I also hope to hear some of my song requests I emailed over the past like the Ukulady, “Weeble and Peanut”.

Sorry we couldn’t connect in the last couple months. Miss you. Hope that trip and settling has gone/is going well.

Sam

About the work in Fayetteville when I was in college: I was actually hoping to help end *segregation*.

And it truly never occurred to me, when I got the chalkboard so Ves could explain what he was doing at work, that this would be an unusual addition to the dining room. Perhaps that’s symbolic of something, that as a family we were always more concerned about how something would work, whether in the lab or in society, than with what it was going to look like. I get bored with hypotheses; I used to have a lapel button that read “When in doubt, do something.” For me, life is a lot more fun when I’m involved in something that produces an effect somewhere – at least as long as I don’t have to cook or run kids’ games.

Thanks for the note. As I posted in my initial post, Dr. Dougherty was my pediatrician (and that of my siblings) and none of us recall any problems.

But you are confusing the standard for state action. The point of the film is that, in fact, Dr. Dougherty cannot be tried, due to the statute of limitations. He has not been tried in a court of law not because of a lack of evidence, but because a statute precludes it. (Maybe for good reasons, maybe for bad reasons, but for reasons unrelated to his guilt or innocence.).

The film presents adequate evidence for me to conclude — not as a state actor, but as just me — that he more than likely committed sexual abuse. He declined to provide any counter to that evidence, as I understand it.

If you’ve seen the film and reached a different conclusion, that’s fine. But its existence is not in conflict with anything in our country’s values; to the contrary, it stands in a tradition of journalism raising important political and legal issues.

My best,
Bill Childs