My Struggle with Obesity

Today is Sunday, September 15, 2013.

I wasn't always obese.

As an elementary school student, I was actually tall and lanky, and I could easily do things like splits and back bends.  Of course, I didn't stay tall for long – only until fifth grade, when I stopped growing, and others did not.

 I was a little pudgy in high school, but managed to slim down by graduation time, and I was fairly slim for most of my time at university.  I was even pretty slim when I got married, and looked OK in my wedding dress.

After marriage, I started to gain weight, but not all at once.  Since I lived in Japan for a decade from my early 20s to early 30s, I probably didn't gain as much as I might have if I had lived for that time period here in the U.S.  And I slimmed down considerably after my divorce, simply because depression left me with no appetite, and I had so little money that I couldn't afford much to eat.

When I got back to the States, I was still in pretty good shape.  I gained maybe 10 or 15 pounds over the next few years, nothing too serious, and I was still able to walk long distances.  I remember living in St. Paul in my 40s and walking a mile or so to Lake Como, which I would circle twice on the walking path, then walk (uphill!) back home, no problem.   I enjoyed walking briskly in time to music.  I do remember being a little concerned about my weight, and making an effort to do lots of walking and some aqua exercise, which didn't work out for me because of a serious skin reaction to chlorine.

Then I remember walking on some uneven pavement and stretching or tearing my ligaments, which made it painful to walk.  Staying off my feet started me on the path to obesity.  Getting myself a computer and hooking it up to the Internet did the rest, I think.

Pretty soon my knees, hips and ankles started to hurt, further limiting my activity.  Then I got cancer, and a whole list of other conditions as a result of the treatment.  At my heaviest, I weighed well over 100 pounds more than I should.  I remember going into a clinic in the mall once and having my BMI read.  I was hoping that they would tell me I was fat, but not obese.  Nope.  I was obese.  Morbidly obese.  How I hate that terminology!

I had friends, family, and doctors tell me to lose weight.  Rather than feeling grateful for their concern, I simply felt uncomfortable and defensive.  As well, I could still remember being perfectly proportioned and feeling unhappy after my divorce, so I knew that being slim, per se, is not necessarily the key to happiness.

I joined Weight Watchers a little more than a year ago – this is my second go-round.  The last time I joined, it was just to lose enough weight to satisfy my mother before my sister's wedding.  This time, I joined at the invitation of my niece, who went with me.  At one point, my mom joined, as well, but both of them have dropped out.  I'm still plugging away.

So far I have lost 25 pounds, and I know I can lose more, but right now I am having a great time being able to wear everything in my closet.  I know that if I lose another 25, I will have to make quite a little outlay on clothes, which I can't really afford at this point.  Still, I'm keeping the weight off, and that's what counts, for now.

What has helped?   Mindfulness.  Paying attention to portion sizes. (In fact, adjusting to new ideas on what one portion actually is, and realizing how little is actually "enough.")  Paying attention to which foods I put into my mouth.  Paying attention to when I eat and why.  And increasing my level of activity.   Those have all helped.

I've been doing some aquacise classes in a saline pool – no chlorine burn on my skin – and I know that has helped a great deal.  I now feel strong enough to lift some very light free weights, which will help tone my arms some.  I'm also trying to get a decent amount of sleep each night.

*** *** *** *** ***

I read some statistics on obesity recently.  An ABC News article said that obese people tend to suffer more from migraine headaches, and they are at greater risk for infertility problems and cancer.  Those who get cancer are more likely to die from the disease, partially because it tends to get diagnosed later.   Obese women who give birth are more likely to have premature babies due to weakening of the uterus and cervical membranes.  Web MD says that 1 pound of weight loss takes 4 pounds of pressure off your knees.  In that case, no wonder my knees feel better:  I have taken 100 pounds of pressure off of them! 

