Ormond museum features art from the war in France and the war at home

(Continued from Jan. 13)

I spend a lot of time at Malcolm Fraser’s “The Soul Escaping Death” painting flanked by a framed spread of many medals earned in World War 1. He served in the French Blue Devils unit and was wounded five times. He also was an officer with the Red Cross on the frontlines.

Chris wanders off. She knows that I may be awhile. 

That’s what you do at a museum, right? Wander. Or roll, depending on your mobility.

If you look up Fraser at New York City’s Salmagundi Club web site, you find that Fraser was a member. I had to search for him and the screen listed 56 items in the file. But the link does not go to the artwork but you can see some in person at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens, 78 E. Granada, Blvd. The Salmagundi club is dedicated to representational art so it’s natural that it drew Fraser who painted portraits of the living and the dead, angels, soldiers, and John the Baptist among them.

“The Soul Escaping Death” shows a dead soldier on the ground in front of blasted battlements. He is wrapped in a U.S. flag that he apparently was carrying on the staff he grips in his dead hands. An angel has one hand on the body and another on a robe stripped from what’s supposed to be the soldier’s soul rising into the gilded heavens. The spirit looks free and happy, the vestments looking as if they are morphing into angel’s wings. The soul’s naked body looks female with long curly hair and the possibility of breasts and any genitals hidden under a triangle of pubic hair. It could be that this is Fraser’s vision of the angelic form, one that is human but intersexual, one that represents a brand-new being that we become after death. The exposed flesh of the dead soldier and the angel is rough and brown as if they were connected to the ground like old oak trees. The soul’s flesh is the pink of life, a representation of new life in the soul.

I looked at this painting a long time. I couldn’t decide if it was a work of hope in the face of death or a memoir of an artist who has witnessed slaughter on a grand scale. He was awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Verdun Medal. “Verdun” was symbolic of the war for the French, a battle cry and also a memory of defeat. Verdun was the longest battle of the war, lasting 11 months. Casualties were enormous for the French and Germans, with 700,000 dead, missing, and wounded. The site’s towering Douaumont Ossuary contains the bones of more than 100,000 soldiers never identified, French and German dead intermingled. You can view them through little windows.

Fraser was an accomplished artist. Not sure he took many risks. The 20^th century was about to explode and the explosion was captured by poets and writers. The so-called “Lost Generation” gave us exciting and troubling masterpieces.

Charles Humes Jr. is a living artist from Miami who has much in common with this creative breed. Humes lives in the present and creates in the present. As an African-American, he has an endless array of subjects, many taken from daily newspapers. Lest we miss his messages, he uses newspaper clippings in his mixed media work.  The museum’s handout for the new year shows Humes’ “Gentrified” on the cover.

“Gentrified” is a loaded word in the black community. It often means that a black neighborhood is being turned over to developers and the mostly-white gentry who will inhabit the condos/townhouses that will replace independent businesses. Artists figure in this, too. They often are the first to occupy rundown urban neighborhoods because they can afford them. Then the city (I’m looking at you, Denver) becomes known as an arts hub and young people swarm in and then smart developers who saw this coming and bought rundown buildings kick out the artists and renovate them into condos and before long you have ranks of techies wandering the streets looking for art for their walls by artists who once lived in their building but now can only afford the prairie exurbs or some quaint rural village in the foothills that soon will swarm with newcomers seeking real estate in artsy quaint rural villages.

It's not the fault of artists. Hey, I just wanted a place to paint! It’s life in America. Not sure what it’s going to look like in Trumplandia.

Oh yes I do. I truly do.

Humes’ work will be on exhibit through Feb. 9. Next up are Colombian sculptor Felipe Lopez and collage artist Staci Swider. Accord to the handout: “Her [Swinder’s] work is a meditation on aging, memory, and the unseen forces that guide us.” Sounds intriguing and timely. Opening reception at the museum gallery is Feb. 20, 6-8 p.m.

Malcolm Fraser flies with the angels at Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens

What makes a 49-year-old artist abandon his paints and go to war?

That’s the question I pondered when visiting the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens.

Malcolm Fraser was a Canada-born professional painter and illustrator who had graduated from the Sorbonne and attended Heidelberg University. In 1917, he left the U.S., steamed to Europe, and joined, after some intense training, the French “Blue Devils” unit at the Front. He was wounded five times and received France’s Croix de Guerre for his heroics. Later, he joined the A.E.F., was promoted to captain, and served with the American Red Cross on the front lines.

Fraser ended up spending most of his time in Ormond Beach. Toward the end of his life, he looked for a place to feature his artwork and one that was dedicated to veterans. A $10,000 endowment by Fraser in 1946 got the ball rolling and led to this impressive place.

Its priorities are clear when you leave handicapped parking and roll through the jungle. As Credence sang:

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Whoa, don’t look back and see.

I roll on my electric scooter and Chris walks. A beautiful space, and peaceful. I can barely hear the traffic zooming by on one of Ormond's busiest intersections. We enter the sheltered labyrinth and follow the lines on its painted multicolored surface decorated with butterflies and hummingbirds. It was designed by by Joan Baliker and the late Carol Bertrand and refreshed by Mack Sutton (artists must be named). This one is within a big gazebo and is a great play place for kids. I think about the outdoor stone labyrinth at my hometown Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, now covered with snow. 

Along the walkway is a monument by Mark Chew to veterans of the Korean War. Its streamlined silver surface reaches for the trees and beyond. It's the shape of a flame but cold as the Chosin Reservoir. Around the next turn is a bronze for Vietnam veterans by Gregory Johnson. On what looks like an old kitchen chair sits a helmet and canteen. Dog tags and a uniform shirt hang from the chair back. Its legs straddle beat-up combat boots.

I linger. This was my generation’s war, not mine physically, but it's lodged in the memories of any guy of draft age from that time (December 1968 passed Draft physical Jacksonville FL, high school deferment; December 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery #128; Navy ROTC midshipman 1969-71; two months served on USS John F. Kennedy as midshipman, summer 1970; released from the Draft on Jan. 1, 1972). I once read this about those times: "Vietnam sucked the soul out of an entire generation."

Memories remain. 

Johnson's statue is homey, I think, the things a grunt might leave behind when he changes into civvies. Or it could be a family's reminders of a GI whose psyche never made it back home. Think of war stories: Krebs in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” or Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July” or Billy Lynn in Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” (whatever happened to Ang Lee’s 2016 movie based on the book?).

