Why didn't it matter?

For a quick recap, two years ago I blogged about allegations against musician James Dewees. 

The allegations were on an Instagram page that claimed to be from multiple people. After reading through every post, I found the the accusations were that he preyed on vulnerable women so he could get money from them and live with them, not what "predator" generally brings to mind. There were other issues, and those were the things I posted about in the original blog.

After receiving two angry but anonymous messages, I later went back to check the Instagram page and it had been deleted.

It changed nothing. Shortly after the allegations first came out, Dewees was fired from his two main bands. That never changed. 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/06/james-dewees-is-not-predator.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/02/james-dewees-is-not-predator-part-2.html

It does bother me for James Dewees himself, but it also seems to reflect bigger issues. That's why I am still writing about this.

So, why didn't it matter?

I think there are a few different factors.

One is simply a matter of power.  

That certainly refers to the amount of fans James Dewees has, but it also refers to my not having a large audience. 

Realistically, I could also have tried harder; posting twice in two years is not a super-focused effort. 

I don't believe more effort would have paid off. Maybe if those efforts were toward building my audience first, but I don't know.

Some of that is also the means. I mentioned the "I'm not reading all that" response... blogs don't seem that popular right now. Maybe if it were picked up by a popular podcast, that would work. 

I am not the ideal person to make that happen. I don't have the patience to listen to podcasts, let alone produce them or network with them.

We here get into an area where the question becomes what one's responsibility is.

I have very little interest in building my brand or my fan base, but I do have an interest in promoting justice and fairness and seeing people do well. Do I have to change how I do  things to be effective?

While we can certainly argue that popularity should not act as protection, and that justice should not require fame, we can also see examples indicating that maybe that is how it works.

That matters, because the other thing that I think is a real issue is apathy about what happens. Do we care enough about what is right? Do we care when it does not directly affect us?

Next week, more examples, and more questions.

Hispanic Heritage Reading: Clemente

Let me start with some background. 

One of my high school jobs was at K-mart, and one of the areas I worked was tidying the toy aisle. It faced rougher treatment than, say, cleaning products.

Those toys included baseball action figures, and that was where I first saw Roberto Clemente. 

I don't remember the series, but Willie Mays was another one. I think Clemente stuck out because I had never heard of him before, but also because his photo was so engaging.

I don't merely mean that he was handsome, though he was. There was this openness and strength coming through. He apparently had that effect on people in person, but it doesn't always come through in a photo.

Later on I learned that he had died while on a flight taking humanitarian supplies. 

I would not have been opposed to learning more about him, but I guess what got him into this round of reading was a Jeopardy! category on graphic novels that were biographies. I had read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, but not even heard of the four others. I have read all of them now. 

The most graphically lush was Mike Allred's Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns, & Moonage Daydreams.

It's opposite was The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi, starkly black and white.

The two made a good pairing for such different lives treated so differently, but similar in excellence. 

(Plus there are scenes where Bowie sees a gremlin on a plane wing, clearly referencing The Twilight Zone as well as Bowie's  discomfort with flying, but in the other book Serling looks out at a plane wing and there is no gremlin, even though you are thinking of the gremlin.)

Houdini: The Handcuff King wasn't that good, and seemed to speculate more than was necessary.

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago was okay, but I felt like there was a lot missing. That is when I decided to read Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss.

Having now covered which books related to Roberto Clemente and why, here are three thoughts:

One small part of the comic was Roberto being irritated with The Lone Ranger and Tonto's name meaning "fool" or "stupid" in Spanish. 

Here's the irritating thing; I read it in July 2021, and I don't remember what they called him in the Spanish comics. There was something else. Maybe Toro?

It resonates more now, after watching Machuca, because they had been building an analogy of the friendship between Gonzalo and Pedro, using the popular comic, with the question being asked of whether an white person and an Indian can truly be friends.

That was the first time in the movie that I really thought about the color difference. Gonzalo was lighter-skinned and it saved him from being relocated with the rest of the shantytown.

Not seeing color is good, right?

Let's move to the next thought.

