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About Siletz news letter. (Siletz, Oregon) 1989-1997 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1992)
. . What About the Father’s? By: Walt Klamath, Outpatient Counselor Milwaukie Wisconsin T raining By: Walt Klamath, Outpatient Counselor Pregnant women who use alcohol and other drugs including nicotine are blamed for harming their unborn child, and widespread efforts have been made for several years to prevent pregnant women from drinking alcohol and using illegal drugs or non-prescribed drugs. But a new study suggests that fathers who drink and use can send damaged sperm to the egg- In one study researchers ‘ have found that cocaine readily attaches to sperm. This suggests that a man's sperm might carry the drug into the egg at the time of conception. In the new study, researchers combined fresh semen from men who did not use cocaine, with a dose of cocaine that was equivalent to what would be present in the bloodstream of a drug user. Researchers found that the cocaine bound to the sperm, with binding occurring best after 20 minutes of the test tube. The cocaine did not kill the sperm, even when extremely high doses were added. Nor did the drug affect the sperms mobility. Cocaine's ability to attach to the sperm, could be involved in abnormal development of off-spring of cocaine exposed males, the researchers concluded. Among known sperm damaging substances are marigolds smoke and large amounts of alcohol. Babies whose fathers smoke half a pack of cigarettes a day or more are more likely to die at birth, than babies with non-smoking fathers. Cigarette smoking by fathers may have even more subtle and delayed effects on a child's brain development. One study indicated that children whose mothers were exposed to someone else's smoke during pregnancy, had lower scores in speech and language development, motor skills, mathematics, intelligence and behavior during early school years. Alcohol, too, is a major concern. In laboratory tests with rats, animals sired by fathers showed basic flaws in their ability to learn simple tasks. July Medicine Wheel Submitted by: Walt Klamath June 21 - July 22 is the STRONG SUN MOON. People born under this MOON are the FLICKER People. Their Plant is the WILD ROSE, their Color is PINK, their Stone the CARNELIAN AGATE, their Elemental Clan is the FROG CLAN. They are compatible with BROWN BEAR, SNAKE, COUGAR and BEAVER PEOPLE. They Compliment those of the SNOWGOOSE. FLICKER PEOPLE are able to silently and receptively ride with the flow of life. They are gentle, dreamy, sensitive people able to both reflect and absorb things around them. They must learn to be more independent, and less changeable. (Courtesy Sun-Bear Publications) In May this writer had the good luck and misfortune of going to Milwaukie, Wisconsin for a training sponsored by the American Indian Training Institute out of Sacramento, California. The good luck, is that the training was excellent. The trainers did a very good job of presenting their chosen subjects, and some were chosen for them at *'■ the last mimife. That did not throw them for a wow. The misfortune was, there is no Country Western dancing in Milwaukie. There were many subjects covered. All that I had the privilege to attend were quite timely for the interests that our own program is planning down the road a piece or two. For instance, one of the subjects was grants and grant writing. Our program is currently trying to find a grant that we can use to purchase recreation equipment. I am interested in white water equipment for our adult program as well as for the young people. Of course, the grant that could have filled our bill, was last month. Just like fishing or hunting, you know darn well you should have been here yesterday, it was great, samo, samo. The lady doing this presentation said that none of these types of grants can pay for labor. But, I believe that if we have a white water unit that we can find plenty of volunteers to carry out the project. We were told how to go about filling out the applications and where to write or call for samples of successful applications-. Personally, I think the way to go is to have a professional grant writer do the work. They must be good in order to be in business for they only get paid with successful grants. Their fees are figured into the grant and, according to this presenter, perfectly legal and accepted. There was a very good presentation on the Sacred Sweat Lodge, the use of. the Sacred Pipe and how it relates to today's population. Some good questions were brought up about Sweats, such as when is the proper time to Sweat, and again as happens so many times when working with human beings, there is no right answer and there is no wrong answer. It depends entirely upon the frame of mind of the pa.” cipant, to put it briefly. One of the subjects that I personally wanted to learn a lot.about, was inhalants. I have called many colleges and so forth with not much luck on getting information. There was not much information at this workshop either, but what there was, was good. The Oklahoma College is going to put on a training this coming winter on inhalants, so it was said, you know, they say, but no one identifies who "they" is. It was said that there is very little treatment available. The consensus is that recreational therapy will work better than any other form of treatment at this time. Of course this made my ears perk up, as said earlier, this is one of the beliefs of our program. Another of the segments that was interesting, (actually they all were, really can't say that any weren't except for the ones that I didn't attend. It is impossible to hit them all, and some I would like to hit two or three times, but there just is not enough time anyway) the particular session was on self July 1992 3 talk. The trainer seemed quite knowledgeable on the subject. The session dealt with self knowledge, self esteem, and self behavior. The areas that, are comfortable to be in. The history of self talk was discussed. It was said that the Native American calls it the "Silent Talk", the dominate society calls it "Self Talk", the same thing. In the process of our own Alcohol Education Treatment here at the clinic, all of these things that I have learned will be used. Airplane Trip By: Walt Klamath, Outpatient Counselor The airplane trip to Milwaukie was not as bad as the one last year. In fact I was quite confident, until I found out that the company whose plane I was on was in bankruptcy. Now this threw a kink in the whole shebang. If they are broke, how were they maintaining the planes, maybe they could care less if the plane made it or not. Since I had purchased the ticket many months ago, there has been several air accidents, like a motor falling off somewhere on the Atlantic Seaboard, then the brakes going on in midflight, a plane missing the runway. In California a plane crashed, the pilot did not know how to fly that particular-plane. The rules are the pilot has to have a license. He is not required to know how to fly the plane. Now if that is not a piece of encouraging news I'll put in with you. Then on top of this, the news media says that all the planes are getting old, that this type of plane has been discontinued since 1978. So upon investigating from the window, one can see paint peeling off the wings. The wings themselves doing some flapping, makes one wander just how long can that thing flap till it breaks off? In Denver our plane had taxied out somewhere I assumed to take off. We didn't. Someone said that a plane in Missouri had a problem, had to turn back and the passengers had to change planes. I do not know if this is the gospel or not, how any one could find out anything at that stage of the game I wouldn't know, but good enough to believe. Anyway we sat there for an hour, sure enough a whole passel of folks came aboard. The stewardess would check to see how many more could be seated. She filled every seat. I think there were 31 rows and six to a row, Made one think that maybe the plane would have a hard time to get off the ground with that much meat aboard. It did seem to me that the plane did labor to get off the ground. Those darn jet engines do not change sound so really can't tell what is happening. After so fast one can't tell if the darn thing is gaining any speed or not. Then I began to wonder if the runway is long enough, and where is the point of no return if something does go wrong? Now when the plane takes off, a lovely lady comes out, possibly an angel in disguise^ and tells us where the life jackets are. Now there is no water big enough between here and there for a plane to crash into that a lifejacket would do any good. The Mississippi River looks like a piece of thread. There must be some kind of device for corn fields. Another shortsightedness of the states, is that they do not write there names on the ground, you know, like a map of the United States. Looking down from 35,000 feet it Is ,
