This is the season to reflect, and in reflection, let’s talk of love, gratitude, and some basic pronouns.
Who are you? Well, you are the sum of all your experiences and in relation to your family, a daughter, son, wife, mother, father, brother, or something. (Joe’s friend, the youngest daughter, mother of three, her this, his that, your, my, our...) When you apply the pronouns, you start to view your identity through a scope that limits the view. (His, hers, theirs, ours) Apply the same pronouns to your family and you might get “real brother” versus “step” and adopted family too.
When you apply the pronouns, your ownership filter starts to view others through a lens of who is more valid, who is more “real” which can be divisive. If he is your half brother, not full, what does that mean?
If all your family members aren’t real family members, how tolerant are you, really? If your brother and his second wife adopted two children, are they still his children? Aren’t they real? Don’t we all have room for a little more inclusion and tolerance?
If we are labeling people “real” and not real, valid and not valid, what does it say about our humanity?
What is a real family anyway? My family was his, mine and ours, but we were a family. Who has the authority to tell anyone that they aren’t real, or that they aren’t a real family? Especially on Christmas!
My greatest wish for Christmas is that we drop the “us” versus “them” and speak to our families without so much baggage and learn to accept people for who they are. For example, aunt Martha might have been stupid that one time, but it doesn’t mean she is always stupid. Let her past go.
Mom might have done some strange parenting, or lacked enough maternal skill to keep a goldfish alive, but let it go; that was then, this is now. You lived; give her a call. Because Aunt Josefina is gay or voted for issue X, is not enough of a reason to punish her humanity. It is time for a visit, but I’d call first!
Don’t let bad news, or loss of life become the sole reason you reach out to your family or your neighbor. These are hard economic times; we need to be kind to each other. These are hard emotional times too.
The older we each get, the more likely we are to have lost a loved one that we mourn on Christmas. I for one learned my dad had cancer on Christmas day and he lived for a year and died the following Christmas day. In a blink of an eye I can be at that moment holding his warm, still hand. Even after twenty years, I have bittersweet memories of the holidays.
I want to remind people to say, “I love you” a little more often. I want to remind people to be more inclusive and less judgmental. Life is short, so short that you really won’t have all your lovely people around you always. Take stock of these great folks and friends and feel truly full of friendship and love. This is a time to be softer, gentler, and more understanding with others, and we don’t really have to stop being that way on December 26th!
An ancient Greek philosopher wrote, “One cannot step twice into the same river.” Meaning, the water is flowing and the river in this moment is not the same water that moved through moments ago. It is a great reminder of how swiftly life changes before our eyes.
This holiday season, take stock of the love and friendship around you and let your love be known. May your days be blessed with love and equality, peace and acceptance.
Jesse
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Saturday, December 06, 2008
New Hope for Veterans
From the Huffington Post
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Tomorrow, you had mentioned earlier, is when we commemorate Pearl Harbor, and so I'm going to be making announcement tomorrow about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki, who was a commander and has fought in Vietnam, Bosnia, is somebody who has achieved the highest level of military service. He has agreed that he is willing to be part of this administration because both he and I share a reverence for those who serve. I grew up in Hawaii, as he did. My grandfather is in the Punch Bowl National Cemetery. When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and, I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling even more than those who have not served -- higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate -- it breaks my heart, and I think that General Shinseki is exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home.
BROKAW: He's the man who lost his job in the Bush Administration because he said we will need more troops in Iraq than Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld thought we would need at that time.
Click Title to see video link
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Tomorrow, you had mentioned earlier, is when we commemorate Pearl Harbor, and so I'm going to be making announcement tomorrow about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki, who was a commander and has fought in Vietnam, Bosnia, is somebody who has achieved the highest level of military service. He has agreed that he is willing to be part of this administration because both he and I share a reverence for those who serve. I grew up in Hawaii, as he did. My grandfather is in the Punch Bowl National Cemetery. When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and, I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling even more than those who have not served -- higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate -- it breaks my heart, and I think that General Shinseki is exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home.
BROKAW: He's the man who lost his job in the Bush Administration because he said we will need more troops in Iraq than Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld thought we would need at that time.
Click Title to see video link
Friday, November 07, 2008
History on the Homefront
Well, I might not have been kind to Sarah Palin, but it seems I made the right call. I hope that John McCain is a part of the new direction of America and I salute his service. Also, I respect Obama as the new Commander in Chief.
Soon, more veterans will be home from war and we will be there for them on the homefront. I hope we can help.
I feel a little badly for being so mad at McCain's pick of VP, in the end, it seemed to be very accurate that she was too polarizing of a pick. I apologize for being so mad, but being passionate drives me to serve, work, edit, teach, love, and I can't be passionate without also stepping on toes once in awhile. Thanks for your generous understanding.
I hope and pray that our military strengthens under Obama, that our methods of warfare can more effectively fight this 14 century war with 21st century idealism, and that our economy can stabilize to support the massive amount of humans on the planet. I hope and pray that he can put together a cabinet to address the issues and help heal us as a nation.
There is a lot to do, and it is time to start the work.
Sincerely,
Jesse Loren
Soon, more veterans will be home from war and we will be there for them on the homefront. I hope we can help.
I feel a little badly for being so mad at McCain's pick of VP, in the end, it seemed to be very accurate that she was too polarizing of a pick. I apologize for being so mad, but being passionate drives me to serve, work, edit, teach, love, and I can't be passionate without also stepping on toes once in awhile. Thanks for your generous understanding.