What surprisd me was a statistic that I read in several places: that women who are obese tend to face more job discrimination and make less money, overall, than their slimmer counterparts.  There was no correlation between weight and salary level for men, however.  Only the women.  And it starts as soon as you apply for a job.  If you send your picture in your resume, you are much more likely not to even get an interview!  Employers tend to see their obese employees as poor role models, and often describe them as "lazy, sloppy, lacking in self-discipline, less competent and less conscientious."  Is this true regardless of the employee's actual work performance?  If so, that's pretty scary!

A statistic that I resonated with said that 67% of obese men and women feel that their doctors shamed or buillied them about their weight.  I can relate.  This is not so surprising when you look at the results of surveys given to doctors.   50% of doctors in one study thought of their obese patients as "awkward, ugly, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment."   24% of nurses surveyed said they were "repulsed" by obese patients.  How much help do you think you're going to get from a health care worker who thinks you're ugly and repulsive?   It's no wonder that many obese people dislike going to the doctor, and try to avoid it if they can.

Fortunately, today it is understood that obesity is not a simple problem with a simple solution.  It's not just how much you eat, but what you eat, when, and why, and how your body processes what you eat.  It also has to do with the context of your life, in terms of what foods you have access to, how much you can afford to pay for groceries, how much exercise you get, and what your emotional state is.  It has to do with your general state of physical health, and your metabolism.

Obesity is not only an individual problem, it's a societal problem, and as a society we are going to have to work together to find some answers.  One thing that we will have to take a hard look at is the way our government subsidizes some foods and not others.  When Norway did this, the level of obesity went down in the population.

In the U.S., commodity foods are those foods which the government has legal authority to purchase and distribute in order to support farm prices.  Not in order to support poor people – in order to support farmers!  Commodity foods are distributed to state agencies, including public schools, and to Indian tribal organizations.  They are supposed to "supplement" the diet, but as everyone knows, they form the bulk of the diet of our poorest citizens. 

Commodity foods include canned fruit juice and canned fruits, which are loade with sugar.  They also include canned vegetables, farina, oats, ready-to-eat cereal, monfat dry milk, evaporated milk, egg mix, dry beans, peanut butter, canned meat, poultry or tuna, dehydrated potatoes, pasta, rice, cheese, butter, honey, and infant cereal and formula.  Notice how many dairy and grain products are in this list?  There have been a number of news stories in recent months about the fact that the diet of our citizens in poverty is contributing to malnutrition and obesity.  Something has to change.  Couldn't the government offer subsidies to farmers who produce fresh fruits and vegetables?

These days schools are doing a better job of serving meals with fresh foods and foods with lower salt and sugar content.  They're also better at getting kids active, but there needs to be a stronger effort in this area, especially at the local level, where kids need to have choices of activities in a safe, neutral location during after-school and early evening hours, and on weekends.  Summer recreation programs are fine, but this effort needs to be year-long.

It's a whole lot easier for a kid to lose weight than for a 60-year-old woman, I can tell you.  :-/

Teachers Open the Door... but Your Kids Must Enter by Themselves

Today is Saturday, September 14, 2013.

A great deal has been said about how teachers should teach, but not as much is said about how students should learn.  The fact is, teachers don't actually teach anything.  They simply create situations in which students can learn, if they want to.  Every teacher knows that you can't really force anybody to learn anything, and there are a lot of variables governing whether a student is ready to learn at any given time. 

Parents can help create a situation in which their child can learn every day by making sure that kids eat healthy meals and that they don't have too much access to sugary foods.  You would not believe how many parents refuse to do this one simple thing.  

Parents can also help their children learn just by not badmouthing schools.  Do you honestly think that your kids will want to go to school and do their best when they hear you saying negative things about schools?  Frankly, if you would just keep your opinions to yourself, things would go a lot more smoothly at school.  You have no idea how many times your children repeat what you have said at the dinner table!  So, you had a miserable time at school – are you going to sentence your child to the same miserable experience? 

Parents can make sure that their children get plenty of sleep each night.  This means that the TV should be turned off, or turned way down when kids are put to bed.  Please do not make your fifth-grade daughter help you at your evening cleaning job at the movie theater.  She needs to be in bed, sleeping, while you do your job.  If you don't trust her when you leave the house, then you need to find someone who will stay with her while you are at work.  

