Wowage...

[icewolf]

Thanks, tompurdue for transcribing my tele-rant on Friday. I followed up with some well needed retail therapy.

treyhawk was wonderfully generous and, because I ran sound for Comedy of Errors, gave me a gift certificate to Borders. Well, Friday, aside from discovering that greyhalfdrow had got the job at Borders (yay!), I used the gift to buy a Loeb Classical Library edition of St. Augustine's Confessions (books I-VIII). I'm totally fangirling out on this, because, get this, it has the original Latin on one side and an English translation on the other [insert much squeeing here]. Thank you, treyhawk!

I'm such a dork. *happy sighing*

In completely different news, I ran across this in a friend's journal (the friend has it behind a lock). It's not for everybody. It's beyond not for everybody. I understand and respect that not everybody "believe[s] in the handbook." But I've posted it because it best expresses the rationale behind what I suspect many people on my friends list see as my blind, obstinate optimism.

Let me say that again. This is not for argument. This is not me saying everybody should think this way. This is just me, telling people what and how I think.

"Let me just check the handbook again... ."

Comments

[pokeyburro.livejournal.com]

Compassion is one of the first keys, yes. It has to infuse all of our action around others. But be careful, I say: don't trick yourself into thinking this means turning cheek after cheek after cheek. Sometimes compassion has forced me to be stern, or appear mean, or scary, or violent. If I had kids, I would not rule out spanking them, if I thought it would make them better in the end. If I can get there without doing it, I won't. But either way, the decision is made with compassion in mind.

Gandhi had one big thing going for him, in addition to the big thing everyone knows about. This big thing probably made the difference between his success and a failure that didn't happen. It was this: India's colonizers had a conscience.

Sorry for the late response...

[icewolf010.livejournal.com]

I used to teach kids who winged desks at my head and dangled each other out windows on a regular basis. Trust me, I get discipline. :)

And at the beginning, India's colonizers had a conscience. Sort of. But by the end... well, I'd say that's debatable. A British woman was attacked by some Indian men at one point, late in the Empire. Several other Indians raced to her rescue. The local governor decreed that all Indians had to crawl past the scene of the crime, even the men who had come to her aid. Where's the conscience in that? At one point, the British government definitely, if unofficially, valued their unquestioned power and order at any price over conscience.

I hope you don't mind a late rejoinder, then!

[pokeyburro.livejournal.com]

Did this particular incident exemplify India-wide treatment, or was it a more localized event? And did it greatly affect Ghandi's resistance movement?

[noncalorsedumor.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed reading that article--thank you for posting it. :-)

"If I just had to love fuzzy bunnies and Aretha Franklin, I could do that and still have time for a late lunch."

Ain't that the truth! ;-)

Also, I am totally jealous of your editions of the Confessions.