Remembrance Day 2013

Barely a year ago, the last of the Great War veterans died, moving our understanding of that cataclysm from direct (and personal) to historical memory. That is, so far as we know, out of an estimated 65 million veterans of the 1914-1918 "War to End All Wars," we are now down to *not a one* left among the living. Think about that for a grave moment or two. 

In addition, 99 years after the start of the the First World War, there are scores of newer wars to muse over.   

Little children -- tiny tots -- who survived and can still remember the WWI catastrophe are a hundred years old or more. 

This post is for all of them, and for all of us now and all of us in between.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire fought in the 1914-1918 war, was wounded and survived his wounds -- only to die in the Great Influenza Pandemic, two days before Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, a date now memorialized as Remembrance Day, and since the 1950s in the USA, as a subset of Veterans Day.    

"Ombre" by Guillaume Apollinaire (1916)

Vous voilà de nouveau près de moi
Souvenirs de mes compagnons morts à la guerre
L'olive du temps
Souvenirs qui n'en faites plus qu'un
Comme cent fourrures ne font qu'un manteau
Comme ces milliers de blessures ne font qu'un article de journal
Apparence impalpable et sombre qui avez pris
La forme changeante de mon ombre
Un Indien à l'affût pendant l'éternité
Ombre vous rampez près de moi
Mais vous ne m'entendez plus
Vous ne connaîtrez plus les poèmes divins que je chante
Tandis que moi je vous entends je vous vois encore
Destinées
Ombre multiple que le soleil vous garde
Vous qui m'aimez assez pour ne jamais me quitter
Et qui dansez au soleil sans faire de poussière
Ombre encre du soleil
Ecriture de ma lumière
Caisson de regrets
Un dieu qui s'humilie

Here's a rough and dirty transliteration:

You're here again about my memories
Of my companions, war dead 
Olive of time
Memories that make one more
As one hundred furs make a great coat
As thousands of injuries make one story in a newspaper
Intangible and dark apparitions who have
Taken the changing form of my shadow
An Indian lookout from eternity's shadow
You feel me but you do you hear me anymore?
You know more divine poems that I sing
While I hear you, I still see you
For multiple shadows that the Sun keeps
You that may love enough to never leave me
And dance in the Sun
Without dust, shadow
Shaded ink of the Sun 
Writing of my light
Caisson of regrets
A god that is humbling

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Remembrance Day 2011

The last of the Great War veterans are passing from direct to historical memory. Little children who survived and can still remember the catastrophe are a hundred years old or more. This post is for all of them, and for us now.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire fought in the 1914-1918 war, was wounded and survived his wounds -- only to die in the Great Influenza Pandemic, two days before Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, a date now memorialized as Remembrance Day, and as Veteran's Day.    

"Ombre" by Guillaume Apollinaire (1916)

Vous voilà de nouveau près de moi
Souvenirs de mes compagnons morts à la guerre
L'olive du temps
Souvenirs qui n'en faites plus qu'un
Comme cent fourrures ne font qu'un manteau
Comme ces milliers de blessures ne font qu'un article de journal
Apparence impalpable et sombre qui avez pris
La forme changeante de mon ombre
Un Indien à l'affût pendant l'éternité
Ombre vous rampez près de moi
Mais vous ne m'entendez plus
Vous ne connaîtrez plus les poèmes divins que je chante
Tandis que moi je vous entends je vous vois encore
Destinées
Ombre multiple que le soleil vous garde
Vous qui m'aimez assez pour ne jamais me quitter
Et qui dansez au soleil sans faire de poussière
Ombre encre du soleil
Ecriture de ma lumière
Caisson de regrets
Un dieu qui s'humilie

Here's a rough and dirty transliteration:

You're here again about my memories
Of my companions, war dead 
Olive of time
Memories that make one more
As one hundred furs make a great coat
As thousands of injuries make one story in a newspaper
Intangible and dark apparitions who have
Taken the changing form of my shadow
An Indian lookout from eternity's shadow
You feel me but you do you hear me anymore?
You know more divine poems that I sing
While I hear you, I still see you
For multiple shadows that the Sun keeps
You that may love enough to never leave me
And dance in the Sun
Without dust, shadow
Shaded ink of the Sun 
Writing of my light
Caisson of regrets
A god that humiliates

Today's Rune: Strength.

