Tom Hale -Psikoterapia zentroa

Am I Rich Enough?

    I came across this NYT article recently which, in a lively, fun way, poked fun of cultural divide between black and white, "have some and want some" cultures.   In the article Charles Murray, American intellectual and author recent cited in this blog,  and  Baratunde Rafiq Thurston, American comedian, interview each other. As it turns out, both are bright and both are funny.

 

    FEBRUARY 10, 2012, 1:41 PM

    Black and White: Charles Murray and Baratunde Thurston Quiz Each Other

    By GREGORY COWLES

    Charles Murray’s book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” about the class     divide in white America, hits The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list at No. 9     this week. Mr. Murray — whose previous book, “The Bell Curve,” spent 15 weeks on the list in     1994-95 — devotes a chapter in “Coming Apart” to a quiz measuring how much his     upper-middle-class readers know about “the rest of America.” (It includes questions about     domestic beer, Nascar and “Desperate Housewives.”)

    As it happens, Baratunde Thurston’s book “How to Be Black,” at No. 24 on the e-book nonfiction     best-seller list (and No. 21 on the extended hardcover list), also features a set of questions about     cultural identity, including “Where did you get that name?” and “How black are you?”

    In the spirit of journalistic mischief, Cowles invited Mr. Murray to answer Mr. Thurston’s     questions and vice versa, letting Mr. Murray substitute “white” for “black” where appropriate.

 

    Now, I'm not going to print the interviews on this page but you can see them here.

    What I am going to do is to print the interview questions here and you can answer them for your selves.  I'm sure that's what you wanted to do anyway.

 

                            Thurston's Questions For Murray (White People or 1%'ers)

Q.Where did you get that name?
A.

Q.When did you first realize you were white?
A.

Q.How white are you?
A.

Q.Do you know what an Oreo is?
A.

Q.Have you ever wanted to not be white?
A

Q.Can you swim?
A.

Q.How’s that postracial thing working out for ya?
A..

 

                Murrays's Questions for Thurston (Black People or Working Class Whites)

 

Q.  Have you ever lived for at least a year in an American neighborhood in which the majority of your 50 nearest neighbors probably did not have college degrees?
A.

Q.Did you grow up in a family in which the chief breadwinner was not in a managerial job or a high-prestige profession (defined as attorney, physician, dentist, architect, engineer, scientist or college professor)?
A..

Q.Have you ever lived for at least a year in an American community under 50,000 population that is not part of a metropolitan area and was not where your college was located?
A.

Q.Have you ever lived for at least a year in the United States at a family income that was close to or below the poverty line? 
A.

Q.Have you ever walked on a factory floor?
A.

Q.Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?
A.

Q.Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian?
A.

Q.Do you now have a close friend with whom you have strong and wide-ranging political disagreements?
A.

Q.Have you ever had a close friend who could seldom get better than Cs in high school even if he or she tried hard?
A.

Q.During the last month, have you voluntarily hung out with people who were smoking cigarettes?
A.

Q.What military ranks do these five insignia represent?
A.

Q.Choose one. Who is Jimmie Johnson? Or: Have you ever purchased Avon products?
A.

Q.Have you or your spouse ever bought a pickup truck?
A.

Q.During the last year, have you ever purchased domestic mass-market beer to stock your own fridge?
A

Q.During the last five years, have you or your spouse gone fishing?
A.

Q.How many times in the last year have you eaten at one of the following restaurant chains? Applebee’s, Waffle House, Denny’s, IHOP, Chili’s, Outback Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday, T.G.I. Friday’s, Ponderosa Steakhouse.
A.

Q.In secondary school, did you letter in anything?
A.

Q.Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or a meeting at a union local?
A.

Q.Have you ever participated in a parade not involving global warming, a war protest, or gay rights?
A.

Q.Since leaving school, have you ever worn a uniform?
A.

Q.Have you ever ridden on a long-distance bus (e.g., Greyhound, Trailways) or hitchhiked for a trip of 50 miles or more?
A.

Q.Which of the following movies have you seen (at a theater or on a DVD)? “Iron Man 2,” “Inception,” “Despicable Me,” “Tron Legacy,” “True Grit,” “Clash of the Titans,” “Grown Ups,” “Little Fockers,” “The King’s Speech,” “Shutter Island.”
A.

Q.During the 2009–10 television season, how many of the following series did you watch regularly? “American Idol,” “Undercover Boss,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Lost,” “House,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Two and a Half Men,” “The Office,” “Survivor.”
A.

