I hiccuped this week and missed the deadline but thank goodness the contributors to this week’s edition of the Carnival of Ohio Politics, #132, listen to the editors better than I did (apologies again to Ben of the Keeler Political Report who compiled the Carnival this week).

Reason #57 for why I love the carnival: It’s the Ohio blogosphere’s regional roundtable report, with the region being our state.  Thanks to all participants.

(Re-posting this AGAIN for two reasons #1 because I was asked to submit a sample of my writing to apply for a job (NOTE: I did some corrections in what I submitted but it is here in its original form), and, #2 Because I do love this post and it is beginning to be Autumn once again...) Autumn Memories (This is actually (I feel) on of my better/more literary posts - I am re-sunning this today

It's been a while since I've posted with any regularity here at Creative Ink. Humble apologies to any regular readers I might have. My creative and productive energies have been diverted elsewhere for the past few months into some very important and meaningful personal projects that required my full attention. As a result, I've had little brain activity leftover to share meaningful thoughts here.

Wow - I thought I wasn’t doing too bad but I follow only three of them right now (Steve Outing, Amy Gahran and Jay Rosen). Hattip to Amy - for pointing out the post (and she is, indeed, a bringer of joy - I agree 100%).

1. Jay Rosen (jayrosen_nyu)
Jay Rosen is the multi-hyphenate author/blogger/academic whose Twitter feed is a more succinct extension of his media criticism over at PressThink.
2. Jeremiah Owyang (jowyang)
Jeremiah is considerably more laid back in his tweets than his blog and gives a real sense of what makes the research analyst tick.
3. Howard Owens (howardowens)
Howard Owens declares himself “just another media geek” but his thoughtful analysis of the new media landscape is well ahead of the pack.
4. Patrick Thornton (jiconoclast)
Hope you’ve got answers cause Patrick’s got questions. Thornton can be likened to the Dr. Phil of the Twitterverse, asking thought-provoking questions about journalism that keep everyone on their toes.
5. Andy Dickinson (digidickinson)
Already a consummate blogger, Andy provides useful links and thoughts on world events through the microblogging service.
6. Amy Gahran (agahran)
“Media consultant, info-provocateur, journalist, semi-geek” and of course, bringer of joy. Take today’s recent tweet: “Why does boulder’s sunflower farmers market have CALIFORNIA peaches by the front door? D’oh!”
7. Steve Yelvington (yelvington)
The multimedia strategist has his thumb on the pulse of major news events like the DNC and the Olympics as well as a keen eye for discerning what matters among technical journalists.
8. Steve Outing (steveouting)
Last week, Steve Outing thought aloud “…if I used nothing but Twitter for a week, I’d still be pretty up to date on news.” He’s probably right and through his tweets we know how technology is affecting the man personally.
9. Kiyoshi Martinez (kiyoshimartinez)
Kiyoshi Martinez, founder of AngryJournalist.com and Journalism.me, is transforming the way journalists interact with each other online. His tweets are a look at the man behind the multimedia prowess.
10. Mark S. Luckie (10000words)
Hey it’s me! Following 10,000 Words on Twitter is a great way to find out what’s going on behind the blog, receive useful links that you won’t see here, plus (and here’s the best part) by sending tweets @10000words you can get instant answers to your multimedia questions and dilemmas.

Got some following to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Politics and world peace aside, here’s a pressing question … has anyone ever redeemed their ICEE Bear Points?

I had a craving for an ICEE over the weekend. So we were out running errands and Target happens to be a fine, fine supplier of the high fructose corn syrup. Flavor selection was limited to Cherry or Blueberry Frost. I went the blueberry route as did Dave. Thing is, the ICEE’s came in Target cups instead of the brand-right ICEE cup with the ever-popular ICEE Bear smiling at you and the ever-popular ICEE Bear points marked on the side. Where’s the brand integrity in that? My ICEE should not be a “Target slush” - I felt ripped off without the waxy cup and my ICEE Bear points.

Anyhow, talk led to whether anyone ever in the years when ICEE ruled the slush category (Slurpees sucked) redeemed their ICEE Bear points for cool ICEE merchandise.  If you didn’t then, you still can now. Check out their website. All I’m sayin’ is you can get an Icee Bear Buddy stuffed toy for a mere 100 ICEE Bear points. And you can get a t-shirt for 250 points. A 24-ouncer gets you 25 points so you do the math. Just four 24-ouncers and you’d get your ICEE Bear Buddy, at least four ice-cream-style headaches, and the most incredible sugar rush of your life.

