Wow! What an Army Nurse!

By Faith Chatham Feb. 15, 2018

An article in the Longview News Journal earlier this month discounted US Texas 1st District Democratic Primary congressional candidate Dr. Shirley J. McKellar, PhD, RN, Maj. (ret) as "just an Army Nurse."

My response is:
McKellar has created more jobs in East Texas than most governmental programs. In addition the two businesses mentioned in this article, she is responsible for helping meet the mental health needs of 12 East Texas counties military families and veterans. As an officer on the Veterans Administration Mental Health Advocacy Council, she is "at the table" fighting to restore cuts to women's mental health services and to expand mental health services for all veterans. 

Instead of just talking about supporting veterans, McKellar puts her talent and personal resources into helping veterans. Last year she attended a ribbon cutting for a housing complex in Dallas for Homeless Veterans. She asked: "How can we get a similar one in East Texas." She did not let the current party of the majority of Congress or the current occupants of the  White House deter her. She pulled together a steering committee of local stakeholders, donated some of her own land, and worked diligently with HUD and the VA to "make it happen." On March 3rd there will be a ground breaking for the new complex in Smith County where homeless veterans can use their VA Benefits to buy their own condos.

For 20 years she operated an early childhood education center in Tyler which provided care and education until midnight 7 days a week for infants through 13 year olds. When she was deployed to the Middle East that facility closed. However, she has tracked the progress of the children they served. EVERY child served by that center has graduated from High School and gone to college. One is currently in law school. That program could serve as a pilot program for how to do it right!

Shirley McKellar understands that the more responsibility you have the more you don't know which you need to know. Therefore she is always learning. She has a PhD in nursing, a MS in Criminal Justice and has almost completed a masters in Political Science.

Her expertise in economic development, small business incubation, job creation and non-profit organization equips her to serve the people of this district. During Mr. Gohmert's tenure the unemployment rate and number of persons living in poverty in most of the district has escalated. Shirley McKellar listens to people, verifies and researches, collaborates and brings solutions that serve people. This is the leadership we need in Congress. 

Someone with the Longview News referred to her as "just an Army Nurse!" 
--She is "just an army nurse" who implemented much of the women's health care for the US Military in the European Theatre. 
--She is just an army nurse who established the only comprehensive breast center in the US Military serving men and women. 
--She is just the army nurse who partnered with UT Medical School to determine why the mortality rate for men and women of color who have breast cancer is significantly greater than for white women and to look for treatments which give better outcomes. 
--She is also the Army Nurse who co-founded (with UT Medical School) the African American Breast Cancer Awareness. 

Somehow, I think the best outcome for East Texas in 2018 is for Louie Gohmert to be replaced with this "just an army nurse!"

Donate to Shirley McKellar for Congress at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/justarmynurse?refcode=ArmyNurse

Carolyn Chatham's words ring true today

New Release by Wise Woman Press on Barnes & Noble and Amazon

TCBD 2018 Virtual Town Hall - Part 1

By Faith Chatham Feb. 9, 2018
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I was honored to be present when this town hall was videotaped. These six women are running for U.S. Congress in 2018 in the Democratic Primary in Texas. All except Dallas Councilwoman Carroway are running in districts currently occupied by GOP incumbents.

This year there are Democrats running in all of the Congressional Districts in Texas. Most of these women are in contested primaries.

If you are a woman or if you are a veteran or if you are a person of color, you have only 20% representation in the US Congress.  These women are articulate, accomplished, compassionate,  informed, persistent fighters for what we need in our communities and nation. They are neither "out of touch" or uninformed. Any one of them will be an improvement over most of the current members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Please share this video with your friends.

Resistance and Insistence Poetry released by Wise Woman Press

By Faith Chatham -- Feb. 3, 2018

This is not our grandparents generation's volume of sonnets!

Not everyone can turn the frustrations and disgust we live through into poetry. San Antonio Tri Centennial poet, Carolyn Chatham's anthology of Resistance poetry is not a collection of flowery lyrics. She tells readers that "I am not the sweet old woman that you think I am." Her words flow from the place human beings encounter when they won't be quiet and take it any more.

The title "Those Bones That Float About" comes from the East Texas idiom used when a person looks you straight in the eye and says: "I've got a bone to pick with you!" These are not words that are used lightly, and they are not prompted by trivilities. They spring when harm has seeped past the coverings to the very foundations of our existence. Once picked dry,  they surface and cannot be hidden.

Released by Wise Woman Press  Carolyn's book, Those Bones That Float About, is available for pre-order on  on Amazon.com, at https://bit.ly/CarolynChatham.

School shootings, fires in California, Hurricane Harvey, gender, racial, economic and immigration discrimination inspire her poetry. One poem, Let's Make America Great Again, is to Colin Kaepernick.

Let’s Make America Great Again

Let’s make America great again,

bring back those good old days.

A man was head of his household.

Kids all toed the line.

A boy could be a boy and fight,

and we all got along just fine.

A man could be a man back then

so long as he was white.

Make America great again,

Let’s put the lid back on.

A baby every year or so

will keep those women home.

Plenty of eager hands back then

to mow our lawns and clean.

No laws to tell us who to hire,

or serve or educate.

Let’s make America great again,

restore the proper order.

Let’s keep those undesirables

on their side of the border.

Let’s make America great again,

bring back the holocaust.

The hanging trees are yearning for

the fruit that they have lost.

I will not stand for this,

This living in the past.

It's not "make America great again."

It's make her great at last.

I will not stand for this.

Take a knee, America.

We should not stand for this.

© 2017 Carolyn Chatham Used by Permission

In The Commander-in-Chief Eats Cake, she makes her opinion of the current resident of the White House clear.

The Commander-in-Chief Eats Cake

The Commander-in-Chief eats cake and smacks his lips, commenting how great it is

from his Mar-Lago resort.

The dark chocolate and orange skin are Halloweenish,

a rotten pumpkin shell.

He shovels dark icing

down a pink throat between sniffs.

His pudgy fingers and reptilian tongue lick brown goop from his too small mouth

centered obscenely on his bloated tangerine face.

While he gorges on cake,

bombs level mountains in Afghanistan,

vaporizing people he has never met or talked with,

whose names he cannot pronounce.

People who may or may not have been terrorists.

People whose children, wives, nieces and nephews are now most certainly terrorists.

Unconcerned for life unlike his own,

he licks his fingers

and announces the “Mother of All Bombs”

has been dropped on Iraq.

Or was it Syria?

Or maybe Afghanistan?

Anyway, it was one of those countries

where he doesn’t have a hotel

and where the people aren’t pink and orange like him

and nobody is asking about his ties to Russia today.

He is a spectacle, an alien thing, surely not human.

He belongs in a side show or science laboratory,

an alien life-form to be studied

then sent back to its cell,

and safely locked away.

© 2017 Carolyn Chatham Used by Permission