Veterans Day

“In war there are no unwounded soldiers.” José Narosky 

Veterans Day panel, photo by James Wallace; checking out MREs, Post-Trib photo by Hannah Reed

Veterans Day activities at Indiana University Northwest included demonstrations of military equipment, MRE (meals ready to eat) tasting, and a symposium moderated by NWI Times correspondent Joseph Pete, who served in Iraq.  Panelists included student Dan Riordan, a former marine and Iraq war veteran, IUN alumnus Dee Dotson, whose son is in the army reserves and “deployable,” and Business professor Charlie Hobson, who served tours both in the 70s and 80s and was quoted as saying, “I don’t like to take orders from morons.”  Riordon noted that “the family serves along with soldiers.”

above, veteran Dave Seibold; below, Pete Buttigieg

On Veterans Day Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg pledged, if elected, to appoint a woman to head the Department of Veterans Affairs.  He went on to say that his choice will be sensitive to the issue of sexual harassment and guarantee access to mental health care.  The Trump administration’s emphasis has been on referring vets to private physicians who may or may not have experience treating symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd).

Liz Wuerffel posted this Welcome Initiative transcript from an interview with John Metz (above) titled “Defining Moment”:

    At the time that 9/11 kicked off, I was working as a civilian police officer. Like the rest of the country, that impacted me greatly. Just getting my mind wrapped around that, “Wow, we’ve been attacked.” And it hurt. It was a physical pain inside. “Now three thousand people are, are gone.” It was a sobering moment, and I really felt emboldened about doing something. I didn’t know exactly what form that was going to take, but I knew that there was something that I could give. And it happened the way that it happened. I joined the Air Force and became a Ground Combat Specialist and went to Iraq.

    When I realized that I was on the list to go—I had been called up—as you can imagine, there was every form of emotion running through my body. I was married and we had four kids. “What do I do here? I feel this obligation to go. I feel compelled to go.” And my rational brain, my emotional heart, my loving father and husband was saying, “Don’t do anything like that.” But once I got to the Middle East, you’re totally focused on everything that’s in front of you because it’s an enormous task. You’re in a combat environment, you’ve got people and millions of dollars worth of hardware that you’re responsible for, you know? All these things are all coming into play subtly, but yet they’re there. And that was my second time in combat, which was quite a bit different. I was in charge of a thirteen-man crew. And I had a mother tell me, “Bring my boy home safe.” And if that has never occurred or happened to you, that is a defining moment in your life, when a mother tells you that. For me, it was a physical weight. And I even have a physical reaction now—got goosebumps kicking out. I took it seriously, you know? I mean, these are young men. These are husbands, and sons, and fathers. And no, I wasn’t sure of myself; it was the first time I had been in a situation like that. Everybody was fine. I took some damage. I didn’t get out of there unscathed.

    I miss the camaraderie. I miss that—look at that, I’m starting to get goosebumps again. I miss that connection with my guys. No, I don’t miss being shot at. I don’t miss being a hundred and twenty degrees outside. I don’t miss the sand in every part of my body and everything that I own probably still 14 years, 15 years later.  What I miss is looking over at the guy next to me and going, “Well, he’s sucking as bad as I am, and he’s still here, so I can’t leave.” I miss that. I miss knowing that if I was to fall down, there’s going to be twenty hands reaching for me to get back up, ’cause that’s what you do. And that’s why you’re there.

Toni and I hosted bridge after dining at Craft House in Chesterton.  Noticing that I was reading Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive, Again,” Naomi Goodman said she had loved “Olive Kitteridge.”  I told her that the format of “Olive, Again” is similar, as in some chapters Olive makes only a brief, albeit meaningful, appearance.  In “Exiles,” about Jim and Bob Burgess (subject of Strout’s 2013 novel “The Burgess Boys”), she runs into the brothers’ wives, Helen and Margaret, on the main street of Crosby, Maine, where booths displayed paintings, and declares to second husband Jack, “God, have I seen enough of this crap!” This just after Helen, from New York City, has purchased one. Later, drunk, Helen tells Jim, “Look, I bought a piece of crap.” When the brothers learn who put that idea into her head, Bob says, “Olive thinks everything is crap.  That’s just who she is.”

In “The Poet” 82-year-old Olive strikes up a conversation with former student Andrea L’Rieux, now a famous poet back visiting her dying father. Later Olive discovered in her mailbox a copy of a journal that contained these lines from a poem called “Accosted”:

Who taught me math thirty-four years ago

Terrified me and is now terrified herself

Sat before me at the breakfast counter

White whiskered

Told me I had always been lonely

No idea she was speaking of herself

Olive’s first reaction was to toss the magazine in the garbage. Later she realized the profundity of those lines, looked up Andrea’s Facebook page, and wrote: “Saw your new work.  Good for you.”

“Friend,” finds Olive living at Maple Tree Apartments, an assisted living facility, where she befriends Isabelle Daignault, whom Strout featured in her debut novel “Isabelle and Amy” (1998).  They exchange keys, and each morning at 8 Olive checks on Isabelle and vice versa 12 hours later.  Olive worries about going “dopey-dope” and being moved “over the bridge” to the Alzheimer’s ward.

Nelson Algren by David Levine 

A recent New York Review contained essays on new books about Chicago novelist Nelson Algren and his longtime lover, French feminist Simone de Beauvoir, “Never a Lonely So Real” by Colin Asher and “Becoming Beauvoir” by Kate Kirkpatrick.  Like with Elizabeth Stroud, loneliness was a dominant theme in Algren’s literary output as well as his life. Kurt Vonnegut called him “the loneliest man I ever knew.”  Andrew O’Hagan wrote:

  [Algren] never really forgave Simone de Beauvoir for spilling the beans on their sex life in her novel The Mandarins (1954), which is dedicated to him (and provides details of the summer together in his Miller beach cabin).  He was always liable to suffer for the depth and constancy of his identification with the deprived, just as F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered from too much identification with the swells.

On Veterans Day a storm engulfed the Midwest; nearby La Porte County was especially hard hit with lake effect snow, and Chesterton received several inches.  Several outdoor Veterans Day events got cancelled. I made it to Dr. Sikora for a teeth cleaning but opted to forego book club at Gino’s.  Olive Kitteridge only drives in the morning after totaling two cars in a parking lot when she stepped down on the accelerator rather than the brake.

Health-wise, the Electrical Engineers are falling apart.  Former member Bill Batalis is dead and Mel Nelson and Dick Maloney permanently sidelined. Frank Shufran, 87, will miss six weeks due to a knee giving out as he walked the dog, and Ron Smith has been having heart problems.  Terry Kegebein, a regular before moving to Georgia, is back because wife Charlotte needs hospital care. Bridge buddy Don Geidemann, 82, filled in admirably with a 680 series, 200 pins better than any of us regulars.  In the army after college, Don got shipped to Germany combat-ready during the 1961 Berlin Crisis.  While most guys went out drinking on weekend leaves, he and a friend found an alley and went bowling.   

 Emily Post

An article in the Vanity Fair anthology “Women on Women” on Emily Post attracted my attention.  The first edition of her best-seller “Etiquette” appeared in 1922, the year Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt topped the fiction list.  Growing up, I blamed Emily Post for my mother’s admonishments to keep elbows off the table, not to slurp soup, and to respond “How do you do?” when introduced to someone rather than the much more natural, “Pleased to meet you.”  Not the snob that I imagined, Emily Post outlined standards of common-sense behavior for a growing middle class.  Prior to writing about manners, Emily Post produced novels, travel books, and articles on architecture and interior design.  “Etiquette” contained colorful anecdotes featuring such archetypical couples as the Kindharts, the Gildings, the Eminents, the Toploftys, and the Richan Vulgars. One admirer wrote that there were three factors in American civilization: parcel post, the Saturday Evening Post, and Emily Post.

scenes from Chinese University in Hong Kong

Protests in Hong Kong have reached Chinese University, where, a quarter-century ago,  I taught for several weeks.  At bridge I told Terry Bauer, whose daughter works in Hong Kong, that I never encountered students who paid such close attention to my every word.  I speculated that the reason was that due to the language barrier, but Terry countered that Chinese students valued education more than Americans.  Joel Charpentier and I finished third out of 12 couples, our highlight coming when I made 5 Clubs doubled and re-doubled (by Joel).  As Chuck Tomes said, you’ll either have high or low board.  Next day, Chuck joked that my hands were trembling during the play.