Sing the Blues on Every Decoration Day

Many layers of meaning attach themselves to Memorial Day and its worldwide equivalents. Soldiers, military veterans, wars -- of course. Mortality and contemplation. The meaning of life and the worth of a life. Loss. Remembrance.

In the past century, the technology of war has become increasingly sophisticated, greatly expanding in possibility through air power, advanced communications, high exposive armaments, submarines, tanks, laser-guided munitions, remotely piloted attack drones, poison gas, atomic weapons, mass electronic propaganda and mediated filtering. And, when nations coalesce together to fight "Total War" or "assymetrical war," everything is brought to bear against perceived enemies, including children, animals, woman and men together, not to mention their combined social spaces. 

Given mass killing realities like the 9/11/2001 attacks, the Holocaust, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Nanking, the Armenian Genocide, indiscriminate firebombings of great cities, the Great War, and the U.S.-Vietnam War -- just to recall a handful of grisly atrocities perpetrated by human societies or tribes or groups in the past century -- it may be wise to expand the official scope and acknowldgement of Decoration Day, of Memorial Day, to include all societies touched by war and massacre, to think beyond the uniformed.

But hell, what do I know?  In the spirit of John Lee Hooker, "I sing the blues every Decoration Day." 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

Decoration Day: Im Westen Nichts Neues

Coming at you from Saxapahaw, a salute on Decoration Day. Despite long wars of dubious worth fought in multiple tours by volunteer military forces supplemented by better-paid latter day Hessians; the Seaborne Toxic Event; and disarray, mayhem and general global weirdness -- all in all, it's been a good day in the here and now. Hope all are well out there, fighting the good fight or peaceably assembling something for the ages. Until next time, adieu. I made it!













These days, things are quiet not in the West, nor in the East, not in the North nor in the South.  Stay strong: there are many more fights to come, and on all fronts.  George Orwell and Aldous Huxley called it, both.

Today's Rune: Growth.

D-Day: Five Lucky Germans

Backtracking a little, again from my UNC journal (May 23-24, 1981):

From a height in between we viewed Gold and Juno Beaches and the Mulberry Harbor. Here we took team photos. Proceeded to St. Aubin on Sword Beach, where the British 3rd Division landed, to the hotel. A German antitank gun stood trained on our hotel. [Map above from Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Volume III, 1966]

What a bizarre supper! The food and wine was great, but the conversation one in a million. Andrea Jennings was talking about the Kinks, which reminded me of the album they put out in 1968 about the decline and fall of the British Empire. . .

In the dining area happened to be five Germans, veterans of Normandy captured on June 6, 1944, by Canadian troops. Four of them agreed to talk with the group, but Helmet left. All are in their 60s and 70s, and all were older than the average fighting man even in the 1940s, when they served in the 716th [Static] Infantry Division. They were here for Memorial Day services.

[The 716th Static Infantry Division, commanded by Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter, was essentially destroyed on D-Day, though it was later reformed. On D-Day, it consisted of Grenadier Regiments 726 and 736, Artillerie Regiment 716, Panzerjäger Kompanie 716, Pionier Bataillon 716, Nachrichten Abteilung 716, and Versorgungstruppen 716.]

They talked about the second-rate quality of their division, how the Eastern Front was given priority over the Atlantic Wall, and so forth. I sat with fascination as they told their side of the story . . . From their point of view, survival came first. Germany in the 1920s and 30s was down in the gutter, spat on by France and England. Harnessing his people’s basic self-pride and basic needs, Hitler created a phoenix-like . . . powerful world state. Only when he became brazenly exploitive did many of the people realize that he might bring their own downfall. . .

The other major topic was their lives as POWs behind the Allied lines. Processed through Scotland, they were scattered across the U.S., serving as laborers in South Carolina, Colorado, New Jersey, and Alabama.