All I’m sayin’ is I love me some slushie stuff.

What if George Orwell had been around to see the advent of blogging? Would he have been a blogger? He kept copious journals, and now those are being republished online in serial form, seventy years to the day of their inception, by the University of Westminster in London.

Cool idea. What other ideas does it give you? I've got some. But, per usual, no time to do anything about them... Read more about the project in the New York Times.

Come on, you can say it (and click the mantra to read about it) with me:

I Care Enough, I Shlep Enough and Doggone It, My Kids Are Turning Out Just Fine – Even With Me As A Mom.

And, in caricature form:

When I write I hold two personalities in tension. There is the self-assured son of a bitch Jeff Hess who is arrogant in the way I imagine surgeons are arrogant, certain that they, and I, know what will happen as the scalpel begins to slice a living person. And there is excitedly terrified Jeff Hess [...]

Readers may recall that in the 2006 election cycle, I wrote the 57 Reasons to Vote No on Issue 3, aka Ohio Learn and Earn* - aka a horrific effort to legalize gambling by leading with an education-funding package. I can’t say whether it was a success as far as an effort by one person to expose why the proposed constitutional amendment sucked, but I do know that a few minds were changed, though not all.

Most importantly, there was excellent debate that rarely if ever devolved into personal attacks.

So let’s have it - what are some of your ideas for a 57 reasons to vote for Obama-Biden? The countdown will start on Tuesday, September 9th. Probably best to e-mail them, for the surprise element, but you can leave ideas in the comments too.  I promise to give attribution.

Also - if anyone is techie enough, maybe we can do a widget for the reasons that would scroll them in a sidebar?

Sigh. I love it when I can really feel support for something. Don’t you?

*That link will take you to an easy to follow list of 48 reasons, but this link will get you to all 57, though it’s not as nice a presentation.

Hattip to View from W6th for turning us on to Wordle, an online tool for "generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide."

You can type in the text you want, or enter the url of any website -- Wordle parses it, giving prominence according to word frequency. Once your cloud has been generated, you can play around with layout, font, and color variations.

Here's what a word cloud of LilaTovCocktail looks like today. (Keep in mind that if you type in the url of a blog, Wordle will parses only the posts that currently appear on the blog's home page. In the case of LilaTovCocktail, that means the 3 most recent posts.)

Created by Jonathan Feinberg, Wordle is free; the only caveat is that if you use a screen-capture or other image representation of the word cloud you create, you must attribute the image to http://wordle.net/.

A new word has come into my home. "Ain't." Jonah picked it up at school, and now his little brother Mills is saying it too.

Growing up, I couldn't tell my parents about how "me and Melissa went to the store," without being interrupted with barely a syllable out - "Melissa and I went to the store," my mom or dad spoke over me grandly. Or else they'd ridicule: "Would you say, 'Me went to the store?'" Sometimes I would give up and refuse to tell the story. It drove me nuts, like they were more interested in correcting me than in hearing what I had to say.

Now I teach legal writing to law students, some of whom have never heard of subject-verb agreement. I can get a little nit-picky at times, I admit. But I know my students will lose the respect of some future clients (say, my parents) if their writing is incorrect.

I try not to be all over my own kids on grammar and usage. I mean, Jonah's only six, and Mills isn't yet four. I don't want to stifle them so that they don't talk to me anymore. Given my upbringing and occupation though, I can't always help myself. Still, it can be counterproductive. For example, now that Jonah knows I don't like "ain't," he uses it at every possible opportunity.

Lately, I've gotten used to my kids picking up language habits from their classmates in their racially and socio-economically diverse schools. A little Ebonics comes with the package, to be blunt about it. Parents whisper about this, but it's a pretty uncomfortable subject, fraught with race and class.

So I gently correct when Jonah pronounces "dead" as "deeyid" or when Mills tells me what another friend "brung" to school that day. It's a delicate balance - correcting their speech without judging their peers or the cultures they come from. I listened to Jonah exclaim "DANG!!!" for a couple straight days before I suggested that he might try to restrain himself.

The other day, when Jonah came home saying "ain't" I assumed it was more of the same. Wrong.

