The metaphorical imagery of bridge building is powerful stuff. If you think about it, though, building a bridge from one community to another doesn't have to be about bringing the people from both sides together to learn from each other and become something greater than the sum of the parts. A bridge could also be no more than the means for someone who thinks of themselves as an enlightened person from the village on the hill to get across the river to the village of unworthy slobs to tell them how it is.

Case in point: Probably like many of you, I'm part of a freecycle listserv. If you don't know about freecycle, it's awesome. Freecycle is “a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills”. Click here to get hooked up with a freecycle group in your area (or help you get one started).

Recently, on the Montpelier freecycle listserv, some folks have been asking for and offering Shaw's “turkey points” – the points you receive from spending money at Shaw's supermarkets through which you can get a free turkey after you accumulate a certain amount.

Well, sure enough someone complained, and it didn't much questioning to determine that the complaint was coming from an anti-corporate ethic, and a desire to keep the freecycle list ideologically pure. Apparently similar things have happened on Chittenden and Franklin County listservs (and likely others).

Look, mega-corprorations create problems, there's no arguing that. If you're working towards local economies and against global warming, a place like Shaw's is the bad guy. When the dairy compact was first launched, Shaw's put anti-compact propoganda on it's milk coolers.

But its all too easy for people with a comfortable standard of living to make such demands and declarations.

The fact is, if you haven't been in the position of seriously having to cut coupons and scramble for special deals just to be sure the basic needs of you or your family are met, it hardly seems fair to demand others emulate your perhaps more enlightened (and expensive) lifestyle. If you have a good job, your spouse has a good job, you have parents who could bail you out if you were in danger of starving, or you married into money, you're just not in a position to make judgments about those who literally have no month-to-month safety net.

Someone in such a position who asks for “turkey points” because they truly need them should not be made to feel small for being poor, and probably does not need a lecture on why they should pay a little more money (that they don't have) to buy a free range turkey from a local farmer. Freecycle is a fantastic invention – an online community that not only redistributes resources based on need and keeps crap out of landfills, but builds a genuinely diverse community by bridging class and cultural communication gaps through the medium of the internet. Stepping into that process and demanding the community precisely mirror an ethic that comes from a couple rungs up on Maslow's hierarchy (especially when there is no conflict in play with the stated intent of the community – in this case, reusing stuff and keeping it out of landfills) is simply an attempt to colonize the resource at the cost of people who really need it.

And of course, this sort of thing happens all the time on the left.

On a larger scale, it happened with the Vermont impeachment movement. Lots of us came together because we agreed it was time to get rid of George Bush. When a few decided they weren't content with such a big tent, and instead insisted the group manifest their own particularized ideology, it largely dimisnished in size, utility and effectiveness. It's a common story.

Sometimes creating common ground doesn't have to be a means to end, it's an end in itself. If you can let it be, you may find that, organically, people can come to amazing things in their own way, and in their own time a lot more reliably than if you try and seize the podium and lambaste them with your own personal gospel, no matter how right (or righteous) you may be.

( – promoted by Caoimhin Laochdha)

Despite better education and more awareness within the general population, a pervasive bias remains against people with mental health problems. 

Suffering from mental illness too often means suffering from prejudice or discrimination as well. The systemic biases in our communities and institutions exacerbate the very illness afflicting those who most need support and understanding. Prejudice and lack of access to care are another set of roadblocks for people struggling with acute and/or chronic serious mental health problems. 

It is an all-consuming task, for many who have mental problems, to cope with their disabilities and work toward maintaining or preserving – to the full extent they can – a functional life. This burden frequently falls on the family and loved ones who help to care and take responsibility for those with mental/behavioral health and personality disorders.  Now, throw in the added burden of prejudice, neglect, a judgmental community that fails at its duty to be a support system (or to allow a support system to be in place), and life for the mentally ill is one nasty uphill fight.

If you haven't guessed already, this is about the  U.S. war on Iraq . . .(more below)

This past week, police officers acting on behalf of the United States of America arrested Army Sergeant Brad Gaskins.

I do not know the legal background to this case, but the fact that Sgt. Gaskins has suffered severe disability from two combat tours in Iraq is not in dispute.  The United States arrested him for being AWOL after he sought treatment for his mental illness. The treatment he sought and needs is unavailable to him in the overstretched, understaffed, unprepared and ill-equipped health care system that is responsible for U.S. solders and marines. 

As reported by the AP

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — A soldier who served two combat tours in Iraq was arrested Wednesday. . .