It was compelling to hear from the other side! Dr. Stroup then gave long-winded praise to the Germans and appealed for peace. After the song contest out on the beach a few of us (Rachel, Bink, Chris, Bill and I) talked with our new German friends in the hotel bar. We knew a little German, they knew a lot of broken English, so we managed to communicate semi-articulately about things. Chris, Bill, and I bought them a round of Kronenbourg 1664s, a gesture that seemed to honor and embarrass them. They bought the next round, and, added to the dinner wine, we were all soon nappy. The bartender looked on this with amusement, pretending not to understand anything we said.

Willy Wiederstein and Karl started up old drinking songs, and soon we were all singing: “In Munchen Stadt im Hofbrauhaus, Ein, Zwei, Zufall!!!!!”

Those kindly old gentlemen could drink like fish, but luckily they drifted off for the night, one by one. . .

May 24, 1981, Sunday

Memorial services at Omaha Beach were very beautiful, even if the speeches were drawn out and irrelevant. The most memorable event came when a group of French children ran out, French and U.S. flags in hand, and sang the national anthems. Some of our group were brought to tears by this gesture. The trim white rows of graves were serenely powerful. . .

Today's Rune: Warrior.

Decoration Day 2009

RIP, to my Uncle Richard Curtis Shaffer (b. 3/24/1939-3/31/2009). He was a cool and unconventional man. He left home when he was seventeen and joined the US Marine Corps (that's him above, scanned from a small photograph my Mom gave me some time ago).

An undated newspaper clipping she also gave me says: "Cpl. Dick Shaffer . . . is currently taking part in amphibious Marine exercises at Viegues, Puerto Rico. He is with the 12th Provisional Marine Brigade and recently departed from Camp Lejeune, N.C. The exercise, known as Brigadelex 3-59, is the third in series of Navy-Marine Corps operations."

From what I've heard in family conversations, my uncle was assigned to the aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt. A little extra research shows that this carrier was either the first or one of the first in its class to carry jets and nuclear capabilities; in 1958, it helped evacuate Americans from revolutionary Cuba, and it later saw a round of service during the Vietnam War in 1967. By then, my uncle was long back in civilian life and on to new adventures.

Farewell, Richard C. "Uncle Dick" Shaffer, you are truly missed.

Today's Rune: Defense.

Decoration Day 2008

Does it Matter?

Does it matter?—losing your legs? . . .

For people will always be kind,

And you need not show that you mind

When the others come in after hunting

To 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 people won't say that you're mad;

For they'll know you've fought for your country

And no one will worry a bit.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918).

Hearing That His Friend Was Coming Back from the War

In old days those who went to fight

In three years had one year's leave.

But in this war the soldiers are never changed;

They must go on fighting till they die on the battle-field.

I thought of you, so weak and indolent,

Hopelessly trying to learn to march and drill.

That a young man should ever come home again

Seemed about as likely as that the sky should fall.

Since I got the news that you were coming back,

Twice I have mounted to the high hall of your home.

I found your brother mending your horse's stall;

I found your mother sewing your new clothes.

I am half afraid; perhaps it is not true;

Yet I never weary of watching for you on the road.

Each day I go out at the City Gate

With a flask of wine, lest you should come thirsty.

Oh that I could shrink the surface of the World,

So that suddenly I might find you standing at my side.

Wang Chien, ca. 830 C.E. (Translated into English by Arthur Waley, 1919).

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Education Before Verdun

Veterans Day -- Armistice Day.

From my UNC journal, part of a requirement for a summer class spent in Europe under the guidance of Jim Leutze and with my great friend, San Antonio Bill (I was twenty years old at the time):

May 28, 1981, Thursday

Another long, informative day. . . We gathered at the jardin de Tuilleres, where Tom lectured about wartime Paris, the occupation, and the liberation. He covered the French people’s decision to save the city and surrender, and Hitler’s later orders to blow it up. He also mentioned French resistance, especially from 1944 onwards. I had an unforgettable feeling sitting there in the middle of one of humankind’s great centers. The culture is still there for all to see, a remarkable city. The French were right to surrender it intact, for it has survived and the Third Reich passed out of existence.

