MISCELLANY
EndNotes
It's tomorrow today
I remember that day
It felt like I had hit rock bottom
It couldn’t have gotten worse.
I didn't know anybody, adults or other youth
My life had ended
I had no loose end to pick up on
I didn't want to go back to my past
I had no present — it was all a blank to me
I had no tomorrow.
You aroused in me a spark of familiarity
when you came to say “Good Night”.
You seemed to understand when you said
“Tomorrow is another day.”
It gave me something to wake up for,
To feel that from rock bottom,
The only way is up.
And here it is: tomorrow.
I have a tomorrow.
And tomorrow is today.
___
“I never dared be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old.”
— Robert Frost
___
___
“We assume that life is more healing than we are, and that our intervention is an emergency measure, that our goal is not the complete remaking of a child. What we try to do is to get the child, the family, the school, and the community just enough above the threshold of the requirements of each from the other, so that the whole system has a just-significant margin of probable success over probable failure ... It is possible for a system to work without the necessity of any intrapsychic change in the child at all.”
— Nicholas Hobbs
in a paper entitled The process of re-education,
delivered at the first annual workshop for the staff of Project Re-Ed,
Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 1964
___
___
At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?
— Jules Feiffer
___
___
This writer has recent experience of an alcohol dependent mother
visiting her thirteen-year-old son in residential care. The visit became
several hours longer than expected as the mother got behind a sewing
machine and helped a staff member who was making curtains for a
seventeen-year-old girl who was leaving residential care. The event was
not planned. It was one of those “opportunity led” events that was
recognised and facilitated by a thoughtful residential care worker.
For a while, power relations were re-balanced and a little bit of
self-esteem was found for a woman who is not capable for the moment of
directly caring for her children. Imaginative ways to express
partnership can be found.
—
John Gibson
Gibson, J. (1995) Residential Child Care in Northern Ireland:
Confronting old images and planning for partnership with parents and
families. Child Care in Practice, vol.1 no.4, p.32
___
