Monthly Archives: June 2016

PTSD and Me

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June 27 is National PTSD Awareness Day, so it’s time to tell you about PTSD and me.

*Especially with a V.A. Center at hand in Bath, we often think about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a military issue. In my case it stems from grinding years of an upbringing that was verbally and emotionally abusive.

*I’d been working with a psychiatrist who said, “Let’s do an evaluation for PTSD.” This startled me, and I said, “Well, that’s not a problem.” She said, “Let’s try it anyway,” and started asking diagnostic questions off a list. When I answered yes to the first three she said, “Take his home and fill it out.” What do you know? I got 100%! A perfect score.

*So now that I’ve learned more about PTSD, I get it. It flows from exposure to trauma, maybe once, maybe repeatedly. If you can’t cope with it well, and some things NO ONE can cope with well, you may develop such symptoms as intrusive thoughts, frequent bad dreams, hyper-vigilance. Certain “triggers” may provoke a “flashback” response that puts you back in the trauma emotionally.

*In the movies this means delusions and hallucinations, and the character blazing away with machine guns because he thinks he’s back in Vietnam. It’s usually much quieter. If a person has been abused in the context of alcohol use, tinkling ice cubes might trigger panic, dread, nausea – the same feelings that the person had at the time. You’re trained into it.

*My PTSD diagnosis turned out to be tremendously liberating. Just like a diagnosis for a physical condition, it finally made all the symptoms make sense. It gave me a chance to study my own thoughts, feelings, and responses. And it gave me a route for dealing with my struggles effectively.

*When I was a little kid, I was relatively helpless. My “fight or flight” mechanism was constantly roaring in both directions, but I couldn’t go either way. Maybe that contributed to my developing adrenal failure (Addison’s Disease), which appears to be a linked condition – having either AD or PTSD increases the likelihood that you’ll develop the other. (It seems that verbal and emotional abuse are more likely to create long-term health problems than physical abuse is.)

*Well, I was helpless then, but I’m not now. One level of doing better is simple avoidance – my whole family knows what to shield me from on TV. Getting a comic book, or a graphic novel, or a cartoon collection, makes me feel better. Walking in the woods makes me feel better. Counseling helps. I take antidepressants. I learn how to deal with flashbacks and other symptoms.

*I’m happy for people to know that I have PTSD. That doesn’t bother me a bit, and they don’t have to worry that I’ve got a machine gun in my pocket. It’s part of my life, and while I’m unhappy with it, I’m not ashamed of it. I have a problem, and I get help, and I’m not ashamed of that, either.

*For some reason people think they need to deal with mental or emotional issues alone – “I’ve got to do this by myself.” Nobody who lies on the ground with a broken leg waves off the first aid and the ambulance and the doctors, saying, “I’ve got to do this by myself.” Good grief. Help is a great thing. You’d help somebody else if you could, wouldn’t you? Why not give them the same opportunity?

*People think hat only a weakling needs mental or emotional help, so they’re ashamed of it. They might as well be ashamed that they’re so weak that their leg broke.

*Since my diagnosis I’ve had help from a great family, great doctors, great friends and church congregations. Not everybody has that. But even if you don’t, there’s help out there somewhere.

*And if you have a loved one who lives with PTSD… well then, you live with it too. Make sure you keep yourself healthy, but learn something about the situation. Don’t be ashamed of it, and do what you can to help that person get healthier too.

*Some people have cancer, some people have PTSD. Neither one is anything to be ashamed of, or anything to hide. In either case, there are ways to get help.

Sapsucker Woods

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Well, I got up to Ithaca a week or two back. It’s a place I sometimes go when I need some quiet by myself, which is sort of a surprise, as it’s actually a very busy place.

*But I started my visit at one of the quietest places in or around Ithaca, namely Sapsucker Woods. Birders world-wide know the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which blends extremely scholarly research with resources for the backyard birder. I’ve taken part in some of their “citizen science” programs, where ordinary people use their observations to contribute to scientific study.

*I came for the woods and the trails, for the Cornell Lab maintains a (mostly wooded) 230-acre sanctuary called Sapsucker Woods. With binoculars around my neck I wandered the trails, stopping to spot the birds but mostly working on the brooding for which I’d come. Just being in the woods works wonders for me, and there are trails here that I’ve never even seen.

*Something else I’ve never seen here, to be honest, is a sapsucker. But I do run across other woodpeckers, and one of them was drumming quite close as I wandered by. I saw a yellow warbler, and even came across a couple of wood thrushes. I felt good about this because I see them so seldom nowadays, acid rain and habitat destruction having wiped out fifty per cent in fifty years.

*In the pond I spot a number of great blue herons, and a bewildering being seeming to glide along the surface without any activity for propulsion… until a head breaks the surface, and I realize with a laugh that it’s a submerged muskrat carrying a clump of reeds.

*Around the feeding station (and elsewhere) are cardinals, starlings, robins, goldfinches, mourning doves, and red-wing blackbirds. Squirrels and chipmunks zip in and out from under cover, while butterflies, moths, and damselflies flit along on the missions peculiar to their kinds.

*You can enjoy the trails on your own… they’ll even lend you binoculars… or there are activities and guided walks from time to time. Inside the center you can sit by thirty feet of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pond (lately covered with lilypads) and the feeders.

*Whenever the space is open I like to look at the wildlife murals and painting of Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Named for a great naturalist, Fuertes became a great nature artist, and his works are always wonders. Although born much later (1874, in Ithaca), he was in many ways a successor to Audubon.

