Good morning, everyone: Soon you’ll be sending children or grandchildren off to school, and some of you will be off to school yourselves, as teachers or students — and in some cases, as it was for me, both.
Those of us who love poetry are always ready to read and learn more about it. I know that’s why, among all the collections on my shelves are books about fundamentals. This morning I’d like to tell you about some of those I have recently found most valuable.
First is a recent little book that I will never part with: Musical Tables by former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins (Random House, 2022). As critic Alice Fulton has said, he “puts the fun back in profundity.” This book of short, witty poems will bear — in fact, invite — repeated re-readings. His own love of poetry, he tells us, might have begun with nursery rhymes; I know that mine did.
Which is why, whether you have young children at home or not, I invite you to go back to the enduring classics of your childhood: Mother Goose, A Child’s Garden of Verses, those fairy tales with crayon-colored names, e.g., The Yellow Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book — and a copy of Bible Stories for Children — if you can find them. There is also a wonderful, small pocket-sized copy of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library, 2004), with an introduction by Collins himself. It’s in my handbag now, and I’ve read and re-read it in many a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting-room. I’m now rushing to put it away, for I never want to be without it — nor, I hope, will you. Continue reading Poetry Monday: September 4, 2023
Click Here to Read: For 30 years, a memorial to Nazi collaborators sat largely unnoticed just outside Philadelphia. Now it’s drawing outrage.
Elkins Park in Montgomery County has several synagogues … and one large monument to Nazi collaborators. Many people had no idea it existed until recently by William Bender and Ryan W. Briggs in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 3, 2023.
Click Here to Read: Scientists Say They’ve Found the Largest Asteroid Impact Crater Hiding in Plain Sight: They believe they’ve discovered what time and erosion have concealed. BY Tim Newcom on the Popular Mechanics website on September 1, 2023.
New South Wales in Australia, Image: TUBS Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The Bully Without and the Bully Within
I know very few people who have not been bullied in some way, to some degree, at some point in their lives, including myself. Bullying can be physical, emotional, verbal, taking place in person, behind someone’s back, and now on the internet. Such bullying is intended to intimidate, shame, diminish, and harm, all for the sake of power and control for the bully. We are taught that if we are young, we should turn to the adults in our lives for help and protection; if we are older, “hold our head high,” and act as though the bullying doesn’t matter; if we meet the bully on their own terms, we might succeed in ending the bullying or further harm could occur.
As we grow, while we unconsciously and consciously develop many psychological defenses, we have three fundamental biological defenses. From birth to about two and a half, our first such defense is “freezing” or “playing dead.” While an infant or young child might protest in some simple form (like crying, or later hitting or biting), their best option is to surrender in hopes the perpetrator will go away. The next defense comes on board from two and a half years to adolescence when the child has some mobility, the ability to run, and a rudimentary sense of time and space: time to get away (to flee) and find some other place to go (to hide). That doesn’t mean that a child might not fight back even at a young age, but it won’t do much good – they will be quickly overcome physically. Finally, in adolescence when strength is achieved along with height and weight, confrontation or fighting back can work, especially in domestic abuse when the teen can match a threatening parent. Many schools, churches, temples, and workplaces have zero tolerance policies in place to further protect victims. As much as these various approaches might be effective, we have another source of bullying to Continue reading The Bully Without and the Bully Within by Dr. Gweneth Erwin