His teacher read a book to the class that day, entitled, "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!" So in kindergarten, where the children learn new words each day from their teachers, one of those words apparently would be "ain't."

I have a problem with this.

I wonder if there is a problem with me having a problem with this.

Jonah has a wonderful teacher. This year, he learned to read, to add and subtract, and much more. His teacher is so wonderful that I haven't been able to bring myself to mention my displeasure with the whole "ain't" thing. (Plus, I feel like the hyper grammar parent.)

On the sly, I looked up the offending book on Amazon. Supposedly, it is some award-winning beloved delight. Only a couple of grammar grouches like myself gave it bad reviews.

It's not like these are fully literate young minds reading Mark Twain. They don't know what is proper English and what is not. Their teacher is the wise guru at the top of the hill. If she says "ain't," it must be ok. But it isn't.

I remember a day in elementary school when the teacher taught us that the word was "ask" not "ax" and other similar lessons. Some students honestly didn't know until that moment. It wasn't their fault - they'd just never been taught the difference between colloquial speech and formally correct English.

I would think that this kind of teaching would still be a priority today.
Maybe it is.

Maybe it ain't.

you know...I don't write enough anymore...why is that? Frankly, I am not sure why I should...my thoughts seem like butterflies and I can't catch them long enough to truly develop... Ah...for a cabin in the wood and time.... (*sighs*)

Wow.

More from the immigration files today, friends, because stories like this keep coming and they keep shocking. Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals:

"Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.

What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.

Since being hoisted in his wheelchair up a steep slope to his remote home, Mr. Jiménez, who sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, has received no medical care or medication — just Alka-Seltzer and prayer, his 72-year-old mother said."

First of all, is it really worth $30,000 to return this man to his home country? Is that the best use of our money? I grant you that it's cheaper than the cost of continuing to house him, based on the $1.5 Million they've already spent. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but I'm guessing that setting a precedent for renting private flights for the purposes of deportation is going to make it through the health insurance costs and into our pocketbooks.

Secondly, from a writing perspective, how great is the line about Alka-Seltzer and prayer?

Thirdly, and most importantly, the ethics involved are the most shocking element:

“Repatriation is pretty much a death sentence in some of these cases,” said Dr. Steven Larson, an expert on migrant health and an emergency room physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “I’ve seen patients bundled onto the plane and out of the country, and once that person is out of sight, he’s out of mind.”

Back in Arizona, as you can imagine, there are quite a few cases in Tucson and Phoenix:

In a case this spring that outraged Phoenix’s Hispanic community, St. Joseph’s planned to send a comatose, uninsured legal immigrant back to Honduras, until community leaders got lawyers involved. While they were negotiating with the hospital, the patient, Sonia del Cid Iscoa, 34, who has been in the United States for half her life and has seven American-born children, came out of her coma. She is now back in her Phoenix home.

“I can think of three different scenarios that would have led to a fatal outcome if they had moved her,” John M. Curtin, her lawyer, said. “The good outcome today is due to the treatment that the hospital provided — reluctantly, and, sadly enough, only in response to legal and public pressure.”

Mr. President: Tear down this wall! Let's create a civil immigration policy that recognizes our leadership role in the world community, our geographic position in the North American continent, and our need for these immigrant workers in our diverse economy.

Great range of posts and perceptions as always at Haveil Havalim #176.  I don’t know if it’s also officially known as the Carnival of Jewish Blogging, but if there were such a thing, HH would be it.  Many thanks to Little Frumhouse on the Prairie for hosting (I love that blog name).

I had a very enlightening breakfast this morning with the remarkable Brian Corbin. Brian has dedicated himself to the Valley for about twenty years, and in his leadership role with Catholic Charities Diocese of Youngstown he and his group are working to address poverty and racism throughout the six northeastern counties of Ohio. We're fortunate to have them based right here in Youngstown, on Wood Street, appropriately situated across from the The Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor.

The U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has been working overtime to round up undocumented workers and prosecute them beyond all reason. This happened in Youngstown, and it appears the restaurant in question was as much of a victim--at least at the local level--as the workers.

However, there's a different story going on in Iowa. First, get outraged with one of the most sensible editorials you're likely to read in a while. That's today's must-read:

A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develops an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group shows workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand tells a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor experts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called “a kosher ‘Jungle.’ ”

The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.

