LB 594 (HHS Committee) change provisions for
child abuse, child..............

	I could not see you clearly,
		but I heard the commotion.
	I did not know your name,
		but I saw them carry you out.
	A pitch or two above the crowd
		your voice did loudly carry.
	You cried, you scream, you begged
		with such sincerity,
	"Daddy, please, don't make me do it!"
		And then, you were gone.
	And so now, long after,
		I find myself sitting here,
			darkly thinking of you.

As the camera pans round the corner of a building, we see a neatly dressed young woman, so freshly come from the pew of her church, that she yet clutches her 'book'. She is briskly walking down "O" Street, headed for an early lunch, somewhere in the Haymarket.

From afar, the woman spies a well-known, local character, a person sort of unsavory in reputation. It is understood by all, that he fancies himself to be an artful thespian. On this waning morn, though, she views him more for a drunk, since he can be seen to ungainly weave and bob, as he desperately tries to reach safety, with one of the nearby benches.

When at last she is abreast of this obviously, unholy sot, the kindly woman decides to pause, so as to spend a few moments of human warmth with the wretch. Taking no notice of her, though, he discharges a nostril, sans any 'chief. Although momentarily repulsed, the woman continues in her self-appointed task.

"I would like to help you," she delicately begins, clearing her throat. His seeming response is an unexpected series of profanities, capped off with a blaphemous-like belch.

"You cannot talk like that!" she rebukes him. "Were it my way this morning, I would have you washed. I would have you given fresh clothes. I even would have you brought to heaven's gate. However, you still could not talk that way. That would be the truth!"

Fighting for vision, and some sense of balance, the thespian fixes at last upon his would be rescuer. "Do I know you from before, or is it that I have heard this, elsewhere?" comes back his question from the bench.

"You and I have never met," she answers, 'nor ever again, I hope,' she secretly thinks. "I merely want to tell you what is right for you to do, here. You seem to be using some wrong reasons. You seem to be on the wrong path. In any case, try to see yourself, as the rest of us do."

Then all of a sudden, the slouch stands straight up, as if he comically has mistaken the street for the stage. "What sort of nonsense do thus thou speak?" he intones. "There be but opinions one? Nay, each opinion be but a thread. Each thread to a cord, and each cord to a rope. It is the thread that makes the rope strong. It then is the rope which returns this generosity. Cut not the thread, least you weaken the rope!"

Sensing that her act of kindness has spent itself, the woman then strides off toward the Haymarket, prayer book now more firmly clasped in hand. Indeed, angry she is, at herself, for having tried to make a difference, there. In fact, somehow, all those earlier good feelings seem shredded and strewn, being blown about "O" Street, like so much emotional confetti.

Calling after her, though, the character persists, "the many not be one, and the one not be many. Yet each in its way provides for the other. Smoother not the opinion, least you give birth to the silence!"

The good woman momentarily pauses, so as to turn back toward the drunk. As the camera fades to black, we glimpse the signalling of her last farewell, with a gesture well-known on the streets of our dear City.