. . . Sgt. Brad Gaskins said he left the base in August 2006 because the Army wasn't providing effective treatment after he was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression.

“They just don't have the resources to handle it, but that's not my fault,” Gaskins said.

Tod Ensign, an attorney with Citizen Soldier, a GI rights group that is representing Gaskins, said the case is part of a “coming tsunami” of mental health problems involving Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

Last month, the Veterans Administration said more than 100,000 soldiers were being treated for mental health problems, and half of those specifically for PTSD. . .

 So here's the problem.  The U.S. government, unable to treat seriously ill soldiers, is criminalizing their illness.  This is where the mental/behavioral health and physical injury prejudices come into play.  I acknowledge not knowing the specific medical and legal details of Sgt. Gaskins' case. However, regardless of the specifics of Sgt. Gaskins plight, his case is one more blatant indictment of the United State's and especially the current administrations', pattern of neglect and betrayal of our all volunteer recruited military.  Compound this continuing mistreatment of our soldiers and marines, with the historic and systemic prejudices surrounding mental illness; and a pre-existing medical double standard becomes a societal and governmental double betrayal as well.

Sgt. Haskins arrest is one example demonstrating the ways in which the physical/mental health double standard has eaten its way into the Pentagon and is one more way in which we are disgracing our troops. 

Imagine, for a moment, a soldier with shrapnel in her brain who faces a lifetime of paralysis if she does not find a neurosurgeon to remove the shrapnel. Then imagine the Army will not provide a surgeon trained or capable of removing the shrapnel in order to save this soldier from a lifetime of disability and suffering. Forced to accept only one acceptable option, the soldier leaves the base infirmary and goes AWOL. The soldier then ends up at Mass General, Dartmouth or a local community hospital where a surgeon can salvage her future.

Unfortunately, for our hypothetical soldier with the shrapnel in her brain, a local TV crew shows up at the hospital parking lot to tell the story (like the media did with Sgt. Gaskins) of her combat injuries and the military's unwillingness to provide critical treatment for her.  Now, imagine as she is going through her pre-operative tests, the MPs arrive and arrest her: putting her in shackles and walking her out of the hospital still wearing a surgical gown. Preposterous? (I hope you said “yes” although what is preposterous any more). That is the  attitude feeding our double standard because it is truly difficult to see much difference in the level of outrage either type of case should generate.

People generally understand and are less likely to “stigmatize” traumatic head injuries and their corresponding disabilities than the mental health trauma suffered by soldiers such as Sgt. Gaskins.  To the soldier facing the consequences of either trauma, the responsibility of the United States to the people we recruit to serve in our military is no different. How short we fall from that responsibility is apparent when the United States arrests a sick soldier rather than treats him.  It is a further apparent when we allow the Pentagon to criminalize illness rather than treat it. 

Sgt Gaskins' case is a gross betrayal by the United States of its soldiers and marines.  It is also a symptom of a bigger problem faced by veterans.  The example of his situation sends a message from the Pentagon and the administration to the tens of thousands of soldiers and marines who are receiving either substandard care, or not receiving any care. And this is the message: “We know you're in bad shape and we know you hurt.  Now you know that we can make it much worse for you too.” 

Every day, the United States War on Iraq proves there is no shortage of ways for the U.S. to shame itself in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of our soldiers and in the eyes of history.

It appears we have shamed ourselves in the eyes of Sgt. Gaskin as well.

The picture here is a light drawing I created Tuesday night.  It’s not a Photoshop effect; it’s me waving a pair of light wands around for a long-exposure shot.  Clicking on the picture brings you to a whole set of thumbnails of light drawings.

1. Take the phrase REMAKE RAILROADING THEFT. Rearrange the letters of that phrase to form the names of two well-known artists;
2. Take the phrase GREGORIAN JUNGLE HOOP.  Rearrange its letters to form a famous group;
3. Look at the following:

   CIDER LIE
   EVIL LIME
   EVER ONCE
   
   You have three clues as to the answer. One clue is an anagram. An other is the same structure of consonants and vowels. The third is the same number of letters in each word. The trick is figuring out which is which;

4. Same sort of puzzle as #3:

   HOC JAM FELIX
   MOMENTS I CRY
   MAD HOE STRAP
   

Note– spoilers may appear in the comments section.  Read them at your own risk.

Does anyone see a problem here?

Vermont Yankee decommissioning funds insufficient

Friday November 16, 2007
John Dillon

Montpelier, Vt.