Stinkerbell’s name is now almost always Stinky, and I think this one is going to stick because not only is she, well, stinky a lot of the time, but she’s also a total stinker, too. Inquisitive, pigheaded, temperamental, charming, engaging, and ridiculously cute–that’s my girl!
She spent quite a while before she turned three months trying very hard to talk, imitating us and making noises to get us to say favorite words. (”Hi!” meant, of course, “hi,” and “Guhguh,” together, meant she wanted to hear us say “good girl.”) But now she’s mostly lost interest and had concentrated on grasping, standing, bouncing, etc. She’s pretty much stuck to two signs that she uses well (”milk” and “pacifier”), but a lot of that is fine motorskills–that is, a total lack of them. She can play 20 questions pretty well. Depending on her mood, “yes” is either an excited arm-flap or crying, so if we ask “Do you want…?” and go down the list of usual suspects (milk, diaper, pacifier, sleep, hugs, Daddy, Mommy), she’ll respond to the one that she’s wanting. She’s tried to do “potty”, but it’s too hard to distinguish it from “milk.” She also follows one instruction–”Come to (Mommy, Daddy, me, whoever).” Sometimes, she’ll cry when she leans across, but she still leans! Good girl.
The Bear said his first word at seven months, his first two-word combination at ten, and his first long sentence at nearly fourteen. I’m not sure that Stinky will speak that soon, since she seems to have lost most of her interest as long as he can make herself understood. Her most common spound now, though she babbles, it “Hoohooooooooo.” My owl-baby!
She has discovered how to manipulate things with her hands now. She batted almost immediately, but at 2 mo, she could grasps the object of her desire pretty quickly. Now, she can reach for, grasp, and lift things, though she often has to use the arm opposite to help. She LOVES chewing things, which makes me uneasy since the Bear was such a non-chewer. I’m going to have to be really careful of his Legos and other toys now! I also hope she doesn’t do things like pull the safety outlet covers out of the outlets–the Bear left the outlets alone once I removed the covers (AKA “wall toys,” to him), but I don’t think she would. She does not have the skill that she wants to with this whole object manipulations thing, so at times, she’ll start sobbing in frustration as she’s trying to make something do what she wants, and even if I know what it is, having Mommy do it does NOT help because SHE wants to do it, all by herself. The walker is actually a favorite toy right now because of that. She can paddle around in it when she wants to, but mainly, she loves how close the tray brings things to her hands. (She barely tolerates tummy time and shows very little interest in crawling. She wants to WALK, darn it. The Bear, at the same age, worked with ferocious concentration at crawling–and he learned to walk slightly late, at 14 months! Stinky might skip crawling entirely, the way my mother did.
She’s not a terribly cuddly baby. The Bear would just melt into a boneless mass of contentment in your arms. Stinky is all about DOING things. Being talked to, eating, playing, go-go-going, always. She won’t rest her head against your chest. She’s always looking around and is an unapologetic out-facing baby.
I’m pretty sure that Sinky has my muscle condition, which is why she’s so incredibly strong. (We jokingly call her “superbaby.”) If we hold onto her hands just enough to balance, she can walk bearing her own weight. She can stand while holding onto an object. This week, she even pulled up once, using her arms over my arm to get to her feet–and this from a full sitting position, not leaning forward at all. She’s now hit every developmental milestone for 7 months except sitting without support, though she can almostalmost do that, and it’s mostly an issue of confidence rather than skill. She even waves goodbye when other people wave first. She stands pretty firmly while holding onto something at chest-height. She’ll steal something she wants out of your hand (even if she does usually drop it because its to heavy), and she’ll lean over to gently touch an item of interest if you support her hips. Where did my newborn go????
