Category: Connecting

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Connecting

On being a parent

In a quiet moment of sharing, Jonathon Delacour wrote:

Though I don’t believe in regrets, I have just one: that I don’t have a child. All my closest friends have children and every time they invite me to their homes, I feel a sense of gratitude that I’ve been able to share the intimacies of family life. I’m well aware that I’m getting many of the pleasures with none of the pain, but the rewards seem so great that I’m always left wondering at what point I took the wrong turn.

Making the decision to have a child or not is the single most defining moment in our lives. No one act we take can have greater impact. No one act we take should have greater impact in our lives.

Think about it — when you have a child, you’re bringing a new person into the world. You’re teaching this new person love and happiness and sharing and the values and beliefs you think are important. You have the front seat of a show starring this new person, watching as she or he grows and becomes something unique and special. From my own childless perspective, I can’t imagine that there isn’t a parent anywhere who doesn’t sit down daily and marvel at what they’ve done.

However, with the marvel also comes the complexity in raising a child. When I watch my brother with his kids, it looks to me as if there is a daily negotiation between him and each child about what rules apply, because every day new circumstances occur and new rules need to be made to meet these circumstances. Even the rules themselves have rules — when should the parent intervene, when should the parent step back and let the child learn the lessons they need to learn?

In my own field, I have had difficulty working with neural networks; a child is the greatest neural network there is. The thought of all that complexity, frankly, scares me.

Adding to the complexity is the issue of maintaining your own individuality, separate from your role and identity as “parent”. You want to provide what the child needs, but you’re also a unique person with needs of your own. Again, as an observer, it seems to me that you have to walk this delicate balancing act of being “you” the parent and “you” the unique individual.

I made the decision years ago not to have children. The reasons were many, and complex, and beyond the scope of this posting. I don’t have regrets about not having a child, but I do wonder sometimes about where I would be and what I would be doing today if I had children. Of course, being in my 40’s it’s still not too late to have children, though the risk of complications increase as you get older. Sometimes I even think about the possibility of adopting an older child, raising him or her as a single parent.

However, I think there are people, such as myself, who just weren’t meant to have children. I genuinely feel I wouldn’t make a good parent. In fact, the thought of being a parent scares me to death

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Connecting

Never having to say you’re sorry

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Love means never having to say you’re sorry”

The lamest line in the lamest movie of all time. If you don’t recognize the line, count your self lucky. Sorry, but I cheered when the babe died.

I consider this movie a tie with “Titanic” for most likely to make you gag.

I’m not cruel, or mean, or unromantic — I just can’t stand maudlin.

Addendum to previous post — Mike Golby’s good people. He pissed me off today. But he’s good people.

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Connecting Diversity People Places

The kindness of strangers

If you know San Francisco than you know the Castro district. It’s colorful, interesting, lively, unique, and the center of gay activities in a city that’s known to be very gay friendly. All in all, it’s a fun place to walk, shop, whatever, because the people in the area are about the friendliest there are in the city.

Every year, the citizens of the Castro area throw a huge Halloween party. Cross dressers will spend months creating the outfits they’ll wear this night, and travel — by limo — from place to place showing off their finery. Over time, the straights discovered that, hey, the folks in Castro are having a great time. Next thing you know, the street party in Castro is _the_ place to be, Halloween night.

Unfortunately, the last few years, there’s been some good Christian boys who have deemed it their moral duty to show up on Halloween in order to attempt to beat to death anyone gay they might find.

It’s interesting, but in my quest to see how many people I can piss off with my “left coast leftist liberal” bias, I’ve talked about every “right” in this weblog except gay rights and the right to die. I’ll leave the right to die to another day.

Gay rights: I’m straight. I have gay and straight friends. I don’t understand homophobia. And the government and everyone’s neighbor does NOT have to be involved with how a person practices their own form of sexuality as long as the practice is between consenting adults. And if two people want to get married, let them. End of story.

I was in Castro today to go the clinic. My doctor was wonderful. In fact, the clinic is full of doctors who entered medicine because they care about people rather than to make as much money as possible. Gives one a lot of hope for the medical community.

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Connecting Political Weblogging

Moral Equivalency

Meryl and Mike Golby are both giving their opinions based on this term “moral equivalency”.

Since neither is referencing my weblog, I am assuming that this effort on both their parts is related to something else other than my posts of this morning.

Update: I hadn’t planned on pursuing this issue because “moral equivalency” is a lose/lose situation — if you want to be informed, or to inform others, and the information isn’t agreed with by someone, you’re indulging in moral equivalency. However, when I searched on the term “moral equivalency, I found a wealth of information that was both scary and fascinating. I had to share some of it.

