Sound on: Music is opening chorus of 'HMS Pinafore' by Gilbert and Sullivan.
25 December 2007
11 July 2007
Emergency Services a Foundation of Hope
Hope is our fuel to a future. It grants our soul the opportunity to find joy in anticipation. It is an essential ingredient in adapting to life's unexpected course changes.
Within most small communities there are a few common established institutions including churches, a school, a library, a post office, fire, EMS, PD, a business presence and some sort of repository for local government.
But to truly be a community, residents must serve or participate in these institutions. It is a requirement for membership. Each institution carries out a series of tasks or activities, but bring to the community a greater or larger quality.
The school seeds fertile minds through daily learning pursuits, but for the community the schools maintain a foundation and value in knowledge. The police provide security, but also a larger community influence of peace. Libraries are pharmacies for the mind that prescribe the right information for those who yearn to expand insight but also instill wisdom to benefit the community. And the churches provide understanding, meaning and in a larger sense principle.
Most of these organizations provide opportunities to make a locale more than just a gathering of dwellings and businesses -- the purpose provided in serving define a community.
Over the past seven years I've had the privilege of working with the local volunteer EMS and then the Fire and EMS combined. My contribution is limited as Information Officer, but much like the majority of my work-life it allows me to continue being an observer.
Volunteer Fire and EMS departments are unique to the institutions of small communities. They are people from a full spectrum of ages, backgrounds, careers and experience. They require a dedication that is unique. Before even starting to serve, EMTs and firefighter need well over 100 hours of training for both disciplines. And training is ongoing to stay current. In addition to the formal training, the true tests happen with real situations in the field.
Emergency services require a volunteer frame of mind outside of the typical. Unlike most other organizations, the schedule is determined by the needs of others or the situation.
It is a commitment to community where members are willing to say "we're here to help at any time - just call us." People leave their jobs, their homes and family, their projects, their beds in the middle of the night and go to help...some person - another community member or a complete stranger who is sick, injured or in danger.
The idea of being a participating community member more than simply living in a local dwelling, paying taxes, keeping your lawn mowed.
Fire and EMS people demonstrate this commitment tangibly many, many times a year.
And what do they do? In an organized manner they rapidly assemble and answer calls. Often they go to motor vehicle accidents which require delicately separating crumpled humans from crumpled metal, providing immediate medical expertise on the move to a destination of recovery. They rescue people from the depths of waterways and the heights of silos and grain bins.
At a fire scene the safety and wellbeing of others is primary, then continue to save property and possessions, often at potential personal risk of peril. Everyone knows their part, played out like a tight jazz group that improvises as they need to, yet everyone knows where the song is going. The goal is the same - to save people and then protect property.
So they do all that. They do rescue cats in trees, walk into infernos, bring back the injured or ill from the brink of a permanent farewell, mend wounds, take programs to the schools, support community causes. They head out in blizzards and ice storms to accidents when no one should have been on the road in the first place. They spend 10 hours fighting and finishing a barn fire on a day of 90+ degree heat and equal humidity. They face hazardous materials that could make your skin fall off, and attend to injury accidents that would make your skin crawl.
What is the larger element this institution brings to the foundation of a community? They deliver Hope.
There are few sounds more deafening than the silence immediately after a vehicle collision. It is the sound of despair. But then the silence is broken by the sound of sirens from an approaching EMS rig and fire engine - it is the music of hope.
Anguish during an out of control kitchen fire is interrupted by renewed hope that it won't cost the whole house when firefighters confidently step in and quell the blaze.
Helplessness, felt by new parents when their newborn, who had been running a fever, started convulsing, is stilled by hope when experienced EMTs arrive with assurances that they've seen it before, then help the child's condition to improve even before reaching the emergency room.
Hope is the first element in returning order from chaos. Hope is the tangible assurance that a community will maintain a past, feel safe in the present and be confident in a future. As long as people are willing to make this commitment to neighbors and their community...there is hope.
Best to all,
Lloyd
Within most small communities there are a few common established institutions including churches, a school, a library, a post office, fire, EMS, PD, a business presence and some sort of repository for local government.
But to truly be a community, residents must serve or participate in these institutions. It is a requirement for membership. Each institution carries out a series of tasks or activities, but bring to the community a greater or larger quality.
The school seeds fertile minds through daily learning pursuits, but for the community the schools maintain a foundation and value in knowledge. The police provide security, but also a larger community influence of peace. Libraries are pharmacies for the mind that prescribe the right information for those who yearn to expand insight but also instill wisdom to benefit the community. And the churches provide understanding, meaning and in a larger sense principle.
Most of these organizations provide opportunities to make a locale more than just a gathering of dwellings and businesses -- the purpose provided in serving define a community.
Over the past seven years I've had the privilege of working with the local volunteer EMS and then the Fire and EMS combined. My contribution is limited as Information Officer, but much like the majority of my work-life it allows me to continue being an observer.
Volunteer Fire and EMS departments are unique to the institutions of small communities. They are people from a full spectrum of ages, backgrounds, careers and experience. They require a dedication that is unique. Before even starting to serve, EMTs and firefighter need well over 100 hours of training for both disciplines. And training is ongoing to stay current. In addition to the formal training, the true tests happen with real situations in the field.
Emergency services require a volunteer frame of mind outside of the typical. Unlike most other organizations, the schedule is determined by the needs of others or the situation.