We were given some free time, so several of us went to the Hôtel des Invalides and paid respects to Napoleon. I vividly recalled the picture of Hitler looking down upon the tomb with similar respect. Two of the great emperors of human history, nothing but dust and memories now.

We left Paris after lunchtime and motored to the U.S. monument at Chateau Thierry. It was raining again when we got out. Dr. Leutze chased away some French punks who were disturbing the memorial area, and then gave a brief lecture on U.S. entry into WWI.

Seeing the monument and the overthrow triggered something in my brain. I became so angry at our entry into that war to be almost fuming. We had no business in it, a stupid cause. The Germans in the Great War weren’t any worse than the British or the French. Our wartime propaganda was ludicrous (as it usually is) -- in this case, the Huns using the diabolically inhuman submarine -- the same goddamned weapon we used to destroy the Japanese merchant fleet 25 years later! Righteous hypocrisy.

Belleau Wood

The curator was surprisingly anti-war, stressing in detail war’s horrors. It was a perfect horror story, this articulate older man telling us of the grimmer side of the Great War in the front room, while outside the battlefield was covered with darkness and rain.

Having finished gruesome stories about rats and disease, he led us into a back room that housed hundreds of wartime artifacts. Some of the shells were still live. After this we plunged into the rain and Belleau Wood, where wild boars still roam. It was a dreadful, eerie place. Two guns sat back in the woods along with thousands of still missing bodies. Bits of rotted wood, black with iron from shell fragments littered the ground. Shell holes half full of blackened water were everywhere. And the caretaker continued about the battlefield horrors. It was a nightmare.

We swung around and looked at a bunch of artillery gathered at a car turnaround, then headed back down to the cemetery. I walked down the aisles, looking for a familiar last name or town, sickened by the present prospects for yet another horrible war. . .

May 29, 1981, Friday

After looking at the Reims Cathedral, we proceeded to the Little Red Schoolhouse, which wasn’t little at all! I became bored so left the group and drank a couple beers at the bar next door. Since I had a German guidebook to the Schoolhouse, the Frenchies seemed to think I was a German. It was pretty funny, but I escaped by hopping into a van right outside the door. . . .

May 30, 1981, Saturday

The past two days have kept us quite busy. Yesterday was an especially long day. We began in earnest at Fort Douaumont, where a guide gave us a very good tour. His convictions were uncannily similar to the guide at Belleau Wood; only near the end did we find that he was a German veteran of WWII. Here was a man sick of war and inhumanity, looking at the Verdun battle not as a German, but as a world citizen. His words were really felt -- war is horrible, and we must do everything to avoid another big one. Afterwards we went above ground, and Dr. Leutze lectured on Verdun. From atop the fort we could see most of the immediate battlefield. We could see later that it was indeed “as pockmarked as the moon.”

We drove next to Fort Vaux, scene of more vicious fighting (described in The Price of Glory). Cemented into the face of the fort is a poignant little memorial from a mother to her son, “a mons fils.” Since her son died, she could never rest without grieving.

We next drove to the Maginot Line and after lunch toured Fort Fermont. We spent hours underground in the dank complex. It was impressive engineering, reminding me of nothing so much as an ant colony. The soldiers moved about like automatons, little ant-men fighting an ant-war. Men are not ants, and underground fortifications like this are a horrible place to fight. Then again, anywhere is a horrible place to fight.

We returned to Verdun and rested momentarily. Then off we went again in the early evening, this time to the haunting Ossuary cemetery. This was a dreadful place -- the resting home for more than 300,000 soldiers killed at Verdun, thousands of them unidentified. I only wish we could have photographed the horrors in the bottom windows of the main structure -- huge piles of leg bones, arm bones, ribs, joints, knuckles, and most disconcerting of all, grinning skulls. This place more than any other really got to us.

Inside was a tear-jerking memorial to known French dead, including facilities to light candles in their honor. Many of the group did. Inside the little gift shop was a rare find: a postcard of Marshal Petain, the French hero of WWI but supposed villain in WWII. Poor old guy, at least he’s remembered in Ossuary.