Bath time continues to be…interesting. At her bath on her 3-week birthday, she sprang into a standing position when I rocked her forward to wash he back. Talk about terrifying! Here I was, holding a screaming, furious baby (all open mouth, squeezed eyes, and red, red face), standing on these impossibly skinny legs and literally stomping up and down while I’m desperately trying to keep her from flinging her sudsy, slippery body out of the baby tub. That scared me badly enough that I bathed her in the big tub with me for a while, but then she got so where she mostly liked baths as long as I kept her from startling herself. (This is easier now, but it used to be that she’d startle at a molecule of air.) Even if she gets upset now, a stern “No!” when she tries to stand makes her settle down.
Stinky believes that sleep is for chumps. Chumps, I tell you! The Bear sleeps 10-12 hours a day, and the days are becoming more and more frequent that she sleeps less than he does. Not fair!!!! I NEED those naps, even if she doesn’t, but these days, one 15-minute nap and one hour long nap are the absolute most I can hope for, and some days it’s only one 5-to-15 minute nap. The good thing, though, is that she’s now sleeping in her crib–and will asked to be put down! First, she eats like crazy for about an hour. Then she cries very softly and makes a “paci” sign. Then she sucks it and either her eyes slide shut and she cries softly some more or she looks imploringly at me with huge eyes. A question of “Sleep?” is met with a single, weak wiggle, and she goes down–in her own crib! Hooray! It took the Bear, who was a total snuggle baby, six months to start the night in his crib, but she prefers it. She prefers to finish it in my bed, still, but as she sleeps longer and longer, that will become less of an issue.
When she does take a couple of really long naps–like and hour and a half–that means I’m in trouble at night. She’ll go down, sure, but she’ll be up with the roosters, crowing and talking and giggling and pawing at me to play with her. Stinky LOVES mornings. NOT MY BABY. While Bear and I are lurching around like zombies, she’s having the time of her life, laughing and playing. She’s usually a lot more mellow in the evenings.
She loves watching dancing and being danced with–of course! What baby wouldn’t? And she has the advantage of a constantly dancing Daddy!
The most surprising thing she’s come up with recently, though, is that she’s insanely jealous of the Bear. She was in her walker, happily playing with her toys when the Bear climbed onto my lap for snuggles. With a cry out outrage, she dropped the toy and flung herself over to me, her arms desperately reaching for me. Um, yeah. That needs to end about yesterday! It was hilarious, though.
I do hope she’s a really early walker. She’ll be so happy to investigate her world under the power of her own steam!
I have to say just how incredibly proud of the Bear I am. He’s just turned six, and except for bad days, he is so exceptionally mature for his age. I was born an “old soul,” but he’s a kid’s kid, so it’s easy for me, from my perspective, to forget sometimes just what a great kid he is. So this post is a huge brag-fest.
-He almost never meets anyone he can’t get along with. He negotiates, mediates, goes along, persuades, cajoles, and otherwise makes things work.
-I don’t have to worry about him when he plays with others. In a four-hour period, I might tell him once to be more gentle or calm or to share something in a different way. Max. When the kids are playing in another room and one screams and five other parents leap to their feet to make sure their kid wasn’t the one who did something to cause it, I don’t have to stand up anymore because he’s never the guilty party. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t hit. He doesn’t even cheat his turn or pick stupid, pointless “kid” arguments. He goal is harmony among the people he’s playing with, and he makes it happen. In fact, there are rarely problems in the area where he’s playing because he diffuses situations between other kids.
-I can take him almost anywhere. The opera, the theater, a nice restaurant, a long car trip–he almost always behaves. Now, he might be singing at the top of his lungs in the car :-), but he’s appropriate to the situation. (He loves operas. I take him to all kinds of things to see what “sticks,” and opera is his #1 hit. His very favorite is The Magic Flute. Next is Hansel und Gretel. Then is Amahl and the Night Visitors.)
-He’s generally polite and respectful. He forgets in impatience and excitement, but he really wants to be as polite as he can, and it shows. Every time we go to an event or have someone over or have some kind of lesson, people tell me what a great kid he is. I agree.
