Thursday, January 22, 2015
Dead toddler in the back seat
In the rising tide of sympathy for the Whanganui mother who thought she'd delivered her toddler to Day Care but actually forgot her in the back seat of the car there are some who are already judging her competence as a mother.
I've just had a harrowing half-hour reading Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the Washington Post in 2009. Gene researched many of the 15-25 of such baby-in-the-backseat-deaths that occur every year in the USA and contrasted how they were handled in different jurisdictions. He obviously spent a huge amount of time and travel getting inside the awful experiences of the people concerned. Of course, my medication prompts easy tears but the account of these terrible situations and their implications just overwhelmed me.
Weingarten also explored expert a wide range of opinion: Ever forgotten your cellphone? asked one: well, then - you can also forget your baby... Carrying children in the back seat, supposedly to make them safer? - also makes them more liable to be overlooked... There's a fascinating analysis of how our human brains do so many tasks at different levels that we are more likely to forget quite important things... And James Reason's Swiss Cheese Model should ring bells for everyone who ever does more than one thing at a time.
The article's punchline just broke me up. One or two of the local commentators should perhaps read it. This is a time for compassion, not judgment.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Fit to drive?
I have a
sneaking sympathy for those who have been insisting that issuing speeding
tickets for very small infringements of the 50kmh limit on quiet city streets
was not likely to have much impact on the road toll. My impression, after a
considerable amount of time on the open road recently, is that drivers are
moving more responsibly these holidays. But the Minister of Police is right to
review the muddle-headed way in which the holiday policy was implemented. There
are a lot of other factors in road safety than merely speed and we may have
reached the point where even harsher application of a sensible law may make it
silly.
"Now which side of the road?" |
I have less
sympathy for those who would make every overseas visitor sit a driving test
before venturing onto our roads. Undoubtedly there is a problem. Last week we had a chat
to one overseas driver who had been holding up a dozen vehicles at 65 kph. She claimed
that no one could pass her, even on an open, clear road, because there
wasn’t a passing lane. Maybe a short introduction to the fundamentals of driving
on other than US Interstates could have helped her before she drove off in a rental vehicle.
But if we
are to introduce some kind of test for rental car drivers in this country, it
would be reasonable that other countries require the same of us when we visit
them. Our trip to the USA in 1983 would have been very different if Bev and I
had been required to pass some kind of test the sixteen times we hired rental
cars on our Trip of a Lifetime.
Also, there are
other groups who are less well known to be at risk to themselves and others.
Perhaps we should have a test for Seniors like me, who got their driving
licences sixty years ago and haven’t had to answer a question on the Road Code
ever since. Or for Under-20s who may have passed the theory test but whose
skill is not always as great as their confidence. Or for any other groups of
drivers who are likely to contribute more than their share to the road toll.
Perhaps
what we need is a brief on-line refresher and a short-answer test that any driver
should be able to pass on demand by an authorised person. Failure could
certainly raise questions about hiring a rental car. Building such a test into
the present mutual recognition of drivers’ licences among many nations might ease a problem for other countries as well as our own.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Sunday After Christmas
We've had a great four days back in Paihia. We
checked on our former property and picked up the last of the odds and ends we
left behind nearly a year ago. Tenant Gary has the house looking
spotless but we can accept it is now his place rather than ours - we have made the break with
Paihia. A little sadly, we realised that even the sudden death of a local friend and colleague on Boxing Day did
not have the impact on us that it would have before we moved.
On Christmas Sunday we led the congregation
through quite a few carols as we explored the Church Leaders’ Statement on the
200th anniversary of the arrival of the Christian Gospel in this
country. Bev read the statement, phrase by phrase. I commented on each and
tried to draw comparisons with “the story” of the “first Christmas” and its
relevance for a different age.
I guess the highlight for us all was the
three minute video clip from the children of St Paul ’s church in
Auckland . It illustrated so well the difference between “the story” and “The
Story”. Well, it did for me, anyway. If the
congregation really grasped “the message” inherent in “the message” that wasn’t
immediately apparent. And any failure would have been due to the density of my
thought rather than their hearing. But, like the traditional carols, the video not
only tickled our funny-bones but warmed our hearts. I think deep spoke to deep. Every reader of this blog should take four minutes to view The Christmas Story.
Oh, yes, we sang te hari nui, not te hara nui (See 22 Dec)
Sunday Before Christmas
I had to cross my fingers behind my back a
good deal in church the Sunday before Christmas as we sang our way through the
traditional Christmas carols. They are so full of concepts that no longer true
for me. My integrity is challenged in singing them. But perhaps crossing my
fingers behind my back makes it OK to sing them.
Of course it was mainly for the children
that we acted out yet again the Christmas stories. Today’s service was entertainingly
devised with symbolic Christmas presents brought forward for each element of
the service. There was a lot of involvement of the congregation. Our curiosity
was aroused as each parcel was unwrapped. And there were some whole-hearted
laughs: after all, introducing the “Quirinius census” with an Inland Revenue
Tax Return form was good for more than a bit of a giggle. And I can tell you the
whole thing was a lot better than our recent Village Christmas service themed
around a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
It’s OK to tell children stories that the
adults understand are not “true”. There are usually elements of fantasy that
are clues to help adults recognise fact from fiction. People can put imaginary
quotation marks around these clues. But in the Christian stories the elements
of fantasy or impossibility aren’t seen in that way by most people. Because
they are found in the Bible, they seem to have become tests of our faith. Their
acceptance has become a measure of our orthodoxy. No matter how improbable,
unhistoric, or theologically unacceptable they seem, the fantasy elements of
the Christian story have taken over the
story.
I have no problem with re-presenting the
story for the children at Christmas. But, let it be story. And when there are adults present let us be open and clear
about what is most likely to be mythic. Maybe all we needed for the handful of
progressives in the congregation this morning were one or two simple phrases.
We could have been told that, “Of course, not all of us believe all these
things actually took place like this... We’re telling a story that was created
by simpler minds in a world of different truth… and so on”. Such comment was not there in this service. But
perhaps I was the only person in 50 who felt a bit alienated because of it…
And what shall I say in ten days when I am
invited to conduct the Christmas service in our former parish? How will I
re-tell the story?
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