What We Found In Our Front Yard

Our house was built in the early 1800s and contains many surprises.  Here's a pretty amazing surprise.  Near a large tree was what appeared to be a decorative cement slab.  We thought nothing of it until it (the slab) started sinking.  A closer examination revealed two more cement slabs and they were also sinking.  With some help, we pulled up the slabs and here's what we found-a perfectly lined with bricks well.  You can see one of the slab things at the top of the picture.  Look closely on the left side of the well.  See the pipe?  Here's my theory.  Originally this well was the kind into which you lowered a bucket to draw out the water.  Eventually the well was modernized.  A pipe was inserted down to the water and the well was filled up to about six feet below ground level.  Then a hand pump, I'm speculating, was attached to that pipe you see.  Eventually the house was connected to the city water line and the well was no longer needed so it was covered with those three cement slab things.  I found this beyond amazing.  The men who came to fill it up were not so impressed.  Apparently these abandoned wells all over New Jersey and probably all over the Atlantic Seaboard.  Things are pretty old here.  We had to fill it up because, well, the slabs were sinking and we couldn't imagine that falling into an abandoned well would be much fun and leaving it the way it was seemed pretty unsafe.  On the other hand, the well is still there and so are the bricks lining it.  I think it is simply beautiful and it's nice to know that it's still there.

We Contributed To These Causes

For Chanukkah my spouse and I chose to not give gifts for which we had no use but instead to make contributions to causes we felt were important. For 8 nights we exchanged our contributions: We each gave to the Human Rights Campaign. My spouse contributed to Doctors Without Borders, New Israel Fund, Tri-State Basset Hound Rescue, Elijah's Promise, Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, the Guardian, and the World Wildlife Fund. I gave to Amnesty International, the Sierra Club, Joyful Heart Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network for Purple Stride, the Anti Defamation League, and Lambda Legal.
Not all of our donations were political. W tried to remember local needs also. We rescued a Basset Hound several years ago. My spouse is so far a survivor of pancreatic cancer. Joyful Heart Foundation supports victims of domestic violence. Elijah's Promise distributes coats to people who have none. The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom is made up of Muslim and Jewish women working together toward understanding and peace. The contribution to the Guardian was intended to support our desperate need for unbiased investigative reporting.  I also intend to support other environmental associations such as Bioneers and Deep Green Resistance.
We intend to carry on this tradition.  It meant a lot to both of us and helped we hope the world.

Off We Go Again

My spouse and I did things a little differently this holiday season.  We finally realized that we own enough crap.  We failed to see the point of rushing into stores and buying shit just to wrap it up and give it each to the other so it could sit unused to eventually wind up either in the trash or in a box designated for donations most of which no one regardless of economic status would want or use.  So this year we made eight donations to causes we felt important.  Each night we exchanged our donation receipts.  It was wonderful and set about a new tradition which we intend to keep.
Just something to think about and maybe even consider.
Happy New Year.

Break Is Over and So Is 2016

Time to get back in the saddle, on track, back in the grove and all of the other sayings that mean BREAK IS OVER.
I'm reading a lot about all of the terrible things that happened in 2016.  Yeah, some bad stuff happned but so did a lot of wonderful things.
Let's change the bad stuff that we can and learn from it but let's also rejoice in the many, many wonderful things that happened during the past year.  We are alive and that is miracle enough.
Onward.

Letter to the U.S. Electoral College

Dear Electors,

My name is Thomas D. Walker from Tucson, AZ.

I am 74 years old and grew up very poor, on Arizona cattle ranches. Through education and hard work, I've risen above that with successful careers in journalism and social service. It's a story that many people of our great nation have shared. We have made some incredible strides in improving the lives of Americans, persons around the world and the environment, through our domestic and foreign policies and legal battles.

That all changed in December 2000 when the Electoral College voted to elect George W Bush president over Al Gore who won the popular vote. As we all remember, the policies of the Bush administration ushered in an ideological agenda that resulted in an illegal war that destabilized the middle east, destroyed the country of Iraq, and ramped up the rise of terrorism.

