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Jason Daniel's avatar

That picture of your daughter with your parents is perfect! I haven't seen the Viking show yet but the awareness of instilling masculine values in my two girls and my own ability to provide-protect for our family struck a nerve-chord.

You also wanted us to share one thing that enriched our life (besides your writing). I would add listening to Hiss Golden Messenger since I've been obsessed with his catalogue for the past week.

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Rick Lewis's avatar

A startling coincidence here. My wife and son are watching the Viking show right now. I abstain, only hearing the grisly sounds of killing in the background, ingesting it like second-hand smoke, and it's caused me to grapple with the precise awareness you describe, and I'm not even seeing the pictures! None of my values/practices are going to protect me or my loved ones in a fistfight or any other form of real life conflict. And am I okay with that?

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Charlie Becker's avatar

Wow, that IS a startling coincidence! One person I really look up to is Mr. Rogers. But a question that nags at the edge of my awareness is how robust and sustainable my values are if there isn’t a mechanism for self-protection in there somewhere. It raises questions like where smart prevention starts and paranoia ends, and—assuming some prevention is good—how much is good, and what’s the right balance of preventing and being present. I would be very interested to see how you tease out these questions and the answers you do or don’t arrive at. I consider you a very healthy model of masculinity.

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Rick Lewis's avatar

Well thanks for the vote of confidence. I think at this point if faced with conflict I'd try to talk my way out of it, but that's where the unease arises from when you see depictions of others who not in any kind of state where words are going to matter, but on the other hand, there is some impressive political jockeying and rhetoric that gets exchanged among those Vikings.

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Jeanne S's avatar

My one thing was watching the lunar eclipse. I enjoyed this digest of footnotes.

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Charlie Becker's avatar

Oh man, I wanted to stay up and watch that but I was so exhausted! Thank you.

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Jeanne S's avatar

Just happened to wake up and thought, why not have a look. So I did.

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CansaFis Foote's avatar

…congrats on getting this out here…

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