-He works his tail end off to the extent of his abilities. The autism/ADD/sensory processing disorder/dyslexia/CAPD complex of conditions runs in my family. He dodged any hint of autism or SPD, but he got a medium dose of CAPD and ADD and a heavy one of dyslexia, and yet this kid works hard to overcome it. He sets his own timer in math to keep himself on task. He’s stretched his memory to phenomenal limits to compensate for his CAPD. (I had him formally evaluated this summer, and there was a 5-standard deviation difference between his normal performance on most tasks and his performance in his weakest areas. Seriously, FIVE standard deviations!) When he’s doing well, I can simply give him his written assignments, and he comes to me when they’re done. Yep, in Kindergarten, and he’s ADD enough that he could not learn in a normal classroom setting with medication. (No way am I medicating a 6-year-old at home, though!) He’s also caught the love of reading after an awful lot of hard work to get him fluent. Because of the nature of his dyslexia, he could test at a 5th grade level and read 6th grade level books before he could read 2nd-grade texts at an appropriate speed and fluency. Now, he’s reading 4th grade books independently. He read 20 books in January alone! He’s not at the maturity level I’m hoping for him here. I’d like to see him working with more speed and diligence. But he’s pretty amazing for any 6-year-old, never mind one with issues that make it harder.
-When you take his ADD and CAPD into account, his behavior is even more impressive. Behavior, because of lack of impulsiveness control, tends to be a big problem with kids with ADD. It’s been a long, hard row to hoe from where we started. A few years ago, I was complaining bitterly about parents who don’t hold their kids to high standards since the Bear consistently was the third worst kid (wiggly and spacey instead of listening) in any group because the bad behavior of the very worst distracted him so. It is one thing to ask a kid with ADD to not misbehave. It’s another to ask him to behave *better* than other kids. But now, that’s exactly what he does–most of the time, at least! He’s still never the worst kid, but now he’s often one of the best at any given moment. Totally awesome, and the result on lots of hard work on his part.
-The strides he’s made this year in swimming really impress me, as well. He took his first swim lesson this summer, when he was afraid to put his head underwater. But gamely, he persevered. He passed Red Cross Level I in one go, II in one go, and now III after two goes. He’s in IV, the old Advanced Beginner, and is actually almost ready for V, Intermediate. I know that because of a blooper on my part. We’d been doing Tues/Thurs lessons all along, except that now he’s in a level that has so few kids in it for his age group that it only has three times total instead of 17 for Level II and 14 for Level III. All of these are Mon/Wed. (UGH!) I had a brain fart and took him on Tues, accidentally missing the Mon class. By now, most of the swim teachers know us, so I asked if one of the other classes didn’t have a hole he could slip into. The Level V class, which only meets Tues/Thurs, only had one child enrolled, and the teacher asked if he could swim a 25-yard lap. “Sure!” I said. That’s the most he’d swum at a go before, but he’s done it and wasn’t tired at the end. So she got him in the water and and had him doing laps–alternately with a kickboard practicing rotary breathing and with freestyle. And the kid swam for 30 minutes straight! He gave it every ounce he had, even when his freestyle devolved into a pathetic semi-dog paddle because he didn’t have the strength to get his elbow out of the water any more. All heart, that kid. The instructor said he was right on the edge of Level V already, so one session of level IV, and he’s there. This thrills me to no end because after he graduates from Level V (by summer????), he’ll be swim team level, which means that the cost will drop to a bit more than a third of what it is for lessons. Wooohooo!
-He makes his own cereal and hot dogs. He hangs his own clothes. He cleans his room and the playroom. Sometimes, he even cleans them without my asking. We’re working on combing hair and brushing teeth without being asked, though, and I’ll do bed-making at some point….
-And finally, he’s the best big brother I’ve ever heard of. I’m rather ashamed at my and my brother’s relationship in comparison, and we actually bump along pretty well. He adores his sister–absolutely dotes on her and spoils her rotten. He declares to anyone who will listen that she’s the prettiest and sweetest and smartest and strongest baby int he world. (The very last one might actually be right! 8-0 ) He had NEVER shown the least bit of jealousy, not even when her eating has prevented me from doing something he needed–like feed him, too! He reads to her, sings to her, holds her, plays with her, gets more excited than we do over her new abilities. He doesn’t find her boring in the least, not even when she’s asleep, because she’s HIS little sister. I would simply not have believed such a relationship among siblings of such ages in a book, but it’s happening before my eyes. It makes me miss my little sea monkeys that much more–how happy he would have been to have at least one more, in between him and Stinky! It’s not just me who missed holding them in my arms. He would be thrilled to be in the middle of a huge passel of children.