We suffered through the collapse of our economy due to deregulation and the supply side economic policies of the Bush Administration. Millions of Americans lost their economic security through the loss of homes and retirement savings. After eight years of an Obama presidency that was shamefully obstructed by those same right wing ideologues in Congress, we are barely making gains in an economic recovery.

I wonder daily how different the world would be today if the Electoral College had voted for the winner of the popular vote in 2000. But the Electoral College didn't know what lay ahead and could not predict the disasters of a Bush presidency.

Now, 16 years later, we are at another tipping point. However, the stakes are much, much greater this time. In 2000 Al Gore was the winner of the popular vote by 539,000. In 2016, Hillary Clinton is the winner of the popular vote by 2.8-plus million votes. Despite that, the GOP managed to garner more electoral votes for a man, who any rational person can observe, is temperamentally unstable and wholly unqualified to perform the duties of the office of President of the United States of America.

Donald Trump is assembling a cabinet of anti-democratic billionaires, Wall Street insiders, white supremacists, religious-right wing ideologues, science/climate change deniers; many of these people also have no experience in governing.

This cabinet, aided by GOP politicians who are wholly in service of the billionaires and corporations who fund them, is poised to create policies that privatize every aspect of American life while dismantling the civil rights gains of the last 60 years. At the same time, they will reverse environmental protections that will hasten the destruction of many species, accelerate the refugee crisis globally and unleash disease and unknown consequences on the human race, due to accelerated climate change. All of which threaten our national security.

Now, we learn from the CIA that the Russian government intervened in the 2016 election in an effort help Donald Trump win the presidency. Hackers connected to the Russian government provided WikiLeaks with thousands of stolen emails designed to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. Whether these clandestine efforts had any effect on the election is unknown, but it certainly should cast doubts.

Donald Trump's administration is extremely dangerous internationally and he threatens to, through ignorance, narcissism and poor impulse control, destroy our relationships with our NATO allies and inadvertently destabilize America's relations with many countries that have the potential to create chaos on the world stage.

I base my opinions and predictions on Donald Trump's past and current behaviors. Instead of using the 146 days between the election and inauguration working daily in Washington, preparing to govern, studying daily briefings and overseeing the hiring of 4,000-plus persons (who, by the way, need to be highly vetted and will need security clearances) to run our government under his administration, this man is on a road trip, holding “thank you” rallies, continuing to make promises he cannot keep, engaging in divisive rhetoric, lying, calling foreign leaders willy-nilly without consulting the State Department, attacking and demonizing the free press and tweeting absurd threats to strip Americans' citizenship from them for exercising their first amendment rights.

Who knows what he’ll do today? He is a one man media circus clown.

And I haven't even gone on about his financial secrecy, international and domestic conflicts of interest, which alone disqualify him from the office of President, as he will be violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution on the day he is sworn into office.

So, the Electoral College is at another tipping point. In the spirit of Alexander Hamilton's letter writing campaign in 1800, when he urged the Electoral College to elect Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr due to his opinion that, "...Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr," I, Thomas D. Walker, respectfully and tearfully write this letter to plead with the Electoral College of 2016 to vote for the winner of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton's 48.2% of the popular vote to Mr. Trump's 46.3% of the popular vote.

Please exercise your duty to protect the citizens of the United States of America from a mentally unstable demagogue who views the presidency as a vehicle to promote his brand. Please elect the "less dangerous" and highly qualified, lifelong public servant, Secretary Clinton as the next President of the United States of America. If you cast your votes for Donald Trump, when our country is ripped apart, you will not, in years to come, be able to say, "Well, we could not have predicted this....".

Thank you for your time and consideration, I appreciate and respect the role you serve in our electoral process.