I hope and pray that our military strengthens under Obama, that our methods of warfare can more effectively fight this 14 century war with 21st century idealism, and that our economy can stabilize to support the massive amount of humans on the planet. I hope and pray that he can put together a cabinet to address the issues and help heal us as a nation.
There is a lot to do, and it is time to start the work.
Sincerely,
Jesse Loren
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Beware the Ides of November
Beware the Ides of November
In act II of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar,Brutus considers the preemptive strike of killing Caesar before he is crowned and compares the strike to smashing an egg:
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg
Which, hatch'd,would, as his kind, grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell.
Brutus has never seen Caesar swayed, but still, if he is crowned, he could become a fearful thing, just as the egg of an adder would one day become an adder. This fear compels him, against his better logic and reason, to stab his best friend to death.
Shakespeare wrote of it when Elizabeth I was on the throne, and today, it still resonates with the Bush doctrine that initially described the United States right to justify attacking a country unprovoked because it could harbor terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. Smash the egg, an adder could come out of it later.
Governor Palin describes the doctrine as Bush’s attempt to irradiate Islamic extremists; and she said during her response to ABC’s Charlie Gibson, that the U.S. “should do whatever it takes…” to fight terrorism. Doing whatever it takes goes far beyond the reach of civilized governments. It is invasive, overreaching, and subversive to democracy. It reminds me of an Internet story I received in a mass emailing and then deleted. It goes something like this:
A woman decides to take her husband’s boat out to experience what he enjoys on the lake. She does everything right, but a Fish and Game boat comes up beside her and boards her boat. She is accused of fishing without a license. She says, “I do not intend to fish, why would I want a license?” The Game Warden explains, “You have a fishing rod; this is clear evidence that you intend to fish, and I am giving you a citation.”
She claims, “Look, I don’t even like fish. I am just out here on my husband’s boat enjoying the water.” The game warden explains that clearly, if the boat has a rod, she must be intent on fishing. The lady begins to scream. The screaming gets louder and she starts yelling “RAPE! RAPE…” The warden tries to shush her saying, “I have no intention of raping you. Why are you saying that?” The lady responds, “Well, I was on the boat alone, you boarded my boat uninvited, and you have the equipment to rape me. Clearly, if you have in your pants the equipment, your intention was to rape me and you must be prosecuted.” Needless to say, the man did not write the ticket.
Under this logic, all men are suspect and should wear ankle bracelets so their whereabouts can be monitored. They are equipped and stealth. We must do whatever it takes…. Perhaps castrate most, or drown them like puppies. Maybe we water board them and hold them indefinitely on foreign soil. Better yet, we can monitor all of their conversations or hunt them down like Polar Bears….. I jest.
Whatever it takes is the most dangerous doctrine of the new century. It defends extremism coming from our soil. It speaks to a gross misunderstanding of everything the Constitution stands for, and it allows any and all fanatics to run the entire country unchecked by logic, reason, humanity or respect for civilization itself.
If you wonder what happens to Brutus, he goes unchecked, stabs Caesar to death and kills himself later because of his deep moral understanding of what he has done wrong. Falling on a sword does not undo wrong. To avoid wrong, we must take up responsibility as a nation.
In act II of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar,Brutus considers the preemptive strike of killing Caesar before he is crowned and compares the strike to smashing an egg:
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg
Which, hatch'd,would, as his kind, grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell.
Brutus has never seen Caesar swayed, but still, if he is crowned, he could become a fearful thing, just as the egg of an adder would one day become an adder. This fear compels him, against his better logic and reason, to stab his best friend to death.
Shakespeare wrote of it when Elizabeth I was on the throne, and today, it still resonates with the Bush doctrine that initially described the United States right to justify attacking a country unprovoked because it could harbor terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. Smash the egg, an adder could come out of it later.
Governor Palin describes the doctrine as Bush’s attempt to irradiate Islamic extremists; and she said during her response to ABC’s Charlie Gibson, that the U.S. “should do whatever it takes…” to fight terrorism. Doing whatever it takes goes far beyond the reach of civilized governments. It is invasive, overreaching, and subversive to democracy. It reminds me of an Internet story I received in a mass emailing and then deleted. It goes something like this:
A woman decides to take her husband’s boat out to experience what he enjoys on the lake. She does everything right, but a Fish and Game boat comes up beside her and boards her boat. She is accused of fishing without a license. She says, “I do not intend to fish, why would I want a license?” The Game Warden explains, “You have a fishing rod; this is clear evidence that you intend to fish, and I am giving you a citation.”
She claims, “Look, I don’t even like fish. I am just out here on my husband’s boat enjoying the water.” The game warden explains that clearly, if the boat has a rod, she must be intent on fishing. The lady begins to scream. The screaming gets louder and she starts yelling “RAPE! RAPE…” The warden tries to shush her saying, “I have no intention of raping you. Why are you saying that?” The lady responds, “Well, I was on the boat alone, you boarded my boat uninvited, and you have the equipment to rape me. Clearly, if you have in your pants the equipment, your intention was to rape me and you must be prosecuted.” Needless to say, the man did not write the ticket.
Under this logic, all men are suspect and should wear ankle bracelets so their whereabouts can be monitored. They are equipped and stealth. We must do whatever it takes…. Perhaps castrate most, or drown them like puppies. Maybe we water board them and hold them indefinitely on foreign soil. Better yet, we can monitor all of their conversations or hunt them down like Polar Bears….. I jest.
