Roberta M Roy

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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Crown Point Ferry to open Tomorrow, February 1

Pretty exciting. Tomorrow the Crown Point ferry from the Point to Addison, Vermont, is to begin its twenty-four hour free service. For the last several days, large ferries, brought in to open the ice, cut back and forth across Lake Champlain. From Spring Street my friend D. tells me she can watch them. She also sees workers moving materials from the imploded Crown Point Bridge to shore.

Will the ferry really happen? If it does, the residents on both sides of the lake will celebrate. And maybe life will return to something closer to normal. The community residents on both sides of the lake have suffered economically and personally in many painful ways since the closing of the bridge October 16, 2009. My heart goes out to them as the anticipate this intermediate answer offered them. Hopefully the ferry service will permit those who have be displaced in order to keep their work to return home and the economy on both sides of the lake to again thrive.

You may recall that on December 28 the Crown Point Bridge was imploded. On that day the fog was so thick that for most of the waiting crowds the view of it going down was completely obstructed. Only the loud sounds of the dynamite blasts cued them that it had happened. And when finally the fog lifted, there was no bridge to be seen.

By January 14 the design for the new Crown Point Brdge was made public. It is described as a Modified Tied Arch. Residents voted on several designs and this one won. It's quite lovely. If you'd like a look-seek, click on https://www.nysdot.gov/regional-offices/region1/projects/lake-champlain-bridge/repository/6-Mod-tied-arch.png

Roberta in Po-Town, Fingers crossed

11:32 pm est Comments

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Where ya' bin?

For the past few days I have been entertaining myself with thoughts on the effects of intensity on one's relationships. We live in a world into which we are often given to structuring in intense experiences. We're good at cramming all kinds of things into a week. In one-week intensive courses we study everything from Greek to brain function. We do things like fly to Paris for the weekend. We commit to intense sports and equally intense practice of those sports. We think nothing of driving nine hours in a day to relax for the weekend.

For three years I traveled four hours down and four hours back one or two weekends a month to spend time with my son and my grandchildren, my sisters, and nieces and nephews. All of which is fine. But what do these kind of total absences do to other relationships? Although I'm not sure, I have made some general observations that somehow relate to the answer to the question.

For me, to begin with, a person who is only inconsistently reliable is simply not to be relied on at all. So I ask myself if by taking courses and running away on weekends specifically because I am well-meaning, hard-working, and reliable that in some quarters by some people I am seen as fickle and unreliable and therefore not to be relied upon?

And then there is love. It takes care to express love. But if I am forever committing to this intensive event and that one, how can I also be available to provide the care I would like to express to those I love?

And could this be a defense? I ask this because around me I find those I know similarly involved. Surely relationships suffer.

Isn't it true that many families increasingly sit less and less together to share uninterrupted fun times. Commitments of all kinds prevent this. Particularly at the level of the extended family. Gosh, haven't seen you in a long time. Yeah. Well. We've been in Florida. We were boating. Skiing. Visiting our parents in Winooski. Seeing my good friend in New Carleton. Studying French in Montreal. Gambling in Atlantic City. Having my face lifted. Taking a wine tour. Camping.

Oh.

Roberta in Po-Town, Speculating

9:49 pm est Comments

Friday, January 29, 2010

Anything but a poet

This morning I had one of those epiphany's where for a few brief moments I lived what it might be like to be a poet. The patter in my head took on a cadence and words spewed forth from the crevices of my references in odd forms . . . metaphors, rhymes, antiquated phrases. And because poetry at its heart is both universal and the coming together of minutia, with sudden clarity I understood what Kristen Henderson meant when she wrote "Poetry Everywhere."

Have you ever studied a foreign language to awake with head-talk as close as you could get to foreign language fluency, but in a mix of English and it? Well, that's what happened.

