dealing with our own inner bigot is not for the faint of heart nor is it popular to suggest to others that their efforts of behalf of a cause may be driven by their own inner demons.
The very painful part of BROTHER TO A DRAGONFLY is the abysmal, total lack of any awareness of the nature of chemical dependency. Campbell's brother is a pharmacist who gets hooked on prescription drugs and is probably also cross addicted to alcohol. His addiction is viewed as mental illness and/or moral failure. There's no clue in the book that anyone ever used any of the learning's about chemical addiction in addressing the violent, antisocial behavior of the brother. I found myself reading with a mixture of fascination, awe about the experiences and insights and, yet, frustration that no one had a clue about chemical addiction.
In spite of that glaring weakness the book is well worth the read.

Some new pics.