Shiawassee Weekly – November 19, 2006

Shiawassee Weekly – November 19, 2006

Opinions

On November 17, Wayne Bruinekool of Perry responded to Mary E Lupu’s letter to the Argus. I don’t understand half of what he said, but I thoroughly enjoyed the conclusion:

Children need to know that Biblically they owe a great debt of gratitude to the immortal Lucifer for giving up his place for all eternity at the side of the Designer just to bring to humanity the knowledge of good and evil that separates us from the rest of the animals.

Prior to his intervention on our behalf, humans could not even tell that they were naked. Although most in Christendom still cannot tell right from wrong, they at least do a pretty good job of dressing themselves (except Janet Jackson, but I have already forgiven her).

For that alone I give thanks to Lucifer every day. Most of the Christians I have known I would not care to see naked.

Coins For Kids

Dan Stewart and Jack Johnson hit the roof of McD’s to raise some cabbage for the Child Advocacy Center. Jack was only up there for a couple of hours, but Dan does this every year for the “Coins For Kids” event. You can see the Argus Press take on this here. One thing that surprised me in that article was Dan’s admission that he was abused as a child. Not that it’s anything to be ashamed of … just that you don’t often see victims of child abuse talking about being abused.

The county needs to help SATA

SATA is reaching out to participating municipalities to kick in some extra funds to cover a shortfall. SATA is an example of a program that the county needs to do more to support. It’s absolutely beneficial to the county to have a transportation system that keeps people active in our communities. The service is used primarily as low cost transportation for the elderly and people with disabilities. This is why I like SATA – these are people who might otherwise not get out of their homes. Or, they’d get out & about only by depending on other people for rides. People don’t want to depend on other people. SATA gives them a sense of independence and allows them to continue shopping in our stores and otherwise contribute to our communities.

SATA busses are also used to transport public school students to and from school, if they participate in a school of choice.

The general county budget continues to increase each year – I think it’s increased by $3.5 million this year – yet our services like SATA get choked out. Time to scale back the amenities to the county government and make sure that programs like SATA continue.

Survivors of Suicide Day

In the Argus today, there’s a feature about a candlelight vigil/walk at Ovid Elsie High School. (I’ll link to this as soon as it’s up on the regular site)

‘With the amount of suicide in the area, I think there is a great need for awareness and prevention,’ said Darling, who is now a members of the Shiawassee County Suicide Prevention Committee.

Later in the article:

Ovid-Elsie High School guidance counselor Jay Miller said he offered the high school as a venue for the event because of the higher number of suicide related incidents in the area.

I don’t know how many Shiawassee area residents take their own lives. Shiawassee County Community Mental Health is listed by the state of Michigan as a resource for suicide prevention. However, I found no references to suicide prevention on their website. For contact info, see the end of this article.

Homeless Awareness Week

Thanks to Governor Granholm, Shiawassee finally has real stats on the number of homeless people in our area – over 300 people in our county are without homes. Contrary to conventional (conservative) wisdom, homeless people aren’t homeless just because they choose to be without a home. Last year, during Homeless Awareness Week, Shiawassee ‘found’ 189 people who were homeless and precariously housed:

In the homeless category, one individual suffered a disability, one person and one family were chronic substance abusers, three people were seriously mentally ill, 28 individuals and 12 families were victims of domestic violence and three individual’s plight were unclassified.

In the precariously housed category, eight individuals and three in families suffered disabilities, six individuals and one in a family were chronic substance abusers, two individually were dually diagnosed, one individual and three in families were veterans, 22 individuals and 11 in families were victims of domestic violence and the plight of eight individuals and 50 in families was unclassified.

I don’t see anyone here who is diagnosed as ‘doesn’t feel like working’. Substance abuse is a problem, though I can’t say if the abuse came before or after the homelessness. I see disability, mental illness, and domestic violence a lot in this list. It’s not a scientific study, but it gives us a pretty good picture of who is out there.

This terrifies me. Anyone can get hit by disability, mental illness, or domestic violence, at any time.

