SAPPHO SINGS AGAIN

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tim-whitmarsh/sappho-poetry_b_4691297.html?utm_hp_ref=uk&ir=UK&just_reloaded=1

What Nurses Know...PTSD

ISBN: 978-1-9363-0306-9

by Mary E. Muscari, PhD. RN
Associate Professorat the Decker School of Nursing
Binghamton University (NY)

PTSD transforms millions of people who have been effected by violence war, natural disasters, and other traumatic events.

Muscari emphasizes that PTSD sufferers are not "crazy" even though they may feel that way at times.  PTSD is as real as high blood pressure, diabetis or other common  illnesses.  Some people may appear callus about any form of mental illness, including PTSD mostly because they do not understand.  Sufferers need to realize that in some people prejudice is their unrecognized mental disease.  There's no more reason to be ashamed of PTSD than there is to be ashamed of asthma, heart disease or any other chronic illness.

In What Nurses Know... PTSD, Muscari gives chapters of practical advice to PTSD sufferers and their families as to dealing with this illness, information on the various drugs prescribed in treating it and several alternative treatments.  She closes with Chapter 10, Kids Stuff: When your child Has PTSD. [a common occurrence following events such as massive tornados or Hurricane Katrina]

The Author closes with an extensive glossary, a list of references and a bibliography.

I recommend What Nurses Know...PTSD to sufferers, their family and associates, and to all Special Educators dealing with survivors of major childhood trauma.

Writer’s Radio

For those of you who may have missed  Readings Radio on lesbian,
bisexual and women's historical fiction with Nan Hawthorne, Patty G
Henderson, Catherine M Wilson, Helen Dunn and myself, you can download and/or listen to it at:
http://blogtalkradio.com/readingslab/2012/03/31/historical

Spring TV Season

There is some really good writing behind some of the shows on network TV this year.  If you haven’t been watching “Grimm”, you can catch up using On Demand.  “Grimm” in my never humble opinion is Grimm’s Fairy Tails on steroids.  Or, perhaps it’s the tales as the horror stories the author’s originally meant them to be.

Once Upon a Time brings Snow White & the wicked witch into our modern world.  All the Maidens in Distress and their Saviors living in small town America with major amnesia.  You won’t want to miss Robert Carlyle’s magnificent portrayal of  Rumplestiltskin.

If you are a CIS fan as I am, you won’t want to miss Body of Proof; a great forensic show starring Dana Delany as Coroner.

And, Bones. I can’t forget about Bones.  When she’s not analyzing some skeletal remains she’s analyzing her pregnancy, her FBI spouse or the bones of a nearly destroyed house which they plan to make into a home for their new edition.  I can’t help wondering what combination of half-comedian/pure scientist the writers will turn that offspring into.  Lots of fun down the road on  that.

Best of all, in the new Spring season is ABC’s GCB.  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, GCB stands for Good Christian Belles and Dallas based Good Christian Belles make Desperate Housewives look like angels of proper deportment.  Catch up on On Demand today.  You won’t regret it.  Just be prepared to laugh until your sides ache as GCB shows you the church-based antics of the filthy rich classic biotches we all love to hate.

Why Do Lesbian Authors Shoot Themselves in the Collective Foot?

Why Do Lesbian Authors Shoot Themselves in the Collective Foot?

