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Sept./Oct. 2006 Issue No. 8
To a Higher
Degree Conference
with Dr. William
Pollack
Bates College,
Lewiston, ME
Nov. 17th, 8:00am -
3:00pm
Dr. William Pollack, author of Real
Boys, addresses Academic Achievement in
Boys. Learn more. Register
NOW.
To a
Higher Degree
Pre-Conference
Dinner
The Harraseeket, Freeport, ME
Nov. 16th,
5:30pm - 9:00pm
Boys to Men hosts this pre-conference
dinner and opportunity to dialogue with Dr. William Pollack.
Limited number of tables, reserve yours TODAY.
Donate or Come to:
Boys to Men's
Amazing
NO-JUNK YARD
SALE
Sat.
Oct. 21st 8:00am-2pm
120 Woodville Rd,
Falmouth
Donate your no-junk items to our
tremendous fundraising yard sale. Contact Boys to Men office
for details.
207-774-9994
Donate Now Online to Boys to
Men
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A Word from the Executive
Director
I imagine that
people living in 1865 always remembered what they were doing
when they heard the news that Abraham Lincoln had been shot.
My parents remember where they each were when President
Kennedy was assassinated. My first experience with this eerie
"placement in time" recollection, or trauma memory, was when
Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. I was ten years old
at the time and in a fourth grade classroom. My teacher, Mrs.
Johnson, began crying and Cheryl Standish, known for high
drama even in elementary school, fainted on the floor. I was
confused and scared, thinking that the world as I had known it
was different- less safe, less predictable. Like many of my
peers, I also remember where I was when I heard that the space
shuttle Challenger had exploded with the teacher of the year,
Christa McAuliffe inside. This too is a trauma
memory.
My children's first
traumatic memory experience was on September 11, 2001. Each
boy was in school that day. My oldest son, Noah, had just
started the ninth grade in a new school. A friend of mine, and
now president of the Boys to Men board, was the acting Head of
this high school. Because of a bizarre confluence of events- a
bank being robbed in downtown Portland at the same time that
the World Trade Center towers were being attacked- Noah's
school was notified that men with guns were on their way
towards the school. The school was put under "lock down". Noah
had a particularly strong sense of the world being unsafe that
day, a sense of vulnerability that has continued in one shape
or another since that time.
For this issue,
we have asked men and boys to tell us about their memories and
or personal reflections regarding this moment in time. There
are so many facets to these experiences: sudden vulnerability,
victimization; musings on the connection between masculinity
and aggression; love and forgiveness. We will only touch upon
the surface of a few.
Feel free to send
us your feedback to: boystomen@maine.rr.com
Layne Gregory,
LCSW
Executive Director
Boys to Men
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Reflections on 9/11 - Five Years
Out
In the days following 9/11/01, I
experienced, along with a range of emotions, a feeling of
unity within our country and beyond. Differences were set
aside and we sought to comfort and support those who had
experienced the loss, while we collectively sought to
understand what had happened and why.
Five years
later, unfortunately, I find our country and our world more
polarized than any time in my adult life. In the taking of
sides between war and peace, right and left, conservative and
liberal, Christian and Muslim, we have lost that essential
middle ground where debate and exchange of ideas can forward
both understanding and meaningful solutions to the complex
problems that face us all.
While I wish we had,
collectively, continued on the path of unity following the
events of 9/11/06, I have found that the ensuing activities
have forced me to look more closely at the United States and
what makes our country special in so many ways.
What I discovered was a magnificent mission statement that
can be as easily applied to any of our lives as it can to our
country: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. And while
certain forces have attempted to hi-jack portions of the this
beautifully simple and profound statement for their own narrow
agendas, its power and essence remains there for each and all
of us to practice and live ....
.... and when we
do, we prosper, we succeed, we understand, and maybe most
importantly, we learn, once again, to love one another. Which
brings us all back to unity.
Michael
Connor
__________________________________________________________________________
I suppose eternity in
heaven with an unending supply of nubile sweet things serving
your every need is a hard promise to pass by. Or maybe
it was hate of a culture and its people who seem to flaunt you
and your ways as it seeks to use whatever it can find in the
world to feed its gluttonous economy. Or it may be a
deeply held but rigid faith that defends itself against the
infidels, everyone different from them, by converting or
destroying them. Why did the terrorists give their lives
to kill so many ordinary and decent Americans on
9/11?
It stuck me as I watched the terrible
sight of the twin towers collapsing that the evil in it was,
and continues to be, the blindness of the perpetrators to the
sacred value of each life of those slaughtered. The
terrorists saw the American's value only as they served their
terrorist ideological purposes. When ideology trumps
innate human value, when the polarity of them/us blinds us to
the common humanity of all peoples evil is in the driver's
seat. If that evil is not unseated all humanity will
suffer, and in this day of doomsday weapons, run us all
down.
The answer is not dehumanization of
terrorists and brutal violence in return.
Merle
Evers was married to Medgar Evers in Mississippi in the
1960's. Medgar was the head of the NAACP in that Klu
Klux Klan dominated state. The Klan has a sniper's site
across the street from the Evers' home and the local police
condoned it. Merle had to keep her children in the back
of their home and Medgar had to race his car up their drive
when he came home. Merle told me that she was beside
herself with anger that day when Medgar came home. She
shouted at him, "I can't stand them. I hate those
people." Medgar took her in his arms and after a time of
shared tears said, "Merle, we can't let them make us hate
them. They are not the enemy. Hate is the
enemy." Within a year Medgar was assassinated by the
Klan. Merle moved herself and her three children to
California where she told me, "Medgar was
right."
The answer is love. How can we love
those who terrorize us and our loved ones? I can't tell
you. It is hard. But I believe Medgar was
right. They are not our enemy. Hate is our
enemy.