Sincerely,

Thomas D. Walker

We're All Just A Little Crazy Right Now

I'm not talking hyperbole nor am I denigrating those of us who suffer from mental illness.  I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and I'm here to say I think that a huge percentage of this country's population suffers from a psychiatric illness called Generalized Anxiety Disorder (DSM-5 300.02).  According to the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition this particular disorder can be hard to diagnose.  However, some of the primary symptoms include excessive worry about stuff like health, family, money and work.  Further symptoms include feeling tense, tired, irritable and restless.  The symptom list goes on to include difficulty concentrating and sleeping.
Any of those symptoms sound familiar?
I'll go first.  I can't remember the last time I slept through the night.  I am tired and tense.  I'm having trouble concentrating maybe because I'm so restless and tense.  I worry about the future of my family, this country and, quite frankly, the world.   I keep checking my phone for updates -- for any indication that things are not as bad as they seem.  And so I ride the roller coaster of good news, bad news and of despair and exuberance.
Now your turn.  Go ahead.  I won't tell anyone.  How are you doing?
Anytime we are diagnosed with something or other we want to immediately know the cure.  The cure may be when the polls close on November 8.  However, that may be just a bandaid.  The outcome of the election may lead only to more things to worry about regardless for whom we vote and regardless of who is declared the winner.
So are we to simply descend into the morass of our disorder?  No.  Here's what we can do.  We can put down our cell phones and our iPads.  We can shut off our televisions.  We can look for reliable, objective news sources if any still exist.
We can also live our lives mindfully and with intention.  The time has come to embrace miracles:  early morning drops of dew on leaves, music, poetry, smiles, rainbows, sunsets, laughter, family, love.
I love you.
That's the bottom line and it's time to live a life of love.
Anxiety eats away at our souls.  Love replenishes, restores sanity, and nourishes life.
Live and love.
Go for it.

Here's An Academic Article I Co-Authored

Volume 6.2 | Fall 2016 | Practice Digest | © November 2016 | eldeducator.simmons.edu Virtual Academic Challenges To Real-Time Trauma

Author
Susan Hess, MSW
University of Southern California
Melissa Indera Singh, MSW University of Southern California

Author
Mary Walker Baron,MSW University of Southern California

Helping graduate level social work students address and process recent mass casualty violence is a challenge to any classroom. We feel it is especially challenging when the classroom is virtual. While the virtual format allows for video and audio contact, students and instructors may be thousands of miles apart and see each other, like the old Hollywood Squares television program, from only the shoulders to the top of the head. Our Virtual Academic Center (VAC), while in most ways a marvel of technology, does present special challenges when faculty is confronted with such sensitive issues as the killings in Orlando, the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the shooting of police of cers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
Classroom conversations dealing with emotionally charged topics are always challenging. However, in our virtual atmosphere, the subtle nuances of discussion may be more dif cult to interpret. According to the Substance Abuse Mental Health and Service Administration (SAMHSA, 2014), the guiding principles of trau- ma-informed care are: safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment; voice and choice; and cultural, historical and gender issues. These guided principles were presented in the discussions with faculty with encouragement to be integrated with students in their class- rooms in order to avoid re-traumatization.
Shortly after the events in Orlando, Florida, we met with other VAC instructors for a regularly scheduled faculty consultation group, which we co-facilitate. During that meeting we presented the question of how best to approach this tragedy in our virtual classrooms integrating the principles of collaboration and peer support. What we immediately discovered was that before facilitating any type of effective student discus- sion, faculty needed an opportunity to address their own thoughts and feelings. We provided some of that needed time before moving on to classroom and student issues.

Virtual Academic Challenges To Real-Time Trauma 2
We expected the student conversations to be intense. What we did not anticipate was the intensity of our faculty discussion. Such intensity, however, deserves opportunities to both problem-solve and process. We believed that to be effective these opportunities for dialogue would need to avoid personalization and politi- cization while including safety as a guiding principal to facilitate a trauma-informed dialogue. The challeng- es were to invite students to explore their own experiences with stigma and to facilitate the creation mecha- nisms for personal and professional stigma reduction.
We provided students opportunities to engage in critical thinking and discussion on micro, mezzo and macro levels.
We suggest the following whether your classroom be in person or virtual:

1. Often we begin our classes with a “check in” designed to help students enhance their clinical interven-
   tion skills by inviting them to facilitate and to share recent challenges or experiences. We encourage faculty to adopt the “check in” as a way to begin each class. Aligning with the Trauma-Informed Care principles of empowerment, voice and choice, students can “check out” if they do not feel comfortable discussing the tragedies.
   