It's not as if I've never written a poem. I've written many. I even have a chapbook of some fifty to one hundred of them. All mostly limp and thin. Although I like them. After all, I birthed them. But you see, I had been reading and thinking Kristen's poems, and when I woke I was talking in my head as if, so to speak, I 'd almost caught them. Is poetry contagious? Is language? Regardless, everything I thought had a poetic or lyric quality about it. Regretfully each head-comment was brief, unsustained. Nothing of substance or import. Except, as it turns out, the experience.

And it was then I learned the one thing (beyond my lack of skill) that might mitigate against my ever becoming a poet. It was poetry's inescapably petite side that permitted it to exist among all things and from which, for those few minutes, there seemed no escape. Until I made (as if I had the choice) the decision to never be a poet.

Prose one can set aside. In fact, for me it is so cumbersome, this business of being a novelist, that to write is to preserve a portion of a day just to find where it was I left off so that I might again begin. And then I need four days and twenty hours to even make a difference in a chapter.

Short stories, while I like to read them, I have little motivation to write. No. I want to write novels. Researched novels. Reasoned novels. Passionate. Bursting with life and ideas. Like Jolt: a rural noir.

But poetry? I write it only now and then. It leaves one too exposed. And then there is the new question of the head-talk. For me to be a poet would translate into the discomfort of being too caught: too stimulated by sounds, cadences, and poetic forms that could permeate my life and steal it from me.

No, I'll take Jolt. And when I find a large enough window of time, a week or two or ten, I'll go to work--real work--on my next novel, Too Close.

But between now and then, perhaps some magic will occur, and all my friends, colleagues, and fellow bloggers and blog-readers and thousands of people I will never know will each and every one pick up a copy of Jolt from Alva Press, the proceeds of which might pay for the time it will take me to write Too Close, (not to mention the cost of having it edited and published).

Roberta in Po-Town, Anything but a poet

12:00 am est Comments

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

On Becoming a Writer

If I was to purchase my freedom with writing,
I should have started earlier.

And when I was twenty, and my essay was judged Faulknerish,
I should have matter-of-factly mentioned how I wrote a lot.

From that day, near a half-century would pass
ere' from beneath my monkish, hooded garb,
with more bravado than belief,
I'd raise my face and say, "I'm a writer."

Simple words. But not their affect.

Since that day I have felt more at home in the world
than I ever thought possible.

Why did I wait so long?

Roberta in Po-Town, Learning

11:39 pm est Comments

Monday, January 25, 2010

Whoopee! TCI Class Done; Kristen's Poems In

The five days of Therapeutic Crisis Intervention training is over and I'll never eat another hamburger. That's because when I study I let go of meal preparations, shopping, and cleaning. To do any of them seriously when a big test is looming smacks of an almost ethical violation. Just can't do it. Why? Studying. Result: hamburgers four nights in a row. Yuk. Done. But here.

Also survived attendance in 30 certificated hours of class offered through the Cornell University, Residential Care Project administered by the Family Life Development Center in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., USA. (That's what it says on the bottom of the certificate.) And if I passed the test (which I think I did) I will be a certified provider of Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI). That should make me a more effective staff member at the residential setting for traumatized and troubled children where I work.

TCI is the least intrusive, most hopeful way I know of for teaching agitated, potentially aggressive or violent kids improved coping skills while keeping them and the staff around them, safe. I've talked about TCI in my last two blogs.

So today we had our defensive moves physical test, did our role-play of a Life Space Interview (LSI), and took the written exam. Needless to say, we were all really motivated to pass. Not that you lose your job if you don't. You just can't use TCI and (the real motivator) you have to take the course again. Not just the test. The whole course. All five days of it.

Lunchtime Kristen Henderson brought me some of her poems to read. Very exciting. Read through the first four. One was better than the next. Can't wait until Joan Sweighardt, the editor, reads them and gets them back to us so Alva Press can publish Kristen's book of fifty poems. Probably around June of this year.