Whatever it takes is the most dangerous doctrine of the new century. It defends extremism coming from our soil. It speaks to a gross misunderstanding of everything the Constitution stands for, and it allows any and all fanatics to run the entire country unchecked by logic, reason, humanity or respect for civilization itself.
If you wonder what happens to Brutus, he goes unchecked, stabs Caesar to death and kills himself later because of his deep moral understanding of what he has done wrong. Falling on a sword does not undo wrong. To avoid wrong, we must take up responsibility as a nation.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Lipstick on Pygmalion
Lipstick on Pygmalion
McCain and Palin don’t have track records of change, they have track records of a bridge to nowhere, pork barrel waste, irresponsible spending and same ol same ol politics of the rich. As a leader, McCain can’t boast anything new, except maybe hooking up with an ex beauty queen… Even that truly isn’t new, his beer heiress wife was one too. No, as a leader, McCain has learned from corporate America to use the tools of advertising, spin, and branding to sell the product called “McCain.” He needs the magic of packaging because he completely lacks substance.
As viewers, we are used to making judgments based on packaging. McCain stands beside the "hockey" mother of five, all gritty and polished like a glossy Hollywood headshot; both shouting, "change, change, change." Whatever that means. But, what does hockey mom mean? Does it mean that years ago, when her adult son was young, she took him to hockey practice? My kids collectively played soccer, football, softball, cheerleading, and Little League, along with guitar, violin, piano, bass and trombone, which meant I went to a lot of practices. That makes me a good chauffeur, but doesn't denote leadership. It might prepare me to negotiate a turn, but not diplomacy.
Palin's slick ability to deliver a prepared speech along with her image as white, coiffed, and lipsticked is straight corporate marketing. Imagine if she was Mexican with five kids, or African American? What assumptions would be made about her sexuality, fertility, or religious background? What assumptions would be made about her knocked-up teen? How about her callous lack of going to a hospital for 22 hours after her water broke with her premature, Down's syndrome baby? Would it still be cool? Or would it be criminal?
Would Palin’s teen be seen as heroic or as a drain on society if she were a minority? The fact that she is white makes her flowering fertility seem like a beauty mark where it would be a scarlet letter alight on her chest if she were a woman of color. Not much has changed, and it makes me wonder about us as a nation.
If we are a country by the people, of the people, and for the people, we have to educate ourselves about our own assumptions. I think we have to separate the corporate branding of our candidates and look at their real qualities, or lack of quality, before we vote. Red lipstick doesn’t make a lady; it just makes lips.
Before we vote I would ask all Americans to step back and really think of the branding of hokey Palin. She is not a maverick any more than McCain. Is McCain a maverick for leaving his sick wife to marry a beer heiress beauty queen he met in a bar? Is hokey Palin a maverick for mouthing a speech written for her? She continues to mouth the same pre-written, inaccurate words, and maybe because of pretty lipstick, men and women continue to listen.
She is under investigation for abuse of power. According to KTVS 11 news, “The legislative council approved 100,000 dollars for the investigation that will find out whether Palin was angry at Monegan for not firing an Alaska State Trooper who went through a messy divorce with Palin's sister.” Clearly, she fired him, but it will take an investigation to confirm abuse of power; and it will take at least three months, just past the election. She has a lot of explaining to do, but as of this writing has only delivered a prepared speech. This isn't change. It's lipstick.
When I think of this election, I am reminded of the loss of secular societies like Iran over the slick branding of fear and religious fervor. It took a loud handful to extinguish that secular monarchy and turn it into an extremist theocratic dictatorship. Since then, Iran has burned books, and women’s rights have moved back about 800 years. It breaks my heart that it could happen here.
Before we jump to vote for one candidate over another, I believe we have to look at track records and beliefs for what they really mean to our laws, freedoms, rights, and to the heart of the constitution itself. Then we have to look at our own flawed and prejudiced selves if we want to heal relationships and move toward a more perfect union…
Jesse Loren
McCain and Palin don’t have track records of change, they have track records of a bridge to nowhere, pork barrel waste, irresponsible spending and same ol same ol politics of the rich. As a leader, McCain can’t boast anything new, except maybe hooking up with an ex beauty queen… Even that truly isn’t new, his beer heiress wife was one too. No, as a leader, McCain has learned from corporate America to use the tools of advertising, spin, and branding to sell the product called “McCain.” He needs the magic of packaging because he completely lacks substance.
As viewers, we are used to making judgments based on packaging. McCain stands beside the "hockey" mother of five, all gritty and polished like a glossy Hollywood headshot; both shouting, "change, change, change." Whatever that means. But, what does hockey mom mean? Does it mean that years ago, when her adult son was young, she took him to hockey practice? My kids collectively played soccer, football, softball, cheerleading, and Little League, along with guitar, violin, piano, bass and trombone, which meant I went to a lot of practices. That makes me a good chauffeur, but doesn't denote leadership. It might prepare me to negotiate a turn, but not diplomacy.
Palin's slick ability to deliver a prepared speech along with her image as white, coiffed, and lipsticked is straight corporate marketing. Imagine if she was Mexican with five kids, or African American? What assumptions would be made about her sexuality, fertility, or religious background? What assumptions would be made about her knocked-up teen? How about her callous lack of going to a hospital for 22 hours after her water broke with her premature, Down's syndrome baby? Would it still be cool? Or would it be criminal?
