#665
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:25:56 -0500
From: "Nelson Atehortua (Student)" <nelson.atehortua@WKU.EDU>
Subject: Roommate for SOPHE / APHA
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Dear members of this community,
I am looking for a rommate (s) for both SOPHE and APHA, can be somebody for SOPHE and somebody else for APHA. I have presentations in both conferences.
I'm checking in SOPHE on Nov 1st and cheching out from APHA Nov 7th.
My e-mails:
My cellphone number is: 270-320-2697
Best,
Nelson A. Atehortua, MD. MPH
Graduate Diversity Fellow
Doctoral Student Fellow of the Mexican-American and US Latino Research Center (MARLC) Department of Health and Kinesiology Texas A&M University
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy".
Martin Luther King Jr. Strength to Love, 1963.
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#666
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:02:00 -0400
From: Michael Ludwig <Michael.J.Ludwig@HOFSTRA.EDU>
Subject: Help on College Health Promotion
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Hello Friends and Colleagues,
I'm meeting with the person at my institution who has the power to create an office of Health Education/Promotion at the university level. We offer both an undergraduate and graduate degree in school health education and community health here at Hofstra.
I realize I'm asking for what could be an avalanche of information.
However, any studies/data that you are aware of relating to the benefits of having such an office would be greatly appreciated.
While I have no doubt I can talk a "good game," support in the form of publications and data can't hurt.
Thanks in advance.
Michael Ludwig
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#667
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:37:35 -0700
From: Pat Hanson <Pat_Hanson@CSUMB.EDU>
Subject: 'Blood on Our Hands' Imp. Writing re: Cost of War NOW bf veto vote
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Friday, October 12, 2007 12:34:35 PM
Message
From: Pat Hanson
Subject: 'Blood on Our Hands' Imp. Writing re: Cost of War NOW bf veto vote
To: HEDIR-L@listserv.siu.edu
Attachments: Blood on my Hands8_24_07w1923 copy.doc 42K
MyBittenTongue8_23_07rev.doc 57K
Friends .. I am getting political in my 'old age' advanced years. Before the veto vote on the Child Health bill comes up .. I think my piece MUST get out to national media; I am not a professional journalist and do not know where to begin. Please DO NOT share this with your local paper without contacting me first; as my son's identity may need to be protected. CALL ME if you have personal contacts at major magazines or newspapers and know how/where I can 'get this out there.' I've sat on it for too long.
Remember good happens!
Pat Hanson
HEALTH MATTERS
1823 Wedemeyer Ct.
Marina, CA 93933
831-883-4482
Cell:831-601-9195
----- Original Message -----
Friday, October 12, 2007 12:11:29 PM
Urgent Message
From: Pat Hanson
Subject: 'Blood on Our Hand' Imp. Writing re: Cost of War NOW bf veto vote
To: "Noah T. Winer, MoveOn.org Political Action" <moveon-help@list.moveon.org>
Attachments: Blood on my Hands8_24_07w1923 copy.doc 42K
MyBittenTongue8_23_07rev.doc 57K
Noah ... I may not be able to host a vigil in Marina, but will be at one in SANTA BARBARA that night for sure.
THIS PIECE IS QUITE POWERFUL AND ABOUT THE COST OF THE WAR ..... AND ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW BEFORE THE BILL .... I am not a professional journalist and do not know WHERE to send this to get it to media: newspaper or print before next Thursday, or longer range later. The poem 'My Bitten Tongue' about being the mother of a son in the military in Iraq as we speak is even more powerful....
Hoping in your good work today you have time to read these and make suggestions.
Remember good happens!
Pat Hanson
HEALTH MATTERS
1823 Wedemeyer Ct.
Marina, CA 93933
831-883-4482
Cell:831-601-9195
FYI from a message I sent to Network of Spiritual Progressives of which I am a member.
And third, and most importantly .... I am writing you at this time you to ask you to forward this important piece 'Blood on My Hands' and my poem about having a son in the military in Iraq 'My Bitten Tongue' to Cindy directly, and ask WHERE you think I should send them to media right now. The 'blood' piece is about the cost of the war affecting all kinds of domestic issues ...and before the Veto of the Child Health bill comes up .. this should go in national media; and I do not know how/who to send it to. Thus the 'urgent' on the message.
It needs to be edited to get in Op Ed sections of papers ... but I am open to suggestions. If you have ideas for magazines, including Tikkun for where the longer piece (blood) could go asap would be great. The numbers of course would have to be
updated: I wrote this in the spring and for some reason just have not gotten it out.
My name and that of my son's may have to be changed to protect his status. He is a Navy Seal in Special Operations (my god how did I raise one?) .... so please, before you share this or My Bitten Tongue with anyone but Cindy .... let me know. I am available by cell ....
