We must acknowledge the past in order to regain trust and to seize the future.
–Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
This was one thing I agreed with my father about: independence. After spending my childhood in Synanon, I had no trust in any organization to take care of me, and that meant the government and the crooked corporations that Ray and Theresa spoke of, although, at that time, I still had no understanding of what a corporation was. In my mind, I saw corporations as massive cement buildings where the production of vague things were assembled and unleashed onto unsuspecting American citizens. Once, when I’d listened to Allison rant on and on about the promise made by General William Sherman in 1865 of “forty acres and a mule” to displaced freed slaves and how that promise had never been delivered, I’d snapped, “Don’t hold your breath.” She’d had a good laugh over my dry, sarcastic comment, but I was serious.
–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman
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The storyteller’s fingertip touched the red symbol stamped on one corner. “This glyph means fate, or chance. The Laughing Man’s actions are so unexpected, and their effect is so profound, that his victims think it is a bitter joke. He destroys everything—even trust and hope. But there is one power that can counteract his.” She took out another card: a circle of people, arm in arm. “Fellowship,” she said.
–Earth Logic (Elemental Logic)
September 21 is the International Day of Peace
This quote really captures the main character and illustrates one of the primary reasons why I love this book:
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She ought to be happy to see him and part of her was—she’d missed him every single day. But this felt less like he’d come to rescue her and more like he hadn’t trusted her to take care of herself. A fine line. She ought to be grateful, but she didn’t need to be rescued. He didn’t understand, and now somehow she had to tell him he couldn’t leave.
-Refuge of Dragons (Voices of Dragons #2) by Carrie Vaughn
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A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children.
–The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Note: This book is narrated by Death. The plot occurs during WWII. It is a very good book, with both humorous and serious aspects.
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Seven times I went down
Six times I walked back
I don’t fear the dark anymore
‘Cause I’ve become all thatDon’t forget the time
I wooed him with red wine
The devil he wore such a fine, fine shirt
And it stayed so clean
While he dragged me through the dirt
Don’t trust anyone who looks you in the eye
Don’t take any kindness, it’s a demand in disguise
–A Bird Flies Out by Deb Talan
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Having lived and worked in both the Fargo/Moorehead area and Duluth, MN, this story does not surprise me. Sadly, it is far from the first time I’ve run across an article like this. Also, this is neither the first nor the last woman to experience this problem, yet police continue to refuse to take it seriously: Crimes against Native American women raise questions about police response, The Guardian, by Zoe Sullivan (01/19/2016)
North Dakota nightmare: Lake Vermilion woman abducted, taken to Bakken oil patch, The TimberJay, by Marshall Helmberger and Jodi Summit (06/03/2015)
A woman was traveling through North Dakota when she found herself stranded. While contacting family on her cell phone she was abducted:
The man had snuck up behind her while she was messaging friends and family members on her progress and was focused on her laptop computer. It was the last message her family would receive for almost a week.
Somehow she managed to escape:
The following few days, she said, are lost in a fog, as her abductor may have kept her drugged. She woke up to the dinging of an open car door, and found herself lying in the backseat of a beat-up Honda Accord with a missing back window. With her abductor apparently outside the vehicle, she stumbled out of the back seat and crawled away. “I tried to run,” she said, but her vision was blurry. Despite that, she managed to make her way down a steep ditch and her abductor apparently didn’t pursue her, but her memory of her escape is far from clear.
And survived through the help of a Good Samaritan:
While she had begun her ordeal in Casselton, in far eastern North Dakota, after escaping her abductor she found herself in a remote part of northwestern North Dakota. She said she wandered for at least two days, without food or water, before finally being rescued by a North Dakota man, who spotted her wandering across open country near the tiny town of Wildrose.
Then the police do THIS:
While Edith had hoped her experience would help law enforcement officials apprehend a kidnapper and possible human trafficker, she soon discovered that officers at the Williston Police Department had little interest in her story. She said officers refused to take a statement about her abduction. Instead, they ran her own record and found a 2011 traffic violation from Grand Forks still outstanding—and arrested her on a bench warrant for the unpaid ticket.
“I kept trying to tell them that I’d been taken, but they wouldn’t listen. One officer told me I was full of __it and was just trying to get out of the warrant,” said Edith.
According to Edith, the Williston police offered no medical assistance. Instead, they booked her into a holding facility overnight and shipped her to a jail in Minot the following day.
This is just one of the many reasons why people do not trust the police. It’s also living proof that the militarization of the police force is ineffective. When police officers are so distanced from the human beings they are tasked to serve that they can’t recognize a situation for what it is…or take the OPPORTUNITY it presents to capture a REAL bad guy…then there is something seriously wrong.
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“All I can do is decide if I trust Marcus or not. And while he has done cruel, evil things, our society is not divided into “good” and “bad.” Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind. Marcus is not good or bad, but both. Well, he is probably more bad than good. But that doesn’t mean he’s lying.”
“People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.“
–Insurgent (Divergent Book 2)
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“From the far basket, a young girl, perhaps three years old, raised her head shyly above the humps…The woman lifted a sheet covering the basket immediately in front of me, and there, wrapped in a cocoon of sheepskin, was a newborn…I was humbled by the thought that for much of the morning I had feared my horse might make a misstep on one of the narrow ledges or be knocked over by the river’s current. This woman trusted her animals with the precious lives of her most fragile loved ones—showing more trust in those camels than many people in my own society would bestow on another human being.”
-On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads
A description of the journey from the beginning of the book:
“The world expanded with every new challenge, from frostbitten toes to the dark clouds of mosquitoes that came with summer in Siberia. But most of all it was the people who left an impression on me….I found it astonishing that in the midst of an adventure I experienced more comradeship and connection with many of these people than with those where I had grown up in Australia.“
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“Almost every social conflict can ultimately be traced back to a lack of humility, respect, or trust.”
“Note that “being humble” is not the same as saying one should be an utter doormat: there’s nothing wrong with self-confidence.“
–Team Geek: A Software Developer’s Guide to Working Well with Others