Celebrating Awareness

Winter in Ohio; now 6 more weeks of winter? I used to love it – when we got real snow that was feet deep for weeks and I could go sledding or build snowmen. I remember when I was little how our neighbor built a huge snow fort with the neighborhood kids and we played in it for weeks. It was nearly the size of their house! (as I recall). And it just didn’t melt. Now I look at winter in Ohio in a whole new light. Will there be school cancellations? Can my son drive safely to his job? What’s my drive time going to be like today? Am I scheduled in a school that has a delay? (I hope, I hope!) Growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be. But I still love a good snow day!

Something else that should be on our minds in February is the whole idea of love. Sitting by a warm fire, sipping coffee, watching the snow fall and cuddling with that special someone. Valentine’s Day! Expressing the dearest and kindest of thoughts about the one (or ones) we love. It really shouldn’t just be once a year though. Just think about how we need healthy relationships with other people to survive, to feel connected, to feel like we belong This is a good time to share with others about how and why they matter to you; we could all use some extra warmth. Aside from Valentine’s Day, February is also cause to celebrate Black History Month, Relationship Wellness Month, International Boost Self Esteem Month, Adopt a Rescued Rabbit Month, American Heart Month, Library Lovers Month, National Weddings Month & several more. And don’t forget President’s Day (Happy Birthday George and Abe), the Super Bowl, and now, Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.

There are so many reasons to celebrate (just look online to see all types of February celebrations!), and now here comes another “awareness month”? How do we celebrate that? Teen Dating Violence? Do we really need another “awareness month”? Well Vice President Joe Biden, author of the landmark 1994 Violence Against Women Act, said this: “After fifteen years of working to end domestic violence, we have learned that teens are not immune from abuse in relationships. Teen dating violence is all too common, and ends up leading to vicious and unhealthy cycles for years to come. Our responsibility - as parents, teachers, mentors, and community leaders – is to guide our young people towards respectful relationships free from harassment and abuse; teach them that it’s ok to walk away from a bad situation; and encourage them to speak out when they see a friend in trouble. In many communities, teens themselves are leading the way in organizing their schools and communities to stand against violence. I commend them.”

I certainly hope that most teens have those wonderful memories of snow days and sledding and building a snow fort, but what about those whose most powerful memories come from their greatest fears? Studies show that one in five teenagers in a serious dating relationship report being physically abused by their partner. This issue is so serious that Ohio Governor, Ted Strickland, has signed into law House Bill 19, or the Tina Croucher Act, named for an Ohio teen who was murdered by her high school ex-boyfriend. Tina's Law requires Ohio schools to adopt a policy that prevents and addresses incidents of dating violence at school, provides staff training on dating violence prevention, and includes dating prevention education for students in 7th through 12th grade.

January was Stalking Awareness month. How convenient. From stalking to teen dating violence. What is the world coming to? We really need to be talking with our children and our young adults. This kind of violence must stop. We as the adults must model good behavior in their lives. Why would anyone think that stalking or domestic violence is okay or acceptable? If you are not sure how to have that kind of talk with your own children, please let us help you. We offer programs to children in preschool all the way through college. We talk about healthy relationships of all kinds. We also share media literacy with our county seventh graders because that’s where they get so much of their education it seems. Last year Rihanna and Chris Brown were in the headlines. Today the name is Heidi Montag and her never-ending plastic surgeries. What are we letting our children learn without talking to them about consequences or positive role models? Technology is a fabulous thing – if you know how to utilize it properly.