Q.Have you ever watched an Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Judge Judy show all the way through?
A.

Q.What does the word Branson mean to you?
A.

    As you can tell, this is done in fun.   Murray's questions are some of ones he actually uses in his reseach.  I've left the answer key out but you can get a sense of where they both are going with it. Go and read their answers.    Murray, in his responses, comes across as very human, funny and complex, more then I would have thought.   Not that Thurston doesn't but that's his job.

 

    Here's another way of asking the same questions.

 

 

 

Women and Addiction

    In an sobering, gritty personal witness, NYT columnist Paige Bradley Frost, writes in a piece published today, Whitney Houston, My Mother and Addiction, about the devastation of addiction on women across the world. 

    Some facts:

    -  there are more than 79,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol consumption per year in the U.S. alone each year

    -  alcohol abuse is now the 3rd leading cause of death and disability  in the world

    -  alcohol abuse in women leades to higher rates of breast cancer, weakens the heart, reduces brain function and ultimately destroys organs

    We live in a culture that glamorizes "partying", cocktail hours and associates alcohol with independence and success particularly in  young women.   Groups, like "Girls Gone Wild" and programs like "Jersey Shore" are classic examples of this cultural trap.   But as Frost points out, "There is nothing glamorous about it".

    And it is often the children who are left in the wreakage, confused and overwhelmed.

    "Alcohol and drug addiction are deadly diseases with the power to destroy relationships, families, and lives", she writes and our denial prevents addicts, particularly women, from seeking the help they need.

    The Houston version of the song, "I Will Always Love You", now has a special meaning for us all, especially her young children.   I hope she has found some peace and that we can use her death as a call for continued treatment and reform in addiction care.

 

  

The State of White America

    I've been watching with some interest the reaction of critics to a new book by social scientist Charles Murray, Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010.    I haven't read the book yet since it was just published about ten days but I will probably read it in the next month.   This is a huge compliment, which means it has been bumped up through a tall pile of very good books I am slowing plowing through.

    What is the big deal  about this book?

    First, Murray (born 1943), is an American libertarian political scientist, author,columnist, and pundit currently working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC.   He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve, co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein in 1994, which argued that intelligence plays a central role in American society.    They proposed in the book that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than one's parents' socio-economic status or education level.    Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this was a dangerous social trend.  Murray's ideas were roundly criticized by liberals, in particular, as racist and simplistic.

    Second, the new book addresses the issue of class in America at a time when many people, especially Republicans, have been claiming that raising the issue of "class" is a liberal divisive political strategy.   And now we have a conservative Republican, devoting 400 pages to the subject.   

    As you might expect, writers have been all across the political contimuum in their responses.   Charles Brooks, columnist for the NYT said, "I'll be surprised if there is another book this year that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society''.  While Brooks is not a commentator I am particular fond of, I suspect he may be right on this.  

    It seams that Murray's basic  premise is that the "white working class is no longer a part of a virtuour silent majority; it has become increasingly alienated from the "founding virtues" of American civic life."   He goes on to say, "our nation is coming apart at the seams, not ethnic seams, but the seams of class."   

    My first response is that finally we can begin to talk about the state of the American family again without being politically incorrect. 

     This seems to be primarily a book of scholarship, not politics.  Murray has approached the topic as a work of scholarship, full of charts, footnotes and regression analyses.  He uses the data to create an imaginary white world of two classes, the new upper class, "Belmont" and a new lower class, "Fishtown".     And what he sees for America in the new, emerging social construct should make us all shiver.   The two worlds are so vastly different in so many ways, includeing income, illegitimacy rates, crime, and joblessness,  with Fishtown slowly sinking.    What are we going to do about it?

    The controversy seems essentially to be found in the response to Murray's description of this sad, new American world, and along the classic political lines.  Murray makes suggestions for change in the last chapter of the book and these are being roundly challenged.   Good.   It sounds like a conversation is breaking out.   I hope that this book stimulate a huge, non-political conversation.

    As a psychotherapist whose early training was in family systems, I have for years been concerned about many of these same issues, and the slow decline of the quality of life in working class communities has troubled me.   As health care availability has eroded for the working poor, fewer and fewer services have been utilized by them and the help necessary for them to challenge the trends being reported here were/are missing.   If we are looking at real solutions to some of these issues, adequate, affordable health care is imperative.

