Lee @ #167 - exactly. I kind of see it as the same point as Mr. MacDonald's (highly useful, brilliant) posts on first aid and being the 0th responder. Thank heavens we don't live in the Objectivist *paradise* and altruism still works.
This did happen to me. I was the infant, and obviously I survived. In 1976, I was two months old, the child of a single parent who was grieving for my late father, who died before I was born. Mom was deep in the trenches of her Bachelor's in Accounting. It happened in March, on a cold, wet day so I got lucky. Mom remembered two hours after she left me... and at the same time, realized she'd locked the keys in the car with me. We lived in a small town and the EMS squad are all relatives, but she was certain I'd be going directly into foster care. She has often said that the only thing that kept her from losing her mind right then and there was seeing me moving in the back seat. I apparently slept through it, until the fire department got there with the slim-jim and couldn't pop the new-fangled anti-theft door locks. They had to break a window. That woke me up.
My mother now lives in Arizona, and to this day, 33 years later, she parks at the far end of the parking lot and checks the back seat of every car she passes for animals and kids, even at the grocery store. In the Phoenix metro area, ten minutes in a car can kill. She's never seen a kid, but she has saved two dogs. I think it's her penance for forgetting once, and when she sees a story on this subject, I see her go still.
It can happen to anyone, any time. The circumstances will always be substantially the same -- overriding situational stressors (job, school, relationship) compounded with immediate stressors.
I don't live near my mom, now, but by surviving, I got my own responsibility. I, too, park at the far end of the parking lot and check the back seats. I work at home so my efforts are probably limited, but one of the easiest ways I can imagine to help prevent this is this: get to know your coworkers and their cars. Know who has kids. When you walk past a car, peek. Be part of the village.
I wonder if perhaps the problem is not so much that young people - sorry, men - are embarrassed to dance, but rather embarrassed, put off or offended by the attitude of the Morris Ring spokesmen?
Of course, I'm female, so automatically excluded, but in reading the BBC article, I found the statements condescending and chiding. I'd much rather go play with some other group that seems to have fun with the art and makes it live than with those whose only commentary is to whinge and try to guilt-trip me. Thanks, I have a mother for that. Don't need it in my hobbies.
One of the quotes on ML's front page seems perfectly applicable -- the groups outside the Morris Ring seem to be preserving the flame of tradition, while the Ring types seem to be worshipping ashes.
Raphael @183
Free Republic is going ape on the racial epithets. Apparently, either the President-elect or the Vice-President elect was good at track and field, specifically the javelin.
Amusing... in a who removed the clutch from your brain sort of way...
@7: Downballot from Colorado (1.5 hours after polls closed - 15% - 38% of polls)
Senate: Mark Udall (D) 57% vs Bob Schaeffer (R) 42% - Called.
Key House: Betsy Markey (D) 60 % vs Marilyn Musgrave (R) 39%
Amendment 47 (Right to "work" -- anti-union bill) appears to be failing with 55%. Called.
The fetal rights bill (Amendment 48) is failing by 3 to 1. (Yay!)
All numbers from Rocky Mountain News or Boulder Daily Camera.
Lance @ 396 in previous thread re Musky Musgrave -- You've my condolences. I'll miss Udall (I'm down in Boulder County) but Polis is a good boy.
The D.Kos map says Markey's looking strong (61-33) with 32% of precincts reporting. Good job!
Lance... I'm getting the "do you need meds?" look from my spouse for having the TV on (that's a rarity in my house) and my laptop on my lap (8 tabs in 2 windows). So... yeah. Maybe.
But if you're happy, that's the key.
Voted last week -- we're on perpetual mail-in ballots here in Colorado. I was glad to get it over with, but yes, the nervous energy has set in -- last week. I'm supposed to be re-writing the first thirty pages of the MS (which does involve convincing the characters that the changes I'm proposing are an excellent idea -- it's what they'd do if they had the chance to go back and change time) and normally, knocking out 30 pages is a breeze. Two days, at most. Not this week.
So I'm cleaning house-- top to bottom. Dust-bunnies, beware. With the radio on NPR and my head not in the game.
Doug@9 - Text? Twitter? I know I was allowed to have my phone one me and on. I couldn't share the information, but... I'm Mountain time, but happy to send updates (free texting.)
Here's hoping Prop 8 goes down in flames.
Terry Kerney #167:
This is my first post here, so feel free to excoriate me. I spent my teenage years in Arizona, on a couple of different bases. McCain was my senator and my father was pretty high ranked. I've met him a few times - most recently for my Naval Academy interview before he gave me my recommendation letter (I didn't go to the Academy -- got a better offer elsewhere).
My father is also a Vietnam vet, with a nasty case of high-functioning PTSD. I saw it every day of my life and I know it well. I smell it pretty fast. (For lack of better analogy.) McCain smells like my father. But worse. Much worse.
I'm a shrink, but I'm not his shrink, so that's not a diagnosis. It's instinct, thirty years' close personal observation of Vietnam era PTSD, and a decade in the field. There aren't a lot of people I trust with 200,000 USAF personnel, that budget and the Big Red Phone, but McCain is #1 on my list of people I don't. It's fairly difficult to describe, but when in a quiet room with six people in 1991, when he wasn't all that important, he behaved like he expected the sixteen year old daughter of a fellow officer (who stood 5'2" and topped out at 105 pounds) to shoot him if given half a chance. (At the time, I liked him well enough.) Highly, excessively watchful, distractible. It was a 10 minute nothing interview that he did a hundred times a year and he was stressed. He hid it well, but I've seen my father do the same thing. Watching him on video since -- he's worsened.
He's also a thief (Charles Keating, Lincoln Savings, and the Keating Five -- if you don't remember, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five) and was more than willing to be bought. Thanks, I'm done. He's not a maverick (except in the air to ground tactical missile sense). He's an adulterer, and the late unpleasantness of the second Clinton administration says that's not acceptable in the President. Most of his behaviors are textbook PTSD. Impulsive, explosive, paranoid, not detail oriented, reactionary (in the sense that he reacts to situations rather than planning for situations). He's a tactical thinker, not a strategic one and the Presidency is a strategic job.
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| 2008 | 7 |
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