*There are also two new murals, each covering a two-story interior wall. I instantly spotted what James Prosek was doing – echoing the endsheets of the groundbreaking 1934 Field Guide to the Birds, by Roger Tory Peterson. Both artists rendered the birds in their typical settings, all in black silhouette. For those of us of a certain age, such silhouettes seem as real as the birds themselves. They conjure up wintry days spent poring over those endsheets, hankering for the birds to come back again.

*Facing this is a marvelous world map by Jane Kim, depicting one representative of all 423 living families of bird in a location at which that bird is normally found – life size! The seven-foot ostrich, the five-foot cassowary, and the wandering albatross with its 10-foot wingspan all adorn more than 3000 square feet of mural, along with much smaller birds far more prosaic to us. But ghostly images show other families that have gone extinct, some in historic times.

*Anyhow, the Cornell Lab is a jewel of our Finger Lakes region – it’s even got its own Wild Birds Unlimited store. On my way out, a deer sauntered across the road in front of me. Great place.

Geniuses

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Who is a genius around here? A lot of people would say that Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport was a genius, and you could certainly make the case. He excelled in designing, using, and manufacturing engines, airplanes, motorcycles, and travel trailers – not to mention making his mark in city development. He might have been what Arthur Squires called a “maestro of technology.” All with an eight-grade education! So Glenn probably qualifies.

Just lately a lot of folks might think about the Hathwar brothers of Painted Post. Sriram (2014) and Jairam (2016) were each co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee – in both cases, after a nail-biting struggle that tens of thousands of us watched live on TV. (Not that they felt any pressure, of course!)

We have two folks locally who are “officially” geniuses. They were honored with John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grants,” for “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction… not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential.” The award includes a large stipend, recently raised to $625,000.

BILL T. JONES moved to Steuben County as a child, in a family that came first as migrant farm workers, and was graduated from Wayland High School in 1970, then went on to SUNY Binghamton. He got his MacArthur Fellowship in 1994.

But in his “spare time” he has also picked up Kennedy Center Honors; two Tony Awards; a National Medal of Arts; the Dorothy and Lilian Gish Prize; and six honorary doctorates, besides being inducted into the Steuben County Hall of Fame and the National Museum of Dance Hall of Fame… and numerous other honors.

At Wayland he was active in drama and at Binghamton in dance. He has made his mark as a dancer and as a choreographer, and he has been honored for his influence in the development of young American artists. Under his senior photo in the Wayland yearbook is the verse, “Where be bonds to bind the free? All the world was made for me!” Prophetic words, we’d have to agree.

DR. MARC EDWARDS, who got his MacArthur fellowship in 2007, has had a life and career that in a sense are mirror images of Bill T. Jones’s. Dr. Edwards was born in Hornell (1964) and lived in Troupsburg until the family moved to the Buffalo area, where he got his schooling. (His grandmothers still live in Steuben County.) While Bill T. Jones has soared in the arts, Marc Edwards has excelled in the sciences.

In 2004 Time Magazine named him one of America’s most innovative scientists, and just a couple of months ago Time named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He’s been most in the news recently for his role in blowing the whistle on the Flint water crisis; he earlier played a similar role in Washington, D.C., in that case tackling the Centers for Disease Control directly and publicly… and successfully.

Dr. Edwards is Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Like Bill T. Jones, he has won numerous academic and professional awards.

Looking at the Flint case MSNBC said, “Up against ignorance and indifference, Edwards and [colleague] Hanna-Attisha were right, they were brave and they were insistent… these two tough, caring researchers are the detectives who cracked the case.” We can only applaud.

Running for President — Here in Steuben

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For fifty years or so after the Civil War, railroad routes channeled the course of presidential campaigns. This very sensibly took candidates to major population centers, but also gave them a chance to “whistle stop” at in-between towns that never see major candidates nowadays. When Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign train stopped at Cameron Mills, he spotted the milk station manager with his nine children on the loading dock. “This is the most prosperous place I have been to yet,” TR quipped (he only had five himself).

Roosevelt (running for vice-president as a Republican) and William Jennings Bryan (Democratic presidential candidate) both stumped Corning in 1900. Bryan was one of the country’s greatest orators. Four years earlier, at 36 just barely eligible for the White House, he had come out of nowhere to seize the Democratic and Populist nominations, running on a reform ticket. In 1900 he was rematched against McKinley, who conducted a “front porch” campaign, meeting friendly groups in Ohio while sending the energetic, combative Roosevelt out on the hustings.

On arriving in Bath in October ‘00, Bryan led a parade from the station to the courthouse square. Many in attendance were enthusiastic supporters, though the crowd included opponents, one of whom carried a banner (now in Steuben County Historical Society’s collection) reading “Bryan is in the Enemy’s Country.” Some no doubt just wanted to experience the prairie wind with which Bryan was scouring the land. The Democratic and Republican newspapers disagreed widely as to what kind of welcome he got.

New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (unsuccessful Republican presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948) made frequent appearances in Corning. Dewey and IBM founder Tom Watson (of Campbell) made sure that their 1952 choice (Dwight D. Eisenhower) got good face time too. But by then campaign trips were revolving around airports, not depots. Local partisans were on their own, as Pulteney Democrats had been in 1892 when they slung a large banner for Grover Cleveland and Adlai Stevenson (grandfather of Eisenhower’s opponent 60 years later).

With TV, radio, and Internet to reach voters, major candidates mostly leave small communities to the “third parties” with their quixotic campaigns. Ralph Nader in 2000 let his hair down enough to freely express his surprise at discovering he was giving a press conference in Corning… it was a very busy tour, and he’d thought it was Binghamton.