THERE ARE LIVES IN THE BALANCE ...
and Blood on My Hands
By
Pat Hanson
Fort Ord closed as a military base in 1990, turned over 4000 acres of prime real estate to the state of California for $1 and became C S U Monterey, its 21st state university. A center that trained soldiers for five wars from World War I through Gulf Storm, became a center for learning. I’ve taught part-time at this, the most diverse of the CSU’s, for ten years.
One six-story sandstone building, that to me looks like something out of the X-files, remains occupied by the military. This Department of Defense (DOD) monolith used to be a hospital for wounded vets. Its fascist architecture can be seen from miles around. I’ve driven past this huge eyesore hundreds of times shaking my head, wondering sometimes in Tom Waits guttural voice ‘What are they doing in there?’
Did I mention that that I have a son who’d graduated one of our country’s service ‘Academies’? A triathelete recruited out of high school, who now at 24 has successfully completed the grueling two-year training to become one of our nations most highly trained warriors. I am proud of him and honored as any mother could be, but I am also horrified. Three days after his graduation, three months ago, his first deployment was to…. to … you guessed it: Iraq.
This past winter, budget cuts hacked the number of the required courses I taught. I found myself out of work and in a position to find out what really did go on inside that ominous looking building. I suspected real people must come and go from there, real people who had real lives, even children that weren’t robots. I’d met a new friend, another writer, who spends 40 hours a week earning better money than college professors make inside that locked down facility.
“My office is on the third floor with a view of the entire bay,” she said, not apologetically. “All I do is use my English skills to write and edit test questions for different exams. In fact I need 100 questions by next month and can get you a contract to help me with them, interested?”
“Not really,” I thought, wiping my hands on my jeans. But when a few more county consulting contracts ended, taxes came due, the price of gas kept going up, and my credit card debt escalated dangerously for health care and prescription drugs, I said, “What the heck. What do I have to do?”
“Just read. Find interesting content in newspapers or magazines, paraphrase and cite 75-100 words of content, and make up a multiple choice question about it.”
“That’s it?”
She handed me a two inch thick book they give to recruits to study from, like I used when I studied for the SAT’s 40 years ago, or the GRE’s twenty. The ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) it said in bright yellow and red letters:
Basic Training for the AFQT, the arithmetic reasoning, math knowledge, word knowledge, and paragraph knowledge subtests. The 97-page book of instructions for editors had print so tiny I needed a magnifying glass to understand how to write the
paragraph comprehension questions I’d been assigned.
“Ugh. I can hardly pick this up!” I protested. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“Of course you can. Any writer can handle this. Oh, and no stuff on sex or drugs though. No gender based or biased items. And nothing too bloody or depressing about disease, or death or dying. I know you’ve taught all those things, but forget your favorite subjects.”
“This will keep my mind occupied and quell the nightmarish daydreams about my son I’d found myself having,” I thought as I completed the first draft of 85 questions. Then on March 26th Cindy Sheehan, came to C S U Monterey Bay to give her “One Person Can Make a Difference” talk. I wrangled an invitation to a private dinner with her that included my poet friend Frances Payne Adler. She’d written and coined the word ‘Matriot,’ that Cindy had been calling herself all over the country. We presented Cindy with a framed photograph of the entire Matriot poem, with the image that photographer Kira Corser had put in the book of the same name. I sit writing beneath that same framed photograph/poem at this minute. It shows a tiny eighty-year-old lady in black coat and pearls, one hand on a cane, the other fist raised in front a wall of graffiti reading ‘Revolution.’ Under it is the entire poem which can be found at http://www.kiracorser.com/matriot/exhibit/Matriot.html
Matriot.com)
Matriot (ma’-tri-at) noun 1. One who loves his or her country.
2. One who loves and protects the people of his or her country.
3. One who perceives national defense as health, education, and
shelter of all people in his or her country. (Orig. FPA, 1991) (c)
I liked Cindy immediately and was saddened at how tired she looked.
That was before I heard her address. Before I heard her tell of how she protested when her son Casey, a junior college graduate, enlisted because the recruiter told him what a good deal it would be for finishing college. Before she told us how highly he scored on the entrance exams. How he was told that he’d be officer material, saved from combat for desk jobs, because of his high scores. Before she told of how he was killed his fourth day in Iraq while enroute to a mission he volunteered for because others wouldn’t. Before I heard her recite the poem her daughter wrote about the sound of a grown man, her father, not crying. Before I heard her tell how she had always hated public speaking, but look at her now. Before I learned of all the death threats and catcalls she gets from both the right and the left. Before I heard her answer the question ‘yes,’ to did she think her phones were tapped? Before I heard her say she loved the moniker the FBI uses to identify her: ‘the tornado.’ Before I heard her call our president ‘Bloody Bush.’ Before she went on to talk of all the policy makers with blood on their hands, her own son’s blood. All of whom had given her no explanation as to why Casey had died.
