Check out this youtube link to see the NJ SEEDS video project that I worked on for many months!  The video is targeted at prospective SEEDS students and their parents, and its goal is to help them see how SEEDS can change the trajectory of a young person’s life.

I didn’t want to look miserable (or half-dead) when I was running, but unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate.  I’m in the white and black, and I don’t look too happy ….

Tyler, on the other hand, looked great — focused and strong!

Yesterday, I went to NYC”s annual photo convention at the Jacob Javits Center and attended a seminar Making a Difference with Your Photography given by Phil Borges, photographer.  His images, mostly photos of indigenous people worldwide are striking, beautiful and deceptively quiet.  His work’s mission:  To bring awareness and inspire support for individuals and organizations that address social issues around the world.

Borges started out as an orthodontist and practiced for 18 years in CA, before he decided that he would reinvent himself and become a photographer.  He moved his wife and young son to the state of Washington and launched his new life and career.  He became an international success.  He spoke calmly and eloquently about his work for over two hours yesterday.  What was most unexpected for me — his emphasis on how his decision to dedicate his photography to doing good has brought him success, resources to shoot more photographs, do more books and venture into multimedia.

Borges showed a photo that he had taken of a 27-year-old Ethiopian warrior, a highly esteemed member of his tribe.  The young man belongs to a tribe where disagreements of any kind between the members of the tribe are discouraged.  Even raising one’s voice toward another fellow tribe member is considered bad form. The warrior’s arm, clearly visible in the photo, was marked with rows of raised scars.  Each scar represented someone he had killed from another tribe.

“This tribe’s circle of compassion extends only to members of its own tribe,” Borges said and showed on the screen this quote from Albert Einstein:

A human being is part of the whole, called by us, “Universe,” a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such an achievement is in itself part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

That’s what we’ve tried to do in the United States, Borges said, and now we’re trying to develop a global circle of compassion.

As I sat and listened, deeply moved by Borges’ powerful photos and compelling talk, I remembered sitting in a journalism ethics class at the Columbia j-school several years ago.  The course was co-taught by two professors — Stephen Isaacs and Jim Carey (1934-2006).  Carey, a native Rhode Islander ( I can’t resist that noting that fact!), was a cultural historian, a theorist on communication and a wonderful teacher.  He was a small man with a big voice that boomed out in the big lecture hall.  He urged us, his students, to view journalism as the foundation of a democracy, as a conversation required of citizens, and that it was our responsibility to continue to draw more and people worldwide into the conversation.

I am glad to have this chance to honor my former professor (who died not long after my course concluded) by connecting the theme he stressed in his lifetime to Phil Borges’s photography and Albert Einstein’s thoughts.

Today, I noticed that the WSJ has two articles relevant to my most recent post about our financial system.

Morgan Stanley Takes on Risk, Posts First Gain Since Crisis. Apparently, Morgan Stanley, a bank holding company now, has adopted the same higher risk strategy that Goldman Sachs is now following.

And, Divorce as a Cure for the Bankin g Headache.  This article by Peter Eavis concludes:  “Granted, reinstating Glass-Steagall has little chance of happening, and it could only work if it were part of a wider reform package. But if banks’ securities arms once again become a problem, Mr. King (Bank of England governor) and Mr. Volcker would suddenly have a more receptive audience.”

I think the question should not be if, but when.  Another opportunity for the Obama administration.

All my friends know I don’t follow the financial markets closely, nor do I read all of the financial papers, magazines and blogs about finance and the economy on a regular basis.

Over the past few days, though, I’ve read three articles carefully in quick succession — Vanity Fair’s Wall Street’s Near-Death Experience by Andrew Ross Sorkin and two New York Times stories:  Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth by Graham Rowley and Volcker Fails to Sell a Bank Strategy by Louis Uchitelle.

Sorkin’s story is an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published book, Too Big to Fail. The article is a depressing saga of unpreparedness and hasty decision-making by both the business tycoons who lead the country’s financial behemoths and by the governmental leaders who shape the country’s economic policy.