2. It can be challenging for even the most seasoned clinician to differentiate between the personal and the professional. We suggest faculty encourage students to check their own responses to determine whether the response is personal or professional. Our personal voices may be emotional or opinionated informed by our own bias and potential dysregulation. However, our professional voices must stay calm. We need to let our personal voices go at the appropriate time in the appropriate manner. We discourage using social media as a forum for our personal voices. We also remind students and faculty that our own expe- riences shape our unconscious bias.
   
3. It is critical to address the effects of listening and watching traumatic events on a daily basis and to implement strategies of wellness in order to prevent burnout, vicarious trauma and secondary trauma (Schott & Weiss, 2016). Students and faculty are encouraged to identify daily wellness strategies.
   
4. We stress the value of creating an educational frame of bias, self-awareness and self-regulation in the classroom. One way to do this is to offer questions around informing the students’ identities and
   how they can be challenged by those who are different from themselves. This approach incorporates
   the guiding principles of trauma-informed care by integrating cultural, historical, and gender issues (SAMHSA, 2014). Another strategy would be to incorporate mindfulness of emotions leading to taking a breath prior to engaging.
   
5. Regardless of the venue, faculty can set a framework to focus the discussion on feelings, re ections, and counter-transferences instead of politics.
   
6. Regardless of the venue, faculty can set a framework to focus the discussion on feelings, re ections, and counter-transferences instead of politics.
   

Some faculty attending the consultation meeting later shared their classroom experiences, which we now present for additional consideration.

Virtual Academic Challenges To Real-Time Trauma 3
“I showed the video Imagine a World Without Hate (https://youtu.be/3KyvlMJefR4) and asked the students to be fully present when they watched it and to think about the circumstances and the shooting in Orlando. After the video we came back together for a very thought provoking dialog about what it means to have
a social work response to this tragedy. Later I showed Dear Young Men of Color (https://youtu.be/TtH- BUaLsXmQ) and invited students to discuss this through a macro, micro and mezzo lens.”
“I gave my students the following activity. I told them that they were the management team of a community based social work agency. A mass casualty shooting had just taken place in their area. Their task was to triage needs based on the capacity of their agency and formulate responses appropriate to social workers.”
Students attending our Virtual Academic Center are from all over the nation and part of the conversation, according to faculty response, was about why we all need to care about this.
Faculty shared that some expressed ideas about engagement on LGBTQ issues in their communities. Other students discussed violence used by police through a historical context while others sought to understand historical trauma, generational trauma and systemic trauma.
“We talked about healing and how social work promotes healing.”
The activity sparked engagement in some students and raised their consciousness about thinking like a social worker. For minority students in the class it was a forum to be heard and supported.
“Overall it was very moving to see the up and coming social work professionals address this tragedy from a new perspective.”
As social workers and as teachers we understand the implications of vicarious trauma. We also appreciate the challenge of creating opportunities to process feelings while avoiding personalization and politicization. The frequency and magnitude of recent mass casualty events challenge our objectivity and our capacity to absorb. The degree to which we reel from it all surely must mirror the degree to which our students reel. We all need a forum in which to absorb and process and learn so we can move forward to create viable solutions based in our core social work principles. We believe the best venue for such innovative healing is the social work classroom.
Since the social work classroom extends to eld placements, our student learners may encounter the parallel processes of managing their own trauma reactions while providing places of clinical refuge for those seeking assistance. Students may also feel buffeted by the employees of their placements as they process their own trauma related thoughts and feelings.