In other, I stopped by my grandsons' school today and helped the oldest one with his homework. He's in fourth grade and Monday's assignments can be heavy. Today, however, he and his three friends whizzed through it with minimal help.

Luv that kid. Love his brothers, too.

Roberta in Po-Town, Truckin'

6:04 pm est Comments

Friday, January 22, 2010

On Juicy Hamburgers and TCI

Well, tonight I had the urge for an old-fashioned hamburger. By that I mean I didn't want a grilled one with all those charcoal-encouraged carcinogens on the outside, and dry, because all the fat had drained away. No. I wanted a real one. Fried. Smothered in onions with a healthy serving of yellow mustard. Juicy. And dripping in grease. Except (although I'm not sure it turns the whole thing healthy) I use olive oil.

So after work I stopped at a small market near where I live and picked up a pound of ground round, a couple of onions, and some whole wheat bread. I fried the onions and hamburger in a frying pan. It was good. In fact, it was so delicious. I think I'll have the same tomorrow.

And whoopee! Monday ends TCI training.

Today we covered more theory on how to not only improve the safety of all in the moment, but to teach the young person improved coping skills. We practiced Active Listening and the Life Space Interview (LSI). The first helps with calming. The second is done when the incident is over and the young person is ready to sit quietly away from others. There the staff involved in incident and the young person explore the event chronologically for both feelings and actions. These are then summarized and an effort is made to explicitly connect the young persons feelings and actions. After that different more acceptable ways the student might have coped are discussed. From them, the student selects one and it is practiced in a role-play. Last, preparations are made for the young person to return to regular activities. Re-entry does not occur however before the young person can state he or she is ready to follow the re-entry coping plan.

You've heard of holds. Well, most of the class practices approved holds to be used in acute situations involving imminent danger. The psychologist and I don't have to do them, so we only practiced the defensive moves used if a young person tries to punch or grab us. They involved deflecting, turning, and moving back into a protective stance.

After evading the full effect of an aggressive or violent act, you move back five or six feet from the upset young person and assume a protective stance, arms extended so that your hands are about hip level with down-faced palms tipped upward so the aggressing child can see the underside of your fingers and your palms.

A little training goes a long way, but the most important step as I see it could be that step away.The problem is that I sometimes forget it and fail to move back and assume the protective stance. Instead, I stay too close with my hands raised near my chest in what unintentionally turns out to appear to be a somewhat confrontational rather than protectivie posture. But I'm working on it. And I have until Monday afternoon to prepare for the practical test.

Over this week I've read and studied the book. And I've prepared an outline of it. And today another student gave me a condensed one put together by others based on their previous experiences with the course. I'm not sure it's the answer, but it's half the length of mine. Definitely a plus.

So this weekend, except when I am eating or sleeping, my plan is to be hitting the books. Can you imagine my chagrin if I can't manage the required 80 to pass. Especially when I not only want to pass, I want to do it with style.

Roberta in Po-town, Revving up for an A

8:57 pm est Comments

Thursday, January 21, 2010

TCI Day 3

Tired. Six hours of class in one day is enough to string me out. All I want to do is to go to bed. But it's too early.

Tried studying. Too tired. Tried emailing. Too tired. So now to keep awake I'm trying blogging. After this, a nice hot bath should help. Maybe then I'll even be alert enough to read a little.

My goal is to stay awake until eleven-thirty, my usual bedtime. Problem is that if I can't make it that far, then I'll be awake at five a.m. which will throw me off all day tomorrow.

It'll be Friday. Hate to miss a chance to celebrate the end of the week just because I can't keep my eyes open. Yeah. So tonight this: bath, read, bed, study TCI, and at all costs, no shut-eye before eleven o'clock at earliest.

So on with the blogging. Tonight's topic:Therapeutic Crisis Management or TCI.

