Ginger and Richard Rhodes
Rhodeman,
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StumbleUponIt's true, I'm not Bambi's biggest fan. I used to feel warmer toward deer, but living in southern New England cured me of that generosity. John McPhee is quoted as calling them rats with hooves. Maybe that's going a bit far, but the deer population has exploded, and with a decreased habitat, they have acquired a taste for flowers, and shrubs, and ornamental trees, and ground cover, and on and on. I tried various talismans to preserve a few springtime buds, like deodorant soap on sticks, deodorant soap shavings scattered around, human hair, and other tricks, to no avail. I think you even tried to "mark" the day lily bed one year. But Bambi and his mom just kept eating and eating. Yummm, thank you for these tender morsels. I remember a friend of ours saying that at his home on Fire Island, he watched a deer stand up on its hind legs and eat from the bird feeder. Those newly emerged fauns are fun to watch, at least for the first few months. But the crows are more my style.
Janet Jackson has pierced her ... ?! What would we do without our weekly Enquirer? Although I used to want you to hurry and pass it along, lately I've found the perfect reading time. It's the perfect antidote to the Sunday Times. I'm sure our mail carrier rues the number of our subscriptions. I wonder if our mail carrier finds the range of our subscriptions different from most?
As for California, I don't know about you but I will "take" some batteries with me. One of our more frequent conversations has been about how people misuse bring for take. "Bring" sounded so dissonant--at first. Whether we bring or take batteries, I am counting down our few remaining months on the East Coast. Two more semesters at the university and a dissertation (small task), and I'll be ready to leave.
Thinking about language, did you see the article in the special vacation section in the Times this morning? The writer offered tips for getting around a foreign country without speaking the language. You and I have used all of her tips, such as carrying a dictionary and pointing at the word, pointing at other people's food in restaurants, using gestures and writing numbers down. What she did not talk about was the knot in my stomach at the end of the day. When we travel to country where I don't speak the language or read the alphabet, I am made aware of how difficult it is to be illiterate. The last couple of years while working in Connecticut's prisons, I have met many men who neither read nor write their own language. Although there are opportunities to gain literacy in Connecticut's prisons, I've often wondered what difference it would make to make it a condition for release. I am not naive enough to think that the ability to read and write would keep people from committing crimes, but lacking that ability does not help those men. But the mood in this country is not about helping people in prison grow, it's about punishment. I think a more productive spirit is to realize that to improve the potential for those men is to influence the lives of their children. In turn, those children might make more adaptive choices as adults.
Yesterday's flight was short. After I took off I headed down toward the shore where the sky looked clearer, but storms cells were building to the north. So I flew back to Chester and worked in the pattern: flying rectangles with a landing. Tedious but necessary to keep up one's skills.
I have to get some work done. It's time to book our August trip.
xo,
G
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: This week's "Breakfast Table"-ers did a terrific job of summarizing the Fray entries, taking up their points and answering them in the column--Fray industry workers could have taken the week off. As new star Mangar put it: "Richard Rhodes was very gracious in his willingness to directly address comments from the Fray. It's a brave thing to do, and I wish more authors had the guts. Thanks to Richard, and I'll try to reply with that respect in mind." Though Mr Rhodes' claim that Fraymanians "blow off while hiding behind the anonymity of your nicknames" did not go down well. Several posters gently and politely defended their right to Fraynames, for example here.
An interesting discussion on Mr Rhodes theories, and of his comments on The Fray (Fraymers didn't like the bit about "can't read very well" either), started here, with the splendid title "An attempted ex post facto clarity?"--if there's one thing Fraysters are going to catch you out on, it is that. Some of the Fray's finest pitched in. A brave and honest (and not anonymous) post about brutalization in schools came from Roy Jaruk, here.
Violence was the overwhelming topic of choice, but there are a few posts on verity, fawns ("fauns are those things that have afternoons, unless your woods are much more interesting than mine"), lekking, and other matters. Use the Fray Editor's Picks button, or just look for the checkmarks and stars. And Claude Scales took up the question of what we should call Fraypersons here.]
What sociologists and psychologists try to do is find a reason for a behavior or pattern of behavior. They don't use these reasons as "excuses" to pardon criminals, just as a way to understand the root of criminal action. These reasons have been badly skewed in courts as they have become excuses for heinous crimes--true to history, people have used science irresponsibly for ridiculous and damaging profit. (By the way I am a biologist and no, this has nothing to do with cloning). So take it to heart and realize behavioral scientists are simply trying to find explanation for such actions to end this pattern in the future.
--Mel
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You don't have to delve very deeply into the human psyche to find out why some people are violent. It's not some strange perversion or disease that needs an explanation from genetics or childhood trauma or sociological circumstance. Put quite simply, it works. It's an efficient and effective way of acquiring immediate power over people, and of gaining their enduring fear, if not their respect. Someone who stands to gain more than he loses from using violence is going to be quite tempted to use it. So in order to combat violence, we need have an ongoing legal, social, and moral campaign against it, to make sure most people who commit violent acts lose more (in terms of money, respect, and social approval) than they gain.
--Jane Grey
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My personal belief (and so it is only opinion based on observation) is that we are not teaching children (males in particular) how to channel aggressiveness positively or when certain levels of violence are a reasonable response (and which are not). We are simply condemning aggressiveness and violence but the children in learning that things are not that simple are making up their own rules.
--Michael Murray
(To reply, click here.)
[People] talk about "violence" as if it were a simple and agreed upon quality, like the flavor vanilla, and could be discussed as a single unified thing. In point of fact, though, soldiers jumping out of trenches into machine-gun fire, cold-blooded poisoners, domestic batterers, schoolyard bullies, and generals who order airstrikes, although they are all engaging in "violence" of one sort or another, have nothing else in common, and it's disingenuous (at best) to discuss them as if their actions were interchangeable.
The "problem of violence" is an illusion. It is not tuberculosis. It is not vanilla. And it does not have a "cure".
--Thrasymachus
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