Many thanks for all the kind words; I have enjoyed serving as your moderator and hope you can find a replacement in spite of the difficulties. Please remember that you can always reach me by e-mail at OCLS@madisoncounty.net, and don't hesitate to contact me there. If I'm just plain too swamped to re...

Greetings....

My final week as moderator for this forum is coming up now -- my "tenure" ends with the last day of June.

If you have any questions you'd like to post in this remaining week, I'll do my best to answer them before time runs out.

Suzette

Thank you very much indeed for all the encouraging words; they're greatly appreciated. I think that next year should be a bit less frantic than this one. 2000 has been made almost impossible to deal with by the fact that I had six new books to launch in this one year. (Not something I planned, I ass...

About _listening_ as part of verbal self-defense.... Scattered through the postings on this thread are several things that can be answered together. There is the suggestion that listening is a major component of verbal self-defense, with more listening than talking taking place in many situations. T...

About Rory's question regarding different perceptions of verbal conflict in two different cultures..... I can't answer the question sensibly without a missing piece of information. I need to know whether we are talking only about two cultures or about two different _languages_ -- and if it's two lan...

For the record: I appreciate the attempts at providing me with wiggle room, but can't accept them. I really do believe, with all my heart, that violence is never -- never -- justified or acceptable for me. The modification you suggest, with violence acceptable as a last resort, is the classical &quo...

Thank you very much for posting this....

Suzette

About the "moral failure" question... I'm going to make one final try with this -- but please be warned that it's an issue that has filled entire libraries over the course of history and will fill many more. Suppose I believe -- as I do believe -- that violence is never justified and never...

_Yona's garden scenario, and the three-part message technique_ Yona cautions us that the scenario is hypothetical but corresponds to a real situation about which she prefers not to provide details. Then she writes: "Let's say I have a garden in my yard, which for various reasons needs to be kep...

About leaving the forum.... My sincere thanks to all of you for the kind words about my leaving the forum. I want to be sure you understand why I'm leaving. It's for one and only one reason: I am so heavily committed to other work that there's no way I can serve as moderator here and do a job that m...

(1) Yona's at-the-movies scenario.... Yona is at the movies and finds herself involved in an altercation over getting butter for popcorn. The dialogue goes like this: Y: "Could I just scoot in and get some butter, please?" X: "No, I'm busy, go use another." Y:"I'd like to, b...

Very briefly.... I'm sorry I wasn't clear. What I'm saying is that -- for someone whose deep conviction is that violence is never justified --he use of violence is a moral failure. Because such people are human, they may not always be able to live up to their convictions; that's understandable, but ...

(1) -- "Where, Suzette, do you get your odd ideas about martial artists?" Several posts have gone up wanting to know where I got the idea that the martial arts culture leans toward macho, where I got the idea that martial artists don't believe in verbal self-defense, and where I got the id...

There's been a lot of fretting on the "defuse" thread (and elsewhere) because I'm not perceived as providing enough specific "how to do it" information. I'd like to remedy that. If you'll post specific questions -- old but not yet answered, or new ones -- I'll give them my full a...

This thread is getting so large that too much time has to be spent just loading the thing...

Let's shut it down and start fresh. I'm not shutting down the discussion, just this thread.

Moving right along....

Suzette