a couple more links - then tying this up.

a couple more links today

"A Different Portrait of Schiavo's Husband", Carol J. Williams, AP, in Gainesville.com

"For Parents, The Unthinkability of Letting Go", Benedict Carey in the New York Times (requires registration; article will go into archives, which are still available but for a fee, on the 27th or 28th).

I have also followed Ticklebug's link to this site, which has as a description "A blog exposing the lies of the media, judges, and elected officials who are attempting to cover up the attempted murder of Terri Schiavo, a disabled woman"...

which just doesn't make sense to me in and of itself, but fits in perfectly with what I said about our desire to read the simplest good guy/bad guy dramatic arrangement into even the grayest of real-life scenarios. The first 2 links get into exactly the psychology I thought I recognized in my earlier reading - and it was only after reading a lot of what both sides had to say that I got to the point of wanting to say anything myself.

Again, I think the most objective history & timeline of the legal case I've found was the one I linked to yesterday - Abstract Appeal - being maintained by a lawyer it's much freer of the tendency to overlay factual statements with emotional biases on either side.

Finally, if you are very patient & a good reader - here is the 2003 Guardian Ad Litem report by Jay Wolfson, DrPH, JD referred to & quoted in the Carol Williams article. 38 pages. No good guys, no bad guys, and no easy answers. Just the legal system really trying to do right by Terri - and trying to figure out whether "doing right by her" meant letting her go or keeping her on.

This is a job I would never want. Numbers - they're right or they're wrong. Simple as that.

anyhow...I'm putting these links up too because I felt like I owed it anyone who's been reading - particularly those who didn't agree with me - to at least try to share some of the kind of reading I'd been doing that (along with the parallels I was seeing in what I'd been through in my own life) eventually led to my putting together Monday's post. I doubt that that information is going to change people's minds here but hopefully this at least gives some insight into the underlying thought process that led up to that post (which I still stand behind).

And that is where I'm going to close this week's 3-day departure from my usual work/life/paddling post routine. Any more and what am I doing but adding to the very circus that I find so distressing? I said what I said Monday because somehow what I was thinking wasn't something I was seeing talked about much. Today, just kind of rehashing. Made my point, I think - time to bow out.

Yes, back to kayaking for my next post. Interesting stuff going on. More invitations to teach, plus never did write on what I did on Sunday while my friend was exploring his innate goofiness - want to get some notes down on that because that way when I forget, during the next couple of weeks, which will be unchlorinated, what I was doing that was working, I can come back to those notes as a memory jogger.