Crime, Punishment and Mercy

 Thank you Esther for providing us another wonderful evening filled with great nourishment.  Two delicious soups and homemade bread.  Always warm and cozy, just like home!  With all our shared contributions it was quite the feast.  

Esther noted that it was fortunate this discussion coinsided with the Martin Luther King holiday as our book, "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson, was set in the South and dealt with racial injustices.  Although a difficult subject to read about, we had a lively conversation on equal justice, or lack thereof.  There is an unfairness based on ethnicity, social class and gender, and the punishment does not always reflect the crime.  It take small steps over many years to make changes, even when the needed changes are obvious.  Time and patience are the rule. 

Carl Sagan Quote

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person - perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos