PTSD and the Army

From All Things Considered (12/4/2006 - 22:45) comes this extended piece on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq. Estimates are that 20-25 percent of the soldiers who have served in Iraq show symptoms of PTSD, including including depression and serious substance abuse--in other words, a repeat of the wrenching experience Americans had with the Vietnam war.


Musings

• The report focuses on the case of one Tyler Jennings, who describes getting hazed when colleagues found out he was having mental and emotional problems. Hazing, it turns out, can be seen as the rough-and-tumble male way of dealing with such problems: pound people until they either toughen up or break.
  
  
• The Army is still basically a man's world, one with little sympathy for emotional weakness, which in a twisted sort of way is seen as feminine or weak.
  

Auschwitz "Gypsy" Paintings

From All Things Considered comes this fascinating piece (11/30/2006 - 7:38) on a series of watercolor portraits of Gypsies, now known as Roma people, that a young Dina Gottliebova Babbitt painted in 1944, in the German concentration camp, Auschwitz.

Musings

• One fascinating part of this story is legalistic--namely, who is the question of rightful owner of the portraits? While it is hard to resist the claim that the Auschwitz Museum should return the paintings, the Museum's position is not without some merit.
  
  
• Another, equally fascinating issue involves the status of Gypsies, or Roma people, during the Holocaust, a topic touched upon in this Wikipedia piece on Auschwitz.