 One
of the reasons to subscribe to Salon Premium -- besides the fact it's a
well written, progressive publication, is the ability to participate in
Salon's very literate discussion forums, called Table Talk. Just to
give you a flavour for the quality of the discourse, here are three
recent Table Talk posts:
From: 'Aunt Snow' Re: A Vietnam Veteran's Odyssey
I was reading Kerry's 1971 speech and immediately thought about the men coming home now.
In 2000 a former co-worker of
mine died. He was my union brother for almost 20 years. He was a
swaggering, attractive, macho kind of guy; a talented craftsman and a
tireless worker who took risks, but could always be counted on to reach
that extra inch, to push himself that extra bit on the job.
When I met him, I was an
apprentice and he was a senior journeyman -- although we weren't that
far apart in age; he had just been doing the job longer than I had. On
the job we did a lot of physical work; heavy lifting, working at
heights, working long hours, working under harsh conditions. He was
always the guy junior people like me looked up to, tried to match, and
I for one always tried very hard to make sure I measured up to his
standard -- and worried if I somehow thought I didn't. He was also a
man who drank a little too much, and liked to get high. He loved his
wife, but our job was one that put a toll on relationships due to the
long and uncertain hours, the fluctuating pay.
His wife left him, and he
entered into a series of troubled relationships. He began to drink more
and more, and began to miss work. The union had to fine and discipline
him for no-shows and for drinking. Although he had many friends who
loved him and cared for him, eventually he had been banned from so many
workplaces that he had a hard time making a living and keeping up the
payments on his home. One night he tried to kill himself with a
handgun. He missed, and lay injured for 12 hours before he was found.
He ended up paralyzed from the waist down.
Because he was a Vietnam
veteran -- a former medic -- he was treated at the V.A. hospital. For
the first time in his life, he stopped drinking. For the first time in
his life, he received counseling. For the first time in his life, he
participated in group therapy with other Vietnam vets. A year after he
shot himself, he was released and had a place in an assisted living
apartment. He was going into vocational training. He was dry. He went
to sleep one night in his new apartment and never woke up. A blood clot
in his brain.
I think about men like my
friend Tom whenever I think about men coming home from Vietnam. I think
about him when I read about the men coming home from Iraq. I sat with
him one day in the V.A. hospital, about three months before he died,
and he told me how -- 30-some years later -- he was finally dealing
with his experiences in war. It's terrible to have to wage war that can
affect a man's life the way Tom's was affected.
It's a crime to do it for an invalid reason.
From: 'Nancy R' Re: Goodnight Moon
For a long
time I have been puzzled about why Right Wingnuts are the way they are,
and I have observed a few things about them which seem to be endemic in
their ranks:
- No sense of irony. The inability to understand paradox. Extreme discomfort with ambiguity.
- Poor critical-thinking skills. The inability to write about
what they read with much competence. Unable to sort out the larger
meaning of what they read. Tend toward not being about to sort out the
difference between the theme of what they are reading, and unimportant
details.
- Lack of imagination, and a singular lack of ability to intuit how to make elementary character judgments.
- Lack of empathy. To the extreme.
- Dislike of reading fiction.
- Absolutist binary thinking run amok.
- blah, blah, blah.
I have always wondered how these people turned out that way ... and
though I have seen a bit of absolutist non-critical thinking on the
left, I read something today on Atrios, where a troll was unable to
understand why liberals like a "fake news show" like "The Daily Show."
Someone made a remark about "Goodnight Moon" and the person said, "What
is 'Goodnight Moon'?" And like a bolt from the blue, it came to me: His
parents didn't read to him as a child.
When I was a new mother, and was cramming what to do to make sure my
kid was going to be a reader, the advice that was repeated over and
over again was, "Read to your kids". And I did. From the time he was 4
months old it was ritual with my son, until he started reading
independently, to read out loud to him every night. (Actually, it
continued until he was 9.)
Now we see that the most important time in developing cognitive skills
is between the ages of 0-5. And I am willing to bet that if you want a
kid with an imagination ... and who is able to make character
judgments, and who wants to read fiction, and learn to identify with
people not like him or her, you've got to read to your kids. Every
night, without fail.
From 'Lionlady' Re: Women's Thoughts About Growing Older
One of the upsides of being older is being able to observe other people's judgments of oneself and not be bothered by them.
Don't like my hair? You don't
have to wear yours this way. Don't get my religion? You don't need to
understand it; it only has to make sense to me. Don't like the choices
I've made in life? Then don't make those choices for yourself.
I used to try -- and try to
justify myself -- and feel the need to explain, explain, explain
myself, hoping desperately that others would approve.
Being 54 means I don't need
everyone's approval. It's nice when people get me, but it's no longer
required. Being older has made me realize that individual human beings
live on entirely different planets, within cultural, educational,
gender, and class bubbles that sometimes prevent them from even
realizing the others exist.
Being seen, being understood,
by a select few friends and family is enough. I'm no longer the server
at a cocktail party of life, circulating with a tray of hors d'oeuvres,
saying, "Here, have a piece of me. Would you like a piece of me?
Please, have another."
I own myself now.
* * * * *
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