Outside were thousands more soldiers of the French empire, victims of Verdun. One section was devoted to the French North Africans, with Muslim minaret grave stones instead of the usual Christian crosses or Stars of David. It was a sorrowful place, so similar to all the cemeteries we’ve seen.

That still wasn’t all. The final touch came at the Trench of the Bayonets where a squad of French soldiers were supposedly buried alive standing up so that only their rifles and bayonets protrude from the dirt. Whether true or not -- the rifles are there, sticking out of the dirt – doesn’t really matter. The myth is more real than reality, the way it brings home war’s banality. That’s what counts.

Today's Rune: Opening.

Specimen Days

I. To my ancestors and relatives among the war dead, some of whom survived their wars and some of whom did not, a partial list:

Benjamin Wheeler, Maryland militia, American Revolution, Battle of Germantown.

Laurence Thompson, 1st North Carolina, Battle of Moores Creek Bridge.

Thomas Wheeler, War of 1812.

Samuel France, American Civil War. Company E, 31st Indiana Volunteers. Wounded at Shiloh and Stones River.

Jeremiah France, Indiana infantry, died of encephalitis, buried in Indianapolis.

Ira Slack, 85th Indiana Volunteers, KIA, Resaca, Georgia.

Absalom Wheeler, Indiana infantry.

Jacob Werkheiser, 198th Pennsylvania Infantry.

Charles France, First World War.

Curtis Saint Bonnet, U.S. Army, U.S. Merchant Marines, Second World War.

Vincent Shaffer, U.S. Navy, Second World War.

Richard Shook, Second World War.


II. Walt Whitman, Specimen Days (1892):

101. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books

The preceding notes may furnish a few stray glimpses into that life, and into those lurid interiors, never to be fully convey’d to the future. The hospital part of the drama from ’61 to ’65, deserves indeed to be recorded. Of that many-threaded drama, with its sudden and strange surprises, its confounding of prophecies, its moments of despair, the dread of foreign interference, the interminable campaigns, the bloody battles, the mighty and cumbrous and green armies, the drafts and bounties—the immense money expenditure, like a heavy-pouring constant rain—with, over the whole land, the last three years of the struggle, an unending, universal mourning-wail of women, parents, orphans—the marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those Army Hospitals—(it seem’d sometimes as if the whole interest of the land, North and South, was one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the affair but flanges)—those forming the untold and unwritten history of the war—infinitely greater (like life’s) than the few scraps and distortions that are ever told or written. Think how much, and of importance, will be—how much, civic and military, has already been—buried in the grave, in eternal darkness.

III. To family veterans among the living:

Bruce Shook, career U.S. Navy.

Norman Russell, U.S. Army, Second World War.

Richard Shaffer, U.S. Marine Corps.

John DeVivo, Vietnam War era.

Scotty Russell, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam War.

Linda Kresge, Tobyhanna Army Depot, logistical support, Gulf War, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Robert Stine, Jr., Gulf War, Iraq War.

Tristan Russell, Special Operations, Iraq War, Afghanistan.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Birthdays: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, Jim Thorpe (Wa-Tho-Huk), Ian Fleming, T-Bone Walker, Walker Percy, Papa John Creach, Carroll Baker (b. Karolina Piekarski), Betty Shabazz (b. Betty Jean Sanders), Gladys Knight, John Fogerty, Wendy O. Williams, Isabelle Carré.

Journey to the End of the Night

Today, besides Memorial Day for the war dead, there are many birthdays to honor. Given the climate of the times, I'll briefly showcase Louis-Ferdinand Céline (b. Destouches, 5/27/1894–7/1/1961). When I teach the Great War and the 1920s every so often, students are assigned Journey to the End of the Night (1934) / Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), Céline's seminal autobiographical novel set during WWI and the 1920s, and ranging from France to Africa, New York City to Detroit, and finally back again to France. To me, it is a key work of art. Céline observes and questions everything, yet soldiers on despite a very dark outlook. The novel remains vibrant and relevant; after all, not much has essentially changed in human behavior, despite scientific and technological changes since its publication. The question is: how does a person build and maintain a meaningful, satisfying life in this world?