From - Nan Hawthorne, Our Story: GLBTQ historical Fiction, GLBT Bookshelf

I am an editor for a section of the GLBT Bookshelf which is a wiki
set up for authors to get the word out about their books.
When I have posted about the site on lesbian groups, invariably I
get the complaint "But it's all men's stuff!"
There's a good reason for that. The men put themselves and their
books up there. Lesbians just sit around and complain there aren't more
lesbians on the site. Well, duh. It's like complaining that a grocery
store doesn't carry something you like when you own the store.
On the GLBT Bookshelf each author has the responsibility to join
(for free) and put up her author page and her book pages (for free)..
There is help, namely me, if it's too hard to figure out, which since I
am legally blind but I figured it out I don't understand.. the blind
leading the sighted, I guess.
Why are women, especially lesbians, so passive? I refuse to
believe it is a natural characteristic.
There is a wonderful essay by Joanna Russ called "Power and
Helplessness in the Women's Movement"... the scary part is it came out
decades ago and is still true.
So you lesbian authors.. you owe it to your readers and
yourselves, IMHO, to go register on the site and add yourself and your
books. You readers review books as the Bosom Friends authors have been.
The only thing that is keeping the GLBT Bookshelf primarily men is
the women who don't put their books up.

http://bookworld.editme.com

It's easy.. just click on register and fill out the form. The
person who set this up and pays all the bills so it will be a success
will get online in a few days and approve you. Then write to the
helpdesk which is listed under contact/help if you can't figure out how
to set up your page. It is incredibly east.
OK, rant over. For the moment.

Nan Hawthorne
Our Story: GLBTQ historical Fiction
GLBT Bookshelf

Digging my way out with my fingernails

For 8 years now the work I love has hidden from me while I experienced every stress factor on the actuary list at lease once, usually more often.  I never called it Writer’s Block because the stories were always there in completed outlines with the research mostly squared away.  Instead, and with the blessings of a string of therapists, I’ve hidden behind the term PTSD.

I wish to take nothing from our valiant fighters who rightly suffer from the disease but I want to point out that PTSD is not limited to combat veterans.  It can happen to anyone who experiences things their psyche cannot process.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is what happens when various events taken together or in series become too muckin fuch for our brains to process.  Simply put, I lost touch with who I was.

I was my mother’s daughter until I became my husband’s wife.  When I lost both of them within a brief span of time I leaned on the fact that I was still “the baby of the family” with my “big sister” to go to when life became too much.  Then she died and I became the eldest living female in my extended family.  My mind went numb.

Nine months later, I put my home on the market and 4 months after that I sold it and moved in with my lovely daughter mere days before Hurricane Katrina destroyed, rearranged and/or demolished everything in the five Mississippi Coast cities I’d been familiar with for over a quarter of a century.  We deal less easily with change as we grow older.

Ten days less than two years after Katrina I lost my Prodigal Son in a stupid “accident'’.  After that the Stress Factors seemed to arrive more swiftly.  Less than two years after the loss of my son came the economically forced sale of my daughter’s beautiful, peaceful home and a move to a strange state for a brief nine months before another move to an even stranger place this time alone.  I don’t know how to be alone.  I ‘m not even sure I know me.  Who is this person who is no longer someone’s daughter, someone’s wife or someone’s full time mother?  I don’t know her and I’m not sure I will like her when I do but I have to try.

As I rapidly approach eighty, I have to remind myself that I am Peggy Ullman Bell, Author of SAPPHO SINGS, a semi-fictional biography of The Poetess of Lesbos that lived through thirty-five years of re-writes before finally becoming available to a surprisingly receptive public.  Then came Women at Gettysburg FIXIN’ THINGS an overlapping thirty years of writing and re-writes because my mother still lived in the Battle area and wanted bragging rights.

Now, thanks to eBooks and the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our American Civil War, FIXIN’ THINGS is selling well and it’s time I find the Author in me again.  I can count the breaks between the traumas by the dates on my rare creative files.  Here’s hoping I don’t break too many fingernails digging my way out of this malaise.

Blessed be, Y’all.

Excerpt from Shelf Awareness 8/8/11

Putting Food & Books on the Table

"I was once having dinner with an international group, and an American was complaining about the price of books in France. 'Yes,' said a Frenchman. 'We have this silly theory in France that our authors should be able to eat.' We don't know what the future of publishing is, but we know that the future for every writer requires food. And we know that one way to help writers eat is to encourage people to buy good books."

--Tom Lutz, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, in his essay "Future Tense."