We emerge from the jungle and its memories. The sun shines on a colorful "Can Do" sculpture by the late Seward Johnson, part of the public art display on Grenada by the Ormond Beach Arts District. Also on the ground is the "Embracing Peace" sculpture celebrating the famous Times Square kiss on VJ Day. Inside the museum, a bronze plaque lists more than 200 residents who served in WW2 (updated in 1999 to list African-American veterans) and one dedicated to WW1 veterans. A WW1 Doughboy helmet rests in a glass case by Malcolm Fraser’s photo and bio that greet visitors. This is a decorated soldier, and we are here to see his artwork.

(To be continued)

On that stretch of sand near J.D. Salinger's favorite Daytona Beach hotel

June 1966. My boss asked me why I was drilling a hole so close to the frothing ocean. High tide coming, boy. Looking for bananafish, I said, and turned the auger in the soft wet sand, digging a hole for the tourist's umbrella. What you talkin' about boy? Sir it's a perfect day for bananafish in Daytona. He grabbed the auger and told me to pick up my five dollars for a day's work and get off his damn beach. Now, he said. I dove head-first into the fresh hole. Blue-green water gave way to a murky yellow soup where dead bananafish floated. They ate too many bananas, swelled, and couldn't escape into sunlight. It was summer 1948. Salinger's Seymour tried to explain it to the kids on the beach at Daytona but they just thought him crazy, which he was, I suppose. So this is what you saw in the war, Sergeant Salinger? Bananafish floating, mutilated bananafish everywhere. That dreadful allied mistake off the English coast, bloody Normandy hedgerows, the bitter Bulge, the stink of the liberated extermination camp. Dead bananafish drove you into the asylum in Germany and you never came out, not really. You shipped out to another bigger asylum, the U.S.A., wrote about it, and we never understood. Your stories spread the alarm. We never understood. We kept looking for that one yellow bananafish who made it out into the blue-green waters. We are looking still.

Sources: Sergeant Salinger, Jerome Charyn; A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger.

"Sergeant Salinger" by Jerome Charyn will rip your heart out

I was gobsmacked by an historical novel written about a famous author’s experiences in World War II.

“Sergeant Salinger” by Jerome Charyn is about J.D. Salinger, the most reclusive of American authors. His war experiences and the PTSD that followed helps explain why he kept his distance from his fellow humans for most of his adult life.

But that’s not the whole story. We first meet Salinger as a young single on the make in New York City. He dates Oona O’Neil, the vampish daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, and hangs out at the Stork Club with the likes of Walter Winchell and famous people we recognize by their last names or nicknames. Papa “Hem” Hemingway is one of them. Salinger writes radio scripts and short stories and readers like them but they are nothing to write home about. The letters home come later when he has something to say.

Salinger gets drafted even though he’d been previously diagnosed with a heart murmur. It’s the spring of ’42 and Uncle Sam needs everybody, even “half-Jewish writers with heart murmurs.” You’d think that Salinger (he goes by the nickname Sonny) would land in a cushy stateside job writing press releases or speeches for generals. What happens is something horrific and unexpected, even for someone like me who knows Salinger’s stories of PTSD veterans (“For Esme with Love and Squalor” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”). Salinger told these stories from the inside out. The author’s “Nine Stories” broke my heart when I first read them all in my 20s. Another heartbreaking story about returning vets is “Hemingway’s “A Soldier’s Story.” In “Sergeant Salinger,” there’s a scene when a jaded Hem visits Salinger in a Nuremberg psych ward and calls his own story “amateurish.” Hem groused that everything was behind him. He published “The Old Man and the Sea” in 1952 and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and Nobel Prize in 1954.

Lest you think Charyn has employed his magnificent storytelling skills to make it all up, think again. I did too. Until Part One: Slapton Sands, the section that follows Prelude: Oona. Salinger is a Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) NCO, who accompanies invading troops to interview prisoners and others who might spill the beans on Nazi war plans. He speaks German. He’s been drilled in all the tricks of the interrogator’s trade. While preparing for the D-Day landings, he’s witness to one of the army’s biggest tragedies. In a practice run for Normandy on Lyme Bay on the Channel side of England, a live-fire exercise goes astray and German’s Kriegsmarine speedboats sneak in an torpedo LSTs, spilling overloaded troops into the ocean. There are 749 casualties, some interred in mass graves, and Charyn documents it.

I told myself this couldn’t possibly happen. I looked it up. It happened. That’s when I knew we were off on a wild ride. We go to Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. Salinger is in the thick of it with the Fourth Division. They get into hedgerow battles with dug-in German troops and 82^nd Airborne “sky soldiers” (paratroopers) who are keen to even the score with Nazis who shot their comrades out of the sky when they dropped into the wrong spot. I looked that up too and it was much more gruesome than featured in “The Longest Day,” book or movie. Anywhere, for that matter.

Kudos to Charyn for doing his homework. He is a brilliant writer, one I’ve liked since getting hooked on his Inspector Isaac Sidel novels. We are in the shit with Salinger all the way through occupation duty in Germany. And he comes home which we all know. Salinger humped his “Catcher in the Rye” manuscript through Europe and wrote until he couldn’t write any more. The novel ends with the manuscript in his tiny retreat on Sleepy Hollow Lane, a street that Salinger invents because of its locale near the setting of the famous Washington Irving story. Nobody but family can find him there. Until he finishes his war-battered manuscript and it becomes a best seller. "Catcher in the Rye" still makes waves. 

Publisher is Bellevue Literary Press of New York, a small press with origins at Bellevue Hospital, noted for its Psychiatric Unit (the Ghostbusters were interned there, briefly) and the medical offices where Dr. Lewis Thomas wrote the best-selling “Lives of a Cell.” I haven’t read most of its authors who write, Bellevue notes, “at the intersection of the arts and sciences.” They’ve also published other books by Charyn, including his latest “Ravage & Son,” a “vintage noir” set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the turn of the last century. I have pre-ordered it. Charyn has other historicals. Look them up at his web site at jeromecharyn.com

Grandma and Grandpa were in France on November 11, 1918, when the guns grew silent

World War 1’s Meuse-Argonne offensive began on Sept. 26, 1918, and halted with the announcement of the Armistice on Nov. 11. It was the largest in U.S. military operation in history with 1.2 million American soldiers. Deadliest, too, with more than 350,000 casualties on all sides and 26,277 U.S. deaths. Many of the troops were inexperienced which probably added to the casualties. The so-called Spanish Flu was raging at the time which swelled the ranks of the soldiers being treated at American Expeditionary Force hospitals.

My grandfather, Lt. Raymond Shay of Iowa City was there serving with the Headquarters Troop, 88^th Division, U.S. Army.

Late in the day on Nov. 11, 1918, my grandmother, Florence Green of Baltimore, was a U.S. Army nurse serving at Evacuation Hospital 8 in France. She and other medical staffers still were treating casualties of the Meuse-Argonne campaign and would be for some time. Armistice Day (later Veterans Day) didn't yet have a name but here’s the entry in her diary:

November 11: Am so happy tonight to think the war is really over. I cannot believe it. Haven’t heard a gun since 11am. Great celebrating everywhere. Can almost hear the city hall in Baltimore ringing, and what a wonderful time for Paris.

