Thank you, Fathers

Read this very cool article on the Declaration of Independence. I'm sorry I didn't see it before so I could post it. I love learning more about our Founding Fathers and the women who helped form our country.

What do you remember?

I wonder if you read this column (see link) of Judith Warner's differently if you are a dad.

Are we moms more sentimental?

I wonder if my ex remembers how C would climb on our laps when he came downstairs in the morning?

How he and I read "Good Night Moon" over and over? Sometimes S still asks for "Fox in Socks"-but only when she's being my daughter and not trying to be so over it.

Does she still miss her bunny, Buddy? We lost him on the way back from
Vermont many years ago.

Are we moms the keepers of childhood? I hope we aren't guarding those moments by ourselves. If we are, dads are missing out on something really special.

What did we do to deserve...

Ok, I'm not going to talk about it.

I'm not going to share how it started, looking so innocent, on my knee, appearing like an cluster of Glenmoore biters on a spree. I won't complain about how it somehow ended up near my triceps (I know where they are now thanks to my trainer).

I wont tell you how thrilled I was when it began to go away-and how disgusted when it came back on my other arm. Or how somehow it made its way to places covered with much modesty that I can't figure out how it got from here to there. Nor will I rant about I seem to attract it in the garden-somehow the intruder always seems to know I'm there.

Or confide about how it wakes me in the small hours...ah, I shall be very quiet about the three weeks it can take to recover.

All I want to know is: how may this be a part of God's plan for us?

My Bennison story from RNS

^Episcopal court finds Pa. bishop guilty of hiding abuse<
By ELIZABETH <

PHILADELPHIA _An Episcopal Church court on Thursday (June 26) unanimously found Bishop Charles E. Bennison guilty of not responding appropriately to sexual abuse committed by his brother against a teenage girl more than three decades ago.
The 64-year-old Bennison, who has led the Philadelphia-based Diocese of Pennsylvania since 1998, was convicted by the nine-member panel of ``conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.''
The panel of five bishops, two clergy and two laypeople will now decide the bishop's punishment, which can range from an admonishment to ousting him from the clergy.
As a married youth minister at Bennison's parish in Upland, Calif., in the early 1970s, his 24-year-old brother, John Bennison, initiated a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl that continued for more than three years.
Charles Bennison walked in on two encounters between his brother and the girl in church offices and Sunday school rooms at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, the victim, now 50, testified in the four-day trial.
In 1975, Charles Bennison presented his brother for ordination to the priesthood. After sexual relationships with several other women, the younger Bennison renounced his orders, was reinstated, and finally renounced them again in 2006.
Six of the nine members of the Church Court for the Trial of a Bishop _ a required two-thirds majority _ also voted to convict Bennison for ``suppressing'' what he knew until the abuse became public in 2006.
In his defense, the bishop testified that he had not known about the abuse until a few years after it started, and when he confronted his brother, the younger Bennison denied the allegations.
Bennison, one of the church's most liberal bishops, has been barred from acting as bishop since last fall, when a church review committee presented the two-count indictment against him.
The diocesan Standing Committee, which has been overseeing the diocese since Bennison's inhibition in November, said in a statement that they share ``in the grief of the victims and all whose lives have been impacted by those events.''
``We are proud of the Episcopal Church for holding Bishop Bennison accountable,'' said Lawrence White, the lead prosecuting attorney for the Episcopal Church, in a statement.
John McDonald, a spokesman for Bennison's legal team, said the bishop is ``obviously ... very disappointed.''
``We plan on appealing this decision and look forward to Bishop Bennison's exoneration,'' the lawyers said in a statement released yesterday.

Bennison, the victim and her lawyers have until July 30 to submit suggestions on an appropriate punishment. It is unclear when a sentence will be imposed.
Neva Rae Fox, a spokeswoman for Episcopal Church headquarters in New York, said she knew of only three other such trials in church history. In 2001, the former bishop of Montana was convicted of a 20-year affair with a parishioner, although he was eventually reinstated to the clergy.

Why doesn't he get it?

Well, it turns out that perhaps he only "gets" information that accords with his own particular worldview.

As the authors point out in the article (see link), we reprocess information so many times that we can't always remember where we heard it.

Then we store it in our long-term memory-and it starts to seem like a fact. Whether it is, or not.

I find very few people who actually have the ability to look at an issue from both sides with any real objectivity. Or what seems like objectivity. It might be possible for us to train our brains to see the opposite point of view.

The incentive to do so would have to be really powerful.

As I've mentioned before, it is almost impossible to write an article without reflecting some bias. "Look at the kicker quote" said one of the journalist friends. That will tell you what the writer really thinks.

No there there

I find it difficult to believe he actually said it.

Even if that what he really thinks, it was an unbelievably assisine remark to make to a reporter.

Charlie Black, one of John McCain's advisors, told a writer for Fortune that a terrorist attack would be good for the Republican running for the top office in the land this fall. Maybe this guy has missed seven years in which we couldn't capture Osama Bin-Laden in Pakistan and created a whole new group of terrorists in Iraq.

I guess Black was just being honest. And if it would be a good thing for the Republicans, what does that say about the party that has "led" us for the past seven years?

Of course, McCain disowned the comment. But it does demonstrate how scared the Republicans are-what ideas does they have to run on, if not those of fear?

All you really need....

As I said in my comment on the last post, I'm not the type of woman to kiss and tell. In other words, I try to avoid most specifics. I admit that I am a bit of a sucker for larger than life characters, though-or guys who are quirky enough to make good column fodder.

I'm a bit of a journalistic jade, I suppose. I think most of us who spin words find material in our relationships to one extent or another.

The failure of my latest attempt to bridge the female-male gap saddens me.

I've been reflecting on how we keep looking for what we think we need. We make our lists, we embrace our prejudices, we put up the walls so that someone who doesn't satisfy our dream of the ideal man (or woman) won't sneak under our guard.

And yet we toss away, or mistreat, something unexpectedly good-because it doesn't conform to our idea of what we ought to have.

Sometimes kindness, and laughter, and kisses, should be enough.

I don't know if he would understand what I was talking about. I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to explain it. I just know it didn't feel good knowing that he had already crossed the moat-and walled off the bridge.