I'm the daughter of a 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter who grew up around intense political debate all of my life. I'm passionate about our veterans receiving the tools they need to recover from war...and restoring the American Dream.
I'm conducting a survey on the intersection of citizen journalism and the changes taking place in traditional media. The data will be used in a research paper submitted as my final in my NIU Media Management class (J449). If you are or were a member of the MSM, the independent press, a J school educator, or consider yourself a citizen journalist would you consider helping by answering the questions below?
A&E's Intervention program recently featured a segment on Brad, a young man coping with his PTSD by self-medicating with alcohol and marijuana after two Iraq tours with the 101st Airborne.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Intervention is a "series in which people confront their darkest demons and seek a route to redemption" by profiling "people whose dependence on drugs and alcohol or other compulsive behavior has brought them to a point of personal crisis and estranged them from their friends and loved ones." Brad's journey is a powerful and important episode.
I just got home from NIU, where I'm a journalism student, about 45 minutes ago. I attend classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I was in the building (Reavis) immediately across from Cole, where the shooting incident took place just a little after 3:00 [Central] today.
I'd like to share my experience briefly, and then allow this space to be one where we can send our thoughts and prayers to everyone whose lives have dramatically changed today by another base act of the type we've become all too familiar with over the past few years.
This is an important call to everyone in the community.
I need your help -- everyone's.
For those who've been around for the past 2+ years, you've been right there with me as I started advocating for our returning troops and military families coping with reintegration problems and PTSD. We've done an enormous amount of work, and now we're taking it to the next level.
Since being asked to write Moving a Nation to Care by my publisher, I've been sidetracked from adding new incidents I've continued to collect; this info is now needed more than ever as I'd like to add it to the Congressional Record with my testimony but don't have time to complete it alone.
This is such a local diary, I almost wasn't going to cross-post it.
But, I wanted to send out a special thank you to llbear (aka Dick Pierce; that's us beaming below, top left) for arranging for me to speak at the Dixon [IL] Elks Lodge Veteran's Dinner last night.
It was an incredible evening.
Please see more pics, my thanks to llbear and the leaders of Dixon Elks Lodge #779, along with transcript of my remarks. I wanted to stay away from the PTSD stuff for one evening, and talk about how I feel about America, about being an American, and how I feel about our country's veterans.
[Ammo Hauler touched upon this in a somewhat neglected diary earlier today, but I'd like to add my personal impressions to this important Veterans Day story in the LA Times.]
At the end of April 2006, I returned home from a few days of down time with my husband to a surprising email from a small New York publishing firm. Ig Publishing said that they were interested in putting out a book on combat PTSD. Would I write it?
The following month I set about fashioning a proposal for what would eventually become Moving a Nation to Care and began reaching out to possible interview subjects for the project.
It didn't take me long to know without any hesitation whose story I needed to open the book with: James Blake Miller, aka the Marlboro Marine.
Psssst. What are you doing tomorrow night at 9pm EST?
If you're online, please join me as a new season of Second Life interviews (Howard Dean is slated, too, I hear) kicks into gear. From my sexy avatar to the left, the tagline for my upcoming interview on the "Virtually Speaking with Jimbo Hoyer" show should be: "If I looked this good in the real world, I wouldn't have any problem 'moving a nation (of men) to care'!"
That in mind, I'd really like to thank Jane at InWorld Studios for creating this, uh, realistic avatar of me for tomorrow night's interview (my official Second Life name is IlonaMeagher Underwood) , and I'd also like to thank Jay and all the rest of the gang for inviting me on. Looking forward to it!
Tomorrow (Sept 1), at 3pm in Fellowship Hall at Decatur Presbyterian I have a signing. Sunday (Sept 2), I give a brief Moving a Nation to Care presentation and signing at 12pm on the City Hall Stage.
