Ever have one of those days when you want to stay in bed all day?

I’m not sick, but staying in bed and reading sounds just marvelous… 🙂

The awful shooting at Umpqua Community College is terribly upsetting.

I’ve talked with Melissa about it a lot.

One of the changes since she first started teaching a little more than ten years ago is that all teachers now ‘watch a video at the beginning of the school year showing us what to do if there is a shooter and how we should have a weapon handy.’

She has actually spent time visualizing what to do if a shooter came to her school. I cringed and cried as she texted me “BTW, my weapon is a metal garbage can, and I’m going with an upswing to the head.”

While  discussions seem to focus on who’s right about how to fix the problem, Melissa’s words ring very true:

“I agree that one thing won’t fix it, but doing nothing won’t fix it either.”

While reading an op ed piece by Dr. Sanja Gupta on CNN a few days ago, I decided to learn more about epidemiologist Gary Slutkin.

Gary Slutkin is an epidemiologist, an innovator in violence reduction and the founder/executive director of Cure Violence, formerly known as CeaseFire. The program is being replicated in several US cities as well as abroad.

After a decade of fighting epidemic diseases in Africa, Slutkin returned to the United States began looking at gun violence, noting that its spread followed those same patterns of the infectious diseases he battled in Africa.

In part, his programs place “interrupters” within communities to stop the spread. “Interrupters are trained health professionals who act as mediators and go to the epicenter of violent behavior.” They don’t judge. They try and understand what’s behind the need to be violent.

His ideas focus on using science as a part of the solution to cure violence.

Here’s a video of Gary Slutkin speaking at TedMed, a global community dedicated to unlocking imagination in service of health and medicine.

Let’s treat violence like a contagious disease

With permission, a portion of this post has been copied from my niece’s Facebook post on 10/06/15. Thanks,  Patricia!

The shooting in Roseburg, Oregon, have caused the debates to begin yet again.

• Was the shooter mentally ill?
• If he was, how could he have gotten a gun?
• Shouldn’t someone have known?
• Shouldn’t someone have done something?

In the Roseburg shootings, it’s not just the shooter who’s being examined for mental illness. His mother is in the media’s focus.

There are too many preconceived and incorrect beliefs about mental illness. And many of those distortions are perpetuated by the media in their efforts to gain viewers to improve their ratings.

Seldom is there effective and sustained dialog past those attention-grabbing headlines. And even less seldom is there a true effort to understand mental illness from those who suffer.

Patricia (furthest left) suffers from schizoaffective disorder, a mental illness that combines schizophrenia and mood disorders. Her strength and grace amaze me as does her eloquence in conveying her thoughts and experiences.

Patricia wrote the following shortly after the latest school shooting in Roseburg, Oregon.

She also posted an excellent (funny and irreverent yet honest) video by John Oliver discussing America’s Treatment of Mental Health.

I’m really touchy about when there are mass shootings. For the record, I know that my distress over the topic is NOTHING like those who were actually involved. I feel great sadness for them. But, on my end, I feel like shit over how much the focus is put on mental illness. Yes, there are mentally ill people who commit mass shootings. What people don’t realize, is that these illnesses are not rare. The most severe illness, schizophrenia, effects 1 in 100 people. One in 100 people do no go on shooting sprees. It’s hard when you are lumped into what people think is a small group – and a group that is dangerous to society. Or a group that is made fun of. That people joke about. Or a group where even doctors don’t take your illness seriously. I honestly jump around from General Practitioner to General Practitioner because it is obvious they don’t take my illness seriously. I have even been turned down for treatment by a physician because she refuses to treat people with “severe mental illness.” And I was going because of my thyroid. I finally found a doctor that acknowledged that I have a serious mental illness that effects my physical health, but he just retired. I do want to say something about the last time I went to him. The nurse that took my blood pressure and my pulse held my hand. My anxiety is so bad when I go to the doctor – and also just a lot of time in general – that while the pulse monitor was on my finger, my hand was shaking like crazy. The nurse put both her hands around my hand. I was shocked. I am so used to people simply looking at me, wide eyed and uncomfortable – even by health professionals – that I was shocked by the kindness that should be shown to people with mental illness, and just to people in general. That’s my soapbox spiel for the day.

Gonna be a rant today, Gentle Blogreader. So bear with me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that when conveying detail specific information texting wins out over talking.

I know a lot of people who hate texting, but I prefer it over phone calls 95+% of the time.

Here’s the back story…

I left very precise message at an office yesterday morning.

I was calling for someone else and the office needed the someone else’s name and birth date to look up the account.

Here’s what I said, minus the juicy stuff about the exact situation…

“My name is Kathy Getto. I’m calling about So-And-So. His birth date is MM/DD/YY. He is an established client of your firm. He was ‘here I explained the situation in less than 10 words.’ Please call me back at ###-####. Again I’m Kathy Getto calling for the client So-And-So , Date of Birth MM/DD/YY and my phone number is ###-####.”

I left the message at 8:15 a.m.

At 11:30 a.m. I called another phone number at the office to try to get a clue as to what the status of my request was. While I was talking with one person, another person from the office called me back.

She said, “You can’t come see us because we’ve never seen you before. You have to get a referral from another office.” She was microseconds from hanging up when I blurted out, “Wait a minute…”

Then I went through my speech again. Then she said, “Oh, OK!” And she proceeded to help me.

Here’s what I think happened earlier in the day:

She, along with the rest of us, multitasked and didn’t  pay attention to the task at hand.

As she listened to my message,  she was probably reading an email, drinking her coffee, and watching five other phone lines light up with additional phone calls.

How the heck COULD she actually pay attention to my message while juggling at least three other tasks.

I think we’re all guilty of doing, or at least attempting to do, other things while we’re on the phone.  Driving, reading, watching TV, etc…

We’re a multitasking nation! Especially American women. And we’re proud of it! 🙂

But think about it…

When you’re reading a text you’re doing just that. Reading the text. If you start doing something else, you’re no longer reading the text.

Make sense?

That’s why I’m convinced that I would not have had the trouble I had had I been able to text my request to the office. My information would have been in black and white. She would have scanned for the key words (shown in red) important for her to do her job.

“My name is Kathy Getto. I’m calling about So-And-So. His birth date is MM/DD/YY. He is an established client of your firm. He was ‘here I explained the situation in less than 10 words.’ Please call me back at ###-####. Again I’m Kathy Getto calling for the client So-And-So , Date of Birth MM/DD/YY and my phone number is ###-####.”

Well, maybe not. Maybe she would have only read the first and last few words.

“My name is Kathy Getto. I’m calling about So-And-So. His birth date is MM/DD/YY. He is an established client of your firm. He was ‘here I explained the situation in less than 10 words.’ Please call me back at ###-####. Again I’m Kathy Getto calling for the client So-And-So , Date of Birth MM/DD/YY and my phone number is ###-####.”

So I’m probably wrong.

But I do know that for someone who’s phone phobic like me, I would rather have spent the morning TEXTING rather than TELEPHONING! 🙂

I was blessed with two father-in-laws.

They were very different: Bob always looked at the bright side of life and Joe—not so much.

Joe did have some wisdom, and he provided me with one of my favorite quotes that is applicable for Rich and I today.

Joe told me once,

We’re waiting for a couple of phone calls, and we need to be patient because, as much as we’d like to, we can’t make the phone ring.

I love Harry Smith’s voice almost as much as I like his stories.

His voice is soothing and feels like a homecoming.

His stories make a person smile.

What’s a better than that combination?

Here’s today’s story about a bookmobile in northern Idaho.

Long live books! Real books!

And long live Harry Smith. 🙂