Would Palin’s teen be seen as heroic or as a drain on society if she were a minority? The fact that she is white makes her flowering fertility seem like a beauty mark where it would be a scarlet letter alight on her chest if she were a woman of color. Not much has changed, and it makes me wonder about us as a nation.
If we are a country by the people, of the people, and for the people, we have to educate ourselves about our own assumptions. I think we have to separate the corporate branding of our candidates and look at their real qualities, or lack of quality, before we vote. Red lipstick doesn’t make a lady; it just makes lips.
Before we vote I would ask all Americans to step back and really think of the branding of hokey Palin. She is not a maverick any more than McCain. Is McCain a maverick for leaving his sick wife to marry a beer heiress beauty queen he met in a bar? Is hokey Palin a maverick for mouthing a speech written for her? She continues to mouth the same pre-written, inaccurate words, and maybe because of pretty lipstick, men and women continue to listen.
She is under investigation for abuse of power. According to KTVS 11 news, “The legislative council approved 100,000 dollars for the investigation that will find out whether Palin was angry at Monegan for not firing an Alaska State Trooper who went through a messy divorce with Palin's sister.” Clearly, she fired him, but it will take an investigation to confirm abuse of power; and it will take at least three months, just past the election. She has a lot of explaining to do, but as of this writing has only delivered a prepared speech. This isn't change. It's lipstick.
When I think of this election, I am reminded of the loss of secular societies like Iran over the slick branding of fear and religious fervor. It took a loud handful to extinguish that secular monarchy and turn it into an extremist theocratic dictatorship. Since then, Iran has burned books, and women’s rights have moved back about 800 years. It breaks my heart that it could happen here.
Before we jump to vote for one candidate over another, I believe we have to look at track records and beliefs for what they really mean to our laws, freedoms, rights, and to the heart of the constitution itself. Then we have to look at our own flawed and prejudiced selves if we want to heal relationships and move toward a more perfect union…
Jesse Loren
Friday, August 29, 2008
Political ranting-We can't afford McCain
(This is a personal, political rant and does not reflect Bombshells or anything I have edited or written. It doesn't mean I am not deeply involved with people who have served, moreover, it is my American point of view August 30th, 2008) It is just me, little ol me, as a woman after the homefront wait, a woman interested in the future of my country.
Desperate men do desperate acts. McCain picked a hockey mom with less than two years experience as governor of a state that is mainly wilderness. I doubt her management of deer will prepare her for Iraq, Iran or Israel, let alone countries that do not begin with the letter I.
There were loads of amazing prospects to choose from, but he chose her. What does she have that someone like Mitt Romney doesn’t have? Mitt served as CEO of the 2002 Olympics, that’s pretty international, and he was governor of Massachusetts. He went to Stanford, then BYU. Oh yeah, he is Mormon and that would surely ignite evangelical ire. God knows John needs those evangelicals.
McCain could have picked Tom Ridge who has served as Homeland Security Advisor. He was twice elected as Governor of Pennsylvania. He probably had to manage deer, Amish and taxes; that had to be hard. Tom cut taxes and worked with green technology, also helped with education initiatives, and increased healthcare availability for children in his state. So what does a self-styled hockey mom have that Tom Ridge doesn’t have? Sara Palin doesn’t have experience. She isn’t more qualified than men like Ridge or Romney, hasn’t served more, didn’t score higher on her SATs, or go to better schools.
Palin got a scholarship to college from winning second place in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant. She only minored in political science. Mitt Romney got into college with his perfect score on the SATs. News agencies aren’t talking about her dynamic intellect; no the news is abuzz about her workout and her eating habits.
Why would McCain consider a second place beauty queen with a minor in poly-science with miniscule political experience over a man who served as Homeland Security Advisor? The answer is so transparent it makes me sick. He thinks Clinton supporters will turn on Barrack and vote for him for having a woman on his ticket.
I voted for Barack in the primaries, but if Hillary won the nomination, I would have voted for her because she was smart, strong and qualified. She went to Wellesley as an undergraduate, (and not on a beauty scholarship). She went to Yale Law School and worked her tail off for children and other causes. She became a lawyer, married Bill, raised her family, and stood by him as wife and first lady both as governor then as president. Come on, she was elected as Senator of New York. Does New York have a deer problem? I wasn’t voting for Hillary because she has the parts necessary to make babies. Frankly, I would have voted for her because if she were a man, she would have been president a long time ago. She is smart, articulate, well educated, level-headed, and relentless. I will not vote for McCain; first, because he voted with Bush 90 percent of the time. Bush’s decisions have made a disaster of our economy and our standing in the world. Secondly, McCain’s choice of Palin is an outrage.
McCain’s decision to overlook all those educated, highly qualified men to pick a hockey mom – hunter is nonsensical and categorically offensive to every woman who has ever struggled for equality. How dare he! If I could slap him, I would, then I would slap her for being dumb enough to think she was qualified for the job. Are you kidding girlfriend. He is just using you for your Va- Jay Jay; did you not learn anything in college?
Lastly, Palin is the mother of five and one will soon be sent to Iraq. I would be more proud of bringing home the sons and daughters of America than to boast sending out more, especially my own.
We can’t afford this course for our country. We started out 8 years ago with a surplus of cash; we are now over 9.6 trillion dollars in a national debt that grows by the second. This leaves at least 31 grand on each of our backs; we will need are sons and daughters at home to pay this off. We will need unity to pay this off. We will need to change to pay this off. Not an endless war and endless debt. We do not need four or eight more years of this, and besides, nobody reading this could ever afford it.
