In junior high in the 1950s we read secreted copies of Battle Cry on the bus—there were four-letter words—and watched movies of war heroics. I remember real war hero Audie Murphy in “To Hell and Back,” actors William Holden and Alec Guinness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” I watched my first war movie, “God is My Co-Pilot,” with my dad. It was in black and white, and flying “the hump” from India over the Himalaya to China and the Flying Tigers was what my Uncle Sid did during the war. Read The Article
Category: Vietnam
Their Vietnam
I have four grandchildren between the ages of 18 and 23. I’ve told them that coronavirus is their Vietnam. It will be the event they will remember when they are my age, as I remember Vietnam for its horror and its impact on my life. Read The Article
It’s Martin Luther King Day
So take courage!
Friends here in Northeast Oregon are upset with the goings on in neighboring Burns. One group “occupied” a local Oregon Wildlife Refuge one evening with binoculars and beer. Most of “my” friends would like to see the government stand up and oust the anti-government gaggle; they’d like the Paiutes to have the biggest say in their ancestral lands. But I understand that some of my neighbors are sending food to the occupiers as well.
In America today, divisiveness is everywhere and hate sells. I needn’t list the shootings and the rancor over guns, the suspicion and hate over color, language and faith; the police conflicts, border walls, the hate speeches of Donald Trump, and the hatred of government that brings wronged ranchers, anti-Semites, anti-Islamists, and other antis swaggering with guns to a bird refuge in Oregon to state their cases and causes.
Many things are discouraging today. In the Middle East, where I lived and worked 50 Read The Article