So maybe we can utilize this latest awareness month and the cold weather to do something really important. We can talk with our children, especially teens, about some of the violence in our lives. Do you remember families spending time together? Around the radio, then the television set, playing board games or even a Wii? There’s that whole initiative to get families to eat supper together again. We need to just talk; re-open the lines of communication. Remind ourselves and our children that love is not abuse and that love is never supposed to hurt. Can we spend time sharing healthy habits or modeling better behavior? Get those board games out again. Stop acting like you have the right to anything you want just because you want it – or her, or him – and think about that other person. Those family times together were great fun, but they also allowed us to share ideas and improve our communication skills. How can we raise awareness of issues like stalking and teen dating violence if we are afraid to talk about it? If we don’t spend time with the adults who matter to us? If we as adults, aren’t modeling better behavior? So can we listen to the words of our governor and vice president? Students need to learn about dating violence, but not by experiencing it. Through education and communication. By spending some time with friends and family that they love, students should be able to reduce violence through better behavior. By using words to describe how they are feeling instead of a fist or a threat, they can resolve conflicts more peacefully. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Then maybe we can go back to those days of hot chocolate and snow forts, when things seemed simpler.

--Jan GreenRiver
Dir. of Prevention
PAVE Coordinator

Sad Genii

There is an apocryphal story about the legendary blues musician Robert Johnson trading his soul for musical talent at a rural Mississippi crossroads. According to the story, he gave his guitar to a mysterious man who tuned it, played a few songs and then returned it and, in so doing gave Johnson his talent. Told often enough in the 70 plus years since his death, it has taken on enough truthiness to have spawned songs, books and at least one movie starring Ralph Macchio. Hoping for lightning to strike again, would-be musicians make the pilgrimage to Clarksdale—although there seems to be some uncertainty as to the precise location of this mythical intersection. (I envision scruffy, guitar-carrying hopefuls accosting strangers asking them to tune their instruments like it was open-bar night at a troubadours’ convention.)

Waiting for the devil to give you talent, or for that matter, lightning to strike, is a trap that many of us fall into and something that occupies me both personally and professionally. Making cheap jokes about musicians is just too easy, but I have to admit that I am envious of anyone who knows what they want and is prepared to pursue that goal.

At some point in our lives we each of us have had access to some sort of instrument even if it was a toddler’s color-coded xylophone. We could have worked at it and become the best color-coded xylophone players in the world, but life had other adventures in store for us: we reached the crossroads and turned the corner. Those who make the journey to Clarksdale are making a commitment to music and are hoping that music commits to them. They have bought into the inspiration-perspiration paradigm for success and, having invested the perspiration, they are hoping for transformational inspiration. Practice might get you to Carnegie Hall, but you had better have something to say once you get there.

I feel a strong kinship to this story because I feel as though I have reached my own crossroads without my instrument.

I have a hard time thinking of myself as a middle-aged man and yet as I engage in the inevitable stock-taking that comes with each turn of the calendar page, I recognize that I bear almost all of the hallmarks of the old clichés. (And if I thought I could afford a little red sports car….)

I have always tried to do what I thought was the right thing. I think I work hard and color inside the lines and yet it seems as though every year I have less and less to show for it. I want more and better for my near and dear and can hardly afford to tread water. And while I struggle with that challenging reality, I am acutely aware of those who receive vulgar rewards for doing the wrong thing and erasing the lines.

Staying the course and delaying gratification are hard-wired into my DNA but as I hurtle toward another milestone birthday I am wondering how much longer I have to delay, defer and deny. The longer I have to wait, the angrier I am getting.

My brother is just on the other side of a milestone birthday and he is every bit as impatient, just as angry and just as uncertain about how to change his fortunes. Which corner do we turn and, perhaps most paralyzingly, what if it’s the wrong one?

We want to take control of our lives, but aren’t certain how to do it.

Much to my wife’s dismay, I watch a lot of televised poker. I am just old enough to fall between the poker booms. When I was growing up nobody I knew played cards, let alone gambled. When Texas Hold ‘em exploded a couple of years ago suddenly everyone was playing.

What is fascinating to me is that players make decisions based on the bare minimum of information and are prepared to back up those choices with some or all of their chips. They can even go “all-in” at any point putting all of their chips into the pot.

I don’t know how people can do that. Sure it’s a game and the sun will still come out tomorrow even if you lose, but still….