“Media Bias” says one article titled Creating Moral Equivalency. This article accuses CNN and other publications of media bias against Israel, based on the reporting of the deaths of the Palestinian Thabet and the Israeli Kahana.

“…Amnesty International issued a report demanding, as its top priority, an end to the war against terrorism, giving that an even higher urgency than the elimination of terrorism itself…”, says an extraordinary document by John Eastman titled “Moral Equivalency in International Law”. I found several Amnestry International reports regarding the prisoners at Guantanemo Bay but nothing about ending the war on terrorism. And Mr. Eastman negleted to provide a specific reference point to his claim.

Then there’s the one at crosswalk.com applauding the Death of Moral Equivalency. I have to quote this one directly. As it was, it was so frightening I originally thought the words were satire. But they’re not:

    • Those humanistic, “can’t we all get along,” “profiling potential terrorists is racism,” “we’re all God’s children,” Kumbaya, “all we are saying is give peace a chance” moral equivalency equivocators will soon be back. They’ll try to wear down our resolve. They should be ignored. They have lost all credibility, just as the “peace in our time” crowd did at the start of World War II.
    • We know the enemy. We know where they live. Let’s got get them before they get any more of us, and let the moralizers sort it all out later.

There’s the WorldNetDaily’s Moral Equivalency in Left’s Condemnation of Israel. This one says:

    • This refers to the killings at refugee camps outside Beirut in 1982 – crimes committed by Lebanese militiamen. (Long apparently believes the Phalangists had converted to Judaism and joined the Israeli army.) When Time magazine implied that Sharon was responsible for the killings, the general sued for libel and was vindicated, not that this stops Israel-bashers from recycling a decades-old lie.

Fact: I am neither for or against Israel. I am neither for or against the Palestinian people. I believe that the situation in the middle east is between two peoples who are so caught up in hatred of each other that I doubt there will ever be a peaceful solution to this situation. And innocents on both sides of this issue will die as well as active participants, be they called military or terrorist. And there is no right, and there is no wrong — there’s only continuous death. And an overwhelming, sickening, cloying self-righteousness. On both sides.

And if you say that I’m indulging in moral equivalency with these words, then so be it. I’d rather be thought to be indulging in moral equivalency then that bullshit you all believe.

P.S. And let this be a warning — I’ve tried to be reasonable and open and maintain an intellectual discourse regarding my opinions. I’ve tried to respect the viewpoints of others and encourage dialog. And I’ve been slammed in the face with a 20 pound Halibut for my efforts. Some people will not listen to reason, they only listen to animosity. They don’t hear whispers they’re too busy listening to the screams. They won’t hear anything other than me admit I’m wrong and they’re right.

Since I’d rather be hated then ignored, or treated in a condescending manner — so be it.

The line is drawn here. Cross it at your own risk.

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Connecting

Anger is good

Anger is good.

No, scratch that. Anger is good, healthy, natural, and, at times, even a salvation.

I’m not talking about the type of anger that makes you postal, has you clutch your heart and keel over, or that fills you with so much rage that you spit. I’m talking about the type of anger that fills you with purpose, gives focus to the undefined, and that empowers you.

Anger can find you in the center of darkness more quickly at times then the kindest words.

Sharon reads an essay by a “…impertinent little fucknozzle”, and exclaims with passion, “Shithead picked the wrong day to piss in my cornflakes.” I followed Sharon’s advice and sent an email comment about the essay, telling the publication that the author was “An impertinent little fucknozzle”. Let them work out the insult — I’m rallying to the cry of my friend who is angry!

Anger. It’s one of the seven deadly sins (along with sloth, lust, pride, greed, envy, and gluttony). Considered a sin, yet without anger humanity is nothing more than spiritless acquiescence. It fires the imagination as much as it fires our brains and hearts. Consider Shakespeare’s Othello:

Thou hadst been better have been born a dog
Than answer my waked wrath!

The anger that empowers one against injustice, hypocrisy, and ignorance can be no sin. Martin Luther King spoke of love and brotherhood, but it was anger that fueled the roots of the Civil Rights movement. It was anger that united a country against a war in Viet Nam.

And it was anger that pulled us out of despair after the events of September 11th, 2001.

However, as much as a healthy anger wakens us to purpose, an unhealthy anger pulls us into an obsession that can blind us to everything but the need to exterminate the target of our anger, regardless of the cost. In “Moby Dick”, it was obsessive anger that drove Ahab:

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

Obsessive anger. Six months after an act of savagery that angered a world, I hope that in the midst of taking a moment to remember those who died from these acts that we also remember that meeting acts of obsessive anger with more acts of obsessive anger is not a fitting tribute, to anyone.