‘Peace House Community Journal’ Archives
PHC: The Simple Life
By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby During a recent discussion at Peace House Community regarding our favorite childhood board games, one of our volunteers brought up some experiments that showed that people who felt they were richer than those around them became less compassionate and less willing to help others. If you’re wondering about the connection between the two, one of the experiments involved a game of Monopoly where one player was given twice as much money as the other player, was allowed to roll two dice where the other could only roll one, and was generally given every advantage imaginable. Almost universally, the winners (those with all the advantages) claimed they won because of their superior strategy, and said almost nothing about the way the game was rigged in their favor. (If you want a summary of the experiments, which has some really funny moments, check out Paul Piff’s TED Talk “Does Money Make You Mean?” at [...]
PCH: The Simple Life
Rose Tillemans and the Peace House Community in an undated photo found in the Peace House Community photo albums. By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby Rose Tillemans, the founder of Peace House Community, would have celebrated her 100th birthday on February 11. In honor of the event, I went through some of PHC’s old photo albums to put together a small memorial for our website.Although the photos were taken before I joined PHC and showed many people I never met, I felt a connection to the faces in the photos. That connection was not just based on having PHC in common. The photos showed simple, everyday activities that we all participate in, like sharing a cup of coffee, or singing together, or playing a board game. I’m not sure how to explain the connection I felt, but I think it could be best summed up with the phrase, “That looks like fun. I wish I could do that.”Of course, I can do that. It doesn’t take much to call a friend, go for a walk, chat with a neighbor, or say [...]
Peace House Community: What Price?
Marti Maltby By MARTI MALTBY I just came from a meeting of the Native American Unsheltered/Opioid Crisis Response group. We discussed the need for more messages encouraging people not to use drugs, rather than focusing on using drugs safely. The harm reduction approach (helping people use drugs safely to reduce the negative consequences of drug use – like death – until a drug user is ready to quit drugs altogether) has its place, but by itself it limits the opportunities someone has to free themselves from addiction. When someone decides they want to stop using drugs entirely, they need a pathway towards that goal. As with any other vice, from overeating to losing one’s temper in uncontrollable rages, reducing the problem is good, but overcoming it is better. At the same meeting, someone mentioned the test strips that allow a drug user to check the drugs they are going to use to see if they contain fentanyl. Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine and has caused [...]
