By Merrill Eisenberg
[Merrill@u.arizona.edu]
University of Arizona

Merrill Eisenberg

It’s been a busy summer for the SfAA, and I’d like to let the membership know what’s been happening in your Society:

Committees
SfAA is a participatory organization, with many opportunities for members to engage in the workings of the Society through participation in committee work.  You name it, and it seems that we have a committee for it!

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By Brian J. Burke
[bburke@email.arizona.edu]
University of Arizona

We live today at the intersection of the two great crises of our time, an economic crisis that has brought severe social dislocation, growing inequalities, violence, and an ecological crisis that has undermined the natural resources that sustain us and the ecosystems that we call home. These crises scream out for new modes of being in the world, ways of life that move us toward a sustainable and egalitarian future. But how do we get there? How do we create these new modes of being and how do we make them real? The answers are not clear, but they surely do not involve more of the same. We can no longer hope for the benefits of growth to trickle down, nor can we wait for the tidal wave of revolution to sweep over us. We need imagination, critique, and action today. As the activist scholars J.K. Gibson-Graham suggest, we need possibilities for creating revolution “in the here and now.”

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By Brian McKenna
[mckenna193@aol.com]
University of Michigan-Dearborn

Brian McKenna

I asked a recent class of 34 students to write about their last medical experience (with identities protected). Their responses astounded me.

One student, an Iraq War veteran, went to the local Veteran’s Administration hospital to evaluate his disability claims for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) only to be told he was just suffering from hearing loss and to “check the VA website” for updates. Another student, also a veteran, suffering a persistent left shoulder injury from his days as a paratrooper, was informed that his pain likely came from an earlier botched surgery by an Army doctor who was “less experienced” than other surgeons. Then there was the father who took his three year old daughter to the ER at 2AM with a stomach ache. Over five hours she was given four x-rays, an ultrasound and an enema with no improvement (and no diagnosis) of her condition. She cried all night and was given nothing for the pain. Finally, at 7AM, after the father refused a second enema, he took her home with a prescription for MiraLAX (a laxative), gave it to her and she was quickly cured.

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By Julie Tate-Libby
[jtmarie77@gmail.com]
Wenatchee Valley College

By Mark Allen
[alpinelines@gmail.com]
IFMGA Certified Mountain Guide

Julie Tate-Libby

Introduction
Mountains have often been regarded as sacred places for the people who live among them. Unfortunately, local conceptions of mountains as sacred places have been misunderstood by scholars, explorers, government officials, and perhaps more recently, tourists. Perhaps no region in the world has elicited more interest or fascination than the Himalaya as a center for spiritual enlightenment, mountaineering, and first ascents. Many studies have examined the impact of tourism and mountaineering on local tribes in the Himalaya (Ortner 1989, Fisher 1990), but little attention has been given to the issue of sacred peaks and how the burgeoning climbing industry is affecting local conceptions of sacred places, their resident deities, and what happens after the peak has been climbed, renamed, and published in international journals. This project seeks to understand the interplay between local and nonlocal conceptions of sacred geography, and the impact of international mountaineering on indigenous community’s religious heritage and traditional culture.

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