The next day was Nov. 12 and she was still in France. She finally arrived back in the States March 10, 1919. She met my grandfather at Army General Hospital 21 (later Fitzsimons Army Medical Center) in Aurora, Colo. Raymond and Florence were married in 1922 and their first grandson, me, arrived on the planet on Dec. 18, 1950. Their son, my father Thomas, served overseas in the follow-up war to end The War to End All Wars from 1942-46. My mother, Anna Hett, was trained as a U.S. Navy nurse at Denver’s Mercy Hospital but the war ended before she could be shipped overseas.

More wars followed.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" not the remake we expected

Some negative reviews have come in for Netflix's remake of  "All Quiet on the Western Front." They all say the same thing, that the movie is not loyal to the book. That's true -- it leaves out some crucial scenes and adds scenes between the German and French armistice-seekers on the war's closing days. Also, the ending. The famous butterfly ending of the 1930 movie vs. this version which takes its time settling Paul Baumer's life and the armistice. He dies and the camera lingers on his young face, so young and so dead. 

I read Erich Marie Remarque's novel in the sixth grade. It wasn't a class assignment. My father had a massive library and I had a library card as soon as I could walk. Dad's World War II collection was a doozy. "Guadalcanal Diary," Ernie Pyle's "Brave Men," Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe cartoons, "They Were Expendable," "PT109." He was a WWII veteran, an infantry radioman in France, Belgium, and Germany. He also had World War 1 books, probably because his mother and father both served in that war. I was entranced by the pilots of those rickety old airplanes. I was obsessed with the Lafayette Escadrille and the "The Red Baron" Richthofen's aerial battles. I read all Nordhoff and Hall books, as  both had been pilots in The Great War. I also read their Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy. Even now, I equate their "The Falcons of France" with "Mutiny on the Bounty." Adventure books. Boys' books. They made me yearn to be a fighter pilot and Fletcher Christian. Only in my imagination.

I was a kid and really had no idea what I was reading about any war. As bodies piled up in books, I viewed that as part of the adventure. My viewpoint has changed over the decades. I never went to war, the one of my generation in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. I was 18 when I graduated high school in 1969. I never served in the military although I was in the Navy ROTC program for 18 months. I felt guilty about my lack of service for a long time, especially in the 1980s when Reagan told us we had licked the Vietnam Syndrome. I had Viet Vet friends. I had peacenik friends. I read a lot of books about Vietnam. There always some nagging sense that I had missed out on something. How odd that seems now. 

I reread "All Quiet" prior to watching the Netflix movie. I also rewatched the 1930 movie, released just a year after talkies appeared. The book and the movie both cover Paul's recruitment and his leave when he confronts those who were so eager to send him to war. They are at the heart of the book. Paul was subject to "the old lie" in Wilfred Owens' poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est." After recounting the deadly effects of a gas attack, Owen ends his poem with this:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori.

That sentiment appears in the new "All Quiet on the Western Front." It just doesn't get the starring role I expected.  

Message for the Commander, France, 1918

A remembrance for what once was called Armistice Day and now Veteran’s Day.

My paternal grandfather, Raymond Arthur Shay, enlisted in the Iowa National Guard in 1912. He was promoted to sergeant in 1915. In 1916-17, he served under General Pershing’s command at the so-called Punitive Expedition on the Mexican border. In May 1917, a month after the U.S., entered World War I, Raymond Shay was in officers’ training school. He joined the 88^th Division as a second lieutenant and went off to France with the 88^th. He returned home to Iowa in May 1919. Later that year, he was diagnosed with a severe lung condition and sent to Army Hospital 21 (later named Fitzsimons Army Hospital) located in Aurora, then a tiny suburb of Denver.

At the urging of his daughter Patricia, Raymond wrote about his service in the Iowa National Guard that was activated for the Mexican Border War and World War I. He wrote his memories in cursive script on 19 sheets of yellow paper held together by a clip. It’s tough for me to read but readers from future generations will see it as we do hieroglyphics in Egyptian tombs; cursive is no longer taught as matter of course in public schools.

We called Raymond Big Danny. I can find some of the details of his service on ancestry.com resources. The stories are another matter. We listened to his stories as kids but they were so old that they might as well be The Tales of Arabian Nights. I remember a few snatches of his stories. The writing he left behind reminds me of those. How he had to arrest one of his troopers on a train bound for debarkation at a Canadian port. The soldier was a bit drunk and was waving around a loaded pistol, shouting about how he dared the Canadian Mounties to arrest him for his German name. One of Lieutenant Shay's duties was transporting bodies from field hospitals and burying them with honor at the new American cemetery in the Hericourt-Alsace Sector. General Pershing came to inspect the troops based in Gondrecourt-le-Chateau after the Armistice. Big Danny outfitted one of the division’s cavalry mounts with his own French Officers Field Saddle, one he bought himself because it was superior to the U.S. Army’s McClellan Saddle named for a Union general who was sacked by Lincoln and later ran against him in the 1864 presidential election (McClellan lost).  

Old warriors tell old war stories – it’s a tradition. I can appreciate them now since I’m getting old myself – 70 on my next birthday. I’m not an old warrior, just appreciative of their service to the country. I also appreciate the stories and want them to be told forever.

So here’s one remembrance of Lt. Raymond Shay, Headquarters Troop, 88^th Division, U.S. Army. Written in his own hand in Loveland, Colo., sometime in the 1990s.

Setting: AEF front lines, autumn 1918

At Div. Hdgrs I was given a message to deliver to C.O. of 1^st battalion 35^th Inf in front line position. We need motorcycles with side cars for this courier service. I was required to use a regular driver or rider as known then and so I rode the side car. We found Bat. Hdqrs easy enough but it was not exactly as 1 expected. When I asked for the Battalion Commander and said I had a message from Div. Hdqrs, a young 2^nd Lt. said he was. But C.O., I said, I expected a major but would settle for a captain. He said you will settle for a 2^nd Lt as I am C.O. and if I had a message deliver it. When I delivered the message I was still wondering where all the other officers were and asked the Lt. about this. He said well Belfort is only 10 or 15 miles down the road and they are all there living the good life.

The Lt. then asked me the 64-dollar question. He asked if I had ever been in No Man’s Land (that two-block distance between the trenches). I said no as my duty did not take me there. He went on to say one of these days this war would be over and I would be ashamed to go home and say I had never been in No Man’s Land. I said I had not thought of it in that light. I did say it would be better to go home and admit I had not been there than to go into that disputed land and not go home at all. He said I was wrong and he knew how to go out there and it would be safe if I did exactly as he directed. O.K. I said if I don’t go I suppose you will report me to Div. Hdqrs as a poor front line soldier, he said, no, you will get along fine.