Parents should go through their kids' backpacks each night to look at completed homework and check for notes home from school.  You can ask your child what homework he or she has.  There should be something each night, Monday through Thursday, at least.  If your child has no homework at all, call the teacher and find out from him or her whether that is true.  Don't just let your child bamboozle you into thinking nothing was assigned.  

 Parents are responsible for seeing to it that their child has a place to study in the evenings, either in the child's room or at the kitchen table.  Parents should have their children show them completed homework and explain what they did.  Your elementary school child should be bringing books home to read. Have the child read to you. This should take no more than 10-15 minutes.  When the child is older and able to read "chapter books" on his or her own, insist that the child read 20, then 30 minutes, and work up to at least an hour.  If you really want to enforce this, create a family reading time.  Your kids should see you reading.  Be available for your kids to ask for help with a word.  Ask them about the book they are reading. 

Parents should insist that kids put their homework in their backpack before they go to bed, and all backpacks should be by the door so the kids don't forget them in the morning.  Make sure to ask your kids if they need any pencils every so often. Pencils are not furnished by the school, unless they are for a test.  As a teacher, I'm really tired of buying pencils for your kids every year.   Seriously. 

Kids have responsibilities, too.  We try to get kids to learn to organize their papers, and we actually do that with them in the lower grades.  We give them assignment planners and we give them time to write down their assignments for the next day.  We remind them again and again to take books home to read.  Kids need to learn these habits in order to succeed in school.

The biggest impediment to learning on the part of the child is emotional immaturity.  If your child is emotionally immature, it will not really matter how high his IQ is or how many things you have already taught her at home.  I have seen first graders who can read third and fourth-grade stuff, but at some level they simply aren't interested in going ahead.  Why?  They aren't interested in the topics that are written about at that reading level. If your child is ahead of his or her class in reading, why not just let the child enjoy reading whatever he or she wants to for a while?  What's the hurry?  If your child is that far ahead in the early stages, he or she will not drop behind later, I promise.

Another impediment to learning is a kind of mental development.  If you talk to your child and read to him or her before the child enters kindergarten, the child will have enough facility with the language to learn to read.  If you don't spend much time even talking to your kids, how do you expect them to learn enough words to do well in school?  Studies show that kids from families where the parents talk to their kids and read to them come to school with large vocabularies of maybe 5 thousand words and up.  (Some of these words they can use and others they only understand.)   Kids from families where the parents have to work so much that they don't have much time to talk to or read to their kids come to school with vocabularies of maybe only a couple thousand words.   Kids from families who speak another language at home instead of English may come to school with no words at all, or maybe around 100, max.  

There are other aspects to mental development, not all very well understood at this point.  There are points at which a child can understand that the printed words on the page are not part of the decoration.  There are points at which a child is able to understand the concept of patterns.  There are points at which a child is ready to understand things like number sense (15 is smaller than 51, 82 comes after 79, etc.) and concepts such as volume (a short, fat can might hold as much soup as a taller, skinnier can, etc.).   You can talk to kids and teach them about things like this at home, but basically, if they're not ready for it, it will go right over their heads.  

As a teacher, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to interest my students in the things I was required to introduce to them.  I tried to think of little games and fun activities that helped to create "buy-in" so that the kids were engaged in the lesson, and I did this no matter what grade level I taught – and I taught them all, kindergarten through twelfth grade.  

There was nothing I could do if the child was too tired and sleepy to pay attention, if the student was sick or coming down with something, or if the child had witnessed a horrific fight between her mom and her mom's abusive boyfriend.  The lesson didn't mean much to the child who was thinking about the rat that he discovered under his bed last night, or the one who was feeling sad and upset because his father, in a drunken rage, threw his cat against the wall and killed it.  I felt helpless to do anything about the girl who was molested by her uncle and wouldn't tell anybody about it; I certainly couldn't get her to understand the poem "Thanatopsis."   The young woman who just realized that her boyfriend made her pregnant was not listening to me or participating in the lesson

I did my best, and I stand by what I did, but in the end, all I could do was open the door and hold it open for kids to walk through.  Some of them did, and others just plain didn't.  :-/

It's Too Early to Shop for Christmas!

