Ridgewood NJ, Since the Ridgewood blog had come up more than once in the last few civility meetings Mayor Aronsohn and Jan Philips reached out to us for an invite so we updated our Last Will and Testaments and graciously accepted .The meetings of the Civility Round Table are held on Tuesday’s, once a month at 7:30 PM in the Ridgewood Village Hall Senior’s Lounge. Residents are encouraged to attend .
The meeting started promptly at 7:30 and was to my mind well attended given the time of the year . Jan Phelps hosted the meeting , with Mayor Aronsohn and Councilwomen Hauck . Everyone introduced themselves representing various groups and organizations in the Village , from the BOE , the Planing Board , the Ridgewood Library ,several local clergy , the HSA’s , RBSA and may other fine organizations that serve Ridgewood as well as a few residents . The purpose as stated by the Mayor is to create a more civil discourse in the Village .
Civility is about more than just politeness, although politeness is a necessary first step. It is about disagreeing without disrespect, seeking common ground as a starting point for dialogue about differences, listening past one’s preconceptions, and teaching others to do the same. Civility is the hard work of staying present even with those with whom we have deep-rooted and fierce disagreements. It is political in the sense that it is a necessary prerequisite for civic action. But it is political, too, in the sense that it is about negotiating interpersonal power such that everyone’s voice is heard, and nobody’s is ignored. https://www.instituteforcivility.org/who-we-are/what-is-civility/
The group seemed to agree that Ridgewood is a town where people like to excel , and that drive and those expectations create a very passionate , as you can see from blog comments and opinionated populace . People care about their community and thats a good thing , but many felt that sometimes we all go a bit to far .
We looked at the causes of incivility , the when and why .Sheila Brogan long time BOE member , felt that todays parents had a lot of additional pressure and worried that in todays world their kids would have a hard time doing as well as they have done . She went on to speak about the changing times and how one could expect to have several careers over a life time ,all this she though made being a parent a lot harder than it was in the past and a lot more pressure .
We managed to go till 8:08 be for someone mentioned the elephant in the room, “I want to talk about the blog”…….
I learned a lot , mostly that I am glad I can sit in my PJ’s drinking coffee writing a blog getting yelled at by anonymous commenters ,and don’t have a tuff job like the RBSA people who are pulled in many directions ,by so many demands all at once .
There were interestingly a surprising large amount of blog enthusiasts there some open and some secret admirers .
While I could see there were some sore spots , like turf fields , PSEG ,sports issues , Valley Hospital , the Village Hall renovation and alas Marty Brooks the daggers were lowered for the night .
While anonymity of blog posters took a hit as expected some pointed out that even on facebook were you know who everyone is the comments can be even nastier . A resident put it down to a type of “keyboard bravado.”
PJ’s Rules
1. Pay attention
2. Acknowledge others
3. Think the best
4. Listen
5. Be inclusive
6. Speak kindly
7. Don’t speak ill
8. Accept and give praise
9. Respect even a subtle “no”
10. Respect others’ opinions
11. Mind your body
12. Be agreeable
13. Keep it down (and rediscover silence)
14. Respect other people’s time
15. Respect other people’s space
16. Apologize earnestly and thoughtfully
17. Assert yourself
18. Avoid personal questions
19. Care for your guests
20. Be a considerate guest
21. Think twice before asking for favors
22. Refrain from idle complaints
23. Give constructive criticism
24. Respect the environment and be gentle to animals
25. Don’t shift responsibility and blame
WOW !
Civility Round Table
another solution in search of a problem
another politically correct attempt to control behavior and stifle opposition
another diversionary tactic to avoid focusing on the real issues
RW does not have a “civility crisis” in need of a weekly round table.
So I learned why you are “PJ” Blogger, because you sit in your pajamas while fielding comments from your anonymous, and not-so-anonymous contributors.
Was the Deputy Mayor there? last time he was there, and counter to the rules of the OPMA he spoke, making him the third VC member participating.
I have to agree with the second poster. The primary incivility that. I have witnessed has come from three members of the current VC. Now maybe…..maybe…..they are trying to change. Or maybe…..more likely….this is just wishful thinking. What is the saying that you cannot change a leopard’s spots? The unabashed nastiness that the public has seen from the three of them makes me think that this is all just a big fat snow job, will look good in the newspapers, and will look good when Aronsohn tries, once again, for a higher office. ,Obama mentioned civility last night, so Aronsohn is just talking the talk to look good.
Well said #3
“Whoever controls the Media, controls the mind.”