He asked if my 45 Colt was loaded, if there was a cartridge in the firing chamber, now pull the hammer back and put on safety catch, hold the pistol in your hand and follow me. He said we would have to proceed with great care thru the communication tunnels as the Germans sometimes sneaked in at night and picked off our men at their convenience. We arrived at the end of this tunnel and were in the Front Line Trench and observation post. The Lt. said we are going out on No Man’s land. He said put your pistol back in the holster and do as I do, follow me, do not make any attempt to go for your pistol unless we are fired upon and that would do no good as we are out of pistol range out here.

We walked around slowly and he pointed to a tree on the German side and said there was a sniper posted there. During all this time, the trench artillery were shelling a small town the rear of the German lines, whatever they were hitting caused a lot of dust to rise.

The Lt. said we have been here long enough so you may return to Div. Hdqrs and tell them that you were in No Man’s Land with the Battalion Commander.

He was a great guy.

As the election nears, remember America's broken mental health care system

The mental health of veterans is tied to the mental health of civilians.

I am not a veteran.  I am a civilian with mental health issues. Depression is in my DNA. I can't help it. I can, however, do something about it. A conscious choice that can only be made when I am not in the grip of a depressive episode. That's how tricky it is.

I'm always on the lookout for Catch-22 analogies.

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.  

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. 

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”  

With depression, it works like this. When you are depressed, you need help. You have to ask for it as nobody else knows you are depressed because you look normal although you may not act normal, whatever that is. If you ask for help, that is a sign that you are coming out of depression. Have some pills, the doc says and sends you on your way to recovery.

It gets worse before it gets better. It takes time for the medications to kick in. With the pills comes talk therapy with a psychiatrist or a therapist or both. This also takes time to bear results. Meanwhile, you have to get on with your life. There's work to do, soldiering to get done, families to raise, bills to pay. None of this waits on your mental health. If your job and family permits it, as mine did a few years ago, you can take a month off of work to allay your latest depressive episode. Some people would rather work through it, take their mind off the problem. But what happens if you can't?

There's a TV ad for Trintellix, a new depression medication. It shows a man trying to get involved in gardening with his wife. A thought balloon perches over his head. Inside is a jumble of colorful spaghetti strands that seem to represent the tangled web depression causes. If you take Trintellix, the word "me" magically emerges from the spaghetti. It's not magic, really, but pharmacological. Antidepressants now can be targeted to the brain's synapses a lot better than when I took my first dose of Prozac 25 years ago. I'm not sure of the science but I'm going to look it up. I'm always looking it up.

My Catch-22 analogy isn't perfect. But it does illustrate the quandary of a person with clinical depression, or with any kind of mental illness. You find yourself in an illogical, Catch-22 universe. It makes no sense. It makes perfect sense.

On my growing stack of books to read is Bruce Springsteen's biography, Born to Run. One of the best-known performers in the world has struggled with depression. Interesting, isn't it, that the man who known for rousing anthems and hour-long encores, can also be battered into submission by the blues. The real blues. The kind that's as physical as a heart attack or leukemia.

Chris and I saw Springsteen in concert during his "Born in the U.S.A." tour in Denver in the mid-1980s. It was September and it snowed at Mile High Stadium. We didn't mind. Springsteen and the band didn't seem to mind. Maybe they minded but it didn't stop them. That's kind of how depression feels. You mind that it's there but you play on. The show must go on, as theatre people say.

Springsteen might have been depressed that day. I was, until I went to the concert. I then was uplifted.

The song, "Born in the U.S.A.," focuses on the Vietnam War and the problems veterans had when they returned home. Not a whitewashed Lee Greenwood or Charlie Daniels vision of wartime trauma. War can transform you, just as childhood traumas can. Some psychiatrists say that childhood trauma can exacerbate PTSD sparked by combat. We also know that people who have been no closer to combat than Donald Trump or Dick Cheney can struggle with PTSD. It's all in your head, man! Last time I checked, my head was attached to rest of me.

It's real. That's why it's so difficult to hear someone like Trump belittle the problems of veterans. After Oct. 9's "debate," Jon Soltz sent out an e-mail call for donations. Here's his pitch:

I am filled with profound sadness after watching Donald Trump's behavior before tonight's debate.  

I started VoteVets after returning from Iraq because veterans, military family members, and those who support them need elected representation that recognizes the cost of war continues long after the last service member returns home.  

This is a presidential election. We deserve a debate on these issues. Every veteran who has ever served deserves better than what Donald Trump has done to the process of deciding our next Commander in Chief.

Contribute to VoteVets here: https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/defeat-trump?refcode=em161009

I am not a veteran. I state this as a matter of fact. I approach this issue not from personal experience as a warrior but as a civilian. It's academic and personal. My kids both struggle with mental health issues. So do I.

My weapons are words.

Donald Trump has no mental health plan in his platform. Hillary Clinton does.

As Jon Soltz says, we deserve a debate on these issues. We still haven't had one. All of us struggling with mental illness deserve better.

Reading "In Country" in the aftermath of another set of wars

It only took me 31 years to get around to reading "In Country" by Bobbie Ann Mason.

Published in 1985, the book explores post-Vietnam War America, specifically the South of rural Kentucky. The struggles of local veterans are seen through the eyes of 18-year-old  Sam (Samantha) Hughes, whose father Dwayne was killed in the war before she was born. Sam lives with her Viet vet uncle, Emmett, and might go to school at the University of Kentucky or she might get a job and marry her boyfriend, Lonnie. She's rooted in a specific place but rootless, too, as are most 18-year-olds. She keeps asking questions about the war but nobody, especially the vets who meet with Emmett every morning for coffee, want to give her any answers.

In one passage, Sam ponders a photo of her "soldier boy" daddy who was about her age when he died:

She stared at the picture, squinting her eyes, as if she expected it to come to life. But Dwayne had died with his secrets. Emmett was walking around with his. Anyone who survived Vietnam seemed to regard it as something personal and embarrassing. Granddad had said they were embarrassed that they were still alive. "I guess  you're not embarrassed," she said to the picture.

In the mid-1980s, the war years were fresh memories. Mason's epigraph is from Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," possibly one of the most misunderstood rock songs in American history.