The excerpt ends with the rescue of Morgan Stanley by the Japanese, who infused $9 billion into the sinking firm, to the great relief of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan.  Dimon was being aggressively pressured by the government to buy Morgan Stanley because the Chinese had backed out of making a larger investment in the firm (Mitsubishi already owned a 10 percent stake in Morgan Stanley) during the crisis. While this drama was unfolding, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, exhorted John Mack, Morgan Stanley’s chairman, to hang on, because if Morgan Stanley failed, Goldman’s collapse was only 30 seconds behind.

Doesn’t just even this brief summary make the whole “rescue” of Morgan Stanley seem hectic, desperate and crazy?  We’re relying on the Chinese and Japanese to safeguard the soundness of our financial institutions and our economic security?

Almost immediately after finishing the Vanity Fair article, I read the NYT story about the bailout.  The gist of this article is that Goldman Sachs is quickly returning to big earnings and bonuses because it’s using the bailout money and its ability to borrow cheaply from the Federal Reserve (now that it has been transformed into a bank holding company) to take big trading risks!  in fact, even bigger trading risks that its competitors who seem to have been scared into some sense of responsibility and decorum by their recent near-death experiences.

Whoa!  I left banking behind 22 years ago, but this outcome doesn’t seem right to me.

Nor apparently to Paul Volcker, an infinitely more informed, experienced and knowledgeable financial expert than I am.  He is recommending that the government reinstate some form of the Glass-Steagall Act that kept commercial and investment banks separate.  Glass-Steagall allowed only commercial banks to borrow money from the government at lower rates, but then they were required to use the money to fund loans that, hopefully, fueled the economy.  Investment banks borrowed and traded at market rates and weren’t allowed to use cheaper government money to fund their trading operations.

Maybe I’m missing something, but sounds like sensible advice, doesn’t it?

Ty and I both ended up running the half marathon in Newport yesterday due to the weather, which was AWFUL! (Tyler had originally planned to run the full marathon.)

The temperature was in the low 40s, and the wind blew in gusts of up to 40 mph!  Although the weather prediction called for the rain to abate over the morning, it rained nonstop and sometimes sleeted.  I ran through stinging sleet at the most exposed points of the race — out at the tip of Fort Adams and along Ocean Drive.

“Well, we can say that we ran through a noreaster!” one man running along near me at Fort Adams yelled out, as we all bent our heads down against the wind, rain and sleet and slogged on.

Despite the horrible conditions, Ty ran the 13.1 miles in 1:40, and I finished in 2:06, although I waited for a while to cross the start line, so my actual race time was a little bit faster.

We have no pictures because the weather was too bad to take out our cameras, but Ty is featured at the start (at the 15-second mark) in a Providence Journal video on the race!

Today, I was delighted to learn that the photo below was chosen to be displayed at:

The Putnam Arts Council’s 47th Annual Juried Fine Arts Exhibit

The Lodge (building #8) at Tilly Foster, 100 Route 312, Brewster, New York

October 17 ~ November 6

Reception & Awards: Saturday, October 17, 4 - 6 p.m.

Sheltering Arms Community Pool, Harlem, Summer 2008

The jurors were Neil Watson, Executive Director of the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York and Rae Wood, an artist whose pastels and oils are exhibited internationally and a teacher at the Katonah Art Center.

I need a clone for the weekend!  I’ll be in Newport on Saturday, preparing to run the half marathon on Sunday morning (got my lucky number 2960 by e-mail today), so I won’t be able to attend the artists’ reception, to my regret.

“How do we get soldiers and families access to the resources they need?”  Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz asked at the start of the third and last military family forum.

Soldiers and their families can sometimes end up as isolated islands, even in New York City, if they can’t connect with the programs orservices they need to thrive, Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, said.

He credited his wife, Laura Stultz, whom he called “my hero,” with theidea of a virtual installation to bring resources to soldiers and their families.