 

 

"The Weight"

    Saw this poem on the Garrison Keillor website and need to share it.

 

The Weight

by Linda Gregg

 

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.

Night and day. In the night and in the day

wet from heat and the chill of the wind

on it.  Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging

and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.

The dignity of being. They slept that way,

knowing each other always.  

Withers quivering for a moment,

fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,

width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.

Fences were nothing compared to that.

People were nothing. They slept standing,

their throats curved against the other's rump.

They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped.

There are things they did that I do not know.

The privacy of them had a river in it.

Had our universe in it.   And the way

its border looks back at us with its light.

This was finally their freedom.

The freedom an oak tree knows.

That is built at night by stars.

 

 "The Weight" by Linda Gregg, from Chosen by the Lion. © Graywolf Press, 1994. 

 

    I am currently reading The Beauty and the Sorrow  by Peter Englund, a history of WWI told through dairies of people who lived at that time and participated in the horrow of that war.  It is hard to read as the stories are so powerful and the tales they are telling so terrible.   Single battles occurred often where 100,000(+)  people died in the course of a few days.    Horses were used in that war, as well as WWII and sufferred terribly.

    Pete Seeger found inspiration for the folk song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone, in 1955, while on a plane bound for a concert he was giving that year. Leafing through his notebooks he saw the passage, "Where are the flowers, the girls have plucked them. Where are the girls, they've all taken husbands. Where are the men, they're all in the army."  

     The lines were taken from the traditional Cossacks folk song "Tovchu, tovchu mak", referenced in the Mikhail Sholokhov novel And Quiet Flows the Don  (1934), which Seeger had read "at least a year or two before".   The Russian novel in two parts was published between 1928 and 1940.  The Don Flows Home to the Sea, part two of the original novel, was published in English translation in 1940.  Set in the Don River basin of southwestern Russia at the end of the czarist period, the novel traces the progress of a Cossack  soldier from a young boy to a Red Army regular and finally to a Cossack nationalist.   War -- in the form of both international conflict and civil revolution --  provides the epic backdrop for the narrative.

    In WWI, Russian troops were among the most feared and hated of all the soldiers in the conflict because of the their tactics of total destruction on the lands they traveled through.   "Scorched earth" hardly describes what they did.

    When will we ever learn?

"There is No Preordained March Toward Senescence"

    Wheew!!!!

    Now what in the world does that mean?!?

    An interpretation of this mouthful - to the relief of all of the Journalism/English teachers and students out there - is that there is no established, predictable formula for the advancement of old age, particularly old age and senility.   This comes from the NYT in an article titled A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond, by Patricia Cohen.

 

 

    Cohen, a Times reporter and the author of In Our Prime: The Invasion of Middle Age, in arguing her position, has done us all a favor by reviewing much of the current research and thinking on aging and senility.

     Many experts, she points out, had contended, and it has been widely accepted,  that "brainpower, creativity and innovation" had a genetic set time when it would expiration and the brain cells eventually died off, not to be replaced.  It also believed that one's ability to learn steadily declined throughout  life.

    But what researches have discovered is that the accumulated data did not consistently support these hypotheses.   "Some people are much better than their peers at delaying age-related declines in memory and calculating speed," Cohen says.   We can all probably think of examples of people, my maternal grandmother for one, who was almost as sharp the day she died as any time I can remember.   Althought she had almost no formal education, she loved learning and followed the news daily, watching NPR news programs regularly.  

    The real question is why, it seems.

    It turns out that one "essential element" in the mix is education.   "Education seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind throughout adulthood and even a longer life," says Margaret E. Lachman, a psychologist at Brandeis University who specializes in aging.  So even though my grandmother wasn't formally educated, he love of education and all things intellectual may have contributed to slowing down her brain's aging process.

  Here is a short list of the academic work Cohen cites in the article which I encourage you to read.:

    Handbook of Midlife Developmemt by Margie E. Lachman 

    Frames of Mind  by Howard Gardner

    The Mature Mind by Gene D. Cohen

 

Here are some terms and studies she identifies as worth exploring:

    Midlife in the United States, (Lachman, et al)

    "Multiple Intelligence" (Gardner)

    "Fluid and Crystalized Intelligence" 

 

Ruthie Foster

    While I generally try to stay abreast of most of the new music, and having a daughter in college has been really been extremely helpful, sometimes I feel like I am slowly sinking and getting more and more out-of-synch of the evolutional march of the new stuff.   Rolling Stone and the new on-line Paste Magazine  helps me fill in the blanks.