To be confident enough to risk all your chips on the turn of a card…, what must that be like?

My parents were born during the Great Depression—the last one—and they had a real respect for risk: it was to be avoided. And if it couldn’t be avoided it had to be managed. As a result, I have a real appreciation for the Law of Gravity and I know all about falling: people fall out, they fall off, they fall down and they fall short. If you are to stay safe then you have to stay on the sidelines.

To play poker at the highest levels is to have enough respect for risk to know when to ignore it.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, the worst starting hand is a seven and a two. With those two cards, the odds of having the winning hand are the longest compared to any other combination. This is one of the first things you learn about the game and yet there are players who will regularly play and win with that hand.

To paraphrase the philosopher Kenny Rogers: you do have to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em and when to go all-in. Folding I have down to a science; it’s holding and going all-in that I have no skills at.

So, why don’t I play more poker? That would be way too risky.

Part of what makes Texas Hold ‘Em work on TV is that the structure of the game is finite. Like life, Hold ‘Em ends. Two players in each hand are obliged to make forced bets—the big and small blinds—in order to start the pot. At regular intervals during the game the size of those bets goes up. This keeps people like me from staying at the table and not risking anything. You can’t help but get in the game. And if they don’t actually play a hand, just put in their blinds and fold their cards, sooner or later they will be “blinded out”. The cost of these forced bets will consume all of their chips. This too is most life-like.

As we have been talking about this over the last month, what I have come to realize is that my brother and I share this emerging sense that we are being blinded out of our lives.

He asked me the other night whether I thought there was such a thing as a “sad gene”. He asked me via text message and I misread it thinking he had typed “sad genii.” Was there some foundational reason why we can’t get to where we want to be? Did we reach our crossroads only to meet the Sad Genii?

The answer to this question is yes and no. We know that depression is part nature and part nurture. Like poker it’s partly the cards you’re dealt and partly the skill with which you play them. But we know too that skilled players can win with lousy cards.

Almost as powerful as our respect for risk is our sense of regret. We know too much about the bad choices we made and the roads not taken. I know in my own case that I have tried for too long to not add to my personal regret chip stack and now, perversely, it is the fear of getting to the end of my life and having too much that is spurring me forward to take more risk.

Robert Johnson got his musical gift from a mysterious stranger he met at a crossroads. In our own ways, my brother and I have each come to our own crossroads and met ourselves which I think may prove to be just as great a gift.

Time to shuffle up and deal.

--Graham Campbell,
Associate Director

English is a Funny Language

English is a funny language. There's a world of difference between "going to jail" and "going to the jail." You see, I "go to the jail" twice a week to offer parenting programs. Oddly enough, it's one of the things I enjoy most about my job. The men and women I meet at the jail come to my class voluntarily, so they tend to be interested, involved, and they are some of the most appreciative people I have ever met. Mind you, I wouldn't want to stay locked up, but so far, the sentries have always let me out, so it's all good.

Back to enjoying my job. "Enjoy" isn't the right word, is it? I should have said "rewarding." It's a painful time for most of them--sometimes it's the first time they've ever been away from their children. Often they feel horrible about the effect a bad decision has had on their families, especially when an addiction is involved. And I'd bet addiction to alcohol or other drugs is involved about 80% of the time, even though the charge may not involve substance abuse. (I asked a deputy and a jail social worker to guess, too, and all 3 of us came up with 80% on the nose.)

I ask parents at the jail to fill out a short survey at the end of the workshop. One of the questions is "Because of this workshop, I plan to __________________________________." Here are a few of the answers I've gotten in the last month:

• "Talk differently to my children."
• "Change how I handle issues that arise daily in our home."
• "Be a better parent."
• "Watch my words."
• "Use the tools I learned."
• "Keep my son as a priority."
• "Positive environment, specific encouragement."
• "Be there." (Especially meaningful for someone in jail.)

And my personal favorite: "Keep going. I love it."

