{"id":91191,"date":"2019-12-19T02:51:46","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T02:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/author-who-visited-numerous-conflict-zones-to-share-insights\/"},"modified":"2019-12-19T02:51:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T02:51:46","slug":"author-who-visited-numerous-conflict-zones-to-share-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/author-who-visited-numerous-conflict-zones-to-share-insights\/","title":{"rendered":"Author who visited numerous conflict zones to share insights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Author
Author Jo Patti spoke about writing her nonfiction book, \u201cGetting Off the X,\u201d and her career in international conflict zones at the Ignacio Community Library Thursday.<\/span>Courtesy of Jo Patti<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Author Jo Patti brought stories of escaping danger in conflict zones to a writers\u2019 group and community members at an Ignacio Community Library book event Thursday.<\/p>\n

Patti, who specializes in health and education, has traveled to over 20 countries practicing medicine and monitoring or evaluating programs for major international agencies. She shared some of those experiences, as well as insights into the writing profession, while presenting her first nonfiction book, \u201cGetting of the X.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis book is somewhat a cautionary tale, giving some warnings \u2026 about some of the things that can happen,\u201d said Patti, about \u201cGetting Off the X.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not things you would normally be told.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting off the X\u201d is a military term for getting out of the line of fire or targeted area. Since the end of 2006, Patti has worked in conflict zones around the world for agencies like the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, USAID and United Nations. She provides monitoring, evaluation, research and training for education and health-focused programs.<\/p>\n

In the book, she compiled stories focused on the moments when people have to make a decision to evade physical, emotional or spiritual dangers.<\/p>\n

The stories embody the risks Patti and others face in conflict areas. American organizations have sent her to places that are dangerous, that no American has recently visited. But where she goes, her colleagues and interpreters are also in danger \u2013 something she has had to remind the organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople get killed,\u201d she said. \u201cLots of really, very serious things happen with trying to push programs on places that are not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her work doesn\u2019t stop with evaluating programs. As a medical practitioner in traditional Chinese medicine, specializing in trauma, Patti worked with refugees from various countries, including Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Somalia.<\/p>\n

She has worked with Aboriginal, tribal and Indigenous communities in New Zealand, New South Wales, Australia and the United States. She has been a Sundancer and pipe carrier, ceremonial positions of honor, on Lakota and Menominee reservations.<\/p>\n

She never has a regular day at her job. She works at least 12 hours a day, at least six days a week, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re never really off duty,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her daughter encouraged her to write about her experiences. When she looked for books about people who worked in conflict zones, they were mainly by journalists, soldiers or novelists. She couldn\u2019t find very many that shared the perspective of a health and education professional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, yes, okay, I will start writing a series of books,\u201d Patti said.<\/p>\n

She also presented \u201cKismet,\u201d a book of poetry, and \u201cZen and the Art of Skiing,\u201d a project by her son, Denali Schmidt. Schmidt and his father, Patti\u2019s ex-husband, died in 2013 while climbing K2 in Pakistan, the second tallest mountain in the world.<\/p>\n

Patti has found catharsis through poetry, especially while processing her grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of deaths in our family and with people that I work with, so sometimes, for me, writing poetry is a way to express that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For the more experienced writer who wants to be published, she said other authors can connect writers to publishers. Asking authors who are successful in a genre to read your work can help forge those connections, she said.<\/p>\n

One tip for amateur writers, she said, was to focus on the genre in which you want to write.<\/p>\n

\u201cRead the writers you think are the best,\u201d she said. \u201cJust keep reading, reading, reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

doubles as writer\u2019s workshop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[639,1235],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-91191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-book","tag-ignacio"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91191"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=91191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}