From the miscellaneous drawer - Speak up

It’s a strange and ever changing world we live in. And the perception of a polite society may evolve to the appearance of a more dignified plane and then may loop-de-loop, crash and recover long afterwards.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, famines and wars perhaps dictated some short cuts and verbal shortness, impatience to get the job done, and to survive.
Women and children took on new roles, moving too rapidly into adult jobs and responsibilities and the reality of the times. Too often unprepared for brusqueness and brutality, verbal or otherwise.
Some of that hasn’t changed. People in power due to money or position, declared new rights, not as human beings, but as bullies. We still see that today as recognition of the inhumaneness affects us and the news.
Ask your female counterparts if they ever felt the need to face an ogre and keep quiet about the results. The human mind can hide away, in deep memory, events which should not have happened in a civilized and polite world. Random coincidences or repetitive television news may trigger consciousness.
The word “whisper” triggered my memory. Though used in relationship to a movie mogul thrusting himself on actors looking for a job, a role. That started the “Me, too” growing response.
However, whispers are used in small town life as well. Let’s say a family has a special needs child, an unusually attractive child, a well developed child or extremely bright child. Something which makes the child stand out from the norm and a person in authority zeroes in on that difference, that uniqueness, attempting to take advantage of it.
It is important to whisper warnings despite the stature of the perpetrator. Also to report and bring attention to unusual variations in behavior, even though it may place the adult in danger of recrimination. To stay silent places everyone in danger forever.
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In the Ely Echo newspaper of October 19, 1977, forty years ago, the headlines were:
• Snowstorm smacks Ely;
• Mercury studies nearly completed
• Ely woman kidnapped, assaulted;
• Winton accepts building offer on old hospital;
• Winton Water Quality Lab checks nation’s waters;
• New garbage system arrives in Ely.