I was impressed with the simplicity and heartfelt pathos behind this wounded mother’s plea, as well as the courage it must have taken for her to make the move to confront President Bush as she did.
The next day I had an appointment in the bowels of that Department of Defense Building to do one of the final rounds of editing those test questions. I realized then on some deep level, that a few of my items might end up being used to categorize and send to the front lines (or not), some young innocent son or daughter. I met my friend at the Security Gate, and signed in. I told her about Cindy’s talk with tears in my eyes.
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” I said.
“You’re over-reacting,” she said shoving the papers in my hand. She had to push me into the metal chair next to a line of computers in the empty basement classroom that used to be the morgue.
“You read first. Announce every comma, every period, and every hyphen. I’ll make necessary corrections. We can get through this. Remember it’s twenty dollars an hour!”
I shrugged and proceeded to read aloud in as well as I could muster. Fifteen minutes and six or so pages into my squinting at the Ariel font 9 document, I noticed a smudge on the paper. Then another. It was reddish. Then another. It was blood. I looked at my hands. I hadn’t cut myself in the shower that morning, I didn’t find anything resembling a paper cut, nor were any of my fingernails particularly bitten. But there was blood on my hands.
“I don’t think I can do this any more,” I said weakly, “at least not today.”
“Okay, okay,” she scowled, leading me to the Ladies Room where I washed my hands, twice, three times, probably more. I can’t remember.
That was four months ago. I let someone else complete the revisions, breathing a sigh of relief. But just today my friend needed one final line edit on the 100 items I thought I had left behind. She met me under the American flag in the circular driveway in front of that building. I opened the folder. There they were, my own words edited in red ink for the gazillionth time. Blood red ink. As I pulled out of the driveway, Jackson Brown was on the radio. Sing along. You’ve heard it a million times since it was released and remained on the top 100 charts for 31 weeks.
I’ve been waiting for something to happen
` For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you’ve seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
……..
There are lives in the balance . . .
There are people under fire . . .
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire …!
Whether you believe me or not, the blood my government employee friend and I saw on my hands was real. I took it as a mirror reflection of the consciousness that both permits and constitutionally encourages war. Anything, ANY thing we do that supports a system that can disgrace us worldwide with its lies, as well as the inhumanity of sacrificing 3,628 American soldiers, not to mention killing an estimated 100-300,000 Iraqis, god knows what percentage women and children (truthout.org), in the name of democracy; anything that we don’t say but feel deeply about --- puts the same blood on our hands that Cindy Sheehan ascribed to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Halliburton in her talk.
It took me a few months to write this. I’ve been avoiding television news. The e-mails from my son, a rookie officer given an inside job in communications because of his ‘value,’ say nothing more than how hot it is, and how great the steaks were they gave them on the Fourth of July.
I had to voice this story. But I also have to disguise both my name, my son’s, and even the branch of service he is in, lest a mother interfere with her son’s chosen career path and put him at risk. Risk of what I’m not certain, but professional risk for sure.
While I did not join Cindy Sheehan’s ill-fated move to impeach Cheney I wish I had. If we let these politicians get away with these grievous war crimes without doing anything, we pave the way for more of the same in the future. I write this to urge more of us, no all of us, to pay attention. Pay close attention and speak out. One person’s voice joined with others becomes the many. The many can transform the masses. It’s a long haul, and a lot too late at this point, but it must be done.
Matriots everywhere must speak out, whether they’re male or female, given birth or parented, or not. The national defense of our country is cracking under the costs of this war: $445, 711,885,662 to date and counting, twelve billion dollars a month in 2007! (see: costofwar.com & [ http://nationalpriorities.org ]http://nationalpriorities.org) What if even one percent of that was spent on health, education and shelter for all of our people?
There are lives in the balance. There was blood on my hands. How about yours?
Pat Hanson – (Statistics from July 23, 2007 3pm WDT)
*****************************************************************************************************
MY BITTEN TONGUE by Jackie Wilkinson
a.k.a. Pat Hanson
At dawn’s light I creep down the stairs to watch my baby boy asleep on the couch write a love poem to him this last weekend before he leaves for afar.
The fuzzy pink/yellow blanket he loves so much is stretched, his broad shoulders, his long legs peek from its edges.
Where did the time go?
His face solid now, tanned cheekbones pronounced an alpha manly jaw, set so often in a smile his skin morphed from baby fat, to triathelete taut, now pumped military solid.