    For my wife's birthday last week, we went over to Norfolk and saw a blues singer, Ruthie Foster, whom I have been hearing much about over the past year.   She played at the Attucks Theatre on Saturday, a restored African-American small venue that we usually visit a couple of times a year.  

    Foster, a young woman out of Texas seems to have paid her dues for some years on the small venue/festival circuit and is on the verge of the "big-time".    Playing Norfolk was a little bit of a homecoming for her because she had served in the Navy for at least one term and had been stationed at Norfolk's Little Creek Naval Base.   So she had a lot of friends in the place so the place was excited.  

    It was a fine evening and, wow, she can really sing.   She had an all-woman group of relatives I believe, and played alot of covers and some songs she wrote.   She closed with "No Woman No Cry" that went on wonderfully for ever and I couldn't find a copy of it for this post.   But she sang this Reverend Gary Davis song that is a favorite of mine that was available.

 

 

What Really is the Cause of ......... (fill in the blank)

    Two articles have stuck in my mind after reading the newspapers this weekend, with both of them involving mental health issues that continue to dog us as a culture and which  seem unsolvable, most of the time.

    The first article, Young, Obese and in Surgery,  appeared in Saturday's NYT, and is a very sad story about a young woman in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn who was teased for being "fat" as long as she can remember.  By age 17, after much frustration, was seriously considering weight-loss surgery.   This young woman allowed The New York Times to follow her for a year as she prepared for and subsequently had an operation to help stop the weight gain. She then embarked on a quest to lose weight, navigating challenges to her morale, her self-image and her relationships with family members and friends.

    In Dec. 2010, she had her bariatric surgery, the popular Lap-Band type, in which a silicone band isinserted around the stomach which then is constricted to make the patient feel full quickly and thus stop eating.  Incidentally, the maker of the Lap-Band is seeking permission from the Food and Drug Administration to market it to patients as young as 14, four years younger than is now allowed. Her doctor had told her that, going by the averages, she could expect to lose about 40 percent of her excess weight, or 70 to 80 pounds.

      Child Health Plus, a state insurance plan for low-income families, covered the $21,369 cost.  Medicaid in almost every state and many private health plans now cover bariatric surgery, often more readily than diet or exercise plans.

   Over the six months following the surgery, she went down from 251 to 237.  And by this November, she was at a place where she had regained half of what she had lost.  According to the article, he does not want to reveal how much she weighs, but admits that she is fighting constant hunger, and her progress is slow.  

    The article pointed out that the long-term effectiveness of weight-loss surgery, particularly stomach banding the procedure that this young woman had, is still questionable. And the push toward surgery on the young has brought some resistance from doctors who say it is too drastic to operate on patients whose bodies might still be developing and who have not been given much time to lose pounds on their own.

        This patient’s procedure, called laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding, constitutes about 39 percent of all bariatric surgeries. The other two main types are Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, which involves stapling the stomach into a tiny pouch and rearranging the bowel, and sleeve gastrectomy, which involves removing most of the stomach and turning what is left into a thin tube.

    The risks of all the operations have declined, partly because surgeons are now more experienced and using less-invasive techniques, like laparoscopy, but also because they are beginning to operate on thinner, healthier patients.

    One in 2,000 gastric banding patients, or 0.05 percent, and 1 in 900 gastric bypass patients die during or immediately after surgery, according to William Encinosa, a senior economist at the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality who analyzed 161,000 surgical records for 2009. For open — not laparoscopic — bypass surgeries, studies have put the death rate within 30 days as high as 2 percent. About 1 percent of banding patients and 3 percent of bypass patients develop major complications, like blood clots or perforation of the bowel, he said.

 

    The second article,  found in the Sunday NYT  in the Blog section called The Stone, was titled "In the Cave: Philosophy and Addiction", and written by Peg O'Connor, who teaches philosophy and gender, women, and sexuality studies at Gustavus Adolphus College.   Dr. O'Connor introduces the notion of addiction as a subject of philosophical inquiry.

    She says in the article, "I am a philosopher, yes, but I am also an alcoholic who has been sober for more than 24 years ― only the last four of them as part of a recovery program. I am often asked how I got and stayed sober for those first 19 years; it was because of philosophy, which engendered in me a commitment to living an examined life, and gave me the tools and concepts to do so. My training in moral philosophy made it natural for me to wrestle with issues of character, responsibility, freedom, care and compassion in both work and life."

