March 1, 2025

Ferguson Facts

From Volume 8, Issue 1:The World seems to have concluded different stories from the facts that they know about the circumstances surrounding the death of 18 year old Michael Brown on August 9th, 2014.

Here is a list of all the relevant facts of the events in Ferguson, MO on August 9 that we know:

1. At 12:03 PM, Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson shot 18 year old Michael Brown with his service revolver, killing him.

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Bah, Humbug!: The Season of Dysfunctional Dialogue

From Volume 7, Issue 12:It’s Christmastime again. The season when we all try to decompress and review the past year and vow to chill and get along.

But somehow the opposite seems to happen. I’m stressed because I can’t get it all done in time—tree, decorations, shopping, cooking. The last person I want to be cooped up with on Christmas Day is my aunt, who never smiles. And then there are all the projects, both at home and at work, that aren’t going to get done because I’m putting all the “some assembly required” toys together. Can we just skip Christmas this year?

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Hands Up Don’t Shoot vs. Pants Up Don’t Loot

From Volume 7, Issue 11:By any standard, the little St. Louis suburb of Ferguson is a pretty old town. Called Ferguson Station at its beginnings in 1854, it became the fourth-class city of Ferguson in 1894 with 1,000 residents. So we’re not talking about some 1950s-era suburb here. Ferguson was an enclave of well-to-do houses with owners who commuted into St. Louis on one of the eight trains a day that stopped there.

At the risk of appearing to simplify the struggles that the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson has been experiencing, I want to compare and contrast two themes

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Authoring the Inner Monologue

From Volume 7, Issue 11:My two-year-old grandson, Oliver, was visiting last Sunday evening. And he’s a chatterbox. To their credit, Oliver’s parents are paying a lot of attention to his (and his older sister’s) self-talk. His mom tells me that she interprets his chatter as verbalization of his internal monologue. Oliver is sorting out who he is and how he fits into the world around him.

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A Special Case of Sad

From Volume 7, Issue 10:In one week, a friend lost his 22-year-old sister, another lost her nephew who was to be in a wedding in two weeks, and another became a grandfather to a non-viable baby who would live no longer than a few hours after birth. Two more friends lost their dogs (one to old age and one to the front bumper of a speeding pick-up truck) and another had their family cat run away. All these friends read this e-zine.

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