In May, the government swoops in and arrests ... the workers, hundreds of them, for having false identity papers. The raid’s catch is so huge that the detainees are bused from little Postville to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo. The defendants, mostly immigrants from Guatemala, are not charged with the usual administrative violations, but with “aggravated identity theft,” a serious crime.

Now, for the story behind it.

When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.

Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.

[...]

Sonia Parras Konrad, an immigration lawyer in private practice in Des Moines, is representing many of the young workers. She said she had so far identified 27 workers under 18 who were employed in the packing areas of the plant, most of them illegal immigrants from Guatemala, including some who were not arrested in the raid.

“Some of these boys don’t even shave,” Ms. Parras Konrad said. “They’re goofy. They’re teenagers.”

[...]

While federal prosecutors are primarily focusing on immigration charges, they may also be looking into labor violations. Search warrant documents filed in court before the raid, which was May 12, cited a report by an anonymous immigrant who was sent to work in the plant by immigration authorities as an undercover informant. The immigrant saw “a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees.” Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards.

In another episode, the informant said a floor supervisor had blindfolded an immigrant with duct tape. “The floor supervisor then took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it,” the informant said, adding that the blow did not cause “serious injuries.”

[...]

Mark Lauritsen, a vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant, said he remained skeptical. “They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.

More round-ups and deportations will not fix our broken immigration system. We need to step back and assess our values. We need these workers and they need us. Let's find a mutually agreeable arrangement. Thanks, Brian, for bringing this to my attention--and now to our attention. Thanks, too, for the work you do for those in need.

As I sat down to have lunch at home just a short while ago, I grabbed my alumni magazine, which arrived yesterday or the day before, to browse through the updates of classmates.  But on the cover, there were title teasers about the articles inside.  “Coming Out” was one of them.

Immediately I thought, noooo - that can’t be an article about sexual orientation, can it? Not from the school that fought hard during the 1980s, and especially during the years I was there, to exclude a student group comprised of gays and lesbians.

It must be referring to some other kind of coming out - some new building or new program.

Well, I was wrong and very, very happy as well as surprised to find this very lengthy article on the inside, “Out on the Hilltop: LGBTQ Experiences at Georgetown.”

Now, I’ve been through this before so I apologize for the readers that know it, but the current president of GU, Jack DeGoia, is a young guy who was my RD in my sophomore year and went to my high school in Connecticut - albeit a 3-4-5 years before me.  He is the first lay person they’ve ever had as president at GU and he’s married with at least one child (I don’t know if he’s had more).

And he’s been pretty aggressive about changing the outward presentation of the university and getting it in tune with the 21st Century. So in this regard, I’m not surprised.

But GU is one of the most populus if not the most populus Catholic (Jesuit) institution of higher education in the country.  And again, as the article notes, it fought tooth and nail in the 1980s against acknowledging the student LGBT group.

I haven’t had a chance to really read it with the time it deserves, but I would encourage other people interested in how one of the oldest Catholic institutions in the U.S. has chosen to come out about coming out.

As a side note, I couldn’t help but think about that Ohio Republican Party announcement about making specific outreach efforts to Catholics.  I didn’t see that they are making such efforts with the LGBT community - but then John McCain did meet with the Log Cabin Republicans.

Also, any readers who went to or are otherwise familiar with John Carrol University, also a Jesuit institution - how does this compare to JCU’s relations with the LGBT community?

My entry for the Felicitea contest. Loosely based on real mornings I’ve had (not necessarily yesterday, though). I’m not entirely enamored with it, but it’s the last day for the contest, so here goes nothin’… ;)
_________________________________________

Yesterday morning
our bathroom shower broke.
Scrambling to make up
the lost time,
I washed my hair in the sink,
wear the nearest clothes,
no blow dry
no legs shaved
no kiss goodbye as my
husband crashed past me,
also late.

It was already
a stellar sort of day.

Slamming down
black tar from the
lounge at work,
I jittered through
daily tasks
like a crazed hummingbird,
coming home to an
equally agitated
energy drunk
Red Bull’ed husband.

The landlord fixed
the shower while we
were psychotically scrambling
through our
wrong foot day,
so this morning I
wake up early and
shower away
the previous day,
blow dry my hair,
put on my favorite suit.

Today I have time
to heat the kettle,
watch the leaves unfurl
as the water darkens.
I pour hot earl grey
into my best
travel mug before
heading down the road,
rockstar playlist blaring,
calming caffeine in my cup.