TCI is an approach used in residential settings with previously traumatized children. It involves knowing their baseline behavior, being alert to signs of agitation, being aware of each child's potential triggers, and responding supportively verbally and non-verbally when the emotionally stressed child responds to a triggering event. The events vary with the individual. Once triggered, however, the agitated young person's body chemistry increasingly drives the child's behavior as his or her emotional state escalates. This can result in increasingly agitated and potentially aggressive behavior. So the challenge for the person trained in TCI working with such a child is to de-escalate the crisis so that it does not reach the outburst crisis phase and possible violence. So I'm there. Wha' do I do?

To begin with I need to do lots of self-talk. What do I feel? What does the child feel? Is there anything in the environment I can change to make things better? How do I respond?

And all the time I'm telling myself I can do this. I'm good at keeping calm. If I do it right, it won't even take long. It's almost lunch. The kid's hungry, too. We'll be fine.

I remember to actively listening. I nod agreement. My face shows empathy. I give the young person time to drain off his or her emotions. I don't talk much. I tell the child I see he or she is upset. Angry. Frustrated.

I move the lunchbox from the desk so the child can't reach it and throw it at me. I remind the child I care about him by moving closer, putting my hand to the child's shoulder. The kid's having some trouble with a social studies assignment. I point to the chapter title. "Let's see." I read it aloud. "Oh, Sailing up the Hudson." I pause. "Why don't I read it with you?"

It doesn't work. The kid throws the pencil.

I say, "Suppose you pick up the pencil and we put the book away for now. Maybe you'd like a drink or water." I wait. "Or some time away from the group to get yourself together."

But the kid's really frustrated and upset because some relative who said he was coming did not. So the child jumps up and screams "I hate social studies. It stinks. And I hate my uncle," and begins to cry and yell at the same time.

But I want to maintain the relationship, so I refrain from yelling at him or her. I let the child vent. Through the tears we talk about what is really the central problem: the relative who didn't show. I say the child, "I see you are upset and angry." The child again restates his or her hate for the uncle.

"I understand you're angry at your uncle. He didn't show up like you thought he would. I'd be angry, too." I wait in silence. The child looks at me. "Come on," I say. I pick up the pencil. "Let's sit down on the couch in the hall." The child looks at me again.

"We'll leave your pencil on my desk for now so we can talk about what's going on." I head for the door. The child rises reluctantly and follows.

Therapeutic Crisis Intervention as done by someone still being trained. Me. Just in this imaginary scenario, it worked.

Well, two more days of training left. And lots of studying this weekend.

What's that? The telephone.

"Hello."

Roberta in Po-Town, Still awake

9:26 pm est Comments

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI)

I have to keep reminding myself that this is my personal blog. Not my professional identity blog. Not my publisher's blog. Not my writer's blog. My blog. Wholistically and unremittingly mine. Me.

Hmmm.

Well. Today I attended the second of five days of training in Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI). It's a system used with traumatized children to reduce stress by supporting them emotionally and environmentally. It is also used to teach them better ways to cope with stress.

The TCI system originated in the seventies. Its purpose was to reduce the need in residential settings for high-risk interventions such as holds and escorts. It was developed at the Family Life Development Center established by New York State Legislation in 1974 and hosted by Cornell University. I wanted to tell you about it, because the system actually works.

As a result of leadership and program support, clinical participation, incident monitoring and feedback, supervision and post crisis response, and competency training and standards, young people in residential and day settings who are recovering from the affects of trauma, are much more likely to learn to self-regulate their behaviors. Meantime the use of holds in times of crisis have reduced from numerous to rare with the end result that students in crisis in places where TCI is practiced have a much-reduced risk of ever being injured fatally or at all as the result of a poorly executed hold or its secondary physiological results.

Roberta in Po-Town, Caught up in study

8:43 pm est Comments

Monday, January 18, 2010

Words from within: Writ large

If I were to surrender to my soul's poetry,
this blog would be a flame that danced on feet
touching n'er the earth while its words curled blue
and skyward to flit delighted among the stars;

Night would not darken their lucent script
nor day bleach it from view. And in such a lissom way
they'd curl above an earth that in any season
might with ease read them writ large above.

