the platitudes of willful resemblance

And I sit on the back porch drinking coffee thinking that on my death bed I will not regret leaving dishes in the sink for so long. Drinking coffee on a beautiful day and wasting the time I could be doing something else but not feeling that it is a waste at all. I’ll practice trumpet in a little bit when my son is done practicing his stuff but for now I’ll sit here.

Smoking as well and thinking about having to replace the cherry trees in the front yard with something. Probably Redbud. It’s a beautiful tree but I don’t have the energy on beautiful days to up root the cherries and plant something else.

I am also thinking about something my wife wrote earlier as a response to a video making the rounds of a cruel mother beating her young child who was arrested and brought to justice while the child has been living with a foster family and is reportedly doing quite well. My response to this was a deep hurt as I couldn’t watch more than a few seconds of the video and to wonder what the hell the videographer was doing just filming and doing nothing – well, the person filming was doing something in documenting the abuse to report the authorities to help the child. Anyway, what K said was this:

“Where as the video-taker might not have needed to let the abuse go on for four minutes – at least she had the courage to do something when she saw the abuse happening. Something that so many people in this country do not have. America has the worst record of child abuse, neglect and death because of abuse and neglect of all the industrialized countries. At least one child dies EVERY 5 HOURS in this country because of abuse or neglect – most of those children under the age of 4. The actual statistics are probably worse than this – because many of these deaths are wrongly classified. A child is being abused in this country every 10 seconds. It is truly America’s Hidden Epidemic. We need more people like the one who took this video to take action.“

I’m thinking a lot about this and wondering what can I do about it. There must be something more that I can do. That we can do to stem the tide of child abuse worldwide but specifically in my own backyard. There is no reason to hurt a child and I vow to say something about it from now on. – I say this like I have witnessed abuse and done nothing before which is not really the case though I one saw a teacher grab a students arm and shove him along as he wasn’t moving swiftly enough for her (a first grader) – I said nothing and in saying nothing I did harm to that child who now thinks that being forcibly grabbed and pushed is an acceptable thing for a teacher to do. It isn’t. I don’t think we should coddle children either but the line is easily crossed it seems. I’ve never had to hit my child or even scream at him. I’ve never forcibly grabbed him when he wasn’t moving fast enough for my liking. These things are unnecessary and teach the wrong things. Nobody should be hitting a child – or an adult for that matter – but we seem to teach children that violence is an acceptable response to certain stimuli – while violence can be acceptable to defend your self or another it is almost always unnecessary and as I teach my son – “nobody should be hitting you. Ever.”

on that subject, I’ve found a club I would actually join – Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA). There is intervention and charity rides – these people are a party to the solution and if there were a local chapter I would be among them.