Boob Jobs
Am I the only one who doesn’t get the Boob Job Craze? I’m not talking about breast cancer reconstruction or fixing a birth deformity. Those breast implant surgeries are wonderful and necessary and healing.
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Wire Coat Hanger Generation
In February, my graduate students in Public Health at a major research university and teaching medical school on the East Coast were discussing a new political cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes I brought to class showing President Bush, as a tailor, holding an empty Supreme Court Justice robe in one hand and an “unraveled” wire coat hanger in the other.
The point of that Public Health class was to research crises in Public Health that are embedded in mainstream culture via history, art, literature and mass media entertainment portals. Telnaes has a similar cartoon this morning where President Bush is handing a judge’s robe to his Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts, and Bush is handing over an “unraveled” wire coat hanger to a woman on the street.
Bush says to her, “Here — hold this.” My students, who were all female, incredibly bright and intelligent, and fell into an age range between 20 and 23, did not understand that February cartoon. “I see the robe. I don’t understand the wire coat hanger,” one student said.
Promise Before Dying
I have permission to tell this story.
I am sharing this with you because it was a human moment that shocked the core of me with quiet tremors.
Sgt. Martha Writes from Iraq
Sgt. Martha is a former student of mine and I now call her a friend. Martha and I are closer now thousands of miles apart than we ever were when we stood next to each other in the same classroom for a semester. I guess war does that to people: It binds you nearer to those you care about because every day there is the danger you will never see them alive again. Martha is somewhere in Iraq serving their country, and ours, in the effort to help build a Democracy in the Middle East.
Mr. Grumpy Goes Blogging
Forgive me for being Mr. Grumpy today.
Here’s a short — okay, it’s longish — list of things that make me grumpy when I read blogs of others and I realize 99% of what I say will insult 95% of the blogs I’ve read so far:
Word Trade Center Killing Grounds
I have been sitting here for three hours trying to find a way to begin this blog entry. Where should I start? How do I bring it all up again? There are some things you don’t ever want to recall. Forcible recall is treacherous.
Yesterday, for the first time since September 11, 2001, I returned to the killing grounds of the World Trade Center. I returned, not by choice, but by the happenstance of mass transit. In my GO INSIDE Magazine article, Celebrate the Dead, Mourn the Living I reflect on what the World Trade Center meant to me and to a city. I have been uninterested in returning to “Ground Zero” because I have no interest in gawking at the empty space where once stood giants.
Yesterday, I had a meeting in downtown Manhattan and I decided to jump on the PATH train and get off at the WTC stop. Now, “WTC” has always meant “World Trade Center” even when it was not operable for four years, but WTC has always been a destination, and not a place, in the minds of many who ride the PATH every day. The recently re-opened WTC stop on the PATH brought the end-of-the line back to Manhattan proper and, I while I was prepared to get off at the WTC stop, I was unprepared for what I was about to witness.
Los Angeles Violence
A disturbing new Los Angeles survey of 73 middle schools and their 28,000 students suggests up to 90% of the children in those schools have been exposed to community violence.
The March 3, 2005 meeting of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) revealed the results during their annual meeting in Alexandria, Virginia.
The report goes on to explain that children who have been exposed to city violence before they reach the 6th grade have much higher rates of suspensions, absenteeism and expulsions. When those children are actually in class they do not perform well academically.
Here is more information from the report:
One-in-four American children have a significant traumatic experience by age 16. Many children suffer multiple and repeated traumas. A child exposed to a traumatic event is at risk of developing traumatic stress. Traumatic stress can seriously delay development of their brains and bodies. It can lead to depression, substance abuse, other mental health problems, acting out, educational impairment, as well as future health and employment problems.
Children who are not safe in their forming environments become adults who wound the world in the way they were wounded: If you control the child’s mind you own the adult body.
We must work to find safe passage for these children and we must discover ways to protect them from violent episodes that mark them, and us, forever to the grave.
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