He does things that drive me crazy, of course. (”What is there to eat?” is a favorite.) But more and more, I’ve been impressed with how much I can depend on him to apply himself to being good and working hard and getting along. I can say that some of it’s parenting, sure. But some of it is just plain him and his sweet-yet-stubborn disposition. Stinky? I’m not so sure that’s she’s going to be quite so sweet.
I’d assumed that most of them were either killed fighting the Normans or got turned into peasantry when their lands were overtaken. Turns out that more than 5,000 Anglo-Saxons and Danes–elites and their men–fled England in 1088 alone for Byzantium. There, they settled around the Black Sea or became part of the Varangian Guard, a traditionally Scandinavian group of elite mercenaries who protected the emperor.
So that means that those of us who have early American families and are tied to the Washingtons (an Anglo-Saxon elite family) might have some very distant but historical-era cousins in the Balkans!
If I’ve been talking more about Roman history than I usually do, that’s because I’m constantly being reminded of it recently–in bad ways. The stimulus package reminds me uncomfortably of the standard response of Roman Emperors to bad economic times–that is, to invent money. (They devalued the currency. We just print more. Pretty much, same diff.) Theoretically, they’d pay back the debt created by these acts. Somehow, it never happened that way.
Heck, I still don’t understand what the bank bailout was supposed to achieve, or rather by what means it was supposed to achieve it…. :-/
I have no idea what I want to invest in anymore–or where to invest, for that matter. If I lived in my hometown, where real estate prices stayed sane, the economy is solid, and growth is steady, I’d have half a dozen four-plexes by now. (The one where I lived when I was a baby is for sale, BTW!) Here? I’d need half a million just to get off the ground, and then the value would implode. Not good.
Current (or semi-current) issues always make me think about their parallels in history. Immigration is one of them.
One of the more interesting areas of study in ancient history is trying to understand the so-called barbarian invasions of Rome more fully. (They weren’t called “barbarian invasions” as a recognized pattern when they were happening–this is a more recent term for a whole bunch of different movements.) There’s a growing group of scholars who are becoming convinced that calling them “invasions” is a misnomer. The purpose of invading an area is to establish dominance, to overthrow the current regime, or to accomplish a political or territorial goal. The purpose of the movements of many, if not most, of the barbarians was to get a piece of Rome to call their own–some fertile farmland, a part of the existing trade, that sort of thing. They mostly wanted, in short, to become settled Romans.
The handling of these barbarians by Roman proconsuls indicates how well Rome knew this. It would be dangerous to Rome’s political stability to allow an entire tribe with its own political system fully intact to just pick a chunk of the empire to call their own, never mind what the provincials already on that chuck would think. The skilled proconsul, then, would march an army out, defeat the invading/immigrating force (effectively removing its political cohesion), and then separate everybody into smaller groups for settling in low-population areas that are in Rome’s interests to have them live in (rather than in the first bit of fertile ground they run across). There, the new immigrants would settle down, intermarry, become good Roman provincials, and enlist in the army, where they helped to the same thing to the next group of barbarians.
Slowly, Rome slid into decadence, and unable to handle barbarians in the old manner, it began granting tracts of land to intact barbarian units. In some ways, this actually made things harder for the barbarians because they kept more of their old traditions and were more “barbarian” than “provinicial” for longer. Problems with maintaining population in the Roman Empire mean that there was a demographic and cultural shift–there were more barbarians and fewer “Romans” with every decade, and Rome was both dependent upon and fearful of these new arrivals for keeping the empire intact. (The populations estimates of 400 and 600 shown here show the demographic collapse that was already at the edge of beginning. despite massive immigration. As I’ve already mentioned, demographic collapse is bad for a society!)
