The Pope's impromptu  planned visit last week with victims of clergy sexual abuse has been widely reported. In a New York Times report on April 16 entitled, "Abuse Victims Not Placated by Pope", Becky Ianni, a 50-year-old abuse victim said,

“He talks about feeling shame for the scandal but it’s a far cry from the shame that victims have had to live with our entire lives. We don’t really need his sense of shame."

She's right, of course. Yet many news outlets reported all week that the Pope visited with the "survivors", not the "victims."   It seems to me that calling the victims "survivors", even though they truly are, softens the terrible act and does more to add to the shame that Ms. Ianni and so many others do note need to endure.

Shame on the news media. These individuals are victims of abuse, even if they are also survivors of despicable actions of individual members of the clergy.

Enough said.

I've been cleaning off my desk today. At the bottom of a stack of papers, was an article I saved from USA Today on February 26 entitled, "Teens losing touch with historical references."  The gist of it is, today's teenagers have lost touch with American History, and can't identify most major events or the impact on our life today. It boils down to the sad fact that History is not taught in most schools as a primary subject.

The article was accompanied by a quiz, Are you smarter than a 17-year-old?  Sadly, my kids failed it, too.

We take some pride in reconnecting our kids with historical facts through hands-on or living history events. We do a little traveling, taking in historical sites and learning a little about our past. I force them to watch historical movies and documentaries, at times.  Heck, we're even descendants of several noted patriots and a signer of the Declaration of Independence--facts they've been forced to learn.

Yet, we don't spend a lot of time of dates and events, really. Until I read this article I hadn't given much thought to the lack of History classes in school.  Perhaps I should have. We have a responsibility to make sure our children learn and understand both our Nation's history and their personal connection to it. 

Poet George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." But, I think this quote from Kurt Vonnegut, "History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again," perhaps puts this issue in the best context. 

Without those list of surprises, we'll have produced a generation of leaders who will continually be surprised as the world unfolds about them.

Do "we" want to be responsible for that?

While I was doing the previous post, I came upon a Po Bronson article in Time Magazine entitled, "Has being Married Gone Out of Style?" from October 2006. It seems that the Census Bureau has noted that homes headed by married couples now falls below 50%.

Given I'd just done a post over the weekend on the perspective of someone who had been married 50 years, I thought you might be interested in seeing this article.

The Miami Herald had an article today entitled, 5 things you didn't know about midlife crisis. Among those five points were, "Am I Having one?" in which the article said doctors do believe it is a genuine condition with the following symptoms, among others:

1. irritability
2. loss of sex drive
3. impotence
4. fatigue
5. depression
6. hair loss
7. weight gain
8. loss of ability to recover quickly from injuries

It also said that a recent "Happiness" study showed that both men and women's happiness followed a U-shaped curve, with the most unhappy time being at the bottom of the curve, or about age 44.

If find all this interesting, but I have to point out that I don't possess an of the symptoms from the bullet-point list above. Except, maybe irritability, but then I've always been a tad grouchy. So, I guess I'm not having a milife crisis after all.

Funny thing about that list though. If you look at it closely, I'll bet you know people in their 20's and 30's who have the symptoms listed.

Of course, this is from the Miami Herald, home to the more retired people than anywhere else in the world. It's the likely the place where "60 is the new 40," was coined. That would explain the list, now wouldn't it?