And, the same factors at play in the lives of the homeless are present in many suicide victims.

When you have a county whose residents are walking around in the cold to raise awareness of suicide, and sitting on roof-tops to collect coins for abused kids, while the county government is for the first time, accurately counting the number of homeless people, and while programs like SATA struggle to survive … well it just makes me wonder if there is a better example anywhere, of the fact that what’s in our hearts is completely disconnected from what’s in our government.

Shiawassee history

I’ve always been a history buff, but haven’t spent much time learning about the history of this county. Steve Schmidt does an excellent job with his Shiawassee history site, which I thoroughly enjoy reading. I’ve considered attending some of the local historical society meetings, but I usually miss them.

(Speaking of: The Shiawassee County Historical Society meets today at 2:00pm, at the Archives and Museum Bld, on M-52 at Wilkinson. The public is invited to attend.)

I stopped in Juddville on my way home from work the other day. Of course I had to stop, because Juddville is pretty much just a 4-way stop with a church on one side and an old school house on the other. But this time, I took the time to take some pictures. You can see them in this gallery.

Make opinions, make friends, make a living

The SRESD hosted a cyber safety conference last week. These conferences offer valuable information, but they surround the issue of blogs and the Internet with constant messages of negativity. They talk about these technologies as though they are bad things. No one is having seminars on how to create blogs and build communities.

From the article:

In addition, younger students are reaching out to blogs, she said, online diaries where they can express their feelings in writing.

“A lot of kids, especially those who are shy, see this is as an audience,” McCarthy said. “With blogs, kids are finding an audience to write to and share with people from around the world. They’re writing about things going on in their families, their feelings, their personal lives.”

McCarthy said the Internet also makes it easier for the bullies to be bullies, taking away the personalization of seeing someone in real life.

“It makes it easy,” she said. “You don’t have to see that person’s face when you say something hurtful.”

The largest new group of Internet and computer users is nursery school and kindergarten-aged children, McCarthy added. “That’s kinda scary for a parent to realize,” she said. “It starts so young now. You’ve got to be on your toes.”

Blogs are an important part of our world now. It’s good to teach kids to use them safely, but part of that should be teaching them to use them. A person who is truly interested in blogs can learn from other bloggers’ experiences in ways that would not otherwise be possible. For example, what young person in Owosso could get a taste of life in Iraq as an Iraqi citizen or as a US soldier? Want to know what it’s like in space? This blogger will tell you. Thinking about working at Microsoft when you grow up? This guy can help you decide. Oh, and guess what? You can make a pretty good living, just by blogging.

If approached with some discipline, blogging helps people learn to write well and to express themselves appropriately. It also builds expertise, if the blogger specializes in a particular topic.

Instead of teaching young people how to use these technologies appropriately, we ban them from our schools and we scare the parents. It’s stupid. It denies young people an experience that they might enjoy and be good at. It also makes it more dangerous for them when they finally do wander out into the blogosphere. I can’t help but think that in 20 years we’ll still be having these conferences for parents, even though the parents are graduates of our own schools.

Oi.

Organization Name: Shiawassee County Community Mental Health
Geographic Service Area: Shiawassee County
Primary Function: To provide individualized behavioral healthcare services to community members to assist them in improving and maintaining quality of life by reaching their personal goals.
Primary Suicide Prevention-Related Activities:
Emergency services
Support services
Clinical services
Education
Description: Shiawassee County Community Mental Health provides a host of suicide prevention services to county residents to help improve their quality of life.
Contact person: Diana Spring
Title: Emergency Services Staff
Phone: 989-723-0712
Fax: 989-723-0763
Email: dspring@shiacmh.org
Address: 1975 W. Main St., Box 428, Owosso, MI 48867
Or
Contact Person: Craig Hause
Title: Director of Outpatient and Emergency Services, Services to Children and Families
Phone: 989-723-6791
Fax: 989-725-506
Email: chause@shiacmh.org
Address: 1975 W. Main St., Box 428, Owosso, MI 48867
Website: www.shiacmh.org