Desperate men do desperate acts. McCain picked a hockey mom with less than two years experience as governor of a state that is mainly wilderness. I doubt her management of deer will prepare her for Iraq, Iran or Israel, let alone countries that do not begin with the letter I.
There were loads of amazing prospects to choose from, but he chose her. What does she have that someone like Mitt Romney doesn’t have? Mitt served as CEO of the 2002 Olympics, that’s pretty international, and he was governor of Massachusetts. He went to Stanford, then BYU. Oh yeah, he is Mormon and that would surely ignite evangelical ire. God knows John needs those evangelicals.
McCain could have picked Tom Ridge who has served as Homeland Security Advisor. He was twice elected as Governor of Pennsylvania. He probably had to manage deer, Amish and taxes; that had to be hard. Tom cut taxes and worked with green technology, also helped with education initiatives, and increased healthcare availability for children in his state. So what does a self-styled hockey mom have that Tom Ridge doesn’t have? Sara Palin doesn’t have experience. She isn’t more qualified than men like Ridge or Romney, hasn’t served more, didn’t score higher on her SATs, or go to better schools.
Palin got a scholarship to college from winning second place in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant. She only minored in political science. Mitt Romney got into college with his perfect score on the SATs. News agencies aren’t talking about her dynamic intellect; no the news is abuzz about her workout and her eating habits.
Why would McCain consider a second place beauty queen with a minor in poly-science with miniscule political experience over a man who served as Homeland Security Advisor? The answer is so transparent it makes me sick. He thinks Clinton supporters will turn on Barrack and vote for him for having a woman on his ticket.
I voted for Barack in the primaries, but if Hillary won the nomination, I would have voted for her because she was smart, strong and qualified. She went to Wellesley as an undergraduate, (and not on a beauty scholarship). She went to Yale Law School and worked her tail off for children and other causes. She became a lawyer, married Bill, raised her family, and stood by him as wife and first lady both as governor then as president. Come on, she was elected as Senator of New York. Does New York have a deer problem? I wasn’t voting for Hillary because she has the parts necessary to make babies. Frankly, I would have voted for her because if she were a man, she would have been president a long time ago. She is smart, articulate, well educated, level-headed, and relentless. I will not vote for McCain; first, because he voted with Bush 90 percent of the time. Bush’s decisions have made a disaster of our economy and our standing in the world. Secondly, McCain’s choice of Palin is an outrage.
McCain’s decision to overlook all those educated, highly qualified men to pick a hockey mom – hunter is nonsensical and categorically offensive to every woman who has ever struggled for equality. How dare he! If I could slap him, I would, then I would slap her for being dumb enough to think she was qualified for the job. Are you kidding girlfriend. He is just using you for your Va- Jay Jay; did you not learn anything in college?
Lastly, Palin is the mother of five and one will soon be sent to Iraq. I would be more proud of bringing home the sons and daughters of America than to boast sending out more, especially my own.
We can’t afford this course for our country. We started out 8 years ago with a surplus of cash; we are now over 9.6 trillion dollars in a national debt that grows by the second. This leaves at least 31 grand on each of our backs; we will need are sons and daughters at home to pay this off. We will need unity to pay this off. We will need to change to pay this off. Not an endless war and endless debt. We do not need four or eight more years of this, and besides, nobody reading this could ever afford it.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
5 years on, Iraq war has changed lives
By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer Sat Mar 8, 12:44 PM ET
Laura Youngblood clutched her husband's photo as she drove alone to the hospital. She'd become pregnant nearly nine months earlier, the day he'd left for training for Iraq. Hours later, after the baby was born, she placed the photo in the bassinet next to the infant he'd named Emma in his last letter home. He would never hold her.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis L. Youngblood, 26, had died two months earlier, killed by an improvised explosive device.
Laura Youngblood is just 29 years old, but she insists she will not remarry. Her life is her children, now ages 2 and 7. One day, she says, she'll be buried in the plot with her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.
"I tell people I'm a happily married woman," she says, crying.
Five years after U.S. troops invaded Iraq, there are many tears — though not everyone is crying. For the great majority of Americans, this is a war seen from afar. They turn off the news and forget about what is happening a world away.
Then there's the other war, the one that's a very vivid and present part of some Americans' lives.
It's the war that more than a million U.S. soldiers have fought, leaving nearly 4,000 dead and more than 29,000 wounded in action. The one in which thousands of contractors rushed in to serve and to make a buck — though some paid the ultimate price, as well.
Around military bases across America, vacations are planned around deployment schedules. Mini baby booms occur nine months after troops come home. Support groups for widows and injured soldiers have come together.
At small town National Guard armories, the focus has shifted from one weekend a month to filling out life insurance forms and packing a rucksack for war.
"'How did I end up in this kind of a situation?' There were a lot of guys that said that," says Jeff Myers, 48, a tech sergeant in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard from Pillow, Pa. His lips still discharge shrapnel shreds, the residue of two roadside bombs he survived in 2004; a neurologist monitors the concussions he sustained.
In his job as a gunner guarding Army convoys, he saw men so paralyzed by fear they wouldn't go outside the wire. He saw others die 15 minutes after he was chatting with them.
It's not a matter of whether you will have to deal with things like irritability and nightmares after you get home, he says: "It's how you deal with it when it does happen."