I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to run

Springsteen's lyrics are sprinkled throughout the book, as are songs by the Beatles, Stones, Creedence -- all the oldies from the era. The soundtrack of the Vietnam War, as one author recently called those tunes. Pop culture references abound, as do mentions of Americana: Wal-Mart, strip malls, muscle cars, Budweiser, and so on. Writing teachers sometimes tell their charges to be sparing with contemporary references, as it might date their work. Bobbie Ann Mason uses these references in order to date her work from the mid-80s, when veterans and non-veterans alike were trying to make sense of a lost crusade that nearly ripped this country apart.   This style was sometimes referred to as K-Mart Realism. This style was at its zenith when I attended grad school 1988-1991. It was shorthand for all of those white folks who once populated rural Kentucky and wide-open-spaces Wyoming. Whether draftees or volunteers, these men went to "a foreign land to kill the yellow man." They returned hoping to marry their high school sweethearts and get a job in the mines or in the factories that powered the 1970s economy. Many disappointments awaited them. Their girlfriends and high school pals had moved on. They didn't want to hear about Vietnam. Neither did older vets, the Greatest Generation, fathers of the whiners and complainers who came back from Vietnam. "Get over it," So they only talked about it with other veterans oif they just dropped out, as did Emmett, who doesn't work and spends his time watching M*A*S*H and recycling cast-off goods, much as the VC used to re-purpose all of the material the GIs threw away.

By 1985, this economy had begun to disappear,  Mines and textile mills and factories were shuttered or moved overseas for cheaper labor. To Mexico, Indonesia and, ironically, a newly energized Vietnam. Reaganomics worked to destroy unions, the foundation of blue-collar America. Vietnam veterans tended to blame liberal elites for this reversal of fortune. They were the spoiled hippie college kids who caused us to lose the war. Their love for the spotted owl and pristine wilderness killed the logging and mining industries. Their political correctness have us everything from women's lib to gay rights to Barack Obama in 2008 to -- yes -- The Donald in 2016.

Mason's characters are wonderful. The book begins with Sam, Mamaw and Emmett driving from Kentucky to Washington, D.C., in a beat-up VW bug Sam just bought from Vietnam vet Tom. We then are transported back to Hopewell in the months leading up to the trip. The book ends at The Wall, no surprise since its presence looms large throughout the book, even though it's off-stage most of the time. This a a fitting remembrance to the Vietnam War. Remember that the memorial was referred to by one opponent as a "black gash of shame." It now is almost a sacred site for Vietnam vets, home to motorcycle rallies for wounded vets and pilgrimages by vets and their families, such as the Hughes clan of Kentucky.

I'm not spoiling "In Country" to tell my readers than it ends at The Wall. The reflective surface of The Wall often leads to eerie juxtapositions, as when Sam looks at her father's name and realizes that it's her name too and she can see his face in hers. Or in veteran writer Yusef Komunyakaa's 1988 poem "Facing It:"

I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.

Update on Laramie County Democrats' Flag Day fund-raiser

Here's an update on tomorrow's Flag Day fund-raiser in Cheyenne. I have it on good authority that Uncle Sam (or someone who looks a lot like him) will be there:

The Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition is hosting a Flag Day Garden Party on Sunday, June 14 at 3626 Dover Road, Cheyenne, 2-5 p.m. 

Tim Fields from Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing will make a presentation about this worthwhile program that assists our local veterans. 

Aimee Van Cleave, Executive Director of the State Democratic Party, will update us on Dem happenings around the state. 

There will be desserts, beverages, and musical entertainment  provided by Terry and Theresa Barbre who will play the bagpipes and drums. 

And maybe even Uncle Sam. 

The cost is $15; $5 will go to Healing Waters and $10 to the Laramie County Democratic Party. The Dems will pay the entry fee for up to 10 Vets who are not members of the LCDGC.

We're asking the Grassroots Members to bring a dessert which has the colors red, white and/or blue. No cream pies or anything that needs refrigeration unless you want to bring a cooler too. We are going to cut some of the desserts to serve that day, plus we will set aside some of them to be auctioned off as a fund-raiser for The Laramie County Democrats. We will also have the cards to play 50/50.

If you choose, wear the colors red/white and or blue. We want to take this day to honor the flag and to honor our vets.

Let's have a great turn out for this special event! Bring a friend(s).

If you have questions, contact Kathleen 421-4496 or Ken 433-4394.

Democrats' Flag Day fundraiser features Project Healing Waters presentation

I'm on a committee with the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Organization that stages fund-raisers for for Dem candidates, mainly local and legislative. The committee raised $10,000-plus in 2014. In the political world, that seems like a drop in the bucket. The Koch Brothers, before they finish their morning coffee, donate $10 million to Repubs. But those thousands in local funding paid for yard signs and flyers and even paid advertising, all things crucial to name recognition, especially for newbies.

It appears that another election is on the horizon. How does this happen? A dozen or so Republicans have already announced for president in 2016. Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have announced on the Democrats' side. Locally, Lee Filer has announced a return bout with fundie Repub Harlan Edmonds. Filer held the seat for two years. Did a great job. Ran again in 2014. Dems stayed home and Repubs voted in Edmonds. You have to get out a vote, people! GOTV efforts will be crucial in 2016.

The LCDGC is staging a fund-raiser this Sunday. You are welcome to attend If you're a Dem who has publicly declared your allegiances, You are welcome if you're a lapsed Dem. You are welcome if you're a closeted Dem, uncertain about making your feelings known in a sea of conservatives. Veterans are doubly welcomed, as it's Flag Day and we're a friendly bunch. 

On Sunday, June 14, Flag Day, the Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition is sponsoring a fundraising event at 3626 Dover Road, 2-5 p.m. Tim Fields from Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing will make a presentation about this wonderful program that assists our local veterans. There will be desserts, beverages, musical entertainment and maybe even "Uncle Sam". The cost is $15; $5 will go to Healing Waters and $10 to the Laramie County Democratic Party. The Party will pay the entry fee for up to 10 veterans who are not members of the LCDGC.

We're asking the Grassroots Members to bring a dessert which has the colors red, white and/or blue. No cream pies or anything that needs refrigeration unless you want to bring a cooler too. We are going to cut some of the desserts to serve that day, plus we will set aside some of them to be auctioned off as a fund raiser for the Party. We will also have the cards to play 50/50. If you choose, wear the colors red/white and or blue. We want to take this day to honor the flag and to honor our veterans

See you there for another fun FUNdraiser!

If you have questions, contact Kathleen 421-4496 or Ken 433-4394.

For more information on Healing Waters, go to http://www.projecthealingwaters.org/. PHWFF is sponsoring its third annual fly-tying competition. According to its web site, the contest is "open to individuals who meet the definition of a PHWFF participant."

For those locals curious about the art of fly-tying, visit the Art of the Hunt exhibit showing now at the Wyoming State Museum.

