News & Commentary from Veteran Writers/Activists
For the average citizen, Memorial Day and July 4th are associated with sales at box stores and family picnics. I had intended to go to the Wall on Memorial Day to read poetry with other veterans, as I have done several years previously. But when I learned that Rolling Thunder was planning a 25th Anniversary ride throughout Washington to include the Wall, I changed my mind. Being in the presence of thousands of … [Read more...]
Perhaps the most chilling movie I’ve seen during the past decade -- while the American led, once-termed “Global War on Terror” rages on and on and on, ever-expanding both overseas as well as within the Homeland -- was the 2006 movie Children of Men. Its Mexican director, Alfonso Cuaron, has described his dystopian film as the “anti-Blade Runner". The 1982 Ridley Scott directed film, Blade Runner, likewise … [Read more...]
This past Monday, October 31st, was All Hallows’ Eve in the Catholic tradition, secularly known as Halloween, a time of ghosts and goblins when children dress up in costumes to scare each other and go trick-or-treating. Today, unlike in my childhood well over half-a-century ago, kids are accompanied by their parents, since today’s streets in many areas, whether rural, suburban or urban, are mostly unsafe for children … [Read more...]
[ A FILM REVIEW ] Last Tuesday, September 13th, I was back in one of my old neighborhoods, the Stuyvesant Square area of Manhattan, where I lived when I first moved to New York City in 1972. The neighborhood is contiguous with the sprawling Beth Israel Medical Center, where I was both a client and later worked as an alcoholism counselor in the mid-70s, my first job as a medical professional. It was a nostalgic trip … [Read more...]
I first visited the Angel Fire Vietnam Veteran Memorial in New Mexico on February 9, 2002. Angel Fire -- a sacred burning -- is an appropriate name for this first national memorial for Vietnam Veterans, built to quell, not cure, the flaming love of a father for his son lost in war. David Westphall, a Marine Platoon Commander was killed in that abysmal war, killed along with 15 men in his platoon in a brutal ambush in Con … [Read more...]
Another Memorial Day, and it’s been thunder storming here in Woodstock, NY most of the morning. I love it! It’s exactly the kind of weather that I prefer on Memorial Day. With rain, thunder and lightning about, perhaps Memorial Day parades will be cancelled. A Vietnam Veteran, I have never been impressed with martial music from marching bands, us old veterans sporting remnants of too-tight uniforms, or the profusion … [Read more...]