Only the writer would rest.

Roberta in Po-Town, Musing

10:14 pm est Comments

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

My Conversation with the World

As I had early on hoped, Jolt: a rural noir has truly become the beginning of a conversation with the world. Take this morning. Coffee time. A colleague stopped me to ask me about Jolt's dedication page. About Spencer. Who was he? What made it particularly difficult that he could not be transferred to Westchester? This in turn led to a general discussion of the impact of 9/11 on people we knew. How flashbacks of the smell of charred bodies ended one New Yorker she knew's ability to relate to his family in the same way as once he had. We talked about how each of us made our telephone calls.

I remember talking with a nephew, explaining how terrorists were not governments that were readily identified, but scattered small groups that did damage to create chaos and worry people, but with whom there would be no negotiation, no clear line of attack. So the main thing was to remain calm and respond reasonably.

My colleague told of how she called her sister-in-law who worked in a taller building on a third floor in Boston. Yes, she'd heard. She was leaving immediately. And then the discussion turned to the gridlock she'd met leaving the city on her return to New York.

And I told my colleague, now more than ever, a friend, about my daughter-in-law who had been contacted by my son on the train she was riding to enter the city to accompany their special son, Spencer, on his trip north in the ambulance to Westchester.

"Turn around," he told her. "You can't go. We need you here. They won't let you in."

And she called the hospital. And he was right. Ambulances were not leaving the city. And she had to come back, leave their son in the city.

It's hard to imagine her pain. His pain. 9/ll occurred for them in the midst of the fog of fear they already knew for their son. Now buildings falling. And just what was a terrorist? What would they do next? Would they ever see Spencer again. Would he be all right?

And we talked about how one of Jolt's first readers had queried as to why there had not been more awfulness to the book. And how I explained as I could that New Yorkers were not ready for more bad news. So I had tempered my telling. And my colleague agreed. We were not ready.

But we are better now.

Roberta in Po-town, Beginning a conversation

10:19 pm est Comments

Friday, January 8, 2010

Researching Too Close: a study in survival

They started to arrive yesterday. Books. Books on surviving radiation sickness. I ordered them so I could research beyond what the military taught me in the CBRNE course in Bethesda, Maryland. To write about it, I need to know how people who suffered or suffer radiation sickness felt. What original or unique adaptations they might have made. How they problem-solved when help was thin or absent. To do that I need people. People to talk with about it. People in books. And me. Me thinking.

Gradually the central theme in Two Close is taking clearer shape. Sure, it's sci-fi about survival. But whose survival? Survival of what? With what? With whom? With whose help? But it's coming.

What prompted me to write this next novel, Too Close, was a simple question from a woman who lived less than ten miles from a power plant. So what's in it for me? Well . . .

So I'm going to write Too Close for her and others like her. And just as Jolt was written mostly with the people in mind who live thirty miles or more from a power plant, this one is for those who live within the identified ten mile evacuation radius.

So I have a lot of reading to do. And when I can, I'll query the experts on whether or not my notions for survival make sense.

But it's Friday of what has been a very busy week. I think I'll just shower and curl up with a book on radiation sickness.

(It's rotten job, but somebody's gotta do it.)

Roberta in Po-Town, Friday

9:04 pm est Comments

Monday, January 4, 2010

Access Blog in Two Ways

At this time there are two ways to access my personal blog: Click on'Roberta M Roy's Blog' at http://www.alvapressinc.com or go directly to http://www.alvapressinc.com/robertamroy

Apologies for the wiggles, but the www.robertamroy.com is being collapsed into the Alva Press, Inc., website and after January 15, 2010, will go away.