Casper gathering planned for Wyoming Vietnam vets who've written about their experiences

Author Starley Talbott Thompson posted this item on the Wyoming Writers, Inc., Facebook page:

Lee Alley, Wyoming veteran and author of "Back From War: Finding Hope and Understanding in Life after Combat," is part of an effort to put together an event for veterans of the Vietnam War next year in Casper. He is looking for other Wyoming authors who have written about their experiences in Vietnam. For more details contact Lee Alley at leeballey@yahoo.com or Linda Fabian at linda@wyshs.org

Find out more about Lee Alley on the Wyoming Authors' Wiki.

Lesson for politicians and military leaders: Never talk to poets

On Thursday evening, CNN's "The Sixties" aired its segment on the Vietnam War. In real time in Washington, D.C., Vietnam War veteran and POW John McCain was beating the war drums, this time for our re-involvement in another quagmire, Iraq. All week chickenhawks such as Dick Cheney had been screeching about Pres. Obama losing Iraq. President Obama staged a press conference is which he said he was sending advisers to help the Iraqi army turn back the attacks by ISIS, basically a bunch of zealots dressed in white pajamas fighting an unconventional war in the desert.

Chris and I watched the one-hour history of our involvement in Southeast Asia. Kennedy sent advisers to Vietnam and Johnson, intent on following in the slain president's footsteps, did likewise. Nobody wanted to be accused to being the one who lost Vietnam to the commies. The "domino theory" was first espoused by Ike in a 1954 speech. "The Sixties" showed a black-and-white TV news clip of dominoes set on a big floor map of Southeast Asia. The newscaster tips the first domino and the rest of them fall, one by one. If Vietnam goes, so goes Laos and Thailand and so on. Soon, little guys in black pajamas would be prowling the suburbs of Denver and Dallas and Detroit.

So we sent millions of young men from Denver and Dallas and Detroit to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. And for what?

You tell me.

It's a long story, I know. It keeps playing out in myriad ways in our own politics. The war was fought in pitched battles in Vietnam and on the home front. It left lasting scars. We made some attempts at healing in the 1970s but then along came Ronald Reagan and his Cold Warriors. We fought proxy wars with the Soviets all over the globe, rebuilt the military and then the new century arrived and Bush and Cheney launched a whole new wave of foreign misadventures.

We'll soon mark the 100th anniversary of "The Guns of August," those missteps that launched the first global war. Farmers in France and Belgium are still digging up unexploded artillery shells. Trench lines can be seen from space. Historians have spent the last 100 years explaining the slaughter to us. As is often the case, we have to rely on the poets and writers to get at the gut-level experiences if war. This is "Does It Matter" from 1918 by Siegfried Sassoon:

Does it matter? — Losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you needn't show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting,
And gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? — Losing your sight?
There's such splendid work for the blind,
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering,
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? — Those dreams from the Pit?
You can drink, and forget, and be glad,
And no one will say that you're mad,
For they'll know that you fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

And Randall Jarrell's "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" from 1945;

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Here's "Facing It" from fellow CSU grad and Vietnam vet Yusef Komunyakaa:

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Carolyn Forche wrote a scary and much anthologized prose poem, "The Colonel," about the proxy war in El Salvador. Forche went to El Salvador in the late 1970s as a poet and a fan of Claribel Alegria but ended up being a campaigner for human rights. Members of the military junta thought she was a CIA agent working as a poet, which may have led to her being invited to dinner with high-ranking military officers. It was during one of these dinners that Forche had the following encounter:

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. 

This comes from Forche's interview with Bill Moyers as recounted in the 1995 book, The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets:

Moyers: Had I reported that incident as a journalist, I would have been quite literal: who, what, when, where, and why. What's the relationship between these facts as a journalist would report them and the truth that you're trying to reveal?
Forché: Some writers whom I admire very much say that facts often have little to do with the truth. What I was trying to do with this piece, as I finally allowed it to be in The Country Between Us, was to acknowledge that something important had actually occurred. But the poem also contains a truth about the brutality of that situation which seems to reach deeply into people. When I came back to the United States and began reading the poem, I noticed that some people were very moved by it and others were very angered by it. And some people simply didn't believe it, they said it could not have happened. There was a fierce denial and yet several years later a reporter for The Washington Post interviewed soldiers in El Salvador and they apparently talked about the practice of taking ears and all of that. In fact, one of these soldiers read the news story about his practice of taking ears and was so proud of the story that he actually clipped it out and laminated it and carried it in his wallet. Because now he was famous, you know, for this.
Moyers: That's what can happen to a journalist's account. But the poem is a condemnation.
Forché: It is a condemnation. As a journalist, maybe you wouldn't have been able to use the obscenity, and perhaps you wouldn't have been able to quote him directly. But more than that, I don't think it would've happened to you because I don't think the message was intended for the press. It was intended for a quiet communication back to Washington, and unfortunately they told the wrong person. They told a poet.
Moyers: Lesson for politicians and military leaders: Never talk to poets.
Forché: Never.

The colonel in the poem also had the reputation for warning Catholic priests that were targeted by right-wing death squads. So it goes...

Each war spawns more war poems. The launch of the "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq caused poet Sam Hamill to put out a call for protest poems for a web site and later an anthology called "Poets Against the War" (later "Poets Against War"). I made a modest contribution to the web site collection. I'm not a poet, you see, but poetry does focus the imagination and the anger. 

Now that chickenhawks are squawking about returning to Iraq, it's only fitting that I end with this poem by Iraq War veteran and University of Oregon M.F.A. grad Brian Turner:

The Hurt Locker   

Nothing but hurt left here.

Nothing but bullets and pain

and the bled-out slumping

and all the fucks and goddamns

and Jesus Christs of the wounded.

Nothing left here but the hurt.

Believe it when you see it.

Believe it when a twelve-year-old

rolls a grenade into the room.

Or when a sniper punches a hole

deep into someone’s skull.

Believe it when four men

step from a taxicab in Mosul

to shower the street in brass

and fire. Open the hurt locker

and see what there is of knives

and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn

how rough men come hunting for souls.

Some samples from 100 years of poetry about war. No non-U.S. voices were included, although their numbers are legion. I'll save that for a future post...
 

As new year dawns in Colorado, authorities on the lookout for stoned Wyoming Boomers

An Iraq War veteran with PTSD was the first in line to purchase pot this morning in Colorado, according to a story on NBC News Online.

"I feel amazing. This is a huge step forward for veterans," said Sean Azzariti of Denver, who helped campaign for Amendment 64. "Now I get to use recreational cannabis to alleviate my PTSD."

Meanwhile, the state's “potrepreneurs” are preparing for an onslaught of Cannabis tourists.