Ironically, the barbarian Alaric’s sack of Rome was not at all an attempt to destroy Rome but should be much better viewed as a civil war symptomatic of the weakness of the western empire–and even more ironically, his first foe representing the legitimate power of Rome wasn’t a born Roman but another barbarian confederate general by the name of Stilicho, the guardian of the emperor who rather blatantly desired the empire for himself. Alaric was probably the most able of Rome’s generals at the time. With another pedigree, with the traditions of succession returned to those of 100 years before, and with the bad luck he seemed to encounter at every turn, he might have been the emperor to revive the Western Empire’s flagging fortunes. But then again, perhaps not. Much of the reasons of Rome’s growing weakness are poorly understood and hotly debated even now. If the root was primarily part of a long cold spell or successive droughts or increasing pestilence or many other things that societies are vulnerable (and there’s some evidence for many of these), everything he could have done might have been too little. And the economic/monetary situation may have been so screwed up that there was no saving it either, either. There are many “only ifs” in history, and a disproportionate number of them are in Roman history!
(Some classical scholars would even argue hotly with the declaration that Rome EVER “fell.” The people of AD 600 never would have thought so–or even 700 or 800. Charlemagne’s contemporaries did not find his title of emperor at all laughable or disingenuous–it was deadly serious and extremely significant. I’m of the camp that says that there was no single event that marked Rome’s fall, but Rome fell gradually, nevertheless, even if it was kept alive in people’s imaginations. And then comes the argument of what a government is, if not an idea in people’s imaginations… )
This isn’t something I thought I’d ever have to blog on, but having followed a news story to the Huffington Post and seeing the some of the muddled comments there, I think it’s worth explaining. Why? ‘Cuz it’s crucially important–both to understanding historical populations and to understanding what’s happening now in many developed countries.
The environmentalist dogma that more people are bad, period, has seemed to make these simple facts no longer politically correct. Instead, there’s an irrational neo-Malthusian 1970s-ish fear of constant, exponentially increasing human population sending the world into a post-apocalyptic future. (The population is going to level off fairly soon. FYI. And then there will most likely be a natural decline. Why? I’ll explain that, too!)
As a result of this careful whitewashing of the humanities, people graduate from high school and even college without having even encountered the term “demographic collapse”, much less understanding why certain countries are beginning to panic about their shrinking populations. Particularly indoctrinated yet ignorant individuals even make nasty comments about people who have more than two children or claim that their childlessness is some sort of virtuous choice for society–not even the planet, which might be argued with some validity, but for human society.
I was given this line in school, too. I realized that it didn’t actually fit with all the history I was learning, though–the actual cold, hard facts about what happened to civilizations that came before ours.
Too many people–I won’t get into what “too many” is, but no matter what you criteria are, they depend heavily on technological level–could, of course, be bad in an ecological sense. People can (and have) sabotage their resources. There is competition among people and between people and other organisms for resources that are finite, even if they can be vastly increased through technology, and this could begin to cause serious suffering. As in everything else, though, there is a balance. I won’t say “moderation” because that implies something “in the middle” (middle of what???), but a balance, absolutely.
Demographic collapses result in the intensification of whatever problem caused the collapse in the first place, leading to further collapse, leading to… Well, you get the picture. It can be interrupted. It can, less frequently, be reversed. But demographic collapse is, itself, never, ever good for an even semi-healthy society. At best, it causes the kinds of economic impacts that lead to out of control inflation/monetary debasement, mass unemployment and unrest, and a whole lot of collateral economic damage while it is occurring, with an overall rise in standard of living for the very poor after–and the best-case only occurs when the regional Malthusian limits are reached within a stagnant technological framework. (I can only think of one historical demographic collapse that meets these criteria–the Black Death. Our modern, first-world definition of “poor” doesn’t come close to the kind of poverty I mean here–you’d have to see mass starvation for this to be a benefit. And even with the Black Death, though the diets of the poor improved according to the surviving wage records, and though marginal lands were abandoned in favor of richer areas, the situation remained dire enough to keep reproduction depressed for about 200 years, which wouldn’t have happened if the poor had been suddenly dramatically better off.) At worst, it spells the end of a society–and the second rather frequently.
