Look folks, I'll make this brief. This is a nice site, and lots of smart, well meaning people abound. I've enjoyed hanging around on occasion, and I'll probably miss it.
But I have to tell you that today, this site hurt me more than I've hurt in a good long time. I haven't trembled or shaken like I am right now in years. Why? Because today, I went to read what I thought would be a heart-wrenching story of loss of a child, because that was what the title was about. It was on the rec list, and so I clicked to read it, and was confused. It appeared to be about, I couldn't quite tell, a dog or a child hit on the side of the road and how this shook the diarist.
But it took me a while to figure out that the diarist wasn't talking about a child at all, the diarist was talking about a dog. This I had to figure out from the many posts asking the diarist, who was resisting the suggestion, to change the title, as it was misleading.
Now, I can definitely empathize with the diarist's grief, as the loss of an animal, even one that you do not know, can be painful. But the title wasn't just misleading, it was deeply hurtful to me, a parent who has lost my oldest son, Malcolm, eight years ago.
I pointed out this out, and pointed out that the title was not just misleading, but also offensive and hurtful to me, a parent who has lost a child and who was further hurt by seeing the emotional pain of losing a child assimilated to the loss of a random dog.
For my trouble, I was told to buzz off, to just shove it if you will, and this by a number of respected posters here.
Because of this, and because it has become painfully apparent to me that too many people I thought I had much in common with simply do not share the same value I attach to innocent human life. Instead of respecting innocent human life, they take it lightly, assimiating it to the loss of a random dog they didn't even know on the side of the road.
Something appears severly wrong here if such a diary, by a diarist who makes such light of the loss of innocent life, not only makes the rec list, but is vociferously defended, even in the offensive nature of the misleading title, by respected members of the kossack community.
Certainly, this cannot be a place for me after all. Sincerely regards to those with whom I have conversed, learned from and, occasionally, crossed swords with over the years.
May your future be occassioned with less grief than my own.