A new day has dawned, we have a new President-elect coming into office on January 20, and a couple of too-long ongoing wars in far places to bring to as honorable an end as possible, as soon as possible. With a hearty shout-out to all our veterans, especially those with whom we served all those many decades ago. Here’s hoping the new day will bring about the ‘right thing’, despite the distractions of economic meltdown. Real help for the tens of thousands of returning veterans from our current wars who have suffered grievous injuries. Schooling and re-training for all. Treatment for PTSD, even for the oldest veterans among us, war does terrible things to people’s minds.

So, in honor of our nation’s brave veterans, what follows is an edited repost of my experience the first time I visited ‘The Wall’ – the Vietnam War Memorial. It was May of 1985, we had been called to D.C. to testify at a hearing. We brought the kids, 15 and 16 at the time, since they had few memories of when we’d lived close enough to Washington to be there for the 4th of July, to visit the Smithsonian museums regularly, to picnic and fly kites on glorious spring days on the Mall.

Because it had been more than a decade since we’d visited, we of course had to make the pilgrimage to The Wall – the Vietnam Memorial finally installed below a berm years after that ill-advised war was over. The overall impression of the polished black granite wall etched with the names of the dead is somber, almost buried, unspeakably sad. My Vietnam-era veteran husband and I were in tears before we even got close enough to read any names.

The cherry blossoms were still hanging on, loosing wafts of pink petals elsewhere to entice the normal crowds of tourists on that day, at the time we got to the wall. So we had it practically to ourselves, a few individuals and small clusters of people here and there along its length.

Today is Veteran’s Day, when honoring those brave men and women who have fought our wars and defended our country since before we even had a country to defend, is the traditional activity. When my husband stopped with the kids to look at some of the little shrines of homemade crosses and flowers and notes folded and stuck into the joints of the wall, I walked on to find the name I’d come to touch. They would catch up.

They’re alphabetical, those tens of thousands of names. So it wasn’t hard to find the one I sought, even as the ghosts of those names I was not seeking floated past my eyes and through my mind in a seemingly endless stream. So neatly capitalized. So many.

When I found him, I reached out to touch him. Remembering a life, not an ugly death. I ran my fingers over the etched letters of his name, nestled so comfortably amidst so many others and not out of my reach. I closed my eyes and leaned into that half-buried wall knowing it would never yield to my weight of pushing back. My hand on his name, tears quietly flowing down my cheeks, falling like rain on the cobbles at my feet. It felt good to cry. It was a good time and place to cry.

As I stood silently weeping a large, warm hand covered my own and I felt the closeness of a man next to me, his other hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw the age in that hand covering my own, knew this was a stranger reaching out with me. For some long moments we stood there leaning together into the name on that wall, until his touch lifted and my tears slowed. I turned to him, thinking to express my thanks – if I could find the words.

Tall and thin, I had to look up to see his face, the tears rolling down his cheeks. It was Jimmy Stewart. Yes, THAT Jimmy Stewart. Before I could get any words past the lump still in my throat, he squeezed my shoulder gently and walked on, not looking back. We’d not spoken a word, we had just shared a grief. I was, to put it mildly, rather amazed. What a very odd thing, on a day when so few people were here, to have shared those tears with this famous, kindly and so fatherly figure.

Of course I wondered why he was there that day. Just in town, sight-seeing? Visiting old friends and colleagues from his days as Brigadier General in the USAF Reserve? Making a round of memorials after visiting his own and remembering the 60 B-17 flight crews – his own men – lost on that fateful mission he led in 1943 to bomb the German ball bearings works in Schweinfurt on “Black Thursday?”

It was not until years later that I discovered Stewart’s son Ronald McLean was killed in action in Vietnam in 1969. He’d been there grieving too, as privately as me. Perhaps felt a need to make that simple physical connection with me, for those few precious moments. He was a a courageous warrior and career veteran whose face and bearing are familiar to generations – a famous man. I was no one at all, just someone touching a name on a wall, crying.

Perhaps that is something all of us who remember can share. For all the dead in all the wars, all the veterans coming home from current wars who will have no monuments of remembrance with which they can connect, for those wars are not scheduled ever to end. When will we ever learn?

It’s Memorial Day and we are not in Oklahoma or Kentucky to manicure gravesites or to solemnly place flags and poppies to honor our fathers for their service, or to recall our lifetimes of love and caring. We instead spent the weekend joyfully hosting the New Princess of the Universe (our newest granddaughter) and her beautiful, hopeful young parents.

The Oklahoma gravesite was manicured and decorated by family anyway, the Kentucky one – now so full of family that there’s no one left to tend it – was no doubt trimmed and swept as part of the spring duties of the groundskeeper, just brass plates in the ground beneath that weathered white marble angel in the sorrowful pose. Funny how life – and generations – go on as the past slips ever farther into the mists of time.