Today is already a
day for entirely
new adventures, free of
black tar and steeped
in possibility.

- Brandice, 2008

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I have no good reason for why I have not posted in the last week. I have had many ideas of topics... I have done a lot of reading... but I just didn't actually post.

I'm stumped by my lack of posting. It's not like I don't have a bunch of methods to do it. I can email my posts. I can text my posts. I think I have some hangups, like, I want my posts to be perfect, well planned, well researched, etc. I also want them to have useful links to the things I'm discussing. All of those things require some time to gather that info and post. I just can't seem to carve that out.

So, I'm going to try something different (again....). I am going to try to post once a day. Even if it's imperfect and irritates me mentally. At least I will have a habit going. As I have mentioned before, I have trouble starting new habits.

We'll see how it goes.

Thoughts for this week:

• Formulating my weight loss plan - I am going to do Weight Watchers again. Why? Because it works. Last time I quit because I got tired of counting. It's a lame excuse. I really need to lose weight for a variety of reasons I won't share right now. I have hit the point where there are no more excuses. I'm actually tired of listening to my own excuse-making. It won't kill me. So, I'll do it. I just need to see my dr. and see if I can get him to recommend it so my flexible spending account dollars will pay for it. That would be best in light of the next couple of bullet points. But cost cannot be an excuse for not doing something.


• Starting an emergency fund - I have to do this. I have been putting it off due to my efforts to reduce debt. Those efforts are not progressing anywhere, so I'd rather have some peace of mind. That's not to say that I'm not going continue to reduce debt, but I can't afford not to have an emergency fund for much longer.


• Seriously reducing my debt - I am not even in a position to calculate when my debts will be paid off. That is how bad it is. I need a plan that is actually progressing.


• Figuring out when I can retire - I keep reading about people who retire early. It's not that I don't want to work, but I want to have more choices about my work. So, I'd like to have enough saved up to live off of it.


• Finding high yield savings accounts - This is to support the points above. Since I obviously don't have much money to save, I need to maximize what the savings do for me. I am fairly certain that I'm going with an ING savings account.


• Exploring cheap entertainment - I'm still exploring the library. I checked out some DVDs today! The last time I looked at the collection at a library, it was sad. It was great today!


• Starting my job search again - I have to rewrite my resume, update it all over the place (online) and really find out what kinds of jobs I want. I read a few articles this week. I also thought a lot about what I'm looking for. Basically, I want to work on projects, organize data or publications, help people get things done, or work with animals. Kind of a broad nebulous list, I know. Several job titles came up: Casual game tester, pet sitter, event planner, personal assistant, project manager. I think I would learn best by becoming the assistant to someone who is doing some of these things and maybe owns their own business. I need a mentor. Anyway, I need to start looking again, despite my struggles with why I am forced to find a different job when I can live with the one I have. I have my moments where I don't want to be at work, but ultimately, I have nothing to list as things I hate about my current job, other than thinking there's something more fun out there.


• Reorganizing my website - I need to either keep it a business site, or make it my personal homepage.


• Exploring the many places to write - I need to keep in practice with this writing thing. I need to review movies, books, cds, and everything else I run into. I need to write about the things that interest me. I also need to write some fiction. I have these stories in my head. They are piling up. I should write them down. Just not sure how or where. I suppose I should just bang them out in Word, and quit worrying about the proper publishing medium until later.

Enough rambling for one night. Shorter, more frequent posts will hopefully put a stop to these long rambles.

I had the pleasure and honor of hosting this week’s Carnival of Ohio Politics #128. Think Ms. Pac-Man. Kind of sort of.

Thanks as always to all the contributors and readers.  Feel free to post about it and if you’d like a button, let us know - we’ve got them somewhere on the blog itself if you use the search tool.

It’s hard to believe I was in Guatemala a month ago because the images and experiences are still living large in my very little and easily distracted brain.

One of those images is of Oswaldo, the young man pictured above who received glasses the same day I gave away my dad’s glasses to a man named Domingo. I wrote about Oswaldo because he stood out in the crowd of 3,000+ that day.  A shy kid who is a minus-18 in one eye and a minus-20 in another. To give you an idea of what it must be like to be a minus-18, hold a book up to your face until it touches your nose. That’s about how close Oswaldo had to place something so it was visible. Everything else? A big blob of blurriness — including his mother who was standing beside him.

