From: jay.thal (jay.thal@TCS.WAP.ORG)
Date: Sat Apr 29 2000 - 16:30:08 CDT
Jim Moss wrote, in part:
> (...Based on the briefs and a quick survey, a 50% reduction in staff. > and services, and mass mergers to save some councils from bankruptcy > is a real possibility.)
Thanks, Jim, for your description of oral arguements.
I've described this case to others as a lose-lose situation. On the
surface it's BSA v. Dale, deep down it's BSA v. BSA.
Yes, if Dale "wins" the schism can result in the dramatic losses you
described. On the other hand, if BSA "wins", particularly if it further
radicalizes itself along the lines suggested by Davidson's "threat", the
schism can be equally dramatic, and the loses just as bloody.
Last night my wife and I watched a video "Behind the Lines". It is a
biographical story of the poets Singfried Sassoon and Winfred Owen while
they were being treated for what we now call post traumatic stress from
the WW I. An excellent movie - I commend it.
In the final scene the military doctor (who also suffers PTS from
"repairing" men and sending them back to the front) receives a letter
from Sassoon containing one of Owen's final poems:
THE PARABLE OF THE OLD MAN AND THE YOUNG
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son,
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Winfred Owen
The parallels are inescapeable.
YiWWSWd,
Jay