Journey to the End of the Night has had a tremendous impact on other writers. Charles Bukowski reportedly declared it the best book written in the past 2,000 years. Existentialists like Sartre and Camus loved it, Henry Miller absorbed it, the Beats read it, and any writer skeptical of the Iraq War and the so-called "War on Terror" would probably like it, too -- or at least those who enjoy following a dispeptic iconoclastic anti-hero on his picaresque way though life, griping and carping all the way.

The sequel is Death on the Installment Plan (1938) / Mort à crédit (1936).


At some point I'll write more about the Detroit section of Journey, Céline's main character Bardamu's work at the Ford factory and romance with a prostitute.

Birthdays: Amelia Bloomer, Wild Bill Hickok, Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Destouches), Dashiell Hammett, Vincent Price, John Cheever, Christopher Lee, John Barth, Harlan Ellison, Lee Meriwether, Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Janet Ballion).

East Stroudsburg

I was born and lived in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania until the age of five, when my immediate family moved to Chicago. A lot of relatives still live in the area, a town separated from Stroudsburg by Broadhead's Creek. This rather wide waterway flooded during Hurricane Hazel back in the 50s, when my mother worked as a telephone operator, well before I was born. The twin towns had about 13,000 people or so last I checked, though the numbers have probably swollen in recent years because of their convenient location as summer retreats for people working in New York City. In fact, my father used to take a train into Manhattan back in the 50s and maybe early 60s. There was even a state college there, now East Stroudsburg University. My family used to visit quite a lot after we moved, before many of us continued dispersing around the USA, got jobs, got married, that kind of thing. I'll visit briefly sometime next month.

As I mentioned in the last post, my uncle Bob died; and so a lot of people are gathering for a memorial service. My sister Vickie reports that Bobby, Jr. did make it back from Iraq and will not have to return again to the Middle East. He'll have to continue service in the States a while longer, but he made it, something everybody is grateful about. Certainly I am.

Robert N. Stine, Sr. (7/3/1941-5/25/2006) always made me think of the spirit of Elvis, for some reason. He had that kind of energy and sense of fun, and often sported an Elvis-style haircut. It seemed exotic from my perspective as a kid that he was Catholic, that he and my Aunt Gail were always married, and that he worked night shifts at Hughes Printing. I never knew exactly what he did until I read the obit the other day that says he was a pressroom foreman for 33 years. We had to be very quiet if hanging out during the day so as not to disturb his sleep. I always thought that was cool, because it was unconventional. I also remember him and the rest of the extended family at the wedding of my Aunt Denise with Uncle John DeVivo, me sipping champagne or something like it after a gig as ring bearer.

Last time I saw Bob and Gail was after they'd moved back to East Stroudsburg from South Carolina; they came back down to North Carolina for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago -- which is also about the last time I've spent with a good-sized family bunch at any one time. Weird thing is, living in East Stroudsburg seems like a blink of an eye away in time. As my mother asked recently, are we moving through time or is time moving through us?

God go with you.

Memorial Day 2006

The Iraq War and its attendant horrors seems like a fitting topic for today. Along with many others, I opposed this war as being unnecessary, preferring containment of Saddam Hussein to invasion and occupation of Iraqi soil. But leaders will do what they do as they always have, leaving the rest of us to have to deal with it. Perhaps, as the Greeks had it, the fates of warring leaders are as much a sport of the gods as anyone else. The fabled Trojan War lasted ten years, the American chapter in Vietnam lasted eight. The Iraq-Iran War lasted eight years, and the American chapter in Iraq -- with small British and other contingents, many of them, like the Italians, quietly pulling out -- is now into its fourth year. As of today, the US contingent has suffered nearly 2,500 killed, 18,000 wounded. In Afghanistan, US forces have lost 296 killed and 718 wounded. The squander of lives and public monies is entirely inexcusable, as usual. The fallout will remain with us to the grave. What the government has forced our military to do -- go in and police dense urban areas and hope for the best, under the constant stress of having one's body torn apart -- ensures the return of tens of thousands of physically and/or psychologically wounded veterans. It's a human tragedy enough to make one weep for the world and all its mortal inhabitants.

