Tag Archive for shame

Sisters in Widowhood

I was prepared to feel sorry for myself.  This is my first U.N. International Widows’ Day.  I lost my husband last November.

Then I started enjoying the good memories of a 35+ year marriage.  And I realized how much luckier I am than many widows in the world.  I live in a free country, in safety, with enough resources to sustain me and then some, and a family–small, but here for me.

And I look at other parts of the world, where widows suffer immensely.  Their land taken from them.  Family members evicting them from the homes or even killing them. Shamed because their husbands are dead. Having to take their children out of school to work to support the family.

The U.N. is trying to solve these problems, but it will take a long time.

I’m deeply saddened by the plight of my sisters in widowhood.  I greatly miss my husband, but I am so grateful for my own life and for the fact that the U.N. is working toward better lives for my international sisters.

 

Shame: San Francisco and the Super Bowl

The good news:  San Francisco is spending $5 million on the homeless.  The bad news: they’re spending the money not on services or housing to help the homeless make better lives for themselves and their families but to move them out of sight in time for the Super Bowl.  S.F. has the 8th largest homeless  population in the U.S., yet the city is moving them to a small spot under a highway overpass–far away from Super Bowl Fan City.

My question is, Will the city and businesses then take a good chunk of the tourist money the Super Bowl will bring in and apply it in ways to get the homeless out of the ghetto the city has created and into needed healthcare (physical and mental), jobs, and housing so that these people never need to be hidden away again?

I doubt it.  And there’s the shame.

For details, go to http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-01-22/san-francisco-nudges-homeless-away-from-super-bowl-fan-village.

 

 

Kids’ Shame; Education’s Friend

A Florida girl was pulled from class and reprimanded for wearing a too-short skirt, violating the school’s dress code.  To continue going to class, she was made to change into what her mom calls a “shame suit”: over-sized sweat pants and a bright yellow tee shirt, both saying “Dress Code Violation.”  Feeling humiliated, she asked to call her mom, who became as upset as her daughter.

The school claims that this was her choice since she could have taken in-school suspension or had her parents called to bring her more appropriate clothing. The girl claimed no knowledge of those other choices, even though they’re written into the dress code that every student and parent should have read.

I can’t help wondering if there was a fourth choice. In my more permissive high-school-teaching days, I remember watching parents drop off fresh-scrubbed kids dressed in nice outfits.  Once on campus, these girls met up with friends. Together, they went to their locker to retrieve “school clothes”–short skirts/shorts, tight/skimpy tops, jeans two sizes too small, etc.  And the make-up bag.  When they emerged from the bathroom, ready for a day at school, their appearance had drastically changed.  The clothes they’d worn to school (and would be put back on–and faces scrubbed–before heading home) spent the day in their lockers.

The fourth option, then, might have been a trip to the girl’s locker and a quick change.

A lesson I’d learned back then, as I vainly tried teaching English to teenaged males with their tongues hanging out and their eyes firmly fixed on what the girls had on display, was that a reasonable dress code is Education’s Friend.

 

 

 

America’s Shame

That’s what President Obama calls it, and I agree.  He also pointed out that “we’re the only developed country on earth where this happens.”  And it happens once a week!

It’s well past time to put aside politics and debates over Constitutional rights and come together–reason and act together–to stop school shootings!