| ||||||||
|
||||||||
|
I had promised some kind of report, re the conference.
Since I just got
home, it's going to take a number of days to fully recover ..
and process. On
the whole it appeared to be pretty upbeat.
My stomach is never used to the
rich food they serve. Some of the meetings were somewhat confrontational but very informative. There was a meeting with the lobbyist from Protection and Advocacy and much of what was discussed had to do with what happened last year, re Helen Thomson, and projecting tactics and strategy for the next round. Knowing Carla the way I do, you can bet your bottom dollar that we haven’t heard the end of 1800. One of the comments coming from the discussion was the fact that we need to have a pro-active plan to deal with the media. Sally mentioned how none of her comments were printed from the news conference, at the Little Hoover Commission, as an example. We also discussed the report, and acknowledged that the Little Hoover Commission report was one of the best pieces of advocacy to come out lately in support of many of our public policy areas concern. Sally of course, and frankly I was not too pleased with Brian Jacobs’ remarks, which were published, once again teaching us a lesson in the need for public relations or to get a better more pro-active, cohesive way in dealing with the media. The event itself ran pretty much smoothly, I belive Senator Burton or someone from Sacremento showed up to get kudoes, and get their award, and pictures taken with Sally and Pearl. Beacause I attended the accountability caucus, a parallel event, I missed a number of the caucuses. However, as always, having the opportunity to see so many people from all over the state at once is always a trip. We had a little flap last night with the hotel management, the San Francisico 49ers. Was really kinda funny and disrespectful, not to mention very strange. Seems the football team booked a room next to us for a few hours to have a “team-meeting.” They requested the hotel to block off the area with a barrier for an hour or two, because they wanted it to be ‘quiet’ and did not want to be disturbed. Or have any of us mental-health folk bothering them for autographs. We were aghast!!! Sally went to the rescue, trying to reason with the security people, the hotel people, explaining that people with mental illness have been discriminated aganst all their lives, and this was another, flat out — in her low key approach to attempt to reason with these jerks. So now we got a situation, going very quietly. I’m there as a witness, because this is so stupid, I can’t believe it. A bunch of mental health consumers are gonna annoy or brutalise a bunch of big bad professional football players. They said they needed quiet. I think Sally was in shock. I asked if part of their meeting was meditation, perhaps they meditated before the game, I asked them that, told them would you know I’m a basketball fan. Well the “barrier came down,” we promised not to pick on them for autographs. We should probably picket their games with a stigma campaign. Score one for the good guys, they should be ashamed of themselves. Wonder if they won today? On Sunday, the South had its regional shoot-out, oops, I mean meeting, and tempers flared, including mine, over the location for the next two meetings. There was much bantering back and forth about issues of inclusion, membership, access, fairness, discrimination, and fundamental principles, of what the Network stood for re where to have the next two meetings held. The issue had been raised by yours truly, as to why the South seem to have had some kind of exclusive arrangement, or de-facto always had their meetings held at the Village at Long Beach. After quite a bit of debate, that was very emotional, it was agreed on that the next meeting will be held at another Village, called LAMP VILLAGE, located on Skid Row in Los Angeles, with the second large regional meeting to be held at Ventura. The reason behind this was very clear, downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row are very isolated, and have a huge amount of mental heath consumers who have been for years been excluded from self-help, and that this was the perfect opportunity to have a meeting, introduce the Network to Lamp’s large residential populaction,and to network with the rest of the underserved mental health consumers of the Row. I have to give my admiration and support for the leadership, and the body of the Network to listen and agree to change their site location. The main fear from some, and it should be noted, was an issue of safety, due to the high crime area. I assured them that we would be responsible for their safety and parking, and make all necessary arrangements to insure that people’s anxieties and fears would be addressed. As an advocate for Lamp, I’m proud to have the Network’s support, and promise to work diligently to insure we have a great meeting. Ron Schraiber did come down today for the public policy meeting, but per-usual, as Ron was coming, I was leaving, so we only had a few minutes to chat in the parking lot. He was running late, and I was tired, had to get back to L.A., to feed the birds and get back to work tomorrow. So there you have it, not exactly the full report, but some anecdotal stuff. Was a good conference, people seem to have enjoyed themselves; took care of business. Cigarettes were $5.50 a pack there, really do need to quit toodles. Gerald MinskL.A. | ||||||||
| PS. Excuse the spelling errors, my secretary has the week-end off, and I still don’t know how to use the spell check on this computer. | ||||||||
A cooling flow in the Galaxy Cluster Abell 1795Like a spoon moving through hot soup, the massive elliptical galaxy near the top of this image has cut a swath across the dense, hot gas in this crowded galaxy cluster known as Abell 1795. This smoothed Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the galaxy cluster A1795 shows a bright filament some 200,000 light years in length. The gas in this structure is denser and cooler (30 million compared to 50 million degrees) than the surrounding gas. The filament was most likely caused when an enormous elliptical galaxy (white spot at the head of the filament) moved through the cluster core. Hot gas spread throughout the cluster is drawn by the gravitational field of the giant galaxy into a cosmic wake of cooling gas, which appears as the long string-like feature in the middle of this image.Most observed galaxies in the Universe appear in groups ranging from simple pairs and trios to complex clusters of thousands. Scientists find these clusters immersed in haloes of hot gas. Through time, this ‘intracluster’ gas loses energy through X-ray radiation, cools, and flows toward the dense core of a cluster where it may form stars. This phenomenon is known as a ‘cooling flow’. |