But Oswaldo also struck me as a young man who had, sorrowfully, accepted that he would never be able to see very clearly. The word “resigned” comes to mind and you could see that resignation in the way he carried himself. Head down, barely a smile, just sort of there in front of you but not really present. As Dr. John worked with him and checked his eyes, Oswaldo said nothing. He simply followed orders while his mother shared his history. Her eyes were bad and he had inherited the same poor vision. He had an old pair of contacts but they weren’t nearly strong enough. She cried, we cried. She wanted more for her son than life seen through a heavy, foggy veil.

On this day, our team was only able to provide Oswaldo with a pair of minus-10s. As Dr. John said, “we gave him an extra 12 inches of vision,” meaning he could now hold that piece of paper at half an arm’s length. Better than nothing but not good enough for Dr. John and teammate Darcy who decided to “adopt” Oswaldo and his mother. Once back in the States, Darcy promised to make glasses to Oswaldo’s exact prescription and also make a pair for his mother.

Darcy emailed me last week:

What puts a dent in my excitement is that I love where I live now for many reasons. The apartment is two floors, the rooms are huge and I have a patio that overlooks a creek (or sewer) and the woods. This morning there were 27 ducks out there!


And I'm leaving this gem of a place.

I've written one poem so far about a neighbor and that will be handed over to the world in the next issue of Barn Owl. There must be more neighbor poems in me. I think of Nas, one of the only brilliant rappers still around. In his song "One Mic" he says something like This is my hood, I'm gonna rep until the death of it. This is what I must do.


In case you didn't already guess, I am the poet pug lady. I wanted to keep the poet thing on the down low but my mother used to walk Telemachus every day when I was at work and she likes to tell everyone about me.

Tuesday was the anniversary of my Uncle Ron's death. I miss him terribly, and I know the rest of my family does, too, but I couldn't help but smile as I was in my class Tuesday evening and think, "I hope I'm making him proud."

My beloved uncle was a man of many talents and many roles. The way most people outside of our family knew him best, though, was as a journalist. His career included stints at the Akron Beacon Journal and the Sunday Herald in Fairfield County, Connecticut. He then joined the U.S. Army as a journalist and subject matter expert for the Defense Information School in Indianapolis. After his retirement from the Army, he joined the staff of the Journal-Gazette in Fort Wayne.

Uncle Ron had a lot of gifts, but sadly, he also had a lot of pain. Like so many other great artists, he suffered from depression a good deal of his life, and like far too many of those great artists, he chose to end his life rather than seek help for his pain.

We reacted to Uncle Ron's suicide the way so many families do: with shock, anger, sadness, and mostly doing the best we could to reach out to each other. In my case, there was a good deal of "survivors' guilt" mixed in. I, too, live with depression, and I have felt at times that I wasn't worth my carbon footprint and the world would be a far better place without me. What makes one person seek the solace of a good therapist and antidepressants while another chooses the solace of a bullet, a noose or a jump off of a bridge? I don't think I'm any stronger than he was, and I certainly don't claim to be wiser. All I can say is that somewhere it sank in that suicide is a "permanent solution to a temporary problem" and that no matter how bad life may be at any given moment, it can and will get better.

If there's anyone reading this who is suicidal or just in a great deal of pain, please know that things really do get better, and there's all kinds of help if you only reach out to take it. Please also know that no matter how lonely you are, there's at least one person somewhere on this planet who loves you very much and would miss you terribly if you were gone. Finally, please remember that life is a precious gift from God as you understand Him/Her/It/Them, and that there is a purpose for you here and your job is to find it and fulfill it. What I've learned in the course of the past few years is that my purpose is to be of service to God and my fellow beings, and one way I can do it is through writing.

If there's anyone reading this who knows and loves someone who is suicidal or who has taken his or her own life, I understand your pain, and there are many ways you can help and receive help for yourself. I'll post some links within the next few days.

May God bless and watch over all of you.

Apologies for the dearth of any meaningful posts here of late. I could say I've been too busy, because I have. It's been quite a frenzied month of story assignments, project beginnings, projects ending, projects hopefully getting underway. It's all good and I feel very blessed, indeed. But there's a good amount of hard work involved. In addition to my regular features for the Catholic Universe