    "Philosophy has always been about the pursuit of knowledge, but one that included the higher aim of living a good and just life. This pursuit has involved examining the nature of just about everything. Socrates’s guiding question was “what is it?”

    It is a remarkable essay and you can read it for yourself.   It addresses an issue that I think is an essential element of both O'Connor's struggle with alcoholism  as well as the sad story about obesity and weight-loss.   At its core is the issue of causality. 

 

    What is it, indeed.   What is obeisity (or alcoholism, or "fill in the blank")?   In both of these terrible illnesses, the lack of an answer to the question being asked has resulted, I believe, in the responsibility being thrown back on the afflicted person with a resounding "ITS YOUR FAULT"  And we act as if they don't really want to live a good and just life.

    It's your fault that you have this problem, that you can't stop, that you can't use the help offered, that we are spending so much money trying to help you, that you relapse, that you have ruined your life and on and on and on.   With alcoholism and addicton, we eventually just lock them up or put them out on the streets.  We are ashamed of them.   But if we can, though, we make money on them, even if we don't have a clue what we are dealing with.   At least that's where we start until the funding runs out.  Will we eventually criminalize obesity?

    The philosophers and the scientists need to start talking to each other.   

2012

    I've been away from my desk for a couple of weeks now and for some good reasons.  I've intentionally taken some time off because of the Holidays and a need to spend more time with my daughter who was home from school because of them.  I've unintentionally been away because I've had a terrible sinus infection that has lingered on and on and ....., sapping my energy and making me only half-present much of the time and unable to literally taste anything through all of it.  

    The Season was fine by itself, we visited with old and new friends, had a wonderful experience at the Celtic celebration we had at "our service" at church, made/ate lots of good food, saw relatives, travelled to DC to see my daughter off, and ate at a couple of popular DC restaurants.

    Aside from the religious/secular component of Christmas which I enjoy for about a week in total, I found myself more impacted by the changing of the yearly numbers on the calendar.  It's is 2012 and all of 2011 is now history.  Reflections on the last year are moving for me and probably more on a National/International level then on a Community one.  Of course, the videos provided by the various media giants encourage that focus.   Here is a Google's effort and probably my favorite for 2011:

 

 

    But as I write this, I am aware that I am also listening to Bob Seger's newest CD.   Seger recently played at MSG and Bruce S. came out and sat in for a couple of songs with him; the performance sparked alot of interest.   My personal music nostalgia, having come from the bowels of another "motor city" not unlike Detroit, does not include the Beach Music of the Carolina Coasts or Sweet Baby James.    It's the hard-core-stuff of Seger  that I remember most and that can still bring tears to my eyes every, every time I hear it.   Especially Night Moves,  I tried to find a video version of it for this space and couldn't find anything to do it justice.    

If I would have an anthem for all of us right now, it would be this one.  Sorry, there's no good video:

 

 Take A Chance

You take a chance on an airplane
You take a chance when you cross the street
You take a chance when you love somebody
When you're standing near the heat

You take a chance when you're honest
You take a chance when you tell lies
You take a chance when you trust somebody
When you look 'em in the eyes

Take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

You take a chance when you're indecisive
You take a chance when you're aloof
You take a chance when you judge somebody
When you've really got no proof

You take a chance when you refuse to hear
You take a chance when you're unkind
You take a chance when you refuse to grow up baby
You end up left behind

Take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

You take a chance when you're ruthless
You take a chance when you're cruel
You take a chance when you make a vow babe
To be nobody's fool

You take a chance when you're distant
You take a chance when you live inside
You take a chance when someone loves you
And you leave them with no pride

Take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

Oh take a chance on me
Take a chance on me
I'm exactly what you see honey
Take a chance on me

 

 

"Beware of Raw Cookie Dough" Revisited

    In today's NYT, there is an article about the dangers of eating raw cookie dough.   It seems that eating raw dough increases your rate of contracting a particular strain of e-coli.

    "A new study that investigated the cause of a large outbreak of E. coli in 2009 pointed the blame at raw chocolate chip cookie dough. The researchers say it is the first time an outbreak of food poisoning caused by the dangerous Shiga toxin-producing E. coli has been traced to store-bought, ready-to-bake cookie dough or a similar product. The outbreak, between March and July 2009, sickened at least 80 people across 30 states, 35 of whom had to be hospitalized."