Today is Friday, September 13, 2013.

OK, they've done it.  They've crossed the line.  Kmart recently aired a Christmas shopping ad, more than 100 days before Christmas.  It's not even mid-September yet!   Maybe they were trying to beat Target, who ran their first Christmas ad last year in early October.

Apparently, the store thinks people will "start thinking" about Christmas shopping, and maybe put a few big-ticket items on layaway.  Maybe, but don't count on it.  Everyone who has not been hiding under a rock for the last few years knows that the best deals are done the weekend before the actual Christmas holiday, and they know that if they can manage not to blink until then, the retailers will blink, and reduce prices just before Christmas.

Basically, the Kmart ad has almost universally annoyed shoppers, and one can always hope that retail stores will take notice of their reaction and not plan to beat Kmart next year.  Most stores have just put their "back to school" merchandise in their regular shelves and racks and brought out Halloween items to the seasonal sale aisles, which are still quite early, considering that Halloween comes at the end of October.  Six weeks in plenty long enough to shop for candy and tacky-looking costumes, thank you very much.

I know there are people who may disagree, but six weeks is plenty of time to shop for Christmas. Just my two cents.  :-/

My Internet Friends

Today is Thursday, September 12, 2013.

It's true, the meaning of the word "friend" is getting an upgrade.  There have always been different levels of friends, but with the advent of social media, new types of friendships have sprung up.  Wikipedia notes, "While there is no practical limit on what types of people can form a friendship, friends tend to share common backgrounds, occupations, or interests, and have similar demographics."   

The hallmarks of a friendship include affection, sympathy, empathy, honesty, altruism, mutual understanding, compassion, enjoyment of each other's company, and the ability to express oneself or make mistakes without fear of judgment or rejection from other.   In other words, I like you, and I enjoy communicating with you.  I share your feelings.  It makes me feel good to know you're happy, and I celebrate with you when something wonderful happens.  When you're sad, frightened, wounded, or worried, I do what I can to help you or  comfort you, even if the only thing I can do is listen.  I know I can tell you honestly how I feel, even if we disagree on a particular point, because you will at least listen to me and give me the benefit of the doubt.  I, in turn, will listen to what you have to say, even if it is a little hard to wrap my mind around it.  

As we age, it is normal to spend less and less time just "hanging out" with our friends.  Our lives start to fill up with work obligations, family obligations, and community obligations.  We may have seen each other daily in the beginning, at school or in the neighborhood, but we're no longer in the same classroom or the same school.  We may not even be in the same town or the same state anymore.  But we continue to communicate, at least once a year.  

With Facebook and other social media, we have the option of staying in contact with people that we would otherwise only hear from once a year around Christmastime.  We have the option of continuing our association and cementing friendships with people we met at a seminar, a convention, a class, or a workplace, even though we no longer have the opportunity to see each other physically.  

We also have the opportunity to make new friends on social media, based on a common interest.  By the time I joined Facebook, I had already been a member of a couple of email lists on Yahoo where I met literally hundreds of people who are all members of my religion, Eckankar.  So when I joined Facebook, within hours I had friend requests from over 50 people.  A week later, I had some 300 Facebook friends, people with whom I had communicated for years on Yahoo.   I had met a great number of them at least once in person, at yearly Eckankar seminars.

 Then I began to get friend requests from ECKists whom I had never met.  A few of them I have since met at a seminar, but many of them are still "strangers," at least physically. Many of these people I have never heard from since, but I have continued to communicate with a small percentage of them on a more-or-less daily basis, and I am aware of their thoughts and various events in their lives that they have shared.  

