free roxana!

this morning, while checking my e-mail on yahoo i see an article titled "us journalist sentenced to 8 years in iran" or something similar. my first thought is 'oh no! please don't be roxana!' as i click and a new window opens to reveal a familiar face.
roxana saberi graduated from my alma mater, concordia college, a couple years ahead of me. it's not a huge school & i knew of her while we attended, but don't know her personally. over a month ago, i was led to a facebook group, release and return journalist roxana saberi from ir custody.
this seems to be the classic case of a country that trumps up whatever charges it wants to convict someone they deem a 'threat'. she had been living in iran the last 6 years as a freelance journalist, with dual citizenship (her father is iranian and her mother japanese & live in fargo, nd). as i understand it, roxana was initially charged with purchasing a bottle wine, illegal in muslim iran. then, they charged her with illegally practicing journalism after her press credentials were revoked in 2006. this morning reports of her trial, a one-day affair behind closed doors that her father was not allowed to attend, say that she has been convicted of espionage, spying & reporting back to the us government, and sentenced to 8 years in prison. she has already been held in evin prison outside tehran since january and is understandably deteriorating mentally and emotionally, if not physically. she has been talked out of a hungerstrike once. i cannot imagine being held in an iranian prison, let alone being a woman imprisoned in these circumstances.
this is truly a travesty of justice. her father says roxana told him that she had been coerced into confessing and recanted the charges. both senators from north dakota have expressed their concerns and hilary rodham clinton is involved as well and presented a petition to the iranian government. roxana's lawyer (thank goodness she has a lawyer!) has stated that he will appeal the conviction.
please, please, please if you are so moved, say a prayer for roxana or contact your own congressperson. i will be.

post-vote high

even though i voted over a month ago, and most of yesterday felt anti-climactic, i am one happy camper. i know that this won't unify people right away, but i am ever hopeful that obama can bring about the change that needs to come in this country.
discussing with a close friend of mine, she's heard people at the college where she works say things about how now 'the white folks will know how it feels' since we have a black president & 'we' are finally in power. i'd just like to post her response:

"I just wish people would see that this man has the potential to make America hopeful, to make us a country that believes in ourselves.

I would love to explain that this is a man who is America. Someone who is multiracial, who overcame large obstacles, and someone who became the most powerful individual in the world in four short years. I want to tell these students he won because his vision moved a country, he made Americans take pride in their nation, in their rights. He’s created a feeling of hope that hasn’t been around since the Kennedy era.

I also want to tell them he has a difficult job. His job is going to be harder than anyone’s in the world. He is taking charge of a country that is economically defunct, a country that is selfish, a country that has made political decisions the whole world disapproves of, a country that needs to fix itself for all of its citizens. I don’t envy his job."

she's so smart. that's why we're friends.

giggle for the weekend-unicorns for obama

my friend n pointed me to this site. i couldn't stop laughing. and, i want to buy at least half a dozen different buttons.

the doctor one. because who doesn't love doogie/nph?

i've always liked banjos.

breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

i'm a natural redhead.

today is talk like a pirate day. arrr!

be sure to go through all 5 pages. you may find the perfect button for you! then, join suzanne's new facebook group, plush animal companions for obama (paco).

taxity tax

here's a nifty ol' website that breaks it down nicely for what your tax situation will theoretically look like under mccain or obama's plans:
http://www.obamataxcut.com/

i'd save approximately $480 with obama's plan & be expected to pay an extra $450 buckaroos on mccain's.

also, i loved this post by a blogger i read regularly. i've never met her, but she's always got something funny or thought-provoking to say.

in memoriam

today is memorial day & as suebob pointed out, it's not really appropriate to say 'happy memorial day!' considering the reason for the holiday.
growing up, i never had much of an association with the military. one of my cousins joined the navy when he was 18 & was always off on some ship or other, but even my older relatives didn't have too much military experience that i knew about. yeah, my parents' older brothers both served in korea, but nothing was ever really made of it. and my grandfathers weren't able to serve (paternal g-pa lost an eye when he was young & maternal g-pa was needed as a farmer). my dad's number was up next for the draft just before vietnam wrapped up.
now with this war, i dealt with my brother placed in harm's way. i know that some of his brothers in arms lost their lives. and i have held s in the middle of the night remembering the terror of insurgent attacks on his battalion & the losses they suffered. for those who have lost a loved one and those who will in the future, any loss is too much.