Clemente did have a lot of pride in his origins. As a Black Puerto Rican, he faced language and color barriers in the States that he did not experience at home; that was a hardship.

There were some issues in Pittsburgh, but it was worst during spring training in Florida, which had more entrenched segregation back then. That meant that there were bars and restaurants that his white teammates could go into that he couldn't. There were times when he could not ride with them, and he could not stay at the same hotels as them.

This would be frustrating anyway, but it stands out because there was a former teammate who was asked about Clemente and said that Clemente never tried that hard to get to know them. The teammate did not seem to reflect on how much of that social time was held in places where their Black teammates could not enter. 

He didn't have to notice, and he didn't; that is one reason why not seeing color -- even if true -- is not ideal.

Finally, there is the matter of Clemente's death. 

It wasn't what I thought. I had this image of a plane having issues mid-flight and just disappearing, no remains being found. 

In fact it was an overloaded, under-maintained plane that had issues right on takeoff, but it was near the ocean, and did go into the shark-infested waters. There were some traces found, but not much of the people inside.

The relief was for Nicaraguans affected by an earthquake. While it was destructive enough to create many problems, those were worsened by the government at the time. A previous shipment had only gotten through because Clemente's name was invoked, and that was why he felt the need to go personally.

Clemente had always felt he would die young, and often that it might be in a plane, and he'd even had a presentiment that something bad was going to happen at New Year's. Those would all be reasons not to go.

He was also someone who believed strongly that if you weren't helping others you were wasting your life. Perhaps all of those feelings reconciled him to the risk, even if he was not expecting that flight to crash.

And yet, there is still so much else that contributed to the death. 

If President Somoza had not been holding up supplies, and exploiting the situation. Or if he were not a baseball fan, and Clemente's name wouldn't have made the difference...

If they had not needed another plane, and been offered one on short notice...

If that plane had not been under-maintained, and overloaded and unbalanced by people who should have known better as the professionals but did not care...

If those many attempts to revoke the plane owner's license had worked, so he wasn't even around offering his services to people who did not know how irresponsible he was...

And the owner died too, and the pilot whom he hired at the last minute, possibly ill-advisedly, so it's not that they were trying to be that incompetent, but it still happened.

Which I guess is to add that you may not realize how important the little corner that you oversee is. The corrupt president of a suffering country may know that he has real responsibility, though not think too much about the impact, but the aviation official who writes up a ticket, and the owner who fights it and the judge who allows the dismissal, the pilot who is tired and is trained, but maybe not thoroughly...

It all adds up.

James Dewees is not a predator, part 2

For this current round of writing, I kept thinking that it would end up revisiting this post. I was having a hard time getting started, until I realized I had the order wrong.

Here is the first part, from June 2021:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/06/james-dewees-is-not-predator.html

In summary, there was an Instagram page that accused musician James Dewees of being a predator, and about the time that came out he was fired from two band, which seemed pretty damning. 

I read those posts and found a lot of holes, but the biggest one was that even though the word "predator" was used, predatory behavior was not demonstrated. The premise was that he was using women for money, but it didn't really hold up. 

Obviously there is a lot more detail in my blog post, but what is missing is what happened after.

The next day, there was an anonymous comment on my blog, saying they knew it was hard but I just needed to accept that he hurt people.

I have to approve blog comments before they are published. If there had been contact information I would have engaged, and if there had been anything new that seemed relevant, I would have published it, even if I immediately posted a reply questioning it. As it was, if repeating accusations with no backup was enough, I would never have blogged about it in the first place. I deleted.

The next day there was a similar, angrier comment about how dared I call myself a feminist. It was still anonymous and without any substantiation, so I deleted again. 

I remember from those comments feeling sure that it was her, that there had never been a "they" (which I already felt pretty sure about), and that my analysis was correct. I did wonder if there would be any new posts on the Instagram. I think it was a few days later that I checked.

The entire page was gone.

Did I do that? I don't know. Maybe.

(Near the end I included what things were easy to document, and that it seemed like material harm could be demonstrated pretty easily, so that may have had an effect.)

Did it matter? Not really.

I mean, James wasn't suddenly back in bands, and as recently as December there was a post with someone asking about James and someone calling him a pedophile, even though that was never among the original accusations.

At the time, I did do some searches, and I did post a link to the blog in response to one tweet about the accusations. I got this response:

"I'm not reading all that, but I'm happy for you, or sorry that happened."

That was actually the first time I saw that one, but I have seen it many times since. It is a proud declaration of unwillingness to engage, except not responding at all would be more effective non-engagement.

It was more annoying because the person who posted it was not the one who asked; not saying anything would have been fine.

On a different level, it was worse than annoying, because it was so wrong. 

Someone lied and damaged someone else's life, and not only did people not care about that, what they remembered was worse than the original lies.

I believe what I did was right -- even without it mattering -- but I also at times feel bad about it. The false ones are such a low percentage of accusations in general... is that even a good focus area?

Except, that is the one where I might actually have something to contribute. 

In addition, I can't believe that the price of standing up for the wrongfully accused is harming others who have been abused. It certainly doesn't have to be.

A big part of that will be listening to accusations. That is important for the victimized, but that listening is also what allows the false accusations to unravel.

It seems obvious, but then we break into teams, where we like this person, or hate this person, or have unacknowledged bias against this person.

There is a lot to unravel, and I am going to spend some time on that.

Otherwise, the one thing I did differently before posting this was that I took the Word document that had all of the screenshots and quotes and saved it as a PDF, just in case anyone is ever interested.

Hispanic Heritage Reading: More mission memories

Back in 2018, some reading I did regarding Native American (including Canadian) history reminded me of some things from my mission. While at the time they sounded vaguely wrong -- which is why they stuck with me -- what I read years later clarified something that was definitely wrong and racist.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/02/nahm-mission-memories.html

This time it happened during a different reading month. 

Our branch president in one area had served in the Navy in World War II. He was telling a story at one time about going out and looking for these "zoot suiters".

I don't remember exactly how I expressed my chagrin, because it sounded like looking for trouble and beating people up, which is of course not very Christian. He defended it by describing the way they dressed, giving the impression of them as being disreputable people who were really asking for it.

He did not make clear that they were Hispanic.

It would not have made the story sound better, but it was key.

It made sense that he focused on how they were dressed, because part of the war efforts involved saving fabric by using less cloth. A good zoot suit used some extra yardage.

But it was really the racism. 

There was prejudiced newspaper coverage about the dangerous gangs before there was a fabric issue, and much of that coverage appears to have been based on insinuation rather than actual threat.

It does make sense that he did not mention them being brown people; we were there working with Laotian refugees and it might have seemed hypocritical.

It was more surprising that he mentioned going out and looking for a fight, except that I think there was a part of him that felt good and strong and right then. After all, they wasted cloth!

Fifty years later, I don't think he had moved past that understanding.

There would have been opportunities. After then-governor Earl Warren appointed a commission to look into it, the results included this statement:

“In undertaking to deal with the cause of these outbreaks, the existence of race prejudice cannot be ignored.”

Also, what eventually stopped the riots was military personnel being confined to barracks. The "dangerous, criminal" element was not rioting on their own, despite making up the bulk of those arrested.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/zoot-suit-riots

Surprisingly, this additional learning did not damage my view of President Shepherd that much; I mean, I felt that it wasn't good, even without understanding why, and it was not the sum total of him as a person.

It does get me really irritated about the song "Zoot Suit Riot".

The song does pay some homage to Mexican-American musician Lalo Guerrero, but mostly I started realizing it is a song of cultural appropriation.

Musician Steve Perry calls it "an expression of proud marginalism", admitting that it is not deep. 

Well, that makes sense too. They needed to capitalize on increasing popularity by rushing out a new album, including four new songs. That's not a situation that encourages depth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_Suit_Riot_(song)

Without wanting to be too hard on the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, we should be deeper. When there is a marginalized identity that you can play around in for fun, but it is rooted in racism that you never have to experience, ignoring that is part of upholding systemic racism.

We need to be better.

That can start by listening to those who are marginalized.

The specific materials for this were watching Zoot Suit, the 1979 play by Luis Valdez or, in my case, the 1981 filmed version.

In addition, I read Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots by Margarita Engle.

The siblings in this book may enjoy the music and dancing, but they also have schooling and jobs and they face prejudice. That part of their experience reminded me of two other books:

Dolores Huerta Stands Strong: The Woman Who Demanded Justice by Marlene Targ Brill

Dolores Huerta's youth and schooling shows some more about the racism at the time, as a a biography this book was very much a part of this reading. The other was not:

Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama by Diane Fujino

Being Japanese-American had different challenges for World War II, but there are similarities just the same.

A Valentine

Twitter quality went down again, and at a time that demonstrates why that is an issue, but I want to keep it kind of short and positive today.

One thing that I expect to go off on soon is how dominator culture manifests in taking sides, where you will find people wholly devoted to their team at the expense of any logic or integrity.

There are forces that skew in that direction, so I am not saying this is the only cause, but I suspect one cause is a lack of self-worth.

If you don't feel like you have much value or make much difference, it may seem more plausible that affiliating with someone who has wealth or fame or beauty will be the ticket, like you can share theirs. 

You can't, but if you were feeling like that was your path, maybe then you would feel compelled to overlook their faults and deny any wrongdoing on their part. Maybe that would lead to things like doing name searches and camping out in the mentions of strangers who criticize your hero.

This is purely speculation. I see it happen, but I don't know for sure why it happens. My first thought is that it's weird, but then my second thought is "Maybe they don't like themselves."

There are a lot of forces out there telling you that you are worthless.

But you're not.

That's the important thing for me to say.

You have value as a living being, a human, a child of God.

There is room for disagreement on the best way of saying that. Some people won't be thrilled with the religious reference on the last one, but if I just say "a human" that seems to overlook my value for other living beings. 

And I know some no longer living who are dearly missed.

They all matter, and so do you.

You are also capable of making a difference, but you will be able to do that better by showing kindness and support to those around you, organizing for social change, and working for a better world. No, you may not accomplish all you want to, but it can still have worth, especially on an individual level.

With my love,

Gina

Hispanic Heritage Reading: Catching up

I have not blogged about Hispanic Heritage reading since 2019. I still wish there was a better name for it.

That section had two posts, and there were more comics than usual:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019_14.html https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019_15.html

I didn't write about it, but I was reading all along. I'd had a list that was my goal, and I was waiting to write until I finished that. This happened when I finished Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by Robert Maraniss on January 25th, while on vacation.

(I'd said that was coming up: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/sports-movies.html.)

The thought was that I was going to finish all of the books related to Hispanic Heritage that were already on my list. Then I would go to the list of authors that came from Sandra Cisneros the following year. I guess I start that in September now, for 2023.

Of course, I did add books that were not expected. Also -- because I like to thwart myself -- I went through my Goodreads to-read list, and found four relevant books that were added to the Goodreads after I had entered books in the spreadsheet.

I think I will try and mix them in with the authors I took down from Sandra Cisneros.

As it is, here is the overall list of books:

A Box Full of Kittens by Sonia Manzano
21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago
Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War edited by George Mariscal
Silver, Sword, & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Maria Arana
Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots by Margarita Engle
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
Dolores Huerta Stands Strong: The Woman Who Demanded Justice by Marlene Targ Brill
The Words of Cesar Chavez by Richard J Jensen
Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music by Leila Cobo
Violence Girl by Alice Bag
What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss 

While I had already written about movies, I forgot that there were three others.

Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado -- This was a documentary about a television personality who gave horoscopes and was very popular. I was not familiar with him, but it was interesting and there would be many people who do remember him and for whom it would be a big deal. There are some sad twists, but ultimately I am glad that this project came when it did, and that he was able to get some recognition again.  

Zoot Suit  -- Long ago in Spanish class we read a piece about Luis Valdez. He is known for being the writer and director of La Bamba, but he had done much more than that and I have always wanted to see one of his plays. As it turns out, there was a filmed version of Zoot Suit that even had some familiar faces in it (Edward James Olmos, Tyne Daly, and Tony Plana). Ultimately, at some point I should read more about El Teatro Campesino.

Encanto -- I'm sure I would have watched this eventually, but it happened sooner because of people writing about trauma, and also quoting lyrics from "Under the Surface" that sounded like me. I have written about the movie, but in a different context: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/all-better.html

As you can see, as I have started writing more, other references come up. That includes Decoding Despacito (and that I will want to revisit it) and Aztlán and Viet Nam in writing about the daily songs:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/hispanic-heritage-month-2022-songs.html 

I know that there are at least two topics that relate to some of the books that I will want to address further; then we will see how it goes. Given the years gone by, more than one post is probably fair.  

In the meantime, it may be interesting to know that 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente was in a Jeopardy! category on graphic memoirs. I had only read one of the clues previously (Fun Home by Alison Bechdel), but I have read all of them now. 

I read Violence Girl by Alice Bag because it was on a list of rock biographies, some of which I had read, and several of which I had no interest in, but she was one of six that I added to my list.

Meanwhile, back on Twitter...

Yes, I am still on Twitter. I have noticed some changes, and there are some things that I know are happening that don't affect me directly.

For example, I am not a big account, and I am white, so I don't generally draw harassment. When I see it happening to others, I still report it, and they are not responding well. 

The result that I see more is that there are people moving away from Twitter whose input I value. That is a loss. There are still some great people, but they could go at any time, and there isn't a good reason to discourage them.

It would be surprising if Twitter were doing a good job of limiting racist or sexist harassment, because they have not only made a big deal of inviting the worst people back, but also they are doing things to push engagement with those terrible people. 

For example, I had to block Kyle Rittenhouse and Marjorie Taylor Green. I never followed them, or liked anything they posted, or felt anything but disgust for them, and yet there they were, showing up in my feed.

Of course the current CEO says this is important for free speech, but it is a very specific type of speech that he values.

I know a lot of people have been finding this amusing, some for believing it proves that Elon Musk is no genius. 

1. There was already enough evidence.
2. He still has weirdly obsessed defenders (which I believe is part of something else I will get to at another time).
3. That ignores the question of whether there is a greater purpose.

Now, if there is a greater purpose being served, that still doesn't make him smart.

Twitter has been important for raising marginalized voices, which is not something I would expect Musk to support. It has also been a valuable resource for organizing, especially in the Middle East. With Musk's relationship with Saudi Arabia, that might be more deliberate than incompetent.

Don't get me wrong; the Saudis could totally be harnessing his hubris without letting him onto the plan. Of course, they could also want it to succeed financially and have plans to murder and dissect him if they lose money.

I do not claim to know anything on that level; that's his problem. From a business point of view, Twitter's profitability was going to be in advertising, where a good user experience and competence in placing the ads was always going to be the key. Taking away the staff that was in charge of that, messing up ad roll-out and user experience, and attempting to compensate by asking your verified accounts -- who draw users and increase their satisfaction -- to pay for the privilege... that is not smart, and I believe Musk is not smart.

However, that can work well for taking away an important tool for organizers and a chance for people to tell their stories, especially the marginalized, while amplifying voices of hate... that is a completely separate goal. It has also been indicated that information will be turned over, even from direct messages, so reasonable expectations of privacy are gone. It's evil, but I believe Musk is evil as well (and still not smart).

Shortly after the transition, there really were thoughts that one day the servers would be down, and it would just be gone. That seems less likely now, but I remember sending messages to people I followed, mentioning things I liked or wishing them good luck... just whatever I remembered not wanting to leave unsaid.

I don't blame anyone who has left, but I have stayed. I am staying for the people.

So far I do not have any interest in switching to some other platform. Frankly, I'm a relic anyway; look at me blogging when even cool old people are doing vlogs and podcasts.

I've got to be me.

Part of being me means caring about people, and looking out for them. While I can do that on Twitter, I will. That is one way in which Twitter worked well for me. I may be doing that now with a more enhanced awareness of how finite some things can be. I hope I am using that awareness to be more thoughtful and open.

For the various things that Twitter did well, it was valuable. Its destruction via increased racism and incompetence is wrong. It is a loss.

Whether the incompetent guy is also being manipulated by smart people is interesting, but if it's sheer incompetence, that loss is no less real.

Machuca: Think of the children

Machuca is set in Chile just before the coup against Salvador Allende in September 1973.

Allende was trying to do reforms that included a more equitable distribution of wealth, which apparently resulted in shortages, long lines, and a thriving black market. Against this background there are protests both for and against the government.

A priest at a prestigious private school (Father McEnroe, based on the real-life Gerardo Whelan) is making his own efforts toward that more equitable future, which includes the students attempting to produce food, but also bringing in five underprivileged children into the school in an attempt at integration.

That is how Gonzalo, upper-class and already enrolled, meets Pedro, and Pedro's neighbor Silvana, and becomes familiar with the shantytown where they live. 

Gonzalo appears to have already not been happy with the social structure of the school, being the smarter kid who is expected to give answers to the ringleader, and being really unhappy with his mother's affair with an older, wealthier man. Perhaps that is why it is so easy for him to begin visiting the shantytown and even selling things at protests with Pedro, Silvana, and Silvana's father. There are rough spots in the friendship, but he seems happy with it.

So when the movie ends with the residents of the shantytown being carted off, but not before Silvana is shot dead, and Gonzalo is only able to leave safely because of his lighter skin and nicer clothes, and there are no traces of the shantytown left in the final shot, well, how do you move on from that?

There is no clarity on what happens to Pedro and his family. Thousands were arrested and held in a stadium, many were tortured and murdered, but not all of the thousands. It is hard to feel optimistic, but eventually ending up poor somewhere else does seem possible.

For Gonzalo, it is hard to say how he will turn out. The coup's windfall to the wealthy means more goodies for his family through his mother's lover, and Gonzalo appears to have stopped fighting that. At the same time, when the popular kid submits his test paper for Gonzalo's help again, the only thing Gonzalo writes before returning it is "Asshole".

There are parts during the movie where I was very angry with this 11 year old boy, wanting him to be better. I kept reminding myself that he was young, and his choices were limited. The question then becomes how much his exposure to other types of lives and the oppression they face will influence him as an adult.

There were other children at the school that were much worse. A meeting with the parents makes it clear that their children are exactly what you would expect. 

On the other side, it was not surprising that Silvana could not stop fighting the soldiers long enough to save her life; there was this anger ready to erupt all along. Another one of the boys sent to the school had a similar latent anger, though otherwise he remained silent, something rare for Silvana.

Of course it matters how we raise children, and what resources they have and the society in which they are raised. That makes it easy to look around and feel despair.

I found myself remembering Ciao Professore!, a 1992 Italian movie.

A transplanted professor finds a less extreme situation, but there is still a vast range of differences in the level of opportunity and supervision and help for his students. One in particular is a little thug, but whose heart you see; it is easy to care about him and hope things work out.

The alternative title of the movie -- and the last words of what may be the only essay that Raffaele ever writes -- are "I hope I make it."

I hope so too.

Ciao Professore! is set in a suburb of Naples, a city known (at least at the time) for crime, corruption, and difficulties getting basic services like trash pickup. That was the backdrop for the problems of Marco Tullio's students, including Raffaele.

For the children of Machuca, there was crime and corruption and poverty, but there were also people trying to change that. Of course they were going to have opposition from those who profited from the old system, but even those trying to help were unsuccessful in their efforts. The gardens and livestock that Father McEnroe had put in place died, and Allende's efforts were seen as the reason for shortages. (I can't rule out sabotage playing a role on both levels.)

That means that part of attempting to make things better is also planning to not make things worse. Maybe there will be downturns that can't be avoided, but can they be mitigated? Can they be planned for with messaging to help people accept them?

And do your plans include that some people are pretty horrible? Because that's a thing.

Dealing with all of that is needed, and not just for the children.