[link]

Totally fascinating, omnis. I did jury duty last year and found it hard, and weighty, and emotionally intense, especially the deliberations (everyone at once bone-naked truthful and totally anonymous and having to trust both your own and everyone else's thought process), and you describe all of that so vividly.

It's eerie, and moving, how deeply seriously everyone takes it all once it starts; we all roll our eyes at the the prospect of getting stuck with jury duty but the reality - the gravity of your discussion and your choices being the deciding factors in the course of a total stranger's life - is slightly terrifying.

Fascinating, and upsetting. Jury duty really is an important responsibility. And tough.

Also, as an aside as M, I am glad I never allowed the boys to get physical with each other in fights. The boys will be boys thing is complete crap to me, and I heard it way too often. No, violence is never acceptable. A great number of 'friends' have suggested that what boys need is to be pummeled by dad on occasion too. Um NO, not ever under any circumstances. Way too many people seem to think that violence is somehow normal behavior, and I just don't get or accept that.

Often sitting alone in the extreme pacifist corner. And somehow my bestie is a HUGE boxing fan. I keep trying to explain to her that my issue is that they hit each other. We go out for drinks at the sports bar on Friday night and sit with her facing the boxing screen and me facing baseball or something. We accept that we will never understand each other. But we won't fight about it!!!

Way too many people seem to think that violence is somehow normal behavior, and I just don't get or accept that.

For way too many people, violence IS normal behavior. Someone grows up with it, it's normal, and they see people who avoid it as being weak. I know a bunch of people like that, including most of my family. One of the many reasons I left and never went back. I'm over here in the pacifist corner with you, Laura.

Nice to know Laura. my sisters and I were not allowed to hit each other Hitting was one of the worst crimes in my family ( lying might have been worse) No matter what the provocation, physical violence was not tolerated. It got the most severe punishments. I know some kids that were encouraged to fight it out.

If more than 2 crows is a murder of crows, what is a group of pacifists called?

:: sits on pacifist bench with the rest ::

A sit-in of pacifists?

Thanks. It has not been a rare occasion that I have been considered a fool for my hard line views on physical altercations. My world is filled with huge testosterone filled athletes and most of them consider mixing it up physically to be normal. I'm happy to report that I find most of them have a huge respect and understanding of the potential for harm and have learned early on to channel their emotions in other ways.

My parents were very gentle people and I can't imagine my siblings ever having physical fights, but chances are we did as kids and mom put an end to it. I honestly don't remember my boys ever fighting physically. Of course they would have known better than to do so in front of me! And it isn't like they like each other much.

My little sister and I would scrap as kids, but it was mostly wrestling and sitting on each other, but she had fingernails and I never did...I was a nail biter...And mom and dad would make us stop if they saw it.

I got spanked a few times when I was a kid, mostly when I did something horribly disrespectful, or something so dangerous I'd scared the shit out of my folks. I got slapped only once. When I was a teenager. I said something so ride and horrible to my dad, and he just slapped me. I think he was more shocked than I was.

Argh. I don't know if you guys remember me ranting about the friend/acquaintance (I'm rapidly leaning towards "acqaintance" and possibly "person I know") who was shitty and rude about not being invited to the wedding. Well, she's posting more shitty passive-aggressive stuff on FB, and I am done with her shit.

We have an acquaintance -- Tim has known them longer, so he may put them in the category of friends -- who had a stroke 3 weeks ago. Her condition was really grave for awhile, and now she's in ICU. We haven't visited, because (1) when someone is that gravely ill and they aren't close to me, I tend to give them privacy because I don't want to intrude, and (2) we're not close to them; I don't really visit people in the hospital unless I'm close to them. (This may be a piece of etiquette I missed. I mean that seriously, not as snark.)

So FB lady posted a public post about how "a lot of us" had a mutual friend who had a stroke but only one "friend" (the scare quotes are hers) has visited, and you can tell who your real friends are in a crisis, etc., etc., and she's so grateful she has people back in her home state she can call friends.

Fuck her. That is so passive-aggressive and shitty. I am so over her shit.

(I am serious about the etiquette question, though -- do people visit acquaintances in the hospital? We really don't know these people well. That seems weird and intrusive. Put it this way: if the roles were reversed, *I* wouldn't expect or want them to visit me in the hospital. But I guess I should?)