And how you deal with your fellow Americans who experience Iraq from a distance.
Amanda Jordan, whose Marine husband was killed three days into the war, says she doesn't know what bothers her more — the days that go by when no one speaks of the war, or the punditry. At a local diner she frequents with her 11-year-old son near their home in Enfield, Conn., she's contemplated standing up and leaving so he doesn't hear when people say Iraq was unnecessarily invaded.
"This is like my life. You're saying my spouse, my child's father, is dead for no reason," says Jordan, a 39-year-old former paralegal who is studying to be a therapist specializing in grief. "That's a pretty harsh thing to hear all the time."
___
Some can tell you exactly when their lives changed.
For Hazel Hoffman, from outside Grand Rapids, Mich., it was when the phone rang and she learned her son, Josh, was shot by a sniper. He was left a quadriplegic, unable to speak.
"I cried so hard that I had tears of blood. I remember looking down wondering, where is all this blood coming from? And it took a few seconds for me to realize this was coming out of me," says Hoffman, who has lived more than a year in an apartment with her son's girlfriend near his hospital in Richmond, Va.
Suzanne Stack, 48, was soaking in the bathtub in their house at Fort Campbell, Ky., when the doorbell rang. There were two officers at the door.
Afterward, still numb from the news of her husband's death, she walked her kids to the school bus. She sensed that people were looking at her fearfully, as if they were afraid they would be next. Even before the funeral, one spouse told her there was a waiting list for post housing. When would she be moving out?
"One day you're one thing. The next thing you're not. It's really quite a shock," says Stack, of Fredericksburg, Va., who now volunteers as an advocate for widows on Capitol Hill.
Walter Lajuane Williams, 33, of Fremont, Calif., was stoned when his turning point came. He was couch surfing, unemployed and in an abusive relationship after he left the Army, which took him to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even his service was criticized: "I had a person tell me, `How could you kill another person?'"
He went to the nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, looking for help finding work. A caseworker, wise to his drug use, took him aside. "I'm going to tell you candidly how I feel and what I smell," he said. "I'm going to work with you. Don't make me regret it."
Williams now helps other vets find jobs.
"All we need is a chance," Williams says.
Recently, an Iraq veteran came to Daniel Fox's office and asked to take a screening exam for post-traumatic stress disorder a second time. He'd lied the first time, he said.
"When I asked him why he wasn't honest, he said because I had just gotten home and everybody's like saying, 'Welcome home hero,'" Fox says. "And how could he tell him that this hero was not doing well?"
Fox, 47, works for the Department of Veterans Affairs as a case manager, assisting Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. For a year, Fox, an Army Reservist, worked as an intensive care nurse at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany; the injured would be airlifted from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fox and his fellow nurses called themselves the ICU angels on the ICU angels tour. To lighten the mood, they made T-shirts with the slogan. Their bravado just helped mask their intense emotions.
"You had a mom and dad and the new wife with the babies in their arms standing in the door of this patient's room and he's got a gunshot wound to the head," says Fox, of Wichita, Kan. "How do you explain that to them? You can't console them."
"After a while, you go home and you cry about it," he says.
He used to be more macho and unemotional. Today, "I have more sympathy, more compassion," he says.
Lt. Col. Douglas Etter's job was sympathy and compassion. Etter, a minister, was a chaplain with the Pennsylvania National Guard in Al Anbar Province; his battalion lost 13 soldiers and two Marines.
He laid his hands on some of the men and delivered last rites. One morning, after he memorialized two of the dead, he says his stoicism dissolved; jogging by the Euphrates River, he cried.
In blunt newsletters home, he chronicled what the troops were seeing and experiencing, from delivering shoes and school supplies to happy Iraqi children to the story of a dead soldier wrapped in a flag by his fellow soldiers in the middle of a firefight because nothing else was available.
"As excited as we are to go home, many are equally afraid," he wrote in one of his last letters.
When Etter himself returned on leave to Pennsylvania to officiate at the funeral of a close friend, he turned to his wife and said he wanted to go home.
"I said, `OK, get in the car. Let's go home,'" said Jodi Etter. "And you said, 'No, my home in Iraq. I just want to go home.'"
When his tour was over, and he went with his wife to buy furniture for their new house in Lebanon, Pa., he had to remind himself that it was important to her — even if it seemed trivial to him after the war. He drove fast, and bought a BMW so he could do it. One day, Jodi pointed out that he was drinking more.
With time, his life settled down, and he came to feel that his months in Iraq were a time of growth. Now executive director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Veterans Affairs, Etter says a deployment is like a magnifying glass.
"Personalities that are strong become stronger," he says. "Personalities which are weaker are made to become weaker."
Phil Nesmith came away from Iraq with a certain clarity.
It wasn't the money that lured him to Iraq, he insists. He was like most of the U.S. troops he was living with at the time — idealistic about the mission.
He had been an Army paratrooper, but now he was among the first group of government contractors to arrive in Iraq after the invasion in 2003. His task was to help get telecommunications running.
At night, rockets flew into their compound. Sometimes they missed and hit apartments nearby, killing Iraqis. On the ground near where he was sleeping, a young officer shot and killed himself.
Violence did not account for all the stress. While he was there, Nesmith says, his relationship with his girlfriend of three years ended and she got pregnant by another man. "Pretty much every other soldier around me, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, had left them or they suspected them cheating on them."
It was hard. "You've left your life and you're wanting to maintain some kind of connection with that, but everything you left behind is continuing on even though your life is kind of suspended while you're there."
