Seven Sees

It’s high time I make up for neglecting this blog. So, once again I return to the “Seven Quick Takes” as a way of figuring out just where I’ve been that I haven’t been posting here over the last several weeks…er, month.

1. What happened to June? One minute it was payday...and now it’s almost payday again. Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I did do a bit of traveling around the state this month - west, south and even further south for meetings and conferences. I’ve never been able to decide whether travel breaks up the monotony and gives me perspective and revitalizes me for more work - or just interrupts a flow of a schedule and wears me out.

2. We played our first summer band concerts this month. We did NOT suffer a complete community band FAIL (a.k.a., “bandwreck”) as many of us feared was possible. As a result, we figured we’d played pretty well. On the bigger picture, I also attended a concert in the park...and noticed the average age of those attending. Then, looking at the average age of those in the band, it makes me a little sad to wonder what community band concerts might (or might not) look like when I attain the status of a “seasoned band veteran.”

3. On the band note: I actually got to play in a dance band. Play “French” horn in a dance band. Not often a horn gets to swing - much less get to displace an extremely competent jazz trombone player and play the first trombone parts. With my apologies to him, I had a great time pretending to be first trombone (and occasionally 3rd trumpet)...even through I doubt anybody in the audience heard me, thanks to my bell facing the wrong way. Ahh, well, probably all the better for it.

4. More music (yes, I know) - it seems I’m going to have a new musical first on the 4th of July when I’ll get to play an E-flat alto upright horn, which I have not-so-affectionately dubbed the “Little Beast.” No more bells-backwards problem for the parade - I’m gonna blast those afterbeats!

5. Is it possible the 8-year drought is almost over? They were actually warning of possible flash floods last night - after a fast inch-in-an-hour on Thursday, three more inches Friday night, rain Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the ground is actually damp. Still, we’re still nowhere near to making up the nearly 40 inch rainfall deficit we’re suffering. But, now we’re stuck trying to remember how to live in a humid, tropical, unpredictable weather climate again. Gotta admit, it was kinda nice knowing your weekend plans weren’t going to get rained out. Now we’re back to the roulette wheel.

6. It seems that people actually watch TV around here. As I met people at the conference I attended last week, people repeatedly looked at me and said, “I know you. I’ve seen you on TV.” Sigh.

7. I know I’m supposed to love tourists, but I can’t help but wish I had my solitude back.

The State of Prevention

This week I spent three days at the State Prevention Conference among other “prevention” people - those of us that either are trained to work in or promote the philosophy that preventing problems is the cheapest and most certain way of solving them.

It’s a philosophy that looks good on paper and often even sells politically, but can be extremely difficult to implement. By nature, we are reactionary beings - we see a problem, and we fix it, and then wait around for the next thing to fix. Sometimes this works just fine, but generally people in this position complain that the spend all day putting out fires and never getting and “real” work done.

Second, prevention looks good on paper, but while it is very easy to report all those things that you reacted to and problems you fixed, it’s very difficult to show how many things have been prevented. How can you prove that vaccinations kept 100 kids from getting sick this year? Or, harder yet, that your anti-drunk driving education campaign prevented people from getting in accidents or killed this year? Maybe it was just a lucky year.

Still, it seems the public health approach of trying to keep people from gaining too much weight or smoking or drinking themselves to death is gaining more traction as time goes by. At least, that’s what the pro-health care reform politicians would like us to believe. The prevention community has been promised some very big money in the future by the bill - but it is still up to Congress to appropriate that in the coming years.

That, in essence, was the dynamic of this conference: people from the state capital and people from the counties and cities gathered to share ideas - and realize once again that the people gathered were not speaking the same language.

If there is one consistent thing world-wide, it is that people in the capital cities, be they national or state/provincial, suffer a disconnect from the local level. It is their role in the capitals and capitols, to set the strategic direction and policy for large numbers of people. The nature of this work - negotiations, study, diplomacy, advocacy, lobbying, and straight-up politicking - demands a certain level of academic skill. There is competition for the relatively prestigious, moving-and-shaking jobs in these capitals, so there is a depth of brainpower that can be constantly drawn upon. Plus, it is usually a place of passion and youthful energy. People often play as hard as they work, so there is usually as good an opportunity for a social life as a career. The dynamic, whether with a conservative or liberal bent (or something in between or otherwise), is usually motivated, full of ideas, and ready for change.

Often, however, just the opposite is true outside of the capital city - the further away and the more rural the area, the more extreme the difference. So while many of the representatives of these less politically driven areas sat in the audience, passions and ideas flowing from a capital city speaker were tempered with a quiet, “Yes, but…” from the crowd.