You don't have to go to jail to attend parenting classes. All our programs are free, although they require a reservation. We normally schedule classes on Mondays, 6-8 PM; Tuesdays, 10 AM-noon; and by appointment at other times. For example, temporarily we have a class on Thursdays 4:30-6:30 PM to accommodate a dad's schedule.

As one dad in jail said: "Be there!" But remember to call me first at 788-0300 to make a reservation. (If there's not enough registration, we may not meet.) You can also call me if you'd like to volunteer to work with parents.

--Judith Allee

Parent Support Coordinator

Compeer Joins National Call to Service

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In celebration of the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the members of the MHA Compeer program will be participating in a community service project at their January meetings, January 19--the day after the MLK, Jr. Day holiday--and January 27, 2010.

Compeer is a social integration and wellness program that matches individuals who have experienced mental illness with community volunteers who serve in one-to-one friendship matches.

Serving Through Example
Compeer members and volunteers will be learning about the teachings and life of Reverend King, as they prepare a project to be donated to the local Salvation Army Shelter. Some of the Compeer program participants have utilized the services of the Salvation Army’s Food Bank and Shelter in the past, and wish to give back to the community.

Members will be assembling “welcome packets” for new residents of the 18-bed temporary shelter, which will contain uplifting messages and donated personal care products. Kay Hartman, Volunteer Coordinator of the Salvation Army, says that many residents arrive at the shelter with nothing, not even a toothbrush. Compeer Members hope to reduce the emotional stress of living in temporary housing by providing the guests with comfort items of their own.

Dr. King’s Message of Hope
Dr. King’s concept of “somebodiness,” which symbolized the celebration of human worth and the conquest of subjugation, gave people of color and poor people hope and a sense of dignity. His philosophy of nonviolent direct action, and his strategies for rational and non-destructive social change, galvanized the conscience of this nation and reordered its priorities. His wisdom, his words, his actions, his commitment, and his dream for a new way of life are intertwined with the American experience.

In 1994, Congress designated the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday as a national day of service and charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with leading this effort.

Taking place each year in January, the King Day of Service is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service – a “day on, not a day off.” The King Day of Service empowers individuals, strengthens communities, bridges barriers, addresses social problems, and moves us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a “Beloved Community.”

Dr. King recognized the power of service to strengthen communities and achieve common goals. Service is integral to meeting national challenges such as poverty, economic insecurity, illiteracy, hunger, and more.

How You Can Get Involved
If you, or your family or organization, would like to join in the King Day of Service this year, go to MLKDAY.gov for more information, or contact your favorite local service organization and offer your assistance. Many Projects are taking place throughout the month.

--Kristen Frame

Compeer Coordinator

Silent Night

Thanksgiving morning I went out to get a coffee and drove past some well-insulated souls who were camping out in front of the neighborhood big box electronics store. With their coolers and lawn chairs, thinsulate and sweaters, they were bound and determined to be first in line when the store opened early the following morning.

It's always struck me as strange that we refer to the "official" start of the holiday season as "Black Friday." It's the "most wonderful time of the year" and yet the associations with the Great Depression and its own black weekday are undeniable. (More undeniable when the January credit card statements arrive....) And while I can think of little more intolerable than wading into the shark-infested waters of bargain-hunters hell-bent of finding the perfect holiday gift for their loved ones, I know that there are a great many people who look forward to this experience every year. It has become a holiday tradition right up there with any depicted by Currier and Ives.

I've been thinking a lot about holiday traditions.

It seems like the older we get, the farther we are prepared to go to honor the memory of a Christmas past.

People do things at Christmas that they don't do at any other time of the year: they go to parties, eat strange foods and even watch Hollywood musicals. People make appearances at soup kitchens, nursing homes, churches; they donate money and clothing, go sledding and even sing. And they do things to their homes that they would never do at any other time of the year.