Bill Gregory
__________________________________________________________________________
I was at home waiting for
a computer repairman to come when my husband called to say,
?Turn on the news, a plane has just crashed into one of the
World Trade Towers.?
Immediately thereafter the
repairman arrived. I let him in, soberly asking, ?Have
you heard about the World Trade?? ?Yeah.? We sat
on the couch watching the footage of the plumes of smoke
circling above the first tower as he unscrewed the back of my
computer to replace the blown mother-board. The reports were
vague; up until that point, it appeared to have been a freak
accident.
And, then,... suddenly,
the broadcasts became distraught with announcements that the
second tower had been struck, along with coverage of the plane
crashing into the Pentagon. In that minute, everything
changed; all that mattered was the whereabouts of friends and
family.
The repairman received a
call from his dispatcher redirecting his schedule just as my
husband called me to say he was on his way home; they were
shutting down the office
The remainder of the day
was filled with angst for family in NYC followed by shock. As
the death count rose, two thoughts went through my mind:
How had we as a nation become so vulnerable, and what did we
as a nation do to invoke such hostility and hatred?
Within the first two
weeks, I drove to NYC to be with family. Curious to
understand the damage, I ventured to Ground Zero, where I
caught a glimpse of one of the collapsed buildings. I
will never forget the mass of dark, smoldering, crushed,
wrangled girders of steel. It looked as if an alien vessel had
flown overhead and attempted to blast a whole in the side of
humanity.
Since then, I?ve found
myself struck with the same myriad of questions and issues
that any other citizen living in a nation with political and
philosophical intolerances has had to contemplate over the
years. What does it mean to live a peaceful existence,
respectful of other cultures? When does one wage war and
under what pretenses? What is violence? What is
aggression? What is our responsibility as a nation to
protect our citizens? What is the role of our military
and our leaders? When do I stand in support and when do
I protest and how? What is freedom?
I haven?t been able to
fully define the answers for myself to these questions, let
alone to anyone else. But I do believe that the answers will
only reveal themselves over time through active intervention
and support that recognizes a relentlessly tested human
condition: the inability to accept diversity leads to
confusion, hatred, and violence. Moreover, the lack of
opportunity to explore healthy forms of self-expression leads
to deeply suppressed emotions and reactionary behaviors.
It is my hope as a nation we?ll begin to explore
how to protect ourselves by offering boys and girls broader
interpretations of such self-expression and acceptance to
promote a world with a lot more peace and far less
violence.
M
argaret Kelsey
__________________________________________________________________________
I
remember the morning of September 11, 2001, very well.
While sitting at my desk at work, a co-worker received a call
from her husband and he described the first plane flying into
the World Trade Center. My initial thoughts were of it
being tragic accident. As he was on the phone, he
described another plane hitting the second tower in real
time. It was at that point when people realized this
incident was not an accident but something more significant,
more dramatic, more unbelievable.
The following days were a surreal blur ? phone
calls from friends living in New York, Red Cross blood drives,
eerily quiet skies. New words were introduced to our
national lexicon ? box cutters, Afghanistan, Bin Laden, crop
dusters. Portland and the Jetport was infamously linked
with the events.
As the nation acknowledged the five-year
anniversary of September 11th, most newspapers and newscasts
editorialized about the significance of the day. These
editorials outlined how the world has and has not changed over
the past five years. To my disbelief some commentators
argued the geopolitical world has not changed
dramatically. I reflect upon the world with the belief
that everything changed at every level.
September 11th caused the nation and its people
to wrestle with major issues that have significantly affected
our day-to-day lives. These events caused the
nation to ask, who can we trust? Will we treat certain
ethnicities as threats? Is it acceptable that certain
people lose privileges and rights? Does the security of
a nation outweigh individual rights? How do people and nations
use ?God? and ?Allah? for political purposes?
Simple answers to these queries don?t
acknowledge the complexity of the questions. The
challenge for the nation and for individuals to take the time
and think about these issues and questions. Listen to,
watch and read information about complex questions; yet be
aware of the source of information. The questions
resulting from September 11th don?t need simple answers; but
rather an understanding the complexity of the issues.
Michael
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Don't Miss the Boys to
Men
"No Junk" Multi-Family Yard
Sale
Saturday, Oct. 21,
2006
8:00am-2:00pm
120 Woodville
Road
Falmouth, ME
Donations also accepted!
We want
your stuff! We are gratefully accepting donations of
"gently used" and/or antique/collectible furniture,
housewares, home accessories, art, sporting/outdoor equipment,
and electronics. Good quality clothing items, jewelry
and personal accessories are also welcome.
You may
bring your donations to B2M Executive Director Layne Gregory's
home at 120 Woodville Road in Falmouth and we make
arrangements
to pick up your items.
Contact
Nathan or Fleur at Boys to Men at 774-9994
to arrange
drop-off or pick up times.
We
appreciate your generosity.
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Resources: 2.1.1.
Maine
Earlier this year John Baldacci along with
United Ways of Maine and Ingraham launched the health and
human services resource and information line. This free
phone and online directory is much like 9.1.1 or 4.1.1, in
that it provides 24 hour 7 day a week emergency and directory
services to Mainers. Along with this in-state service,
2.1.1 has a toll free out-of-state line, which relatives can
use to help friends and family living here in Maine
(877.463.6207).
2.1.1 includes a statewide directory of over
5,000 resources including agency services and support groups,
which can also be accessed through the website http://click.exacttarget.com/?ffcb10-fe531d73736505747d13-fdf517757166017573177271-fefd1572766301.
The directory can be used to locate services in a wide range
of areas, from child care services to energy assistance and
from health and home care to transportation and voting
information.
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