From the Colorado Highlife Facebook page

Colorado Highlife Tours promises “fun, affordable and discreet” cannabis-centered excursions on its bus and limo tours. From NBC:

“You’ll be able to buy a little pot here and there, see a commercial grow, visit iconic Colorado landmarks and take lots of pictures,” said company owner Timothy Vee. “It will be like a Napa Valley wine tour.”

--clip--

Unlike Napa Valley wine tours, however, out-of-states tourists to Colorado’s pot retail stores won’t be able to take home most products they purchase. “It remains illegal to take marijuana out of the state,” said Michael Elliott of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group. And because marijuana also remains on the Transportation Security Administration's list of prohibited items, Denver International Airport will enforce a new policy that bans pot throughout the airport.

Prior to Jan. 1, Colorado Highlife Tours has mixed sightseeing with stops at glass-blowing shops, marijuana grow centers and has offered customers “free samples” — because buying pot was not yet legal.

“You live and learn,” said Vee. “On our tours, we’re getting a lot of empty nesters that haven’t smoked pot in 20 years. We’ve also had people who have never smoked pot take our tours and had one couple get high and so paranoid that we had to interrupt the tour and take them back to their hotel.” 

Stoned empty nesters. Baby Boomers, high on Bubba Kush, reeling around downtown Denver is search of organic munchies. Busloads of Wyoming retirees rolling down the highway, sweet smoke and Doobie Brothers tunes wafting out the windows.

All hell is breaking loose in my home state of Colorado. Across the border in Cheyenne, we are sober as judges -- most judges, anyway. No legal pot here.

But Wyoming NORML is working on it. It will sponsor a "Walk for Weed" Feb. 10 in Cheyenne. At least two Republican legislators have been discussing marijuana publicly. Sen. Bruce Burns (R-Sheridan) made the news recently when he revealed that 30 years ago he transported illegal ganja to his cancer-stricken uncle (a priest!) back in New York. His momma asked him to do it and he delivered. His uncle started eating better and gained 15 pounds. Burns knows first-hand the benefits of medicinal weed, which is where Wyoming may start. Rep. Sue Wallis (R-Recluse), she of the strong Libertarian streak, has already talked about promoting medicinal marijuana legislation. On most issues, Rep. Wallis is as conservative as most of her neighbors in rural Campbell County. But she is a big promoter of the local food movement, spoke out last year in favor of a civil unions bill and has been very vocal in opposition to anti-women legislation promulgated by the wackos in her own party.

So who knows? Will Legislature focus on pot amongst all of the budgetary items? On day one, 2014 already looks interesting. Don't know about you, but I'm glad to be here.

Marking the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion with a photo sampler

These three photos come from The Atlantic magazine's series of photo essays commemorating the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This is only a sampler of the 150 photos featured in The Atlantic. They each spoke to me in different ways. The above photo was taken on Wednesday, March 13, 2013. It shows a view of Baghdad's Firdos Square at the site of an Associated Press photograph taken by Jerome Delay as the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down by U.S. forces and Iraqis on April 9, 2003. Ten years ago on live television, U.S. Marines memorably hauled down a Soviet-style statue of Saddam, symbolically ending his rule. Today, that pedestal in central Baghdad stands empty. Bent iron beams sprout from the top, and posters of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in military fatigues are pasted on the sides. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

I work in the arts and have often wondered about the fate of artists and musicians and writers during the war. A student practices playing the oud (above) at the Institute of Musical Studies in Baghdad, on October 21, 2012. The once quiet courtyards of Baghdad's Institute of Musical Studies, located in the busy Sinak area, where violence was rife during the height of Iraq's sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, are thriving again as the Iraqi capital enjoys a noticeable ebb in violence (for now). Many of Iraq's most talented musicians fled during the rule of Saddam Hussein, fearing persecution for their political views and suffering from a lack of funding and exposure if they refused to glorify the leader in their art. Now, slowly, some musicians are making plans to come back, hoping to revive Iraq's rich musical tradition on home soil. (Reuters/Mohammed Ameen)

I've written a lot about veteran suicides during the past decade (go here and here and here). In the above photo, Matt and Cheryl Ecker hold a photo of their son, Army veteran Michael Ecker, in Champion, Ohio, April 19, 2012. In 2009, Michael committed suicide, shooting himself in front of his father. Veteran suicides remain a serious problem in the U.S. A recent Veteran's Administration study using data from 21 states between 1999 and 2011 suggested that as many as 22 veterans were killing themselves every day. (Reuters/Jason Cohn)

Iraq vet and writer David Abrams returns to Jackson with his novel "Fobbit"

I'm always a bit dubious when a new novel is compared to Catch-22 or M*A*S*H or is labeled "definitive." However, I am always ready for a new reading adventure, especially if the book features a darkly humorous take on war, any war, and the author is from Wyoming.

So here's some info on Jackson Hole H.S. grad David Abrams and his new novel, "Fobbit," and the author's upcoming appearance in his old stomping grounds:

The Jackson Hole Writers Conference & Teton County Library Present: David Abrams, 7-8:30 p.m., on Friday, Nov. 2. David Abrams, who graduated from Jackson Hole High School in 1981, spent 20 years in the Army and then came back to the states to write what is being acclaimed as the definitive novel of the Iraq War. His novel about the Iraq War, "Fobbit," was published by Grove/Atlantic in 2012. Location: Center for the Arts, Dancers Workshop, 240 S. Glenwood Street, Jackson, WY 83001. Free. Adult Humanities Coordinator, Oona Doherty, 733-2164 ext. 135, odoherty@tclib.org. 

From the author’s web site:

In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield – where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like an office job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy. Of all the fobbits stationed at Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph, Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding is the fobbitiest. His M-16 is collecting dust, he reads Dickens and Cervantes instead of watching NASCAR with the grunts, and the only piece of Army intelligence he really shows an interest in is the mess hall menu. Gooding works in the base’s public affairs office, furiously tapping out press releases that put a positive slant on the latest roadside bombing or strategic blunder before CNN can break the real story. Another soldier who would spend every day at the FOB if he could is Captain Abe Shrinkle, but unfortunately for him he’s a front-line officer, in charge of a platoon of troops. Abe trembles at any encounter with the enemy and hoards hundreds of care packages, brimming over with baby wipes, foot powder, and erotic letters from bored housewives. When Shrinkle makes a series of ill-judged tactical decisions, he ends up in front of his commanding officers, and Gooding has his work cut out trying to make everything smell like roses--and that’s just the start of the bad news.

