Retributive Justice

I've been watching the situation with Christa Pike, not deep diving into it but keeping an eye on headlines. The poor woman is back in prison while they figure out next steps. I think she has suffered enough. I know she did a heinous thing. I also know she was young when she did it. I also know she had suffered horribly as a child. She has expressed remorse and as they say, an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. Christa has endured 30+ years on death row, survived two doses of lethal injection and recovered from the resulting coma. That is enough for a traumatised child.

Sam Wood is afraid of gaol style punishment for the (alleged) attempted murder of his wife in the presence of her daughter and the couple's three under 10 children. He can dish it out but he's apparently not so great at taking it. I am unsure of how I stand on retributive justice but if he happened to slip on some soap

and hit his head

and the cameras were faulty

and the guards were asleep

and the phones didn't work 

and the ambulance was caught in traffic.....

I would not shed a tear.

Arguing with Strangers on the Internet

 Some days I take a huge amount of delight in arguing with strangers. I know, there's 10 000 more useful things to do.

Today I saw a post from a man who works in palliative care. He described how grief and past traumas can combine to create some difficult behaviours in the family members of the dying.

He also described how he had learnt to give those challenging people a job to do, alleviating their sense of powerlessness and improving their behaviour.

It was a wise and useful post but the first (and only) comment said "Learned, not learnt. Learnt is not a word'

I was inordinately tickled with my own answer and might cackle about it for the rest of the day:

"If you had done the tiniest bit of research you would have found that learnt is, indeed, a word and has been used correctly here. Someone pours out their soul and you incorrectly correct their spelling. You have never learnt to read a room" 

Generation Gap

 

I'm sure at least some of you are aware of the current cross generational argument: whether is is acceptable to take an iced coffee to a job interview?

For me, the answer is a hard no. I wouldn't go to an interview with a hot coffee, a cold coffee or probably even a water bottle. The water bottle because I grew up in a world where people didn't hydrate every two minutes and I still don't have an emotional support water bottle. I wouldn't take coffee because I just don't think it's appropriate. To be honest, I'm at a level of old lady grouchiness that I am quietly irritated when people stroll in to church (less formal than an initerview) slurping coffee. 

I asked my son (who has been on interview panels) what he would think of a candidate showing up with an iced coffee and he looked at me like the dinosaur I am and told me it's all about the right fit for the role. 

I have never been interviewer, just interviewee, so I can't say if an iced coffee would be a deal breaker but it definitely would be part of my overall impression.

What do you think?