Band-aids for bullet wounds

[bn2bnude]

I must say (and this is the last that will be said by me), I am fascinated by most of the responses since my first post in this strip...

[Petros]

See the primary message of Sayers' Gaudy Night, just re-re-finished.

I've seen that book but not read it. Dorothy Sayers is one of my favorite writers. For those unfamiliar, can you summarize her "primary message" in the book?

Yes, I can. If I felt playful, I would stop there.

In Gaudy Night Harriewt Vane [introduced in Strong Poison] goes for a reunion to Oxford, also Lord Peter Wimsey's Alma Mater. Wouldn't you know it, nasty and scary things start happening, property is damaged, individuals are harassedm lives are threatened. Eventually the mystery is solved and several issues personal to several resolved.

Two major themes in the book and in the development of Miss Vane and very likely in the personal history of Dorothy Sayers are the roles and relationship of the sexes and the relative importance of truth and principle on the one side and policy and - call it niceness, though not really precise on the other, and the balance between professional / intellectual life and personal relationships.

Read it, you will like it. And get to met several of your colleagues and mine. Though it contains a vile slander on nudism.

Ruthlessly summarizing, the message is to thine own self be true, great is truth and mighty above all things, and if you have to fudge to get something it is not worth it.

[New_Adventurer]

Band Aid (registered trademark)...

Long ago and far away when I was a student attending Fresno City College the college sponsored a VIP each month to give a lecture on some mundane topic. With an attendance of 10,000 students about 100 would show up for these lectures. Except for one! When Melvin Belli came to speak there were about 2,000 in the gymnasium to hear him speak, and I was one of them.

I forgot most of what he talked about except for one glaring point he made. He told a story about an American soldier in West Germany (yes, it was East and West at the time, 1968) who shot a German citizen. The victim was taken to the hospital and the emergency room doctor put a Band Aid on him and sent him home. A week later he was dead from a massive abdominal infection from an opening in his gut.

So, the soldier get charged with murder, convicted, and Belli gets the job of appealing the decision. What Belli said was that the ER doctor was the one who should be charged with murder, he neglected to properly treat the wound and did not examine or monitor the victim for internal damage. Belli successfully argued that the soldier should only be charged with attempted murder and that is was the doctor who actually caused the death by malpractice.

So what does that have to do with the current topic?

Seeing sin and not challenging the sinner is a sin in and of itself, and I am guilty of this too. At least I am aware of it and try to avoid doing this. A few times my rebuke of the sinner has actually produced remorse and apology, more often it has just provoked an angry response. I let the response pass but I know that at that point the sinner knows he has been observed and called out. Just be careful the sinner is not armed or aggressive, no need to provoke a fight.

[Soapbox Preacher]

Amen! That is exactly what I have in mind with that quote.