The first virtual installation center, the Army Strong Community Center, created for families that live great distances from military installations, opened on Sept.12 in Rochester, N.Y.

“The Army Strong Community Center should really be called the Army Strong Community Connection Center,” Mrs. Stultz said at the Oct. 7 forum that is part of the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition.The goal of the centers, which are targeted at all military families, is building connections. There are plans under way to build five more pilot centers and continued service growth.

Col. Kris Peterson, Army psychiatry consultant on children and adolescents, illustrated the need to expand services for military families in his presentation. He outlined the adverse impact that eight years of war and multiple deployments have had on the mental health of children from military families and the lack of sufficient mental health services to help them.

“Parents are no longer gone for months,” Peterson said, “but years, and we are now seeing increasing levels of anxiety and depression across all age groups.”

Preschoolers show higher levels of aggression, and teenagers exhibit a lower threshold for emotional outbursts, in addition to increased anxiety and depression. The consequences of these adverse mental health changes are higher rates of failure in school and higher dropout rates.

In 2003, 800,000 military children were seen by non-military outpatient mental health clinics. Last year, the number of children seen in non-military clinics reached 1.6 million. Peterson said that families are turning to non-military mental health clinics because the military mental health clinics are already saturated.

The Military Child and Adolescent Center of Excellence (253-968-4723 or 253-968-4772) was founded in 2008 to help redress this imbalance by training more mental health providers since multiple deployments are ongoing. Its goal is to reduce stigma and promote health-seeking behaviors. Also, the Army is testing in both Washington and Hawaii the Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) counseling program developed by the Navy, www.focusproject.org

Tim Red, director of military programming for the National Fatherhood Institute, www.fatherhood.org, described the need for military fathers to stay involved, responsible and committed to their children.

“Think of a social ill,” Red said, “and it’s likely to be highly correlated with fathers’ absence. The list includes poverty, school failure, drugs, crime and suicide.

Currently, there are 165,000 military fathers deployed, Red said, and they have 333, 000 children. The military needs to create more programs for fathers, Red said, to avert crises at home and prevent distracted fathers from serving military missions.

“Soldiers respond when they’re told what is important. The more important fatherhood becomes to Army leadership, the more it will be important to soldiers,” he concluded.

The second half of the last military family program focused on community involvement with the military. In 2007, the Army Community Covenant was launched to help promote military and community interaction. The number of communities that have signed the covenant at present is 250, and 200 more are new enrollees in the works.

Four organizations described their commitment to the military community:

The founder of Azalea Charities, Frank E. Lasch, Sr., spoke about the nonprofit’s dedication to wounded soldiers and their families. Azalea,>>www.azaleacharities.org, has already donated 28,000 comfort items and over 1 million phone minutes to them.

“Tell us where the gaps are, and let us have the privilege and honor of filling them,” Lasch said.

Matthew Wright, director of corporate and foundation relations at Scott and Wright Memorial Hospital in Texas, said its project is to place mental health counselors in primary care clinics off base. The approach removes stigma, increases access and provides immediate assistance. The counseling is free and unlimited. The initial goal was to provide 900 counseling sessions in 24 months, but the project supplied 4,675 sessions in a little over 18 months, and is currently seeking more funding.

Susan Agustin, who founded Operation Give a Hug and now works in partnership with the Army, www.operationgiveahug.org, said that that the nonprofit has given away 150,000 dolls to date. The dolls have a plastic slot on their heads where the photo of the face of the deployed parent can be inserted and also have a hang tag that lists resources and contact info for military families.

Daniel Nichols, executive director of the Military to Medicine Institute that is part of the INOVA Health System, >>www.militarytomedicine.org, outlined the effort INOVA Health System,www.inova.org, is making to hire military talent. He said that the organization hired 20 military spouses last week and provides no-cost training for military family members who want to enter the healthcare field.

