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Friday, August 13, 2011 – Steps away from Ft. Lewis McChord, a capacity audience attended a public forum at Coffee Strong (GI Coffeehouse) on the issue of military suicides.
A panel discussed the circumstances that led to the death of Sgt. Derrick Kirkland at Lewis-McChord in 2010. On the panel were Sgt. Kirkland's mother, and several combat veterans who served with him. Also speaking was Ashley Hagemann, the widow of Staff Sergeant Jared Hagemann, who took his own life at Ft. Lewis-McChord three weeks ago.
The testimony of panel members recounted the months that ended in tragedy: Derrick Kirkland, once a sunny personality with a natural sense of humor, returned from his first combat deployment with troubling obsessions. Diagnosed with PTSD, and facing a third deployment, Kirkland asked for help but did not receive it.
In his last days, despite two suicide attempts, he was officially declared a “low” suicide risk. Hours before his death, he was mocked as a “coward” by his superiors. He has been denied a military memorial service.
Soldiers on the panel told of dealing with haunting combat memories of their own, as well as moral disillusionment with fighting wars based on false premises.
A persistent trend apparent from these discussions is that healing from military trauma comes through repudiation of the atrocities and the lies justifying war, invasion, and occupation.
The discussion also called upon those present to remember that the suffering of war is not limited to the combatants. Two serious studies estimate that over a million Iraqis have perished because of the American invasion. And untold living civilians now suffer from PTSD.
Mike Prysner, of MarchForward.org, who led the panel, opened up the discussion to address the causes of the wars: vested interests, e.g., the profiteer billionaires and corporations who have the media and politicians on puppet strings. He urged us all to fight back against state-sponsored terror. As Prysner says:
“We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land and not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, is the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable, is the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemy is not five thousands miles away, they are right here at home. If we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers we can stop this war, we can stop this government and we can create a better world. If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy... The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger real or imagined from abroad.”
Happy Easter: Pigeon Eggs Found in Our Planter, early in April, 2011
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Geese on Puget Sound, April, 2011 |
The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History by Jill LeporeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a well-crafted sketch depicting both the American Revolution and the modern tea-party movement. For me, this was just the right survey view that actually made historical facts interesting and enlightening. Done by a highly disciplined professional Harvard historian. I'm sure no one cares what I think or what books I read, but if they did, I would recommend this book.
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Cat's Cradle by Kurt VonnegutMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
This book I found to be sophomoric, lacking any literary value. I was stunned by the vacuous pretentiousness -- the contrived banalities. A pathetic phoney. I didn't finish the book.
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My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The edition I own is published by Henry Holt with introduction and notes by Frank Vogel.
I picked this book up at a flee-market. I am an intermediate-level German student, and wanted to have some entertaining short-length German literature to practice my German reading. I also liked the old German script.
I was pleased with the narration.
In the author's mind, this tale began as a children's tale, and is now however considered a seminal fantastical novella from the German romantic tradition. To call it simply a fairy-tale is to miss the deeper meaning of the German word for fairy-tale, "Maerchen". I found this work very interesting from a social-commentary standpoint, and it gives good insight into the mind of someone living back in 1814 along the French-German frontier and experiencing all the relevant upheaval of the time involving Napoleon, etc. (Commercial review below). Interesting about this book about a faustian bargain is that it touches upon ethnic stereotypes present in Germany at that time, particularly toward Jews. After reading the book, von Chamisso's attitude toward Jewry is not completely clear to me yet, but it was probably a product of its time, as we all are of course.
Note: At the beginning of the story, as he arrives in the country by boat, the protagonist makes a supplicant visit to the mysterious "Herr Thomas John", who with his great wealth reminds me of the Great Gatsby.
Commercial review (from Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag GmbH ):
"Asked which book by another author he would most like to claim as his own work, Italo Calvino once said without hesitation, Adelbert von Chamisso's Peter Schlemiel. First published in 1814, this brilliant novel is not only a precursor of Poe, Kafka, and the magic realists - it is a timeless fable with a remarkably contemporary flavor. When a mysterious man in a gray coat asks Peter Schlemiel if he would sell him his shadow, that "lovely, lovely shadow" of his, he naturally thinks the man must be mad. But then the stranger makes him an offer he can't refuse. In return for his shadow, Schlemiel receives a neverending source of riches, and he is convinced he is on the road to happiness. Yet he finds that without a shadow he is rejected by society and unable to find the fulfillment of love. After a series of fantastic adventures, Peter Schlemiel realizes that he must discover a new way to give his life meaning if he is to go on in the world. Adelbert von Chamisso was born in France, but moved at an early age to Prussia, where he lived during the Franco-Prussian war. Chamisso felt that he belonged equally to both war-torn cultures. Peter Schlemiel was written soon after Prussia's defeat by Napoleon, and was Chamisso's answer to a world in turmoil. The novel was an immediate success, and it catapulted him to international fame."
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