Making things personal.

I spent a good part of this beautiful rainy afternoon browsing Sandy's list of websites that he wanted us to look at. I got pretty side tracked though and ended up picking the pieces of dog and horse hair out from between the keys of my laptop. I have a white Brittany Spaniel and a white Thoroughbred, interestingly, I can tell which is the dog hair and which is the horse hair. It very quickly became some sort of addiction.
By now, after cleaning my keyboard, I've looked at most of the websites. My favorite one so far has been Mediastorm.org, where I watched Marlboro Marine, and a few other videos. Last year I took Intro to Creative Non-fiction, with Janet Schofield. I really enjoyed it, but I always struggled with finding a way to make other people understand and relate to things I went through in my stories. It was very frustrating. In Marlboro Marine, Luis Sinco, a photojournalist from the Los Angeles Times profiled LCpl James Blake Miller in his personal struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is something, I think, that everyone knows about, but doesn't ever want to talk about, for obvious reasons. About 12-20% of soldiers returning from Iraq will develop PTSD. You read about it in the paper or hear about it on TV, but unless you know someone who is dealing with it, it seems so generalized and you can kind of shrug it off and say "Yeah, okay... Whatev's".
Sixteen minutes of pictures, some voice clips and some good music got rid of the generalization and turned PTSD into something that can be personal to everybody. Sinco's story, for me, gave PTSD a voice, a face, a wife, friends, a house in Kentucky, and a sweet Harley.
Today, nearly everyone has a friend, a family member, or a lover on deployment. My ex-boyfriend came home from Iraq in May. I had heard things about his Company on the news sometimes, so I knew a little bit about what was going on, in regards to attacks and such. I didn't ever realize how little they showed on TV until I knew someone who had actually been there. There was a Marine in my ex-boyfriend's Company that hanged himself within a few weeks after arriving in Iraq. The guys had to cut him out of the rafters. Though my ex did not develop PTSD, the same thing applies. Things don't become personal until they're a little closer to home. Even though I don't personally know LCpl. Miller, I feel now like I do.
On a much lighter note, the Virtual Grocery Store at Interactivenerratives.org was pretty cool Next time I go grocery shopping, I'll pay attention to the prices at eye level versus the prices closer to the floor :-)