If you're in the Atlanta area, please come out if you can. [Directions/parking]
And without further delay, this month's PTSD Combat News Roundup:
"The kind of great movie that rivets you as entertainment at the same time it carefully sets about saying something deeper about the present time...a brave risk." -- Gregory Kirschling, EW.com
Defying intense thunderstorms, micro bursts and even an area tornado or two, Chicagoans trekked out to AMC River East last Thursday night to catch a special screening of the new Paul Haggis ("Crash") film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron.
As hinted at in the quote above, 'In the Valley of Elah' drills down to how our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq affect the warriors who deploy, the families who hold down the fort while they're away, and the society undoubtedly intertwined -- no matter how little they may know it or own up to it -- in it all.
Unlike better online writers, I'm not an on-the-fly type who churns things out easily while on the road. From Chicago to Washington, D.C., I've been busy absorbing a lot of information and talking with a lot of people these past 10 days. From last week's seat on a YearlyKos Convention panel with none other than General Wesley Clark to this week's Journalism That Matters Conference and visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, it's been a busy August.
(Click on links above for more pics...)
A few notes on my comings and goings, disappearances and sightings before getting back to the more important work of covering issues that concern the state of post-combat reintegration in our returning troops.
Me and my new friend at the top of the Stratosphere. (And they say Chicago is the 'windy city'!)
Actually, I hadn't seen this incredible photo of me and sidepocket's better half (waving hi guys!!!) on top of the world until a couple of days ago when they arrived in my inbox.
A little blurry was the explanation for its delay.
Hey, you can see our smiles, can't you? That's all that matters, then!
It's quickly become my favorite of all the pics in my collection from last year. A collection I wanted to share once more with everyone as we embark upon another stratospheric gathering of hearts and minds. As I wrote last year in my post-convention photo essay, We Were ALL at YK2006.
And we're ALL going to be there together, again, this year...
Last week, 2,600 of Minnesota's National Guard members returned from overseas duty. Following a 4-month extension, their brigade's 22-month deployment achieved something no other Guard unit has to date: the longest such continuous call-up of National Guard forces in our nation's history.*
When looking at the data on the strain of extended deployments and the special stresses of 'weekend warriors' vs. that of the active forces, it's obvious the state's leaders felt the need to be proactive in ensuring their citizen soldiers' reintegration goes as smoothly as possible.
But proactive homecoming measures aren't always enough to counterbalance months on end away from family and sanity and moments of relaxation.
An upcoming film that I shared news of last week offers today's NYT a chance to explore the more personal aspects of war. Such films allow us to reflect on their effect on society and warrior, as well as how the families that wait for their return home are coping.
On Sept. 14, Warner Independent Pictures expects to release "In the Valley of Elah," a drama inspired by the [recently-returned Iraq vet Richard R.] Davis murder, written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose "Crash" won the Academy Award for best picture in 2006. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired veteran who defies Army bureaucrats and local officials in a search for his son’s killers. In one of the movie’s defining images, the American flag is flown upside down in the heartland, the signal of extreme distress.
Frustrated by delays in health care, a coalition of injured Iraq war veterans is accusing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment. ... The class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad change in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on several fronts -- from providing prompt disability benefits, to adding staff to reduce wait times for medical care to boosting services for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying out benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.
It's been waaaaay too long since I've posted over here! How's everyone doing?
Busy on this end on my Moving a Nation to Care tour, as well as working on a number of things related to our project. I've only had time enough to post over at my own blog for the past few weeks, and think a PTSD Combat update is long overdue. Lots to share with everyone...
Will be signing books at the Ig Publishing booth immediately after, and hanging out at the ePluribus Media booth throughout the event, so please come keep me company!
I just got home from 
[Ammo Hauler touched upon this in a somewhat neglected 
Defying intense thunderstorms, micro bursts and even an area tornado or two, Chicagoans trekked out to 
Unlike better online writers, I'm not an on-the-fly type who churns things out easily while on the road. From Chicago to Washington, D.C., I've been busy absorbing a lot of information and talking with a lot of people these past 10 days. From last week's seat on a 
