Thursday, August 18, 2016

Oddities, England

The antlers were in all the mirrors. If anyone wants large mirrors, the antique shop in Ashford, Surry, has Many. It was hard to see the mirrors, for all the odd treasures.

The building used to be a pub. The largest room has two skylights, which enabled Jesus to fit up among the chandeliers (and to have a nice lighting effect on his head, too):


A mystery I'm pondering, rather than looking up.


James says "cabbage" is not a term for the operation of a taxi service, but it does look like a gear-shift knob. And another of them seems to have a door knob as handle. I'll look it up when there's a lull, someday, maybe.

This seemed to be Indian workmanship, on thin metal attached to/around a wooden horse. Pretty wonderful, but impractical to own outside of the local area.


This was interesting:


In the left breast pocket of that Levi jacket were two little bullets. I didn't photograph them, or some of my friends could surely have named them. I did look up the organization on that upper patch, and write to the editor of their magazine, saying that if there's someone near, they might want to go there and get it (with some directions about where in the shop, and where the shop is). Said maybe don't mention the bullets, when purchasing. So he wrote right back and invited me to a round-up in a couple of weeks. I will be RIGHT NEAR THERE, three days before. It's a group of people interested in U.S. history from 1700 on, mostly Western history. It would have been fun to be there, but the round-up is near The Wash (which I had never heard of it until playing "Articulate" with Adam, Meredith and Julie a few nights ago), and I will be in Brighton.
British Westerners' Association

Shops like this one are as good as museums for me. I can take photos, touch things, ask questions, and if something is really wonderful, I could potentially take it home—at least as far as Julie's house, if not to Albuquerque.

Outside was a beautiful old pump, and these are not all the cool things, but they're a representative sample of a thousand things. Carved chests and wooden buckets might get their own post.



Monday, August 01, 2016

The problem with "being supportive"

I'm moving this here so I can find it again, and so it might be read in a more leisurely way than people tend to read on facebook. I wrote it July 4, 2016:

Bad advice.
Sometimes "support" is the same as very bad advice.
Come on people, we are all doing the best that we can.
You—stressed parent—are doing a great job no matter what, and this is why:
1. No one knows your child better than you
. . . .
You are the perfect parent for your child. You are the expert. Trust yourself.
2. Our kids are going to survive.
. . . .
They are going to be okay—and so are you.
3. We’re all supposed to be doing it differently.

That's from a longer blog post called "3 Things all Parents Need to Hear."

But those things aren't helpful, and they're not true in all cases. Let's not share scare stories, but each of you could think of a scare story—just one, don't inventory all the sad things you know—about a child who didn't survive, about a parent who wasn't ANY kind of expert, who should NOT be trusted.

Anyone who soothes an irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive parent is contributing to that neglect and abuse.
ARE all kids eventually okay? No.

Is it okay to soothe the parents of kids who were neglected and abused?
The author of that blog post thinks so. The 144 people who shared it thought so.

I don't think so.

I'm NOT saying everyone should become unschoolers. Many people should not even consider unschooling. Unschooling's not easy.

What I'm saying is that it's better to encourage other parents to be conscious and careful, patient and kind, than to spread nonsense like everything's the same and no one else can say you could possibly do better.

The writing wasn't considering the kids' point of view. If a child thinks a parent could do better, shouldn't that matter? But this was just parents assuring parents that there is no such thing as half-assed, no such thing as bad parenting. All parenting is equal and all children will survive and be fine.

People who would prefer that message to actual ideas that could help should probably leave this group and find "support" for just whatever, because it is definitely out there.



End of the quote.
I have a couple of pages on my website about "support." One (the second link below) is a random generator of more and more worthless support. The other has those messages in a different format, with commentary following.

http://sandradodd.com/support.html

http://sandradodd.com/support

Please don't coo and soothe another adult who is harming a child.