Brig. Gen. Reuben Jones, adjutant general, wrapped up the last forum by inviting all audience members to
follow him on Twitter at>>http://twitter.com/BGreubenjones or
>>http://twitter.com/FamilyMWR

and to use the following Web sites for more information:

>>www.myarmyonesource.com
>>www.armymwr.com
>>www.armyfrg.org

He also thanked Sylvia Kidd, director of AUSA family programs, for
organizing the three forums, and she requested that all audience members complete the AUSA Family Member Survey, >>http://ausa.questionpro.com/,
that will help AUSA understand what hardships family members undergo during a deployment and the availability of TRICARE.

To see presentations from Military Family Forum III, click here.

By Susan M. Sipprelle
for AUSA

“We know that the strength of our Army comes from the strength of our families,” said Brig. Gen. Reuben D. Jones on Oct. 6, at the second of the Association of the United States Army’s three military family forums.

As the Army Family Covenant kicks off its third year of existence, Jones said that the Army is striving to help its soldiers and families develop resilience — positive adaptation to repeated adversity or trauma.

Also at the Oct. 6 event, Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire, director of the Army’s suicide prevention task force, reported on what she called an unfortunate trend — the steady increase in the rate of Army suicides. In 2008, 140 active duty soldiers committed suicide out of a total active duty population of 700,000. Before 2005, the rate of suicide in the Army was lower than suicide rate in the general population; however, today, the Army suicide rate exceeds the civilian rate.

The Army has identified a long list of factors that increase the risk of suicide, including: infidelity, alcohol abuse, high-risk driving, multiple drug offenses, use of opiates, sleep deprivation, erratic behavior, compressed dwell times between deployments, undiagnosed PTSD.

The Army is examining its counseling, drug testing and medical treatment programs to see if they are effective at mitigating those risks and addressing the needs of today’s soldiers.

Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum directs the Army’s new effort to ensure that its soldiers are strong mentally, as well as physically. The effort is called comprehensive soldier fitness.

“It is essential to intervene in a crisis,” Cornum said about the Army’s suicide prevention programs, “but it’s better to prevent catastrophic thinking that results in a crisis.”

Most soldiers get through their deployments, she said, but they could overcome mental health difficulties more easily if they had been trained beforehand. Cornum said that training is most needed by the Army’s recent influx of very young soldiers who face the complex array of stressors inherent to warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. These young soldiers, who enter the Army with varying degrees of mental preparedness, are often asked to accomplish offensive, defensive, stability and civilian support tasks within a very short period of time.

Comprehensive soldier fitness will be provided for the entire force, beginning this month and will be available in early 2010 for families and civilian employees of the military. The comprehensive effort has four components: an online self-assessment tool, online self-development tools guided by the assessment, resilience training and master resilience training.

The Army is making a long-term commitment to improving soldiers’ mental health with its new comprehensive soldier fitness, Cornum said.

Resilience training will help soldiers develop better coping skills – steering them to find ways out of catastrophic, but temporary, crises. The ultimate desired outcome of the training is that most soldiers will find stability, or even growth, after confronting adversity or trauma.

The next three presenters focused on the benefits available from the Veterans Administration (VA), which are explained in greater detail on its Web site:>>www.va.gov

Mike Carr, management and program analyst from the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), explained its five groups of programs:

• compensation and pension,
• education, loan guaranty,
• insurance,
• vocational rehabilitation and
• employment.

Some of these benefits and services are available for active duty soldiers after they have served for 90 days or 180 days prior to separation and pre-discharge, not only veterans.

Jennifer Perez, acting chief consultant of the office of patient care services, outlined the nationwide VA network of hospitals, vet centers and outpatient clinics, as well as the special programs for OEF and OIF vets, caregivers and families and the liaison program aimed at coordinating healthcare between the military and the VA.

Alfonso R. Batres, chief officer of the readjustment counseling service, described the confidential counseling services available for veterans and their families at vet centers and provided contact info:

>>www.vetcenter.va.gov or 866-644-5371

Preventing caregiver burnout was the subject discussed by Wayne Boswell and Shawn Moon of Franklin Covey. Providing Outreach While Enhancing Readiness (POWER) is a new program for chaplains, teachers, medical providers and others who support soldiers and experience compassion fatigue.