Roberta in Po-Town, In struggle

10:44 pm est Comments

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Moving again, this time to http://alvapressinc.com/RobertaMRoy

Thank you, Robert at Register.com for making it possible to maintain my blog and move it to alvapressinc.com. The entries below have been copied from the RobertaMRoy page at alvapressinc.com That page will now be deleted. To reach this page you will need to go to http://www.alvapressinc.com/robertamroy

January 2, 2010

Oh, my goodness. W found me a link so I, too, could observe the Champlain Bridge implosion which, having viewed it, has lead me to the conclusion that the word implosion is nothing more than a euphemism for ex-plosion. Do check it out the event for yourself and email me your impression. W titled her note Bridge URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEa0AbxItno&NR=1 I thank her for it.

Roberta in Po-Town, Still concerned

January 1, 2010

Can't help it. Have to say 'Twenty-Ten'. And given that as an option how many among us are likely to opt for 'two thousand and ten'? Well, whatever you prefer, Happy New Year!

But not really happy for the people of Port Henry. Reports drift in of the residents' reaction to the implosion of the Champlain Bridge. Very sad. Everyone's loss. Determined to make the most of a rotten day, that day my friend D had a bridge implosion party. Chilli, kettle corn. Good friends. A sense of camaraderie.

A bit before ten they lined up for the viewing. An unusually thick fog covered the lake. They waited. The implosion shook them to the core. Scared 'em even.

D's cousin placed his trumpet to his lips and played taps. Here and there a tear rolled down the cheek. But they waited all the same. The fog did not lift.

When eventually the view cleared, the bridge was gone. Not even a chance to view it as it went. Cheated. Cheated again.

Sad they were. And saddened they remain. It'll be a while before laughter ceases to be more forced than it used to be in Port Henry, New York.

They said the ferry would be up and running by Christmas. It gave people hope. And here it is twenty-ten and they have not even finished the docks.

They say the new Champlain Bridge will be done in two years.

Nobody believes it.

Roberta in Po-Town, Hopeful anyway

December 30, 2009

Tomorrow eve 2010 slips in about midnight. My first New Year's as a published author.

People are actually reading Jolt. I'm touched by how they tend to report back. 'I'm on page ten.' 'Page seventy.' 'My cousin is reading it and as soon as she's done, it'll be my turn.' And now even one, "I read it." And an enthusiastic one at that.

If I could just figure out how to turn this page into a blog now, it would be great.

Roberta in Po-Town, Wishing you a very Happy New Year!

December 28, 2009

Yes, I'm over here now. It was both too cumbersome and too costly running the two sites so http://robertamroy.com is now a page in http://alvapressinc.com Hey, but that's okay. About twice as many people visit this site as do the other. And it's still me.

Hopefully when the real move happens they will bring everything with it, including the butterfly, pic, and color:)

Roberta in Po-Town, Truckin'

1:38 pm est Comments

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Here you're suppose to learn about my personal life, my love of learning, the dog I don't have, my house that sits empty on a hill in Port Henry 'cause on the one hand I don't want to sell it, 'cause I love it too much, but on the other hand, I never seem to find the time to get there anymore but I haven't found a buyer. Of course I haven't been looking either. Too busy with Jolt. Also this site is still under construction so I probably won't get to selling it this month either. Well, that means, at least I can run up there over Labor Day and party with all my friends and neighbors there which is enough to make me want to hurry up and finish this so I can get ready to leave.

Here I am supposed to write more about myself and think about putting a picture of myself someplace below, except I put the picture in before I did anything else because I thought I was suppose to get rid of the butterfly but it didn't, which is probably just as well because I like the butterfly better. That's because it doesn't make me feel exposed like the black dress I'm wearing below does. The reason I chose that picture is because my sister C. thinks it's about the best picture of me I ever had taken. That's because I'm more mature now and most pictures look awful because they really look just like me. Of course C. thinks the one below does and all the other ones don't. Which a bit of a trip in itself. But what is there to say? And I'm glad she took it. R.