My favorite comedian, Eddie Izzard, likes to describe the military and its attractions as “running, jumping, climbing trees”. (Izzard is also frequently a cross-dresser, so he likes to describe his fantasy army as “running, jumping, climbing trees, putting on makeup when you get up there.”) I’ve never actually considered a military career because I’m just too puny. But I’m not entirely immune to the allure of action. I studied gymnastics as a kid and, in my early twenties, I pursued stage combat for quite some time and even purchased a couple of swords. But I’ve mostly stood by and watched while…
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Hey, all! I had another sober but inspiring visit to Gorham, NH last week, to meet the North Country Veterans Committee at the Berlin Vet Center. Upon seeing Team Leader Jay Sprinkle again, I learned some more important details about the care veterans and their families receive through the Vet Center program. So I’ve updated my previous post about the Berlin Vet Center, and also added more pictures. I also learned that the hygiene kits donated by the Red Cross are already proving useful to homeless veterans up there, yippee! So stay tuned for updates about the work of the…
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POST UPDATED 9-12-12: As you know if you’ve followed my adventures studying traumatic brain injury in military service members, one theme that emerges again and again is the difficulty of trust between veterans and their civilian friends, family, co-workers, and even the care providers they encounter. Even at the VA., as former Sgt. Matthew Pennington has explained, civilian medical staff at VA hospitals may not seem to hear a service member properly, nor to understand the culture of self-reliance and loyalty to their unit that makes it so hard to ask for help. So the Vet Center program is a…
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I grew up with an A-plus volunteer for a mother. Mom began her long career fundraising for Public Broadcast as a volunteer, and then as a volunteer coordinator, before moving up the ladder in Development. Aside from Public Broadcast, she’s been fighting the good fight as long as I’ve known her–for women’s reproductive rights, for peace, and in support of reasonable voices in our government. Once I stopped worrying about whether she’d let me buy a miniskirt at the mall, I realized that my Mom was an amazing individual and that I wanted to serve the community as she always…
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Hello, everybody! As you may know, there was until lately another version of lesliepasternack.com. It was a poor, raggedy site that I insisted on building the hard way. I had arbitrarily selected software I couldn’t understand, and I declined to seek training or sustained advice from one of the many kind gurus in my life. Periodically, I threw the user’s manual at the wall, gently, and that did relieve some stress, but it didn’t improve the site. (Plus, I have pretty paint on the walls now, so I can’t risk a repeat of that technique.) I did have some better…