The yachting season seems to be in full swing.
Issuma has been here for several days, the yacht on the outside must have come in last night, I cant make out it's name yet.

Later: The other yacht is ‘Evensong’ out of Wichita Falls. Not sure how the marinas are in Wichita falls.

I had an interesting weekend physically and mentally [some may say I am just mental but what would they know].

The physical part was doing odd jobs around the house; the mental was a little flame war on a facebook site [Ban Alcohol] on Sunday.

I think I handled myself adequately, a little batted and bruised but I came out of it OK.

So the emotions are over my end and we have to deal with the issue at hand rationally, that is why I concentrated on offering up possible solutions to addiction and other forms of mental wellbeing treatments.

Here are some more that I have posted to the facebook site.

“Addiction fill some sort of function-it fills an emptiness or kills pain. If you want to help people get past their addictions you have to at least understand what kind of pain they are trying to alleviate.”

‘Gabor Mate’- in an article written for August edition of Readers Digest by Susan McClelland.

Fran pointed out the article to me, reading it and checking out Gabor Mate on the internet it would seem that this is the type of treatment could be looked at for Nunatsiavut.

This is not meant to down play any of the work done to date; it is especially not critical of the front line workers and volunteers.

It is just pointing out that the leadership needs to look at more support and especially look at other ways of dealing with the pain and suffering and psychological issues that leads to all these addiction problems.

Some years ago now an innovative thinker in Nain lobbied to bring Wallis Kendal and a young first nations woman to town to have a look at the street kid’s problem and see if there was anyway Wallis’s way of treating addictions and other social issues, mainly with kids, could be adopted here.

Within an hour of the pair’s arrival they had kids flocking around them on the streets.

Kendal spent the best part of the weekend they were here with kids, mainly out on the street. “ you have to relate to the kids in a way they understand, and on their own turf” was Kendal’s philosophy.

And who could argue with that.

Well some people seemed to either not agree with that philosophy or they were afraid of something new or even maybe felt threatened, who the bloody hell knows.

Bottom line is: Kendal and the young woman gave two public presentations while here, one at the start of the weekend and one when they had assessed the situation. There was good attendance from workers in that area and the school.

When it was time for questions to be asked not one, in either session, came from people who should have asked the questions, or at least feigned interest. It was to say the least bloody embarrassing, at least Fan and I found it so.

As interested observers we both asked some questions and received honest and hart felt replies to each.

Needless to say nothing was done with follow up. Sure there were other attempts at dealing with the kids problems but nothing ‘out of the box’ like Kendal and his programs.

If this seems like a criticism to some then so be it.