It is a commitment to community where members are willing to say "we're here to help at any time - just call us." People leave their jobs, their homes and family, their projects, their beds in the middle of the night and go to help...some person - another community member or a complete stranger who is sick, injured or in danger.
The idea of being a participating community member more than simply living in a local dwelling, paying taxes, keeping your lawn mowed.
Fire and EMS people demonstrate this commitment tangibly many, many times a year.
And what do they do? In an organized manner they rapidly assemble and answer calls. Often they go to motor vehicle accidents which require delicately separating crumpled humans from crumpled metal, providing immediate medical expertise on the move to a destination of recovery. They rescue people from the depths of waterways and the heights of silos and grain bins.
At a fire scene the safety and wellbeing of others is primary, then continue to save property and possessions, often at potential personal risk of peril. Everyone knows their part, played out like a tight jazz group that improvises as they need to, yet everyone knows where the song is going. The goal is the same - to save people and then protect property.
So they do all that. They do rescue cats in trees, walk into infernos, bring back the injured or ill from the brink of a permanent farewell, mend wounds, take programs to the schools, support community causes. They head out in blizzards and ice storms to accidents when no one should have been on the road in the first place. They spend 10 hours fighting and finishing a barn fire on a day of 90+ degree heat and equal humidity. They face hazardous materials that could make your skin fall off, and attend to injury accidents that would make your skin crawl.
What is the larger element this institution brings to the foundation of a community? They deliver Hope.
There are few sounds more deafening than the silence immediately after a vehicle collision. It is the sound of despair. But then the silence is broken by the sound of sirens from an approaching EMS rig and fire engine - it is the music of hope.
Anguish during an out of control kitchen fire is interrupted by renewed hope that it won't cost the whole house when firefighters confidently step in and quell the blaze.
Helplessness, felt by new parents when their newborn, who had been running a fever, started convulsing, is stilled by hope when experienced EMTs arrive with assurances that they've seen it before, then help the child's condition to improve even before reaching the emergency room.
Hope is the first element in returning order from chaos. Hope is the tangible assurance that a community will maintain a past, feel safe in the present and be confident in a future. As long as people are willing to make this commitment to neighbors and their community...there is hope.
Best to all,
Lloyd
08 February 2007
Sarah Olson, The Pentagon, and the First Amendment
Sarah Olson, The Pentagon, and the First Amendment
(an excerpt by…)
Doug Ireland <http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2007/01/sarah_olson_the.html>
January 30, 2007
Last month, military prosecutors subpoenaed Sarah Olson, a 31-year-old writer and radio journalist, asking her to appear at the court-martial of Lt. Ehren Watada <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ehren_Watada> , the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. Lt. Watada said that he could not participate in the Iraq War because it was "manifestly illegal" and that his participation would make him a party to war crimes. He had spoken candidly to Olson, who had written about the case, and prosecutors have tried to conscript her into their effort to convict Lt. Watada, whose trial begins February 5. (snip)
Fieldtrips replies...
While this is indeed 'egregious' and I haven't read all the references, I'm not sure what the military is doing to try to force her to testify for the prosecution. It's simply something that the military can't do with or to a civilian.
And there are few positions safer than being a journalist with contacts in situations like this. It is not as though she is trying to keep secret a source - something that journalists can indeed be incarcerated for, but only in civilian court.
But what I don't understand is that the pleas are requested to send to the Pentagon. Screw the Pentagon. They should be flooding congress with this. There are few things Pentagon Generals fear more than congressional inquiries. And even though they aren't the Commander-in-Chief more than once I've seen or heard a member of congress say "Fix it!" and they did. So it seems like journalists and even some intelligent people ;-) are to the point where they think the military can have control over civilians.
But the big picture issue that most people do not understand and often say "Why doesn't she just testify and save the hassle?" is a matter of precedent that is very dangerous. If journalists are seen as agents of the government then there is no longer a situation that makes it impossible to have independent verifiable information. You simply can't mess with the press. And I mean the press, because broadcast news, especially FOX, is already an agent of the government or on the leash of the corporations that own them. Oh, alright I know Olson is in broadcast media.
So many times journalists have been allowed to go into hostage situations to gather information for news. The police surely were as privy to the information reporters gathered as their readers would be, but they didn't work for the police and gave them no more info than would be provided the public. In a couple of instances police impersonated journalists in hostages situations. Subsequently the officers were dismissed and in the suits that ensued the judges wisely treated them much as the law would treat someone impersonating an officer. Who could trust the press if this was accepted practice. Suddenly everyone would wonder if a journalist was an agent of the government.
In my newspapering days I was constantly told things off the record as background info for subsequent coverage. If people weren't' assured of an independent press there never would have been a Deep Throat that made public wording of the Nixon White House. We never would have heard about the massive price fixing by Cargill, and there never would have been any reporting on the effects of pollution, nor the recent backward steps to the environment. Hey people. Freedom of the press in not a right of journalists - it is your right.
In the 1920s and 30s as gangsters were getting regular headlines due to illicit or nefarious practices, the press had an 'all access' pass. The gangsters pretty much endorsed and didn't mess with the journalists. There is only one that I know of in the Chicago area who was killed due to a gangster relationship. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Lingle&GScid=107016&GRid=2740& And I believe that was because of actions outside the realm of journalism.
So what we ultimately have in this case is a military that has sensibilities that are below those of gangsters.
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08 January 2007
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