Jeff Hunter at the Salt Lake VA Medical Center referred us to this info from www.usuhs.mil.  Good stuff.  Marriage matters.  Hold on to yours!

COURAGE TO CARE Becoming a Couple Again 
How to Create a Shared Sense of Purpose After Deployment

From the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, your federal medical school, Bethesda, Maryland • www. usuhs.mil

Coming together as a couple after war deployment isn’t always easy or something that happens naturally. It requires effort, and an understanding that each person has grown and changed during the separation. A positive way to think about this is that both of you, service person and spouse, have developed your own sense of purpose coping with new experiences while apart. What’s important now is to come together and
create a “shared sense of purpose”, that is essential for your well being as a couple, that of your children and your life in the community. This won’t happen overnight; it will take time, mutual compassion and a desire to do so. You can read about four steps that will help you create a “shared sense of purpose” at http://www.usuhs.mil/psy/RFSMC.pdf

---

Steve Champeau has sad, tired eyes. He speaks cautiously, rarely laughs and rations smiles. His demeanor is not unkind — just worn-out.

He is tired of fighting.  Click to read more

---

VETERANS:
Get Involved or Get Lost

Veterans Benefits are Under Attack
Politicians will eliminate your benefits if you do not write them regularly! A single page, handwritten note is best.

Forwarded from Terry Schow, Director of the Utah Division of Veterans Affairs

note:  We sent out a complete letter in a previous issue.  Included here are excerpts.  Read the entire article at Contact Elected Officials

From: "James F. Tichacek"
raoemo@mozcom.com

• I believe informed vets are better voters than ones who do not know what the facts are and/or what their representatives are doing to or for them...
  
  Complacency is our biggest problem and when vets fail to speak up Congress and SECDEF who control the VA & DoD purse strings have traditionally placed us near the bottom in their expenditure priorities. The best way our 25 million veterans can have an impact on any issue is to write the congressmen of their state/district and president or vote them out of office.
  
  Ongoing legislation and current status can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov. How your representative voted on any particular bill can be found at www.vote-smart.org .
  
  
• A hand written legible letter of no more than one page is most effective.
• Next most effective is a FAX.
• Congressional staff opens and reads your correspondence along with the thousands of others. Most have been machine produced and thus receive very little attention.If you do not get the attention of the staff reader your message will never get to your Congressman.
• Very little attention is given to email.
  
  You can locate your congressman's contact info by by entering your zip code at http://www.house.gov/writerep/ . Your senator's contact info can be found at http://www.senate.gov/.

Once more:  The best way veterans can have an impact on any issue is to write their Congressmen, Senators, and President a handwritten letter of no more than one page.  If they do not respond, vote them out of office.

Ongoing legislation and current status can be found at thomas.loc.gov  How your representative voted on any particular bill can be found at www.vote-smart.org .

Please contact your Representative TODAY to ask him or her to support veterans issues. Veterans benefits are under attack as never before in 50 years. We must unite or these vital resources will evaporate in the political haze. And we must act NOW.

Addresses and phone numbers are included below for you convienience.

Congressman Rob Bishop  Utah Congressional District One
District Office
324 25th St.
Suite 1017
Ogden, UT 84401
ph: 801-625-0107
fax: 801-625-0124

Congressman Jim Matheson Utah 2nd Congressional District

240 East Morris Avenue
#235 South Salt Lake, UT 84115
Phone - (801) 486-1236 Fax - (801) 486-1417

321 North Mall Dr., #E101B
St. George, UT 84790
Phone - (435) 627-0880   Fax - (435) 627-1473

Congressman Chris Cannon  Utah 3rd Congressional District

Provo Office
51 S University Ave
Suite #319
Provo, UT 84606
Phone: (801) 379-2500
Fax: (801) 379-2509
Outside Utah County Call
1-800-571-2971

Salt Lake County Office
3600 S. Constitution Blvd.
West Valley City, UT 84119
Phone: (801) 955-3631
Fax: (801) 955-3632
Office Hours:
Monday-Thursday 8am to 5 pm

 

The Wisdom of the Dakota Indians

This article recently came across the VVA Talklist. It's just too funny to pass up.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However in government and in much of corporate America more advanced strategies are often employed. Such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses.

5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired.

7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.

9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.

10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would impro ve the dead horse's performance.

11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than live horses.

12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And last but not least:

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

This page copyright by W, Andrew Wilson 2006-2008