Comment Policy
Welcome to LeftFace, where we enjoy informed debate and celebrate well-composed, insightful and witty dialogue. This is a place for those of us with a liberal bent who happen to be military spouses, partners, and significant others. We invite interesting comments from all over the political spectrum – we may not always agree, but we are here to listen to and learn from each other. NB: If you are leaving your first ever comment, it will be held for moderation – but only once. This is in no way to discourage comments (and is quite common on other wordpress blogs), but more to prevent spam and hit-and-runs. Once one of us has approved the newcomer, feel free to comment all you want!
Zombie-esque unintellectual nutjobs, however? Well, those don’t sit so well. If you find you simply cannot respond without personal attacks, insinuations or truly foul and uninventive language, you will be responded to in the following manner: First, your comment will be highlighted and subjected to editing. Some of us are partial to disemvowelment (look it up) while others are partial to other forms of translation.
If the thought of your nastiness being translated into Klingon or Redneck doesn’t help you change your tack, you will then be deleted. Quickly and without warning. However, so far we have not deleted a single comment, so remember what your mamma taught you: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all!
And please, don’t think we’re not savvy enough to track trolls, loosely defined as anyone who makes defamatory, hateful, abusive, incoherent, illogical, or unnecessarily argumentative posts, usually with the intention of derailing healthy discussion and debate based on logic and respect. If you find it necessary to go to that much trouble to flout our comment policy, then really, we worry for you, we really do.
LeftFace -- The Other MilSpouse Blog 
I just found your blog and am curious about your banner. I’m not sure what you mean by “The Other MilSpouse Blog”. Is there another out there for milspouses who may be more right leaning? BTW, you may want to check your spelling of disemvowelment, I think you meant to type a “b”, not a “v”. 🙂
Hi D. Thanks for finding us 🙂 Yes, there are other milspouse blogs out there. Search away and you will find plenty.
And we did mean “disemvowelment.” It’s the act of removing all vowels (a,e,i,o,u … sometimes y … and I’ve heard in rare cases sometimes w, but I have yet to see a case of that) from what you wrote. So yours would go something like this: “jst fnd yr blg nd m crs …”
You get the point 🙂
Okay, got it! What a relief to know that it’s not the one with the “b”! 😉
Oregon should stand up for military families
By Guest Columnist
June 02, 2010, 7:00AM
Stacy BannermanBy Stacy Bannerman
Military families are breaking under the burden of the war at home. After nine years of war on two fronts, Oregon’s military families with a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan in the household have experienced significant increases – up to 50 percent – in divorce, mental health issues, veteran interpersonal violence and spousal abuse, and post-deployment joblessness of the primary provider. Oregon’s military families are the invisible ranks, struggling, suffering, serving in silence and social isolation. Military families need a seat at the table in Salem and a vehicle that leverages their expertise to identify and develop policies to ease their burdens, which are categorically different from the challenges facing our troops and veterans. Oregon should establish a Military Family Advisory Council.
At the recent hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, I made the case for creating such an advisory council, but it was the testimony of Sabena Moriarty, U.S. Marine Corps veteran, National Guard spouse and mother of eight, who told the real story:
“I wish I could sit here before you today, and tell you that having been in my husband’s shoes as a deployed service member, a deployed Marine, made my personal experience with Stephan’s first deployment easier in some way … but I can’t. Being the family member of a deployed service member is far, far more difficult than being the one deployed. …
“I was left to navigate this past deployment without a solid network of friends, no family in the area and minimal support from ever-changing Family Readiness Group representatives, who more often than not came into their positions untrained and unsupported by their own infrastructure.
“My experience here at home was a mixed bag of daily frustrations, utter exhaustion, loneliness, fear, anger, stress and confusion bordering on insanity. … I survived a high-risk pregnancy with gestational diabetes, an unexpected financial crisis that nearly [made] us homeless during the holidays [while my soldier husband was in Iraq].”
Sabena paused, struggling for composure, and then continued as tears rolled down her face:
“[A]s much as I had anticipated it, planned for it, sought out professional help for it and spent many, many sleepless nights trying to fix it, I saw each and every one of my children have extreme behavioral changes related directly to the deployment of their father, ranging from just plain acting badly and acting out, to two suicide scares by one of my children. I can honestly say, without doubt, that this was the most difficult year of my life.”
As the spouse of a National Guard two-time Iraq war veteran who is currently attached to an active-duty battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, I can honestly say that this has been the most difficult decade of my life. When we are a nation at war, I understand that there will be sacrifice. But when that sacrifice is being made exclusively and repeatedly by less than 1 percent of the population, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we are a military at war.
The military family is the first line of support for our troops, and the primary unpaid caregivers of our veterans. Mission readiness, morale, military recruitment and retention, and veteran reintegration are all directly affected by the military family. Oregon has a proud history of supporting our troops and our veterans. After nine years of war, it’s time to stand up for military families, too.
Stacy Bannerman of Medford is the author of “When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind” and founder and director of The Sanctuary for Veterans & Families.
© 2010 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.
I am trucking through a my husband’s fourth deployment, my third in his life. It isn’t easy. It is helpful to hear others going through the same things. Which is why I decided to start a blog about my day to day struggles in this year of his absence. We have a newborn and a dog and I would REALLY like to stay home, but we can’t afford to have me stay home this year after an expensive adoption, so I am trying to balance working full time as a teacher, raising a baby, taking care of the house, myself, a crazy dog, etc. There are days I crash. I hope my struggles, strengths and weaknesses can be something of interest or help to another. It isn’t much, but come visit my blog (and if you click on the ads, you can help me in my desperate bid to find another income source!) http://deploymentdiaryofarealarmywife.blogspot.com – all are welcome. Especially if you like to have frank open discussion in a polite forum with respect and understanding.