LEAF granted leave to intervene!

LEAF has been granted leave to intervene!!! Here is what they have to say about the case:

Some of the issues of importance in Rick v. Brandsema for LEAF and West
Coast LEAF include:
􀁺 a women's consistent disadvantage and inequitable results in family
law settlement agreements - leading to barriers of women's economic
independence and survival;
􀁺 serious and unique challenges for rural farm wives;
􀁺 advancing equality analysis in an area of law which has enormous
effects on women and children;
􀁺 re-defining the understanding and reviewing the value processes of
negotiation-based resolutions in family law; and
􀁺 women, mental illness and family law
This case offers opportunity to influence and advance family law and
thereby women's economic potential.

THERE IS A PROGRAM FOR ABUSED ANIMALS-WHAT ABOUT ABUSED PEOPLE???

IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

Nanc found out about this program run by Rescue Ink in the U.S.. It looks a lot like our Family Violence Education Initiative, with one big difference. Maybe we should get tatooed all over!?
This is not the first time that we have noticed that animals get more protection than women, children, and the elderly in our society.

The School Visitation Initiative
sign up now

In conjunction with law enforcement and animal control officials, Rescue Ink members visit elementary and middle schools, presenting a program designed to instill an appreciation of the value of animals, and to teach children how to spot and properly report instances of animal abuse and neglect. The curriculum fosters respect and consideration for animals via one-on-one interaction with positive role models, and contact with rescued animals.

The Rescue Ink members who participate in the School Visitation Initiative Program say that the experience gives them a feeling of nostalgia, and reminds them of their days attending school. We even have a member who likes to drop by the Principal's office in every school he visits. After all, he told us, it's where he spent most of his time.

THE TIME BETWEEN TICK AND TOCK

We have learned that much of life exists between the tick and tock of events. We are in such a place now. One great event has occurred, and we must wait for the inevitable tock that follows. "Tock" occurs (god willing and the creek don't rise)on next Tuesday, October 16th. I will be posting about it, but right now I don't want to throw any monkey wrenches into the clockworks (to extend the metaphor perhaps a bit too far). In the mean time, I want to share some quotes on fear that struck Nanc and I as appropriate to this time:

Eleanor Roosevelt:
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Marcus Aurelius:
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

David Oliver-Godric:
Fear is one of the essences of what it is to be alive. Courage is to have fear but act anyway, cowardice is to have fear and fail to act. Life is about action, failing to act is the same as being dead, although even the dead act as fertilizer so perhaps it is worse.

See you Tuesday!

PAIN AND VALUES

I originally wrote this for Jack Hittrich, Nanc's attorney in this case. Hopefully, readers of this blog will find it inspiring:

"Great events and horrific trials identify the outstanding individuals among us. They take the ordinary man or woman and, if they have the right steel, forge them into the tools of history. Pain is the birthright of humans. What the individual does with that pain is the story of their life. For the few that find their true temper – turning their personal suffering to the service of others – there we see the shining blades that are the power and the real value of our species."