Veterans, artists, writers and colleges team up for the Combat Paper Project

-->

From Nov. 5-9, the Combat Paper Project is teaming up with the Colorado

State University Veterans Organization right down the road in Fort Collins

for a week-long program of workshops, film screenings, presentations and 

an exhibit leading up to Veterans Day on Nov. 11. The completed works 

will be exhibited at the William E. Morgan Library at CSU from 7-9 p.m. on

Thursday, Nov. 8. The event is free and open to the public. For more 

information, contact Drew Waldbauer, alvs_staff@mail.colostate.edu, 

970-491-3977. 

Here's some info on the project:

The Combat Paper Project utilizes art-making workshops to assist veterans in reconciling and sharing their personal experiences as well as broadening the traditional narrative surrounding service and the military culture.

Through papermaking workshops veterans use their uniforms worn in combat to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beaten into a pulp and formed into sheets of paper. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences in the military.

The Combat Paper Project is based out of art studios throughout the United States and has traveled to Canada and the United Kingdom, providing veterans workshops, exhibitions, performances and artists' talks. This project is made possible by a multifaceted collaboration between artists, art collectors, academic institutions and veterans.

Through ongoing participation in the papermaking process, combat papermakers are attempting to progress from creating works specific to their military experiences to expressing a broader vision on militarism and society. The work reflects both the anger of the past and hope for the future. Through this collaboration between civilians and veterans, a much-needed conversation is generated regarding our responsibilities to the returned veteran and an understanding of the dehumanizing effects of warfare.

The Combat Paper Project is a collaboration initiated by Drew Matott and Drew Cameron, involving war veterans, activists and artists. More information about our beginnings or the papermaking process can be found in our basic papermaking primer.

MoveOn petition asks: Sen. Barrasso, why did you vote to block veterans' jobs bill?

Wyoming MoveOn member Josh Kronberg sent this:

Dear Wyoming MoveOn member,

All over Wyoming we see public support for our troops overseas, but just because their tours of duty might end doesn't mean that the debt owed them by their country ends with them. 

Nonetheless, our troops are coming home to Wyoming and finding it even harder than non-vets to find jobs, housing, and support. We can wave all the banners we want and paste all the bumper stickers we can find but that doesn't put paychecks in veterans' hands or roofs over their heads.

Recently, Senator John Barrasso voted to block a billion-dollar veteran jobs program, and it's time we in Wyoming did more to support our troops than put bumper stickers on our cars and repost pictures on Facebook. 

That's why I created a petition on SignOn.org to Sen. Barrasso, which says:

Senator Barrasso, stop blocking programs to employ our vets, and start showing them the support they have earned. Reverse your decision on preventing the billion-dollar veteran jobs program from going through; put our money where our mouth is.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thanks!

–Josh Kronberg

This petition was created on SignOn.org, the progressive, nonprofit petition site. SignOn.org is sponsored by MoveOn Civic Action, which is not responsible for the contents of this or other petitions posted on the site. Josh Kronberg didn't pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell the MoveOn.org list.

It's Enzi and Barrasso who deserve jeers for their votes against veterans' jobs bill

WyoDems Communications Director and long-time Wyoming reporter and editor Brodie Farquhar posted this on Facebook:

Today's Casper Star-Tribune properly "Cheered" a recent jobs fair for veterans with their weekly Cheers/Jeers column. Yet so far, aside from one letter to the editor, the CST has been entirely silent about the fact that Enzi and Barrasso voted against a veterans jobs bill. That in itself deserves a "Jeer."

The real quandary for the depressed: you often are too depressed to take action

Marjorie Morrison is the author of the recently published "The Inside Battle: Our Military Mental Health Crisis" (Military Psychology Press, $8.99 ebook). Yesterday, she wrote a great column for the Huffington Post. Here are some excerpts:

From 2005 to 2010, service members took their own lives at a rate of about one every 36 hours. There are currently more deaths in the military by suicide then killed in combat. Suicides in the US Army increased 80% in 2004 to 2008. 

This is the excerpt that rang true for me:

A service member who seeks help has significant barriers to overcome. Almost all of us can look back at a time when we felt depressed. Typically, it isn't until after you get through it that you realize how distressed you were. It's difficult enough to ask for help, but considerably harder when one feels hopeless.

This is the problem, isn't it? People who suffer from clinical depression often cannot reach out of that big black hole to get help. In other words, we are too depressed to know we are depressed and too depressed to get the help we need. It often takes someone close to us to urge us on. Unfortunately, we may be too depressed to act. We may pretend that we know better. We may pretend that we are fine.

I am not a veteran. I do come from a long line of veterans who suffered from depression and PTSD. I know what depression feels like. I know how hard it is to reach out to get help.

I was first diagnosed with depression in 1990, when I was 40. I have been on and off antidepressants ever since. More than one psychiatrist has told me this: "Stay on antidepressants. You have clinical depression."

Did I listen? Of course not.

Here is the danger. Antidepressants may seek to work effectively over time. If we are seeing clinicians on a regular basis, they may discover this and switch our meds. If we are not seeing clinicians on a regular basis, who's to know? We may just decide to quit taking Prozac or Zoloft or Mertazapine or Effexor or Wellbutrin or any of the other drugs that help to ward off the hopgoblins.

Big mistake.    

We should pause here to entertain objections from those who think that antidepressants are the work of the devil, or a means to mind control. Any Scientologists in the room? I can see why objections may arise. Many of those who commit suicide are taking antidepressants. It's easy to assume that antidepressants lead to suicide.

When I was embarking on my latest antidepressant regimen, I came across an article about a young Iraq veteran who had committed suicide. Tip for the depressed: never read about suicide when in the throes of depression. The photo in the story showed the vet's bedroom. Near his bed were myriad bottles of pills. One read "Mirtazapine." Thing is, I'd been taking the very same drug at the very same dosage for two weeks. Nothing was happening. I was feeling a bit desperate. Was I ready to kill myself? No. But I was depressed as hell. It would be months and months before that med and several others finally combined to give me some relief.

Now that I am no longer depressed, I realize how depressed I really was. And I am amazed that I am front of you right now, that I am typing on this keyboard and entering fairly sensible words on the screen. Amazed.

I was lucky. I had an understanding wife. I had understanding colleagues at work. I have friends. I have health insurance. I am en ex-jock who knew that exercise can be a way to the other side. I am a writer who believes in journaling. I have an extra dose of Irish cussedness in me -- it keeps me going when things look blackest. I have some wisdom endowed by six decades on the planet. I know how to pray.

What if I was 21, just back from a terrible war? Would I know what to do? I've never had to face that. But thousands of others have to face that every day.

Be kind. That's what combat veteran and ex-POW Kurt Vonnegut used to say. Be kind. He knew that little acts of kindness can go a long way. If nothing else, that's something we can all give to one another.

Be kind.

And take your freakin' meds, ya dimwit!

That's me talking to myself. When I'm feeling right. When I'm not, well, I say nothing.