The presentation by Secretary of the Army John McHugh of the Quality of Life Awards concluded the second military family forum.

To see presentations from Military Family Forum II, held on 6 October 2009, click here.

By Susan M. Sipprelle
for AUSA

Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., Army chief of staff, reaffirmed the Army’s commitment to its military families and its continuing dedication to meeting the familial needs of an all-volunteer force that has been engaged in eight years of persistent conflict.

Casey, along with Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Army Sgt. Major Kenneth O. Preston re-signed the Army Family Covenant before a 600-person audience, mainly comprised of over 500 family readiness group leaders from around the country at the first family forum of the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Before he invited feedback on the effectiveness of its family programs from the audience, Casey cited changes that the Army has made to support its soldiers and families. Today, the Army has 44 active brigade combat teams compared to 33 in 2004. The increase in the number of personnel has allowed the Army to move closer to its objective of lengthening the time at home between deployments for its active duty, Reserve and Guard troops.

Two years ago, the Army also doubled its budget for family programs. It has been able to sustain the higher level of funding to continue to provide a broad array of programs and services for soldiers and their families.

“We are much better postured now than we were two years ago to accept an additional commitment of active forces,” Casey said, Oct. 5 referring to the possibility that more troops might be called for in the near future to serve in Afghanistan.

Casey then asked his audience to vote with a show of hands on its satisfaction with the Army’s effectiveness in five areas: standardizing family programs and services across installations, increasing accessibility to quality health care, improving soldier and family housing, providing excellent schools, childcare and youth services, and expanding educational and employment opportunities for family members.

The Army’s ability to help family members with their education and employment received the most positive reaction from the audience.

“We’re moving; it’s a jagged line, but going up,” was Casey’s summation of the audience’s feedback on the Army’s delivery of its family programs and services. “We’ll just keep pushing it,” he said.

Sheila Casey, whose remarks preceded her husband’s, also stressed that families are the Army’s first priority. She noted that First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, a Blue Star Mother, both have shown great support for military families. The audience, mostly military wives, clapped and cheered warmly when Mrs. Casey told them that military family caregivers needed to find time for themselves to create balance in their lives.

Lynn S. Heirakuji, deputy assistant for personnel oversight, reported on the preliminary results of a large-scale survey that examined how well the Army provides programs and services to geographically dispersed personnel.

More than 5000 survey respondents indicated that they did not find large gaps in the services offered by the Army for military families, but that greater awareness of and access to programs is needed. As the distance from installations increases, the difficulty of obtaining information also climbs for military families, especially Guard and Reserve families, who are often unsure whether or not they are eligible for Army programs.

Although the Internet is proving to be a boon for geographically dispersed families, important sites for military families such as TRICARE and Army One Source were reported to be confusing and difficult to use.

“Face-to-face contact is preferred,” Heirakuji said.

Kathleen Y. Marin, director of installation services, recently conducted town hall meetings at six sites to ascertain what programs are making a difference for Army families and where improvements in services need to be made.

She found highly valued programs included: deployment respite childcare, military family life consultants and the Strong Bonds program. Echoing Heirakuji’s findings, town hall participants said they prefer one-to-one, confidential and personally targeted services. They particularly wanted to see improvements in the online registration process for children and youth services.

Marin, along with Brig. Gen. Allison T. Aycock, installation management command, and Brig. Gen. Reuben D. Jones, family and morale, welfare and recreation command, conducted a mini town hall meeting at the conclusion of the day’s military family forum. Their responses to audience members’ suggestions and comments will be posted on the Army One Source site: >>http://www.myarmyonesource.com/default.aspx

To see presentations from Military Family Forum I, held on 5 October 2009, click here.

By Susan M. Sipprelle
for AUSA