Random Blogging
When Will We Ever Learn?
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Random Blogging on August 26th, 2010
There was an anti-war song from the sixties that I always loved, titled “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” The refrain was “oh, when will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?” I’ve thought about that refrain a lot lately, as America has increasingly retreated into one of the ugliest nativist episodes in a [...]
Continue reading...Mirror Images
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Random Blogging on July 31st, 2010
There must be a special blind spot that allows people to engage in precisely the same behavior that they (correctly) criticize in others. In one particularly distasteful example, the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to counter religious prejudice, recently opposed locating a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero. Evidently, the ADL’s commitment to civil [...]
Continue reading...Game-Playing
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Random Blogging on July 28th, 2010
When I was growing up, parents and teachers used to tell us “it isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” Honor was a higher goal than winning. Playing fair, displaying sportsmanship, generosity in winning and gallantry in losing were the goals. Adults worthy of our admiration and respect were those [...]
Continue reading...Us versus Them, Redux
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Random Blogging on July 11th, 2010
When I was growing up in Anderson, Indiana, Jews were often viewed as an alien species. I can remember being asked—in all seriousness—whether Jews had tails, and whether we lived in houses, like “real people.” In addition to these innocent if disconcerting questions, I also remember being called a “dirty Jew” for the first (but [...]
Continue reading...Paradigm Shift
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Miscellaneous, Random Blogging on June 27th, 2010
In a recent column about urban relocation, Neil Pierce noted that “for humans, displacement from their known settings may be exceedingly painful…the psychological impact of forced removal from a familiar neighborhood is like a plant being jerked from its native soil.” He went on to acknowledge that holding neighborhoods static isn’t practical. Of course, it [...]
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