fallout

not that it hasn't been in the back of my mind, if not the forefront, but this article & this one only served to elucidate my feelings.
i guess i've known for quite some time that the va sucks in treating veterans properly. this point was brought home to me probably as much as two decades ago by an elderly neighbor who served in wwii as a decoder (sorry, not sure of the correct terminology. she decoded both messages announcing v-e day & v-j day, along with many, many more, i'm sure. she had plenty of health issues, severe asthma particulary, and she had to travel 200 miles to get to the state va every time she actually had an appointment. considering she was in her 70s then, it made things incredibly difficult.
now our veterans who've served in iraq & afghanistan are getting screwed over, even if they make it back. if they're not suffering from some physical injuries (from loss of limb to hearing loss), a huge percentage have mental health issues (ptsd, depression) that need to be treated as seriously as any physical ailment. according to the article more than 300,000 vets & only about half have sought help. i know this from personal experience with both my brother & s. my brother would never admit to any kind of stress. he's just that kind of tough guy. i don't even know half of the stories that my parents do about his time in iraq & i'm sure that's only a fraction of what horrors he actually experienced. in s' case, he's been on antidepressants for over a year and sees a psychiatrist for therapy monthly. the nice little chart of symptoms for ptsd states: "feeling numb & loss of interest in relationships & activities, feeling on edge, getting angry easily, having a hard time sleeping, and overreacting when startled" and for traumatic brain injury: "changes in mood & behavior, trouble remembering & concentrating"
huh, doesn't sound familiar at all to me. nope, i don't know anyone to whom that applies.
i'm so glad that s is getting the treatment that he needs, but other veterans are having trouble finding therapists who will be compensated by their insurance. i imagine that this doesn't help keep the suicide rates down if it takes months to find someone to counsel you.
healthcare in general is abysmal, but we need to do more. the government needs to do more. i just wish i knew what that were.

war torn

oh g-d. i am going to die.
tonight, in the middle of dinner, s told me that he would volunteer to go back to iraq if his old unit were redeployed. you see, he switched to a local unit this year. he'll drill here in town starting next month, but they've already been called up, & since he's not trained as a medic yet & their roster is filled, he's not going back. but if the unit he went to iraq with in 2004 gets called any time this year, he's going to volunteer even though he's supposed to be out january of next year. they're family. i spent about an hour crying & calling him mean for doing that to me.
i don't think i can handle him being gone, in danger, for 15 months. i'm not gonna pull the 'be strong' mentality. i missed him terribly when he was gone for two weeks at annual training last may. it'll be an infinite number of times more difficult if he's gone for over a year. and it's not like this war is going to end any time soon. in two months, it'll have been going on for FIVE years. five whole years! can anyone believe that? and have we really achieved that much in such a period of time? it's definitely not that i don't support the troops; it's the war i have a problem with. my brother is also a decorated veteran. before i ever met s, my brother had my support & prayers, no matter what i thought of the events over in the 'big sandbox' as they call it. i just don't know how i can deal with this when, if it does happen. the likelihood is greater than ever with this whole idea of stopping troop cutbacks from w recently. how i wish richardson had stayed in the race & won, so someone would actually get all the troops out. not for me, but for all the families of soldiers. okay, yes, for me. because i'm selfish & don't want s in danger again. just because i didn't know him when, doesn't mean that i don't freak out thinking about what he went through, how he's still suffering from things that happened. if he has to go again, how can his luck hold out? and how am i supposed to deal with it?

write more!

how's that going for me, you ask? oh, here i am, just getting around to making a post or at least some little blurb. hmph! at least i forced myself to do my daily 20 minute workout a few moments ago.

perhaps tomorrow i'll have something of interest to post. in case you were unaware, it's the iowa caucus thursday night & i inted to be a first time caucuser (is that what i'm going to be?!?) i'm still feeling quite torn on what i'll do. i've been leaning obama for the past few months, but in all honesty, i really like bill richardson & his stances, even though i'm afraid he doesn't have a snowball's chance in... new mexico. admittedly they aren't terribly different from barack's take on the issues. i've been terribly lax on researching those issues, even the ones i consider important to me.

if i weren't so anti-social, as s oft tells me, perhaps this wouldn't be such a big deal. the fact that it's so icy frigid is not much of an incentive to go out of the house after spending all day at work. but this is a democratic privilege to take part in the process & hey, it's only a couple hours out of my evening. i wonder if my vote will make a difference?