I now have 721 friends on Facebook.  Only about 35 of these are actually family members, by blood or by marriage.  The rest are either teacher friends, writer friends, ikebana friends, Meetup group friends, Facebook game friends, blog follower friends, or ECKist friends.  By far the largest category is my group of ECKist friends, who number at least 650, and who come from all the continents of the world except Antarctica. I continue to get friend requests from ECKists.  When I don't personally know the one who requests Facebook friendship, my criteria for accepting the request is how many mutual friends we have, and these days I can afford to wait until that number climbs well over 50 before I accept.  If among the mutual friends, there is one friend I consider fairly "close," I can always write to the mutual friend and ask about the one who sent me the request.  Sometimes the person who requested friendship is one whose comments I have read on a mutual friend's wall and I realize that we have a lot of things in common.  I occasionally request friendship with others for this reason.  

Interestingly enough, none of my Facebook friends are people I met in childhood.  Only a couple of them are high school friends, and none of them was a friend or classmate from my undergraduate days at university.  Not many are grad school friends, either.  I suppose I could try looking up one or two from the old days, but with online friends, the main connection is things that we have in common now, not earlier in life.  I would only be interested in maintaining my connections from the past if there is still something in common today.  

My online friends, whether from Yahoo or Facebook, made it so much easier to transition from working to retired, and from living in Minnesota to living in South Dakota.  They provided encouragement and love as I made these changes, and I have appreciated the chance to chat with people late at night, when everyone around me is asleep and I have no one to be with me, physically.  My Facebook friends have stayed in contact with me while I was in the hospital, which I appreciated no end.  In some ways, that meant more than visits to my room, physically, because my online friends could contact me anytime, regardless of visiting hours. 

I have no idea how many of my online friends will actually read this post, but I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them, from the bottom of my heart, for their friendship, their love, their support, and their concern for my wellbeing. 

Some thoughts on 9/11

Today is Wednesday, September 11, 2013.

People my parents age remember where they were when they heard that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and where they were when victory was declared in Europe and in Japan.  My generation remembers where they were when President John F. Kennedy was shot, when Robert Kennedy was shot, when Martin Luther King was shot, and when the World Trade Center towers were attacked on September 11, 2001.  

Today is the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.  There's something about a cycle of twelve years that is important, and it's no coincidence that one whole generation is  two cycles of twelve years.  Kids who are in sixth grade this year were either not yet born or just born, so nobody who is in elementary school now has any personal memories of the event.  Kids who were in sixth grade when the attacks happened are young adults now, finishing up their schooling and starting out in careers, marriages and child-rearing.  People who were young adults then are mature adults now, poised to enter middle age.  People who were middle-aged then are now in late middle age, or entering those "golden years."   And people who were old then are really old now - or gone.   

Today the main news article on the front page of newspapers and news web sites is not the terrorist attacks on 9/11.  There are fewer pictures of the chaos and destruction in the media, and more pictures of the beautiful memorial at Ground Zero.  

After the attacks, Americans gave up some of their freedoms in the name of national security.  We put up with scanners at airports and long lines at TSA security gates, but we also learned that inspections were often cursory, and it was possible to get dangerous items through inspections.   We learned that a lot of innocent people whose only "crime" was to be from the wrong country a member of the wrong ethnic group have been profiled and harassed by TSA.   We learned that Native Americans, Latinos and others of Southern European descent are often mistaken for Middle Easterners.  The media has made much of catching a few potential terrorists, but we wonder, all the same, whether we are really that much safer.

After the attacks, we resolved as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we haven't really done that.  Sure, the wind power industry has gotten off to a good, if slow, start, but we're no closer to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.  To quote a Readers' Digest article from 2011, "Although 87 percent of Americans believe the Gulf of Mexico hasn't fully recovered from the 2010 oil spill, 69 percent favor increased offshore drilling.  And while nearly two out of three Americans want more alternative energy development, 47 percent said (even right after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown) that nuclear power's benefits outweigh its risks, compared with the 38 percent who disagreed."

