Every Xmas, my parents get these end-of-the year newsletters that are usually pretty insipid. There's one, however, that's always interesting.
One of my mom's college roommates is a retired master beekeeper. I think USAID sends her to developing countries several times a year to help beekeepers develop their hives.
This year she traveled to Haiti, Georgia (Republic -- not the state), and Azerbaijan. Extracts of some of her comments follow:
- Haitian beekeepers will be threatened by Africanized bees.
- A deep gorge in eastern Georgia is the original home of honey bees.
- Rural Azerbaijan has not changed since her last visit 10 years ago. The roads are still as bad as ever. And oil deposits haven't been as big as hoped for, but there is plenty of natural gas in the Caspian Sea waiting to be tapped.
In Los Angeles, watching tv news, yesterday, I realized that I'd dodged a bullet, or rather, a blizzard...
You see, I'd flown from BWI on United and passed through Denver, Tuesday night. The storm had not yet hit.
Boy, was I lucky! When I'd taken booked the flights, I realized that there was a risk of encountering bad weather when flying through DIA at this time of year.
Meanwhile, the package I'd mailed here 2 Saturdays ago, finally arrived an hour or two ago. I'd used the self-mailing system set up in the lobby of my local post office (White Marsh or Nottingham), to avoid the long line of customers. The mailing software told me it would take 7 days for delivery, but it actually took 12 days. Obviously, the holiday mail rush slowed things down, and the delivery information provided to the customer was not supplemented with a warning to expect such a seasonal delay.
Now it's time to help my mom buy a turkey, at the local supermarket, so off I go... (I know that she will eventually use the carcass for making turkey jook.)
Last week I heard a piece on NPR on the lack of treatment for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in soldiers back from Iraq. This has been going on at Fort Carson, Colorado.
Apparently, soldiers who've scheduled appointments to see mental health counselors or therapists were denied permission by their instructors to leave during training sessions. An instructor sergeant told the reporter that he thought the soldiers were faking their condition.
The reporter opined to listeners that the problems some Ft. Carson soldiers had experienced or displayed of agressive, disruptive behavior, substance abuse, and sometimes self-abuse would be symptomatic of PTSD.
The day after the broadcast, I mentioned some of this to a person who happened to have been a mental health counselor or evaluator for the Army during the Vietnam War. He'd done this for 2 years at a fort in Texas.
Actually, I was interviewing him on something else (Asian American advocacy in DC in the 70s), and when he recounted some of his background, it struck me how relevant his Army experience was to this current issue.
He figured that there was some kind of policy to prevent or restrict soldiers from receiving treatment for PTSD. Which was odd, because there's been so much study of PTSD since the Vietnam War.
He said that even drill sergeants can suffer from too much stress if they drill for more than 2 cycles in a row.
In any event, the issue of PTSD treatment (or lack of it) at Ft. Carson has been covered by other media before the NPR piece:
http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.com/2006/12/npr-major-military-ptsd-troop-abuse.html
My internet search also turned up a controversy over free community (off-base) mental health services for Iraq war vets in Colorado Springs back in the Fall of 05. (Ft. Carson is located on the south side of the city.)
http://threshingmachine.blogspot.com/2005/09/in-fastest-and-most-transparent-flip.html
http://threshingmachine.blogspot.com/2005/10/its-deja-rumsfeld-all-over-again-how.html
Of course, it's not just Ft. Carson where PTSD has been noticed. One blogger lists incidents allegedly related to PTSD that date back to 02, when special forces personnel returned to Ft. Bragg from action in Afghanistan:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/24/13533/5240
And what does the Army have to say about all of this?
They issued a rebuttal, of sorts, to the radio piece. The Army couldn't ignore it, since it prompted Senators Boxer, Bond, and Obama to ask the Pentagon to investigate the situation at Fort Carson.
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Here's another good site for keeping up to date with PTSD and discussing it:
http://www.gotptsd.com