Not always, but often. It is the job of those middle-men in the prevention world to figure out how something that is being decided or developed at the strategic levels can be translated to the local level. It is the job of these prevention workers to take what is given to them and make it reality.

I always leave these conferences full of ideas. It’s also interesting to see later how many of these ideas actually manage to stick. Sometimes you do get a successful statewide (or even nationwide) campaign, such as the ban on indoor smoking in Wisconsin. But those are long term movements that must be fueled with almost constant passion of those at the state level. Motivation and renewed optimism is something we also often benefit from at these conferences. But it is also up to us, those in the middle, to make it clear when passion at the highest level isn’t going to mean a thing to the people that need to actually make the changes.

And in that lies the secret alchemy that determines success or failure of prevention.

Memorial Day Memories

Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day. Drop one word, and you get a very different connotation. The first is three full days away from the office, or, around here, the first busy day of summer as an endless stream of vehicles hauls boats, kayaks, camping and fishing gear, and people to the sun and lakes of the Northwoods. The second is a solemn day of remembrance, a day for color guards, cemetery decorations, patriotic music, and speeches.

This split is not limited to celebrations in the United States. I was re-reading my journal entries from Martyr’s Days spent in Madagascar. Apparently I was fortunate enough to be there for two March 29ths that were semi-attached to a weekend, so we celebrated the day as a full holiday weekend those times. The first March 29, in 2003, I had been in country for about two months and was still in training. I really had no idea what was going on. Our language and cultural trainers did their best to explain the history of the day, but it mostly translated badly as “Independence Day.” Yet, what I expected out of Independence Day wasn’t what I saw. It was a very solemn event with few organized community-wide activities like a parade or festival. My host brother left town to go to the capital to spend the day with his siblings and my host father went to the next town over to give a speech. So, three other trainees and I left town for a weekend-long bike excursion into the country.

When the next Martyr’s Day in 2004 rolled around, I had been at site in Bealanana for nearly a year. It still took my faithful sitemate, Elizabeth, to make the connection of “Martyr’s Day” to “Memorial Day.” We had just returned form our momentous 60 km hike down the mountain and back a few days before, so we didn’t do anything extraordinary for this Martyr’s Day weekend, but as volunteers only got official Malagasy holidays as days off, I know many other volunteers who did take advantage of the three full days. So, instead, we observed the solemnity of the day:

March 29, 2004 Malagasy Memorial Day. I was re-reading my journal from a year ago (2003), and somehow I’d had the impression that this was their Independence Day. Then Elizabeth said “Memorial Day,” and I realized how well that fit. We went to the ceremony at the monument in town and it was very much like the familiar U.S. celebrations: colorguard, armed contingent, officials, speakers, even a veteran. Oh, and scouts in uniform. Very patriotic. Yet very Malagasy.

The Sous-Prefet (equivalent of a County Board chairman) delayed all the proceedings as usual - so much so that even his wife walked into town ahead of his car. Then, the usual raising of the flag, national anthem, laying of wreaths, speeches. The mayor’s speech was short and to the point. Then the Sous-Prefet. Arrive late, talk long must be his motto. I was sweating from places I didn’t know I could sweat by the time he finished. But at least Elizabeth and I weren’t seated with the VIPs this time, so we didn’t have to fully pay attention…

I’m amused to read how the following part of the entry reflects on our recent down-the-mountain adventure, as one of our “guard des corps” (body guards) was the commander of the small legion of Malagasy troops (gendarme) standing in observance of Martyr’s Day.

Elizabeth and I amused ourselves by noticing the old gendarme from the walk down the mountain was the man barking orders at the troops today - and then noticing him notice us and informing the guy next to him who told the next guy and so on until the whole guard was now looking at us. We could just hear him saying, “Don’t look now, but there are the two white girls I saved from a bug.”

Always a good thing to have an in with the local military unit. (Oh, and if you don’t know the story of the bug, remind me to tell it sometime.)

Sadly, I never attended another Malagasy Memorial Day observance. The next year I had moved to Fianarantsoa, and was well warned that if we came within sight of the gathering at the monument, we would be dragged into the proceedings and seated in the V.I.P. section. We sent Dan as our sacrificial representative and the rest of us celebrated with a picnic brunch inside the compound, then, I think, took a long walk around the city in the afternoon while everybody else was busy getting drunk.

So, as I walk to the cemetery this coming Monday morning, I will remember standing in the hot sun, dust and sweat of March in Madagascar to honor Malagasy killed at Ambatomanga - and the good company I kept on those days.