Americans in many ways are less tolerant of Islam than they have ever been.  Only one-third of all Americans hold a favorable view of Muslims.  Fortunately, those who do hold a favorable view, or at least a neutral one, tend to be more tolerant and more interested in learning about Islam.  Believe it or not, enrollment in Arabic classes at universities has tripled since 2001, and more college students study Arabic than Russian. 

In 2010 an Arab American won the Miss America beauty pageant.  Minnesotans elected a Muslim, Keith Ellison, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007 and he has been serving ever since.  Famous Arab Americans don't seem to have been affected that much in their professional life, but average citizens definitely felt more fear of surveillance after the attacks.  Not that the surveillance kept the Boston bomber brothers from doing their dastardly deed. A study done in 2006 found that both Arab-Americans and law enforcement personnel noticed an increase in reporting of false information in the form of anonymous tips. F.B.I. agents who responded to the tips found that many of them were actually the result of petty disputes, business competition and dating rivalries, according to the study.

We have more respect for military service personnel, local law enforcement, and firefighters now than we did before the attacks.  We still aren't doing a good job of welcoming our military veterans home after their term of service is up.  Vets' unemployment rate is much higher than the national average, and vets who have post traumatic emotional issues are not getting the mental health services they deserve.  Consequently, their suicide rate is very high.

One good thing that has happened after the attacks is a rise in the number of people who volunteer their services to help those in need.  Nearly 30 percent of Americans now volunteer their time, as opposed to only about 20 percent before the attacks.

On an individual level, some of us have become more vigilant when in crowded places, and we are more proactive about expressing our love and appreciation to family and friends.  Some of us have been less willing to travel far from home.

Americans are aware that we as a nation are no longer invincible, if we ever were.  We are more aware of what people of other nations think of us.  We are much less inclined to get into a war – witness the overwhelming disapproval that Americans, even liberals,  are currently expressing about attacking Syria, a Muslim nation.   More of us are becoming aware that the vast majority of Muslims were and are just as horrified about the attacks as non-Muslims were, that traditional, mainline Muslims have as dim a view of Islamic terrorists as many mainline Christians have of fundamentalist Christian extremists in the Westboro Baptist Church.  :-)

World Suicide Prevention Day - September 10

Today is September 10, 2013.

One million people die every year by suicide.  That's approximately one death every 40 seconds. By the time you finish reading this article, a number of people will have killed themselves.  The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are 20  people who fail to kill themselves for every one who succeeds.  Suicide accounts for nearly half of the violent deaths worldwide, and as Brian Mishara, a former IASP president, has noted, "more people kill themselves than die in all wars, terrorist acts, and interpersonal violence combined."  Suicide is the "most common cause of death for people aged 15 – 24.  The number of people who die by suicide may reach 1.5 million per year by 2020, according to estimates.  In the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the highest rates of suicides for both males and females were among Native Americans and Alaskan Natives.

September 10 was originally set aside by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003 as World Suicide Prevention Day.   These two organizations now also collaborate with the World Federation for Mental Health to sponsor activities that will draw attention to suicide as a public health issue.  This year, they are asking everyone to light a candle near a window at 8 pm this evening to show your solidarity. 

Each year, there is a different theme.  This year's theme is "Stigma: A Major Barrier for Suicide Prevention."  The reason for this is simple: 90 percent of all suicides are caused by mental illness, in particular, depression.  People who suffer from any of the many forms of mental illness experience stigma.

Social stigma is extreme disapproval of an individual or group who differ in some way from the cultural norm.  People with physical disabilities and obvious diseases such as leprosy experience social stigma.  So do people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), people of a racial group that is in the minority in a given location, followers of a minority religion, people who have a low level of education, people without jobs, people of certain ethnic groups (depending on location), people who were born illegitimate, and people who have been convicted of a crime.  That's in addition to all the people who suffer from mental illness.

I read a very powerful explanation of the way in which stigma contributes to suicide on a website called Suicide.org. (I'm giving you the link to the page where I read what is quoted below, and you can navigate to the home page from there.)  The piece was written by Kevin Caruso.  The following is only a partial quote.