This latest war in Iraq is well-documented for all to see. Regardless of one's attitudes about the conflict and public policy making, anyone would benefit from seeing both Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's Gunner Palace (2004) and Jon Alpert's HBO film Baghdad ER (2006), among many others starting to become easily available. In them, you see the people on the ground, in country, the Iraqi civilians, and the horrendous circumstances for all involved. These are good things to see before the recruiters show up at school or the local mall. Our civilian and military people deployed in Iraq, the majority of them it would seem, are doing their best; they are simply being asked to do too much. Either we should reinstate the draft, or let these people who volunteered -- before the war, for the most part -- home. They deserve the thanks of the nation, but they also deserve to have their lives back. As public policy, this is a coward's way of continuing. If the conflict against radical Islam is as apocalyptic and all-consuming as our present leaders contend, then it should be treated as such, and all of us should be actively involved. If it is not, these leaders should go, like the pro-war factions voted out in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. Containment is a far saner policy than large-scale occupation.

I salute our veterans, having taught some of them, and hope my cousin Bobby will be able to return safely after nearly a year in Iraq, along with the rest. His father, my uncle Bob, died after an extended illness, and I hope he is allowed back in time for the funeral.

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

The story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its creator is movingly charted by Freida Lee Mock in her Academy Award winning documentary film, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1995), now available in digital format. The scenes of veterans and vet families at the wall can't help but elicit sympathy and sadness; interviews with various vets involved in the creation of the memorial are also indicative of how deep the wounds left by the Vietnam War remain. Though there is much talk about healing, it's clear from viewing this film that for many involved, the wounds will never heal in this lifetime. Maya Lin's achievement is to have created a place where people can weep and release some of their grief, at least for a time.

Maya Lin (10/5/1959-) was a Yale undergrad when she entered a 1980 competition to design the memorial, and almost miraculously, her radically brilliant but controversial design won. She was 21 years old at the time. At Yale, she had studied funereal architecture and wondered, as she says on film, "What is a memorial's purpose?" How has the world shifted since the great World War One memorials were designed and erected? How did they relate to their natural setting? In support of her very simple but powerful vision, she spent two months composing an essay explaining how it "focused on the individual losses" of war and steered away from the overtly political. It was to be neither a glorification of war and nation, nor a barbed condemnation of flawed policies. Still, some took it the latter way and fought ferociously to change the design from sunken, low and black to raised, above ground and white, with a giant U.S. flag at its apex. Some called it a "boomerang" design and read that as a critique of U.S. foreign policy. She imagined the concept as "taking a knife and cutting into the Earth," whereas one vet fumes on film that it is "a black scar" on all who served.

Maya Lin was attacked for being a woman, for being Chinese American (her parents, born in China, were professors at the University of Ohio in Athens, Ohio), and for being too young. But, after a pragmatic compromise was reached, her vision prevailed. The main monument area was constructed as she intended, and a more traditional "combat figures" statue was set to one side, with a large flag at the side entrance.

The result, unveiled in 1982, is stunning. It is worth the journey to Washington, DC to see and experience in person. It is very much a living memorial. People leave notes, photographs, letters, posies, dog tags, uniforms, teddy bears, and anything else you might imagine there every day.

The film follows Maya Lin's success after the Vietnam memorial, too. We see her Memphis civil rights memorial and her peace chapel at Juniata College.

Maya Lin also designed the Wave Field swales pictured above. She is very attuned to natural setting and context, and was a selection jurist for the World Trade Center Site Memorial competition. She owns and runs a studio in New York City and has a retreat in Colorado. I read somewhere that she loves the energies of Manhattan but also needs a remote place for more relaxed contemplation. Seems like the best of both worlds.

Near the end of the film, she raises the interesting question of whether there is a significant gender difference between what she calls the male eye and the female eye, and concludes, "we can only wait and see." Architecture, like engineering, has long been a male-dominated field, but as in most fields, women are making significant inroads over time, however slowly it seems.

Freida Lee Mock is to be comended for this fine documentary. She subsequently produced the excellent 1999 documentary Bird by Bird: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott.