well, apart from arrested news reporters and the oppression of law enforcement agencies giving me the shake up, things are pretty good. i have not had therapy all summer, though, because of beaurocratic systems that are helpful but tricky, and i am really looking forward to the time when i can get some help in that department.

i thought of something that might help my mind.... maybe it is exercise, diet, etc etc. i want to get well and not have a loss in gray brain matter. songs are good because they help me remember things i learn. so i am taking music and math, seems very brain-wise. and i want to read helena's book. she wrote Dangerous Peace-Making and I can get it at the library.

Here is a review:
n Dangerous Peace-Making, Meyer-Knapp offers an intelligent, exhaustively researched, and brilliantly argued analysis of complicated and often unpredictable factors that must be understood if one wants to understand how wars end. While acknowledging the passion and commitment of "ordinary people committed to peace," Meyer-Knapp's case studies of wars in Rwanda, Bosnia, Ireland, Palestine, and South Africa illustrate her contention that "the peace-oriented should lay . . . responsibility squarely at the feet of . . . the political leaders," those with the power to sanction war and to end it. Her concluding chapter about justice, mercy, memory and peace offers mercy, especially, not as "forgiveness," but as deliberate decision and action. "Without mercy, without the willingness to desist from the punitive and destructive acts that remain within their power, there is no way for leaders in a war to bring their fighting to an end." This is an important book, one that thoughtful citizens should read, particularly those who want to move beyond over-simplified analyses to one grounded in historical and political realities.