It’s time now to release words I’ve never told him say what only a mother could having bitten her tongue for far too long, swallowing fear, choking down questions since a mother “must never interfere with her son’s training, never insert doubt, it could break him.”
What have I not spoken, but thought and suppressed?
that he might have chosen Cornell or Stanford, not that U.S. Service Academy, had he thought we could foot the bill?
The free ride, the scenery, so seductive at seventeen.
$500,000 worth of education they told us at one of those Parents Day spectaculars, where 4000 uniformed children line-up and goosestep to lunch.
My baby boy, grew up to become in his own words ‘the alpha male of the military.’
One of our nation’s finest specimens of muscle and might.
He’s about to go to Iraq
to train other darker skinned mother’s babies in the ways of war.
There are so many things I’ve wanted to scream, shake some sense into his head, that I didn’t as a child. Or did I?
Words like I love you, that’s terrific, yes you can!
came easily, slipped like silk from my heart when he was little.
I’m so proud of you
still falls from my lips like a raindrop, matching the tears welling behind my eyes.
Think for yourself … I said that, he still seems to.
Fill each moment with delight … he does.
Now, he gets his kicks jumping out of airplanes at 15,000 feet proclaiming he’ll sign up to be an air show stuntman, after, I hear AFTER, they deploy him twice more to places this mother can’t fathom, to do things unthinkable, in the name of Freedom.
“Don’t worry mom, he tells me. I’ll be back in six months.
As officers they’ll keep us safe,
inside, they’ll protect us.
They’ve invested too much.
Putting someone like me on the front lines
would be like driving a Ferrari or Lamborghini
down a bumpy dirt road.”
$385,000 I remember, crunching that tongue in my teeth, picturing a piece of media propaganda about needing more Special Ops, more ‘warriors elite.’
Sure, I think, biting that bruised tongue before I go mad.
Safe where the entire country is a land mine while some other mother’s Army private takes the hits for you!
He thinks my fear is about his risk of death that he’ll come home in a flag draped coffin they won’t show on TV that’s it, but not all I choke back.
I’ve never uttered
How can or will, you, kill?
Don’t you think if you do you’ll go crazy?
Come back psycho, too much chaos to bear?
What else have I held back?
That I wish you were gay?
When I watch the training videos
see the relentless survival they endure, teambuilding and support, so part of the process, I think “that male bonding is the epitome of love.
Forget ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ Mason,
come home and be proud!”
One last thought, just under my bitten tongue, perhaps too little too late, after four years of death and destruction, three thousand, two hundred, thirty two American soldiers gone and still counting six hundred fifty four thousand Iraqi’s erased, that have ripped open their families hearts.
IF this Iraq war gets you my Mason
(and I hold the high watch that it won’t) If this unjust, pre-emptive, embarrassing, greedy, oil-full not American but Texan created corporate battle takes you down … LOOK OUT!
I will channel my grief
for my unconceived grandchildren,
the little Mason and Masonette’s I deserve to see,
in ways I can’t even imagine.
Heed my words other mothers,
we Matriots of the world must unite!
Before more of us become Cindy Sheehans.
It’s time NOW to find constructive ways to channel our anger
unleash our energy,
to make peace palpable,
for ALL to see and BE.
Sleep tight my baby big boy, while you can,
Written: March 26, 2007
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#668
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:51:21 -0400
From: Carmen Head <CHead@SOPHE.ORG>
Subject: Re: Roommate for SOPHE / APHA
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Dear Members:
SOPHE's Student/New Professional Caucus is pleased to help link registrants who would like to share hotel accommodations.
For further information please contact....
Contact Ryan Marie Diduk at: ryi913@yahoo.com
Have a great weekend!
Thanks,
Carmen J.
Carmen J. Head, MPH, CHES
Director, School Health Programs
Society for Public Health Education
750 First St., NE Suite 910
Washington, DC 20002
Phone 202/408.9804
Fax 202/408.9815
Please visit our website www.sophe.org
-----Original Message-----
From: HEDIR-L List [mailto:] On Behalf Of Nelson Atehortua (Student)
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 12:26 PM
To: HEDIR-L@listserv.siu.edu
Subject: Roommate for SOPHE / APHA
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Dear members of this community,
I am looking for a rommate (s) for both SOPHE and APHA, can be somebody for SOPHE and somebody else for APHA. I have presentations in both conferences.
I'm checking in SOPHE on Nov 1st and cheching out from APHA Nov 7th.
My e-mails:
My cellphone number is: 270-320-2697
Best,
Nelson A. Atehortua, MD. MPH
Graduate Diversity Fellow
Doctoral Student Fellow of the Mexican-American and US Latino Research Center (MARLC) Department of Health and Kinesiology Texas A&M University
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy".
Martin Luther King Jr. Strength to Love, 1963.
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