Generally perceived as working to inform and enlighten public opinion, media, in western democracies, can also be a propagandistic rhetoric, manipulated by political power. –
‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the Spider to the Fly.”
By “Keyboard Bravado” is meant…what, exactly?
By “Keyboard Bravado” is meant…what, exactly? Another of those glitzy saying like Drill Down, Double Down, Moving forward, Transparency, Drill baby Drill.
Marty Brooks was and presumably still is a highly-placed apostle dedicated to spreading the bad news of the constructivist education bible. His wife enjoyed and presumably still enjoys the same status, if not an even higher place, in elite progressive educational circles. Since well before Brooks found himself the object of admiration by one or more BOE trustees of his same philosophical stripe, Ridgewood as a whole had shown itself capable of displaying a healthy skepticism with respect to the unfortunate modern trend of recycling disproven educational theories and perversely forcing their continued use in public school districts whose unwilling residents pay for and deserve much, much better. For those who may still be in doubt as to whether the Ridgewood district dodged an educational bullet when Marty Brooks got weak knees and left us at the proverbial altar, imagine what a dynamic trio he and his wife would have formed together with our now-former Assistant Superintendent In Charge of Curriculum, Ms. Regina L. Botsford. Not only was Ms. Botsford’s personal dedication to the cause of constructivist education uncannily complete and total, she had an unhealthy professional obsession with blowing the district’s precious funds on the demonstrably content-denuded K-12 educational materials of Pearson Publishing. Pearson’s free millions have long been liberally distributed throughout the progressive educational elite in the form of domestic grants intended and specifically designed to keep the grantees corrosive educational fetishes fully funded and bearing at least the bare patina of professional legitimacy. Marty Brooks’ wife, together and one or two of her like-minded colleagues, formed a partnership that was a prominent recipient of multiple such grants of recent vintage. These grants were quite substantial, and quite rightly elevated the profile of Mr. Brooks’ wife well beyond that of the typical faithful professional spouse. One need not have a very long memory, or even a particularly active imagination, to envision the substantial damage that can be done to an otherwise respectable society by a high-profile husband-and-wife team committed to pulling in the same progressive political direction over the course of multiple decades. By the time Ma and Pa Brooks were on the verge of sowing their bad educational seed in the Ridgewood district, this blog had succeeded in making of the latter a distinctly infertile field. Hence, not only are we beholden to PJ for the singular service he provided on our behalf in prompting Marty Brooks to reconsider and reverse his decision to take the helm of the Ridgewood district, Brooks himself is to be recognized for his intellectual acuity in recognizing when he’s been beaten, and his professional discretion in leaving us to our own untutored plebian devices, rather than punishing us with what would surely have been a rancorous, unproductive and unpleasant tenure as district superintendent.
“If You Question Authority, You Are Mentally Ill”, Report Finds
ZeroHedge.com | 21 January, 2015
This post is about an issue that is by now a bit dated (though the topic as such certainly isn’t), but we have only just become aware of it and it seemed to us worth rescuing it from the memory hole. In late 2013, the then newest issue of the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short) defined a new mental illness, the so-called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD.
As TheMindUnleashed.org informs us, the definition of this new mental illness essentially amounts to declaring any non-conformity and questioning of authority as a form of insanity. According to the manual, ODD is defined as:
[…] an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
In short, as Natural News put it: According to US psychiatrists, only the sheeple are sane.
Every time a new issue of the DSM appears, the number of mental disorders grows – and this growth is exponential. A century ago there were essentially 7 disorders, 80 years ago there were 59, 50 years ago there were 130, and by 2010 there were 374 (77 of which were “found” in just seven years). A prominent critic of this over-diagnosing (and the associated over-medication trend) is psychologist Dr. Paula Caplan.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com …
Questioning authority might make you mentally ill. But Paul Aronsohn is not an authority on anything and he has no authority over me. And I question just about everything he says and does.
One labors to find justification for continued grieving over the pre-arrival departure of superintendent-hire Marty Brooks from the Ridgewood district-what, was it six or seven years ago now? Anyone in such frame of mind at this late date must be willfully blind to the glaring deficiencies of the educational theories Mr. Brooks and his wife so shamelessly propounded. A village admirably capable of bureaucratically defending itself against the doleful influence of ideologically driven administrators and BOE trustees should not be about muzzling or neutering privately-written local blogs that encourage the free exchange of ideas and of opinions. IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT, PAUL AND SHIELA!!!!