But, hey, the whales are happy, right?
Nope. Not even right about that, because in times of economic distress, people are way more worried about whether they’ll have enough to eat than whether or not the meat on the table comes from a highly endangered lemur. That’s why loss of habitat and widespread killings of endangered animals go hand-in-hand with wars in Africa, for instance. When economies are interrupted, people turn to any resource at hand.
Demographic collapses occur when the death rate is higher than the birthrate over a generation or more. The population shrinks, and nasty things happen like empires imploding or being devastated by waves of invaders. Most people know about some triggers for demographic collapse. For example, we’ve all learned about the Black Death in high school. And we’ve all learned about the results of small pox on Amerindian societies.
But there are a lot of other things that can cause demographic collapses. War is one, of course. Sufficient unrest can be enough to make people a bit chary of marrying and having babies, even before birth control. High taxes. Weak government. Reoccurring bad harvests. A bad economy. All these things cause birthrates to drop. A society that requires that couples be self-sufficient before starting families (rather than breeding on the expectation of inheritance) cause birthrates to be lower. Scarcity of resources–employment, capital, etc.–lowers birthrates. Societies in which children are a financial asset raise birthrates, while societies in which children are a financial drain lower them. Socioreligious obligations–to provide an heir, to have the youngest child be male, to provide dowries for all daughters, etc.–can also raise or lower birthrates, as well.
A demographic collapse is only rarely the result of a single event. Usually, it’s a combination of things. You can think of population growth as being a kind of tug-of-war between various factors. When things get slanted heavily in a way that encourages growth, you get a boom. When things slant the other way, you get a collapse. Booms aren’t bad in themselves, typically, but they often breed the kinds of conditions that lead to a later collapse.
Food pressures are hardly an issue in highly developed countries, but a number of other things are. The fact that children, in post-industrial countries, are a cost and not a financial benefit is a biggie. The sheer cost of raising a child in a developed country is a major deterrent to having children. Another issue is the very high rates of taxation in many countries suffering from a demographic winter–that is, a slowing of expansion or an early, pre-collapse contraction. Unemployment in Europe is a perennial problem, European economic policy constantly driving levels upward until they reach levels well above 10% (then followed by a political backlash that only temporarily corrects the problem). A new socioreligious attitude condemning those with “too many” children is also an issue.
Think this has nothing to do with us? Think that American have way too many kids, as it is? Well, even the United States now usually relies upon immigration to maintain a positive population growth. (We’re at replacement now. I can’t say where it will go next.)
A particularly interesting aspect of demographic change–THE most interesting one, to me!–is something that I haven’t mentioned yet. It’s the paradox of urbanization. Urban centers have always had negative natural population growth rates. Whether you are discussing ancient Rome or medieval London or modern New York, cities have never been able to sustain themselves.
It makes sense when you’re talking about pre-1900 cities. After all, that’s where the risk of illness was greatest. You had the least access to pure foods. You had the most dangerous jobs. You had exposure to all kinds of contamination, and the air and water pollution wasn’t to be believed.
But the non-replacement birthrate of cities is as true for 21st century first-world cities as it was for ancient ones. Cities have always relied upon immigration from the countryside and smaller towns to sustain themselves and grow. They have always been a population sinkhole, even as they are the most concentrated center of economic activity and wealth. There are reasons for this that are built into the very nature of cities themselves. No amount of economic policy can change these traits of cities, and as the first world becomes urbanized to an unprecedented degree, we’re seeing the results.
The overall problem is this: it’s hard to raise kids in cities. It was hard a century ago, it was hard a millennium ago, and it’s hard now. Cities are, by their nature, short on space. They’re short on space for living and playing, both. Cities are dangerous places for kids, and that makes parents nervous. Cities are really expensive places to have kids, too. Urban children require enormous investments compared to their country counterparts.