Virtual Academic Challenges To Real-Time Trauma 4
We believe that wellness plays an essential role in social work education and must receive attention as students new to this very demanding profession begin their eld education. Those students intent on academic accomplishment may resist the very notion of taking care of themselves and become at risk, even before graduation, of professional burnout. We believe that social work faculty can prepare students with readings, videos, and discussions of secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and professional burnout. We also encourage faculty to integrate mindfulness practice in each class. We further believe in the value of frequent student contact from faculty to reinforce wellness for students in their eld placements. While eld faculty cannot function as student therapist, we can identify possibilities and suggest school-approved resources for students needing additional emotional support.
In order to assess student burnout potential, we suggest that eld faculty become comfortable discussing topics such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced sense of personal accomplishment (Newell & MacNeil, 2010). In order for students to successfully provide their own wellness, the eld instruc- tors in the placements must also embrace this educational and personal necessity. We acknowledge that this may be a signi cant barrier to the prevention of student burnout since encouraging wellbeing might very well y in the face of the culture and practice of the placement agency.
Regular attention to wellness has the potential, we believe, to minimize the toll of vicarious trauma. In the classroom as well as in the eld we suggest frequent discussions of the realities and the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual symptoms of vicarious trauma (Gerding, 2012). Gerding (2012) further suggests that supervision can be a coping mechanism for clinicians if the supervisee feels safe to express fears, concerns, and perceived inadequacies. Once again, such supervision should not stray into the realm of therapy.
Realizing that students may have already experienced trauma, it is critical that Field Instructors provide trau- ma-informed discussions to prevent additional trauma. Field faculty may need to facilitate such discussions during eld visits. During eld placement, it is important to discuss populations that may trigger students and how eld placement may feel like a scary environment.
While we often think of families, youth, individuals and communities experiencing trauma, it is important to recognize that the trauma experiences of our students may have led them to the eld of social work. SAMHSA can be used during individual supervision when exploring countertransference. Students who present with ght, ight or freeze responses, for example, may be experiencing re-traumatization and it is important to know how to support them in eld placement. An effective response to such a student might be to offer a break before discussing a client experiencing trauma. Providing choice and safety can support the intention of doing no additional harm while providing students with trauma-informed supervision.
With or without the involvement of the placement agency eld supervisor, faculty can facilitate student wellness by encouraging student activities to help minimize the effects of vicarious trauma. Pearlman and McKay (2008) suggest activities to help escape, rest, and play. We have suggested that students escape by

Virtual Academic Challenges To Real-Time Trauma 5
watching videos of cats riding robotic vacuum cleaners or listening to music. Rest for graduate students may seem an anomaly. However, students schooled in the value of wellness may schedule times to stand up and stretch or meditate. Play can come in many forms. We might participate in sports, write poetry, go to the gym, or read an absorbing mystery. If wellness is included as an essential part of professional development, we believe students will become more aware of their own physical and emotional needs and this increased awareness will move students toward successful completion of their eld placement experience.
We regularly remind our students that the world needs social workers and thus the world needs them. An essential task of faculty is to prepare our students to enter and remain in this essential profession. Such preparation, we believe, must include not only familiarity with trauma-informed care but increased awareness of the urgent need for our own wellbeing.

Virtual Academic Challenges To Real-Time Trauma 6
References
Gerding, A. (2012). Prevention of vicarious trauma: Are coping strategies enough? Master of Social Work Clinical Research Papers. Paper 27. Retrieved from http://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/27/
Newell, J. M., & MacNeil, G. A. (2010). Professional burnout, vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue: A review of theoretical terms, risk factors, and preventive methods for clinicians and researchers. Best Practices in Mental Health, 6(2), 57-68.
Pearlman, L. A., & McKay, L. (2008). Understanding and addressing vicarious trauma. Pasadena, CA: Headington Institute.
Schott, E. M. P., & Weiss, E. L. (2016). Transformative social work practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). Guiding principles
of trauma-informed care. Retrieved from http://www.samhsa.gov/samhsaNewsLetter/Volume_22_ Number_2/trauma_tip/guiding_principles.html