    The issue, as you can read, is that if you consume "ready-to-eat" cookie dough, you are vulnerable.  I highlight that it is the "ready-to-eat" dough which is purchased in the dairy section of your grocery store which is the problem.   The e-coli has been traced to the flour used in the dough.   But it is  only the flour that is suspect because it seems to be the only real food product in the dough.

    “Out of all the ingredients, raw flour is the only raw agricultural product that was in the cookie dough,” Dr. Neil said. “It didn’t undergo any specific processing to kill pathogens, so we feel that’s the most likely suspect for what may have introduced contamination into the cookie dough. We couldn’t prove it conclusively, but that’s what we suspect.”

    And remember what Michael Poulan said in "In Defense of Food" -   eat only food, not too much and lots of the green stuff.  And there's not too much food in this dough.   I can only imagine what  the rest of the ingredients in it might be  -  but they're not techincally food, according to the FDA.

    This question is asked indirectly in the article; "Could I or my family get sick from eating uncooked cookie dough if I make it at home?"    The answer is yes, but with a twist.

    "Prudent chefs and parents everywhere usually cite a single cookie dough ingredient – raw eggs, which can carry Salmonella – as the reason to bake before eating. But the study, led by Dr. Karen Neil, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the culprit in this case was likely not eggs, but flour."

    Now, "prudent" cooks always knew that eating uncooked eggs are a potential problem at any time and smart ones, like my daughter, knows how to deal with that.  But salmonella is a far cry from e-coli, I think.

    The lesson I think, again citing Michael Poulan, is to make your cookies at home and use real food ingredients.

    Hmmmmm ..... now what about Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream?

Who's Afraid of the Coming PostWar Period?

    The troops are coming home.

    I am having some interesting conversations these days as I explore the shift to being postwar with  people in my world.   (This is a reference to Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What it Means to be Black Now by Toure.) Through my talks,I am trying to get a sense of how the people in our nation feel about our current wars in Iraq and Afganistan.   I am interested in the thoughts about their startings and apparent finishings, the causes of them, the challenge of deployments, the returns home, the consequences on multiple levels that we are/will be facing and the welfare of the troops who fought.  The troops are my primary interest.  I am concerned that we may not respond well to these soldiers and thus help them re-integrate into peacetime after horrors of war.   Wars they fought for us.

    As I  begin to collect these conversations and reflect on them in this blog I am trying to make sense of what I am hearing.  I am initially  stunned to realize that a national conversation on this subject is not happening on any level.  We are currntly winding down from two major wars and we're not talking about it.   So when I have started many of these conversations, people seem intensely uncomfortable with the subject.  So after asking a number of people now my questions, I have come to believe that I may be the first person to even raise the subject with them and they haven't had a change to talk about it.  Therefore they are  caught off guard, don't have much of an answer and seem unccomfortable maybe by that fact alone.   

    My questions generally take the form of:

        "Well, the President has told us he is bringing the troops home by Christmas?   What do youi think?"

        "Do you have any family members, friends or neighbors serving in the wars?"

        "Are you planning on helping the troops get reintegrated when they come back?"

        "Would you like to help in some way?"

     In one group and the first time I actually began asking, this one being at my church, there was a deafening silence and blank stares coming back instead of answers.  Now I know these people well and they are to a person, some of the kindess, most loving, thoughtful people I know.   Dead silence.   

    And when they began to talk, the answers were reflected ideas on many of the topics that have been debated and dogged us all since the first invasion occurred.  There was disbelieve the war(s) were really ending, anger about the expense and cost of the wars to our country, concern about what we were leaving behind and fear that any help would be enough for the returning troops.   But most of all, there was skepticism and distrust about it all.  There was an almost palpable emotional distance from it all, even the last chapter of it.

    And so as I think about how I can be most helpful to the returning troops I will soon see, I became even more concerned and worried about the help our nation needs.   We have asked so many unanswered questions, felt so much betrayal and become so hopeless for any good outcome that our availability to help others may be limited.   Alienation would be a word best used here.  These soldiers will need, in many cases, specialized help to begin the recovery from the traumas of the wars.   But so will our nation, I am afraid.  And when will our leaders begin to talk to us about it?  

    Ask yourself these questions.  And if you think of any more that need to be asked of you, send them on to me and I'll post them.