Since Memorial Day of last year, 624 soldiers, sailors, Marines, reservists and guardsmen have been killed in our “occupation” of Iraq. Diarist clammyc has details on each one, including age, date of death, branch of service and home town.

Today, when you’re watching the parade or grilling some dogs or enjoying the sunshine in a park or in the woods, remember these fallen and the fallen of all our endless wars – right or wrong – who answered the call and gave their lives. Maybe say a little prayer in hope that someday soon the world and all the generations alive in it may discover peace.

The web page for Forever Friends Pet Cremation Services explains…

Pet cremation is a clean, sanitary way of saving your pet’s remains. Pet cremation is environmentally sound, providing an alternative to placement in municipal landfill sites, or for those who do not have adquate space for burying their pets.

The problem of taking up space in municipal landfill sites must have been a big consideration when an officer accompanying the body of a comrade to his final disposition discovered that the military had contracted with Forever Friends to handle the bodies of US servicemembers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On Friday [May 9] the Pentagon banned the arrangement, which had been in place since 2001. According to a story in the Washington Post, Some War Dead Were Cremated at Facility Handling Pets, Pentagon officials say they don’t think human and animal remains were ever comingled at the facility. That will probably soothe the outrage of families who might suspect from this news that they’ve got some dog’s ashes in that urn or plot instead of their loved one.

From now on, the Pentagon promises, all cremations will be done by crematories associated with actual human funeral homes. For those who thought it wasn’t a very good idea when these wars of foreign aggression were started that the news media was barred from photographing returning coffins or covering funerals of service personnel killed in those wars, this is just one more reason why it behooves us to pay some real attention to the horrors the new “privatized military” brings. It’s cheaper to cremate dogs than people, so I’m sure some pencil-pusher honestly thought no one would ever be the wiser.

Those whose loved ones were cremated after they were killed in action will no doubt be gratified to know that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates found “the site and signage insensitive and entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen. The families of the fallen have the secretary’s deepest apologies,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said at a news conference hastily staged when the news hit the fan.

Worse, had the officer not attended the cremation of his friend (because no family members were present), the situation might never have become known. Lt. General Frank Klotz, Director of the Air Force Staff, said he doesn’t know whether ANY military officer previously had ever inspected the contracted crematories.

David Bose, manager of Forever Friends, said that typically service members would drop off remains at his crematory after he signed the paperwork, and would return the next day to sign for and pick up the cremains. This is contrary to normal procedure described by Gen. Klotz, where the military provides escort for all service members killed overseas during all transport and processing at the Dover mortuary until the deceased returns home for interment.

Wow. My father and father-in-law, whose trifolded flags adorn the mantle in glass cases honoring their service to this nation would be spinning in their graves in total outrage! Or, in the case of my own father who spent 27 years being the best he could be, there would probably be tears and a badly broken heart.

There is something very, very wrong here. It’s been wrong ever since GW Bush launched these ill-conceived oil wars, and it’s still wrong today even though we hear that the Pentagon won’t be cremating our war dead with assorted dead cats and dogs any more since last Friday. I hope some outraged, still-human country in this world takes these war criminals to the Hague someday. They deserve it.

Links:

Some War Dead Cremated at Facility for Pets
Pentagon objects to cremation facilities
Pentagon Shipping Troops’ Remains to Pet Crematory
Forever Friends Pet Cremation Services

“We will never forget, we will never hide, and we will never stop asking ourselves every morning what we must do to prevent what happened to ever repeat itself.”

So said Israeli President Shimon Peres at the main ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned his audience that anti-semitism is on the rise across the world today, and that insidious forms of Holocaust denial were asserting themselves even in nations that have every reason to remember with circumspection what occurred in Europe 63 years ago.

Iran’s quixotic dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust is a “myth,” and hosted a revisionist Holocaust conference in 2006. Given that Israel and Iran are currently at a heightened state of tensions – complete with bravado from Hillary Clinton about “nuclear umbrellas” and US defense of Israel (which has plenty of its own nuclear weapons) – it’s worthwhile for those who weren’t born when this horror occurred to take a long, hard look at reality.

Yet in Britain, Muslims have joined in commemoration events, which is a step forward, at least for those Muslims who have chosen to participate in the modern world by immigrating to countries like Britain.

A documentary film entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released just two weeks ago purporting to examine the censorship and discrimination in American academia against biologists and other scientists who criticize the Neodarwinian model of biological evolution. The never-ending Evolution vs. Creationism debates aside, a disturbing focus of the film are images linking Darwinism to Eugenics, and Eugenics to the Holocaust. This has resulted in the explosion of a very strange form of Holocaust denial coming from the ranks of science and academia that is a bit shocking.

Despite the ebbs and flows of partisan politics and election campaigns and candidates who will say or do anything to get themselves elