Welcome Burden?

“Heavy! You want it heavy!
Welcome to my world, feel the weight of it grinding down"

            “A Welcome Burden,” Disturbed

Once in a while, I’m in the mood for Disturb’s 2011 “The Lost Children” album, a B-sides compilation.  It includes such unsettling numbers as “Hell,” “Monster,” “Sickened,” “Dehumanized,” and “A Welcome Burden.” Heavy, but, listening to the Chicago metal band nephew Joe turned me on to, I don’t pay attention to the words. Not being a masochist, I can’t think of any burden that I’d welcome, unless it were taking care of a child or an elderly loved one.  The final cut, which I sometimes skip over others to get to, is the rousing “Living after Midnight (rockin’ to the dawn),” originally recorded in 1980 by British metal pioneer Judas Priest. The other cover on “The Lost Children” is “Midlife Crisis,” originally recorded by Faith No More. Right now, I have Disturbed on rotation with Natalie Merchant, Tom Petty, Phoenix, and The Specials.

 Tommy Lee

In “Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent” (2015), Amber Clifford-Napoleone argues that costumed metal groups often attract gay fans despite frequently employing homophobic lyrics.  While that seems far-fetched for KISS or Metalica, I can see the homoerotic appeal of Iggy Pop or Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, whom I once met when he sat down next to me at an airport bar.  He was charming toward me and the many fans who wanted photos with him.

During his Asia trip, Trump keeps blathering nonsense based on the fallacious concept of American Exceptionalism and our duty to police the world.  A welcome burden?  I think not.  It took 75 years, from the time of the Boxer Rebellion and the Philippine Insurrection to the fall of Saigon, for policymakers to comprehend that we could not remake Asia in our image. Blind to the historical lesson, the United States since World War II has attempted with little success to control the fate of the Middle East.  In each case economic self-interest trumped human rights. 

Pat Wisniewski was showing “Shifting Sands” at Rittenhouse Senior Village in Valparaiso when Walter “Pappy” White recognized his old professor’s appearance in the documentary and afterwards told Pat to bid me hello. White’s memoir “Two Different Wars” is in the Shavings issue I gave to Nicole Anslover’s Sixties students.  It begins:

  Years after coming home from Vietnam, I decided to look into joining the reserves in part to repay a debt to an old gunny sergeant who had fought in World War II and Korea and helped make me a marine.  Until our nation stops sending its youth off to war, there needs to be a legacy of caring, and I felt that this was my duty as a citizen.  I ended up in Desert Storm, the Gulf War, and my return from that war is among my fondest memories.

  Flying from Saudi Arabia to Bangor, Maine, by way of Dublin, Ireland, we were met by a high school band and hundreds of well-wishers as we walked down the corridor into the terminal.  We all got yellow ribbons reading, “Welcome to Bangor, Maine.”  Older soldiers like myself were asked whether we had served in Vietnam and given a second ribbon saying, “Thank You and Welcome Home.”  We learned that the local VFW and American Legion had helped organize these events whenever troops came back from the Gulf War.

Reporting on my Shavings issue, one student brought up the veteran who wouldn’t talk about his wartime experiences except in the event he needed to dissuade his son from enlisting. Several mentioned Dvina Biron’s interview with IUN professor Raoul Contreras. His unit was involved in a “Pacification” operation, forcing villagers to uproot their lives and move to relocation camps, when he noticed an elderly woman who looked just like his grandmother.  He recalled: “From then on, I always got along with the Vietnamese.  But I asked myself, what are we doing here.  Is this who we are fighting, old ladies?”  Back in California, Contreras initially avoided antiwar activities.  That changed in 1970 when President Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia and the Kent State Massacre occurred.

2015 Diversity Award winners David King, Raoul Contreras & Keith Kilpatrick; James Wallace (left) and Bill Lowe (middle)

Several of Nicole’s students mentioned relatives suffering from the effects of the herbicide Agent Orange, not unlike Doughboys gassed in the trenches during World War I.  One spoke about River Forest grad Charles Hubert Stanley, who wrote wife Linda from Binh Long province, beginning in September 1967.  Linda’s sister Sherril Tokarski wrote that six months later, a final letter arrived that referenced the 1968 Tet Offensive:

  As you’ve probably read, Charlie wasn’t so quiet after all.  My unit made it through.  They keep us out in the fields for longer and longer periods, so it’s hard to write with any regularity.  I miss you and look forward to seeing you in a few weeks for R & R in Hawaii.  My last battle lasted 3 days, and I am awaiting a chopper to take me and the last of my men out of the area.

Stanley died when a defective grenade in his ammo pouch exploded while waiting to be airlifted out of the field.  Tokarski concluded: “He never got a chance to buy his first home or hold his first child.”  Stanley’s name is on a list of 230 Lake County casualties complied by Tom Clark’s students at Lake Central.  Clark’s students sought photographs, letters, and other memorabilia, often forming close bonds with the families of the deceased.

 from left, John Weber, Phil Hahn, Len Bessette, Larry Lane, Chuck Bailey

Bridge friend Barb Mort saw South Shore Brass Band perform and thought Larry Lane not only looked like me but had the same distinctive laugh.  We’re not related, so far as I know. In bowling the Engineers had just 19 strikes in the first two games but the four of us got 19 more in the finale, enough to prevail over Pin Chasers despite a 268 by George Leach.  Ruth Leach converted two straight splits and then left a 7-10.  When I offered to give her a dime if she made it, she chuckled.

Under the heading “Counting ALL my blessings,” nephew Garrett’s fiancée Netnapha Mahlan posted a photo of her kids whose t-shirts revealed their names and the year they were born, along with one for BABY on the way.

At my suggestion IUN English professor Bill Allegrezza sent Archivist Steve McShane Spirits magazines dating back four years.  In volume 27 (Fall 2014) appeared Tim J. Brennan’s remarkable poem “1951,” about things missing from a person’s life after 47 years of marriage:

A voice, a throat pinked,

smooth and still working,

speaking of Betty, the dancer,

clicking her heels at Bar Harbor

to Rosemary Clooney’s “Beautiful

Brown Eyes” or Johnny Ray’s “Cry”

I am 1951, your voice says. I am

feet moving, tiptoeing across a glass

floor, bubbles being thrown above your head,

and you believing the evening’s nothing more

than a little box filled with tinsel and triangles

A good crowd of students and faculty was on hand to hear keynote presenter Chad Fulwider speak about “German Propaganda and U.S. Neutrality in World War I,” the title of his 2016 book.  Fulwider went into the wartime suppression of German publications and social organizations, as well as the internment of 6,300 German nationals in three internment camps, (the largest being Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia), including merchant sailors, steamship passengers, and 29 members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Afterwards, I mentioned how Kurt Vonnegut has lamented the resultant loss to cultural life in Indianapolis.  Amazingly, Fulwider had intended to use a quote from Vonnegut’s Slapstick and showed this passage to me in his notes:

   

  The delight the family took in itself was permanently crippled, I think, by the sudden American hatred for all things German which unsheathed itself when this country entered the First World War, five years before was born.

  Children in our family were no longer taught German.  Neither were they encouraged to admire German music or literature or art or science. My brother and sister and I were raised as though Germany were as foreign to us as Paraguay.

After a four-hour lunch with eight 1965 Wirt 1965 classmates at the Captain’s House in Miller, Judy Ayers shared this poem in her “Home on the Range
 Ayers Realtors Newsletter column titled “The Girls of ’65 are Still Alive and Fabulous”:

It was sort of a class reunion and all through the house,

I checked in the mirrors and begged my poor spouse


To say I looked great, that my chin wasn’t double


And he lied through his teeth just to stay out of trouble.

Said ‘neath my reading glasses my eyes hadn’t changed

And I have the same figure it’s just rearranged.

He said my skin was still silky although looser in drape,

Not so much like smooth satin but more like silk crepe.

I swallowed his words hook, sinker and line


And showed up at the luncheon feeling just fine.

The years have added gray to our hair and pounds to our rears

Still my friends are quite sassy and all very dear.


As we shared a few memories and retold some class jokes


We were eighteen in spirit though we looked like our folks.

It was a wonderful day filled with updating, news, laughs from the past

And all of us thinking there’s nothing like friends and friendships that last.