As he left Iraq, he crossed paths with a contractor who bragged about what he was going to buy with the money he was going to make in Iraq.
"I was just like, well, `You know, everybody's got their reasons, but I've got to ask you this: You lose both your legs, is that $160,000 going to be worth it?'" he says.
By that point, Nesmith says he knew what he wanted, what was important. He wanted to backpack through Australia, visit Montana, and go to photography school.
He did all three.
He had taken pictures in Iraq. Now he took some of those shots and manipulated them to look like they were taken in the Civil War era. They were shown at Washington, D.C.'s Irvine Contemporary Gallery in Washington, D.C., and priced at $1,500 each.
One photo depicts a single soldier standing alone in the desert. It reminds him of his own plight. "I knew I was on my journey back and when I got there I was going to be alone," Nesmith says. "No one was going to understand what that year was like."
Another photo, his favorite, is of an Iraqi flag flying outside a government utility office. Some Iraqis had just put it up. It was a time of optimism.
But now, he says, "it just seems like a more naive time, when you thought there was so much more that could possibly happen."
Before Travis Youngblood left for Iraq, he and his wife watched a TV interview with a pregnant woman whose husband had died in Iraq. Laura Youngblood cried.
"I felt so sorry for her," Youngblood says.
But then, "When my husband died, my first words were, 'I became her.'"
Today in nearly every room of her Florida house, there's a photo of her husband.
"It is hard. I feel bad for my son because he's 7. He doesn't know how to ride a two-wheel bike. His daddy was going to teach him," she says. "I can't do all the boy things that he wants to do."
She put together videos so her daughter will know the father she never met.
"I'm a survivor of the war. I'm a surviving spouse," Youngblood says. "That's the best way I can say it because every day you're surviving."
Laura Youngblood clutched her husband's photo as she drove alone to the hospital. She'd become pregnant nearly nine months earlier, the day he'd left for training for Iraq. Hours later, after the baby was born, she placed the photo in the bassinet next to the infant he'd named Emma in his last letter home. He would never hold her.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis L. Youngblood, 26, had died two months earlier, killed by an improvised explosive device.
Laura Youngblood is just 29 years old, but she insists she will not remarry. Her life is her children, now ages 2 and 7. One day, she says, she'll be buried in the plot with her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.
"I tell people I'm a happily married woman," she says, crying.
Five years after U.S. troops invaded Iraq, there are many tears — though not everyone is crying. For the great majority of Americans, this is a war seen from afar. They turn off the news and forget about what is happening a world away.
Then there's the other war, the one that's a very vivid and present part of some Americans' lives.
It's the war that more than a million U.S. soldiers have fought, leaving nearly 4,000 dead and more than 29,000 wounded in action. The one in which thousands of contractors rushed in to serve and to make a buck — though some paid the ultimate price, as well.
Around military bases across America, vacations are planned around deployment schedules. Mini baby booms occur nine months after troops come home. Support groups for widows and injured soldiers have come together.
At small town National Guard armories, the focus has shifted from one weekend a month to filling out life insurance forms and packing a rucksack for war.
"'How did I end up in this kind of a situation?' There were a lot of guys that said that," says Jeff Myers, 48, a tech sergeant in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard from Pillow, Pa. His lips still discharge shrapnel shreds, the residue of two roadside bombs he survived in 2004; a neurologist monitors the concussions he sustained.
In his job as a gunner guarding Army convoys, he saw men so paralyzed by fear they wouldn't go outside the wire. He saw others die 15 minutes after he was chatting with them.
It's not a matter of whether you will have to deal with things like irritability and nightmares after you get home, he says: "It's how you deal with it when it does happen."
And how you deal with your fellow Americans who experience Iraq from a distance.
Amanda Jordan, whose Marine husband was killed three days into the war, says she doesn't know what bothers her more — the days that go by when no one speaks of the war, or the punditry. At a local diner she frequents with her 11-year-old son near their home in Enfield, Conn., she's contemplated standing up and leaving so he doesn't hear when people say Iraq was unnecessarily invaded.
"This is like my life. You're saying my spouse, my child's father, is dead for no reason," says Jordan, a 39-year-old former paralegal who is studying to be a therapist specializing in grief. "That's a pretty harsh thing to hear all the time."
___
Some can tell you exactly when their lives changed.
For Hazel Hoffman, from outside Grand Rapids, Mich., it was when the phone rang and she learned her son, Josh, was shot by a sniper. He was left a quadriplegic, unable to speak.
"I cried so hard that I had tears of blood. I remember looking down wondering, where is all this blood coming from? And it took a few seconds for me to realize this was coming out of me," says Hoffman, who has lived more than a year in an apartment with her son's girlfriend near his hospital in Richmond, Va.
Suzanne Stack, 48, was soaking in the bathtub in their house at Fort Campbell, Ky., when the doorbell rang. There were two officers at the door.
Afterward, still numb from the news of her husband's death, she walked her kids to the school bus. She sensed that people were looking at her fearfully, as if they were afraid they would be next. Even before the funeral, one spouse told her there was a waiting list for post housing. When would she be moving out?
"One day you're one thing. The next thing you're not. It's really quite a shock," says Stack, of Fredericksburg, Va., who now volunteers as an advocate for widows on Capitol Hill.
Walter Lajuane Williams, 33, of Fremont, Calif., was stoned when his turning point came. He was couch surfing, unemployed and in an abusive relationship after he left the Army, which took him to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even his service was criticized: "I had a person tell me, `How could you kill another person?'"
