Life before 2008 22 Jul 2006 09:06 am
Happy Saturday
My little boy camped in pouring rain last night. The worst of the storm went through that area. I seriously contemplated driving out there last night to check on him. It was a restless night.
We had plans for the farmer’s market and the library book sale today. Scratched them to conserve every penny for this upcoming, sure-to-be-full week. Had whole wheat pancakes (soaked flour overnight) and coffee instead. It’s been a quiet morning.
Thanks to a friend (Read Dr. H here) I’m writing this while listening to the Wailin’ Jennys and memorizing harmony. I’ve got a letter to an editor to tone down considerably (Doug Wilson ought to stay away from the topic of waterbirth and midwifery if he’s not willing to represent it correctly) before I send it and the entire idea of “toning down” to contemplate.
How much should we tone our opinions in order to cram them into the box labeled “Polite”? That box certainly serves a purpose and has merit. It’s next to the crate named “tact”… And if we stuff something too big into too small a box, and wipe away the overflow, have we lost the effectiveness entirely? Have we just made it very convenient to rearrange the shelf so that it’s hidden behind something else and can be ignored?
And I wonder, when someone puts ideas out there, but structures the format so as to not allow true interaction over those ideas, what the point is and when it’s best to just walk away, letting the yammering go on like so much noise.
on 22 Jul 2006 at 10:33 am 1.Rachel said …
I wondered what you would think about the latest Credenda…I think Wilson’s a mainline medical guy. I guess we should think about the “why” of what we do, mainline or not.
on 22 Jul 2006 at 5:05 pm 2.Tia said …
One thing they stress in the Credenda Agenda is being open to “secular” cultural materials and evaluating them, disregarding content that is not central to an otherwise worthy point. It seemed to me that he did not carry that philosophy into his analysis of whatever books on waterbirth (or midwifery) that he read. Furthermore, he stated an outright mistruth, that babies can “drown” in waterbirth. They can’t, because as they are born they have not taken a breath with their lungs yet. It is not until they are raised out of the water that they will take their first breath. I think he used that line as an inflammatory scare tactic that seemed out of place in an otherwise appropriate and challenging article about the father’s involvement in the birth of his child. Infant mortality is far away more common due to mainine medical practices gone awry than waterbirth and midwifery. I think he “threw the baby out with the bathwater” haa haa, when he disregarded the entire practice because one segment of users may have pagan or mystical belief systems. Plenty of mainline medical professionals have objectionable beliefs in their personal lives as well and yet I didn’t get the impression that he was cautioning anyone to examine that when choosing a birth venue.
Oh…there’s tons more to say. I didn’t even touch two other major points. I think that particular article was inconsistant with what he teaches, to say the least.
on 23 Jul 2006 at 9:19 am 3.Joel said …
I’ve found increasingly that facts are irrelevant to most news. They’re treated as nuisances in most cases. It sounds like he didn’t write an article, he wrote what I like to call the “informed opinion” article in which he starts with his opinion and works backwards to cherry-pick supporting evidence from “experts” and ignore detracting evidence. In other words, the ends justify the means. If he gets caught he’ll never be called a liar, just “mistaken”.