If you had a broken leg, you would go to a hospital immediately. There would be no hesitation, and no consideration about what others would "think." And after you left the hospital, you would not hide out in your house because you would be afraid of being discriminated against because of your "condition." You would just go on with your life.

No big deal. A broken leg. A cast. And in a few months, a healed bone.

But what if a stigma was attached to having a broken leg? Then what? What if you could lose your job because of it? What if people would treat you differently because of it? What if people said that you were weak because of it? Weak? Yes. Only weak people get broken legs. So, you are weak! And what if people told you that your broken leg was all in you mind? That you just needed to be "strong"? That you were choosing to have a broken leg? And what if you lost friends because of your broken leg? Remember--you are a weak person for having a broken leg, and don't you ever forget it. And what if people whispered behind your back about you because of your broken leg? After all, only crazy people have broken legs. You didn't know that? Well now you do. You are crazy! That's right, crazy!

So you are ridiculed incessantly, become a pariah, lose your job, lose friends, and now you start believing that you actually are weak and crazy. And the pain of the broken leg is unbearable because you never sought treatment. How could you? The "broken-leg stigma" prevented you from getting help.

So you begin having suicidal thoughts. You want to end it all. You cannot go on.

Within the Native American population, there is a very high incidence of conditions that result in stigma, including being of a minority race, speaking a minority language, being a follower of a minority religion, just for starters.  When you add in the fact that on some reservations there are rates of unemployment that exceed 90 percent, that alcoholism and violence are rampant, and that the people are excruciatingly poor, it is no surprise that an overwhelming number of people in this group are depressed, and it is abundantly clear there are so many suicides in this group of people.  Remember that depression can be caused by a number of factors, including post traumatic stress.  One in three Native American women is assaulted or raped in her lifetime.

If you are on Facebook, go to the World Suicide Prevention Day 2013  event page for more information, including links to help for those who might be contemplating suicide as well as links for people who have lost a loved one to suicide.  Otherwise click on the World Suicide Prevention Day link given in the second paragraph of this post.

Caruso stresses, "The most important thing that we can all do for people who are mentally ill is to get them help as quickly as possible, while we show them as much love and concern as possible."  <3 br="">

More Shoes Dropping

George Zimmerman in court during his trial, July 8, 2013.

Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/AP Photo/ABC News

Today is Monday, September 9, 2013.

See?  I told you. 

I wrote in my blog post last Friday that I wouldn't want to be married to a man who thinks a gun will solve his problems.  Now George Zimmerman is in custody again for domestic violence against his estranged wife and her father.  And yes, the incident involved a gun.

According to Shellie Zimmerman's attorney, she found a firearm in the home they shared and George pulled a knife on her.  Later, in an argument between Shellie, George, and Shellie's father, George threatened them with his gun.  This was during a verbal argument, and no one was shot, but if anyone had been, I suspect that the Stand Your Ground law could not have saved old George from the slam.  Not this time. 

Naturally, he hasn't been charged with a crime, but I do hope Shellie gets a restraining order.

When will George Zimmerman and others of his ilk realize that a gun is not going to solve all their problems?

I'm OK with having a gun for sport, as long as the sport is shooting at targets and not shooting live animals just for fun.  I'm even OK with having a gun for protection, although I think guns just tend to exacerbate situations, and the people you really have to protect yourself from generally also have a gun.  They probably know how to use it better than you do, anyway.

As for hunting, very few people these days actually hunt for food to eat, but as long as you do eat what you kill, I guess that's OK.  Really, hunting is a "sport" nowadays, not a necessity of life.

I do not think that automatic or semi-automatic weapons of any kind belong in the hands of anyone other than the military, but I realize that as long as there are gun controls, there will always be a black market for such things, as well as for regular hand guns and rifles bought without any checks by law-enforcement.

Anyway, this is all just my two cents.  I'm not surprised at these developments in the Zimmerman case, and you probably aren't, either.  :-/