He went to the nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, looking for help finding work. A caseworker, wise to his drug use, took him aside. "I'm going to tell you candidly how I feel and what I smell," he said. "I'm going to work with you. Don't make me regret it."
Williams now helps other vets find jobs.
"All we need is a chance," Williams says.
Recently, an Iraq veteran came to Daniel Fox's office and asked to take a screening exam for post-traumatic stress disorder a second time. He'd lied the first time, he said.
"When I asked him why he wasn't honest, he said because I had just gotten home and everybody's like saying, 'Welcome home hero,'" Fox says. "And how could he tell him that this hero was not doing well?"
Fox, 47, works for the Department of Veterans Affairs as a case manager, assisting Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. For a year, Fox, an Army Reservist, worked as an intensive care nurse at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany; the injured would be airlifted from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fox and his fellow nurses called themselves the ICU angels on the ICU angels tour. To lighten the mood, they made T-shirts with the slogan. Their bravado just helped mask their intense emotions.
"You had a mom and dad and the new wife with the babies in their arms standing in the door of this patient's room and he's got a gunshot wound to the head," says Fox, of Wichita, Kan. "How do you explain that to them? You can't console them."
"After a while, you go home and you cry about it," he says.
He used to be more macho and unemotional. Today, "I have more sympathy, more compassion," he says.
Lt. Col. Douglas Etter's job was sympathy and compassion. Etter, a minister, was a chaplain with the Pennsylvania National Guard in Al Anbar Province; his battalion lost 13 soldiers and two Marines.
He laid his hands on some of the men and delivered last rites. One morning, after he memorialized two of the dead, he says his stoicism dissolved; jogging by the Euphrates River, he cried.
In blunt newsletters home, he chronicled what the troops were seeing and experiencing, from delivering shoes and school supplies to happy Iraqi children to the story of a dead soldier wrapped in a flag by his fellow soldiers in the middle of a firefight because nothing else was available.
"As excited as we are to go home, many are equally afraid," he wrote in one of his last letters.
When Etter himself returned on leave to Pennsylvania to officiate at the funeral of a close friend, he turned to his wife and said he wanted to go home.
"I said, `OK, get in the car. Let's go home,'" said Jodi Etter. "And you said, 'No, my home in Iraq. I just want to go home.'"
When his tour was over, and he went with his wife to buy furniture for their new house in Lebanon, Pa., he had to remind himself that it was important to her — even if it seemed trivial to him after the war. He drove fast, and bought a BMW so he could do it. One day, Jodi pointed out that he was drinking more.
With time, his life settled down, and he came to feel that his months in Iraq were a time of growth. Now executive director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Veterans Affairs, Etter says a deployment is like a magnifying glass.
"Personalities that are strong become stronger," he says. "Personalities which are weaker are made to become weaker."
Phil Nesmith came away from Iraq with a certain clarity.
It wasn't the money that lured him to Iraq, he insists. He was like most of the U.S. troops he was living with at the time — idealistic about the mission.
He had been an Army paratrooper, but now he was among the first group of government contractors to arrive in Iraq after the invasion in 2003. His task was to help get telecommunications running.
At night, rockets flew into their compound. Sometimes they missed and hit apartments nearby, killing Iraqis. On the ground near where he was sleeping, a young officer shot and killed himself.
Violence did not account for all the stress. While he was there, Nesmith says, his relationship with his girlfriend of three years ended and she got pregnant by another man. "Pretty much every other soldier around me, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, had left them or they suspected them cheating on them."
It was hard. "You've left your life and you're wanting to maintain some kind of connection with that, but everything you left behind is continuing on even though your life is kind of suspended while you're there."
As he left Iraq, he crossed paths with a contractor who bragged about what he was going to buy with the money he was going to make in Iraq.
"I was just like, well, `You know, everybody's got their reasons, but I've got to ask you this: You lose both your legs, is that $160,000 going to be worth it?'" he says.
By that point, Nesmith says he knew what he wanted, what was important. He wanted to backpack through Australia, visit Montana, and go to photography school.
He did all three.
He had taken pictures in Iraq. Now he took some of those shots and manipulated them to look like they were taken in the Civil War era. They were shown at Washington, D.C.'s Irvine Contemporary Gallery in Washington, D.C., and priced at $1,500 each.
One photo depicts a single soldier standing alone in the desert. It reminds him of his own plight. "I knew I was on my journey back and when I got there I was going to be alone," Nesmith says. "No one was going to understand what that year was like."
Another photo, his favorite, is of an Iraqi flag flying outside a government utility office. Some Iraqis had just put it up. It was a time of optimism.
But now, he says, "it just seems like a more naive time, when you thought there was so much more that could possibly happen."
Before Travis Youngblood left for Iraq, he and his wife watched a TV interview with a pregnant woman whose husband had died in Iraq. Laura Youngblood cried.
"I felt so sorry for her," Youngblood says.
But then, "When my husband died, my first words were, 'I became her.'"
Today in nearly every room of her Florida house, there's a photo of her husband.
"It is hard. I feel bad for my son because he's 7. He doesn't know how to ride a two-wheel bike. His daddy was going to teach him," she says. "I can't do all the boy things that he wants to do."
She put together videos so her daughter will know the father she never met.
"I'm a survivor of the war. I'm a surviving spouse," Youngblood says. "That's the best way I can say it because every day you're surviving."
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