News & Commentary from Veteran Writers/Activists
STILL WAITIN' - A short video produced by: The Vietnam War Commemoration CORRECTION Project You-Tube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMuc3RU0pEk&feature=youtu.be The pentagon's Vietnam War Commemoration Project was funded by Congress to the tune of $5 millions a year for the next1 13 years. That's $125 million of our tax dollars to fund events designed by "patriotic" local organizations to clean up the … [Read more...]
Among the veteran writers on this blogsite, there is an on-going discussion about the importance for aging activists like us to record and pass on our stories of opposition and resistance to war. So consider this an infomercial as well as a blatant attempt to drum up business for a memoir I published five years ago called Vietnam Awakening. We would like to reach fellow veterans who struggle in the present to survive … [Read more...]
The message of John Grant’s article, “The Vietnam War and the Struggle for Truth”, should be heard as an alarm bell by all who were blind-sided and unsettled upon learning of the Defense Department initiative announced by the President this past Memorial Day to “commemorate” the Vietnam Era by rewriting its history. The projected duration of the Pentagon’s mandate for this exercise stretches from 2012 to … [Read more...]
On the flyleaf of a school notebook I’d purchased at a papelaria in Salvador, Bahia, where I was on assignment in Brazil to write a destination piece in 1984, I found the following stanzas from a 19th century poem by Casimiro de Abreu: Correi pr’as bandas do sul Debaixo dum céu de anil Encontrareis o gigante Santa Cruz, hoje Brasil; — É uma terra de amores Alcatifada de flores Onde a brisa fala … [Read more...]
Members of the class of 1961 gathered on an unseasonably cool September evening at the Hibernian Hall in Babylon, Long Island to commemorate the fiftieth year since our graduation from the local high school. More than eighty graduates had committed to attending. Adding spouses and partners, well over a hundred men and women filled the hall for the Friday evening buffet. Not to belabor the obvious, but most folks on … [Read more...]
Oh very young what will you leave us this time? - Cat Stevens. When the county paper comes out each Thursday, I usually give it a ritual briefing. It’s a broadsheet full of the humdrum town affairs and local doings. Selectmen’s meetings get a lot of ink, and whose bid won the winter ploughing contract, that sort of thing. The culture vultures of every taste promote a steady stream of art openings and … [Read more...]