Modern, post-industrial life, though, is incredibly urban. And therein lies another part of the paradox–the very wealthiest countries, by their very structure, discourage their own continuation. This is also why, BTW, we don’t have to worry about population increasing out of control. Only a first-world country can sustain the kinds of population concentrations that would pose a tangible threat to the global environment, but every first-world country will, due to urbanization, not have a population that expands rapidly, if at all.
For an interesting exploration of the possible relationships between demographic change and society, do a search on medieval European populations. The Byzantine Empire would be even more interesting, but it isn’t all that well studied. The population in the Western European Middle Ages is, however, and there are lots of really interesting online discussions.
I’ve taken a lot of flak for saying that while plagiarism is wrong, the plagiarist isn’t necessarily evil and irredeemable and that the plagiarist’s entire career, whatever it is, should not always be instantly destroyed. The fact is that most people like to see the world in black and white. There are bad guys and good guys, and plagiarists are bad guys.
Even a quite intelligent novelist has declared that plagiarists deserve not a lick of forgiveness because when she was plagiarized, it hurt her very deeply. Not to trivialize personal pain, but this is one of the worst reasons ever to want to ostracize the plagiarist–”you hurt me, so you should be hurt, too.”
But few people will be convinced by theoretical arguments. More will be persuaded by this simple fact: Martin Luther King, Jr., was a plagiarist. His plagiarism was egregious and stunning and should have caused a revocation of his doctorate–an entire order of magnitude worse than any recent fiction scandal coming from a context in which he had been explicitly taught about citing sources. (The Wikipedia article is quite generous and downplays the extent to which the ideas and language of his papers were simply lifted from others. If he had been an ordinary graduate, he certainly would have had his doctorate removed.)
AND YET Dr. King was a great man–an inspiration to generations, a figure of unity rather than divisiveness, of hope and vision whose incredible integrity of purpose is beyond question and beyond reproach. He was not a man whose future should have been thrown away because of his, yes, intellectual thefts. He was worthwhile in every sense of the word and in every area of his life.
I’ve made other arguments, based on reason, based on logic. There has been so much intransigence on this topic–a failure to recognize that just about every single writer plagiarizes at some point in their development, a pretense that there is always a clear standard for every genre of writing that absolutely everyone knows, etc., etc. I plagiarized as a child–accidentally, and to my intense frustration, but I did it. Derivativeness itself is on the continuity between originality and plagiarism, and any number of *published* authors simply rewrite the works of others endlessly, incapable of creating their own books. To my amusement, some of the absolute worst offenders at, say, rewriting Putneys are always some of the loudest to declare that plagiarists should be hanged, drawn, and quartered. As an adult, I’ve been imitated and outright plagiarized, both. My hurt feelings–or simply being pissed off–have nothing to do with the matter. It’s an issue that’s as old as authorship itself, and it will never go away, it will never be black and white, and plagiarists will not become the scum of the earth, without exception, just because we want everything to be easy.
Of course, legal action is completely justified and in fact an imperative against certain types of plagiarism. And plagiarism is bad. (Heck, I think the standards for derivativeness are way too loose–part of my protest is people getting up in arms over infractions I find far less egregious that the wholesale copying of another author! “Oh, but I don’t use her WORDS!”–because trying to steal her identity is so morally superior????) PLEASE don’t think that I’m defending plagiarism. Plagiarism shouldn’t be tolerated, but then again, neither is it a capital offense. Plagiarism being wrong doesn’t make the plagiarist more than, well, a plagiarist–no matter how badly one feels betrayed. We want our heroes perfect and our villains purely evil. But wishing can’t make it so.
Life isn’t like that. It’s messy and difficult and complicated–and so are real people. So was Dr. King. A great man. A mortal and flawed man. But still a great one–even though he was, yes, a plagiarist.
And she has the advantage of a constantly dancing Daddy!
)