I saw a television special about the "most extreme Christmas houses." They interviewed people around the U.S. who each year install ever more elaborate holiday light shows. Each of the people interviewed talked in terms of the hundreds of thousands of lights they put up and the hundreds of extra dollars in additional electricity they consumed. One man, a law enforcement officer who proudly identified himself as Mr. Christmas, even runs a low power radio station from a closet in his home during Christmas.

It would be easy to default to the bromide that Christmas is for children but, like most things adults say, I think it's more complicated than that. I think adults extend themselves at this time of year as a way of finding their way back to their own Christmas Past.

From my Christmas past, I can remember being excited to go to have my picture taken with Santa. I remember going downtown for the Christmas parade. I remember looking forward to the annual showing of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." And I remember sitting on the floor in the gym in my elementary school and watching "Babes in Toyland" just before the Christmas break. But as I have been thinking about Christmas this year, the dominant image has been surprising in its stillness.

In our living room there was a bay window and window seat and directly across the street there was a very bright streetlight. Each year, when it came time to put up the tree, we would experiment with different locations, but one of the most popular was to center it in the bay window. Lit or unlit, decorated or undecorated, it was thrilling to see a tree standing in the living room framed by the yellow curtains and silhouetted by the light coming through the window from across the street.

The image that I have been carrying this year is from my polo pajama days--I can't remember what year. I do recall waking up way too early and, like Cindy Loo Who, going into the living room just to see what Santa had been up to.

We had apparently been very good that year because in addition to the wrapped gifts that had been there when I went to bed, there were unwrapped gifts from Santa for my brother and sister and me. But what I am remembering is the site of that tree and the light from the street as it bounced off the snowbank and into the living room. The house was still, the scene was magical and like the wrapped packages, the day had promise.

Growing up is a lot like unwrapping those packages: despite wishing and hinting for a Major Matt Mason with jet pack, you never know when you're going to get something practical like socks, or a sweater.

Over the years I have spent quite a few Christmases organizing events for children and generating donations for worthy causes and so by the time that the 25th rolls around, I am pretty Christmassed out. I try to "gear up" for the holidays by playing the holiday music and I really do look forward to watching "White Christmas" every year, but Christmas for me happens late in the evening the night before.

Round about midnight I like to go outside and just listen.

It gets quiet in a way that doesn't happen at any other time of the year. After the last of the retail warriors has hung up their coats, after the kids are in bed, after everything, there is silence. There is no traffic, no car alarms, no dogs barking: it's still. As I listen, I am standing again in the living room of my childhood. All too soon the air will be cut with the sounds of traffic and children, dogs and sirens, but for a couple of hours it really is a silent night.

The escalating chaos of the ever-lengthening holiday season is over. The preparations are as complete as they are going to be and, as the poem says, people are at last able to settle their brains.

It's kind of like when your computer locks up and the only way to move forward is to turn it off and wait a couple of minutes before turning it back on again. In the silence of the Christmas overnight, we are rebooting.

I recently read a news item about research that showed children are innately sociable and helpful to others. As we get older, we learn other behaviors that seem to be driven by our need for protection and self-preservation, but right at the very beginning we seem to have very strong instincts to help other people. That, as adults, we are more likely to manifest these same behaviors at this time of year suggests that we are driven by a spirit from our past.

As our brains are settling and we are reconnecting with our most essential selves, we humans are capable of some remarkable things.

Not a year goes by that someone does not reference the Christmas of 1914 and the 48-hour spontaneous truce that broke out through the trenches. World War I would claim approximately 9 million lives, but for a brief period, the enemies exchanged gifts, shared food and even played soccer. It only happened once, during the War's first Christmas, but it speaks volumes about the difference between our instincts and our learned behaviors.

Out of the silence of the Christmas overnight can come the ideal gift, the ideal moment and even our ideal of who we want to be. I am not a person of faith, but, in my own way, I do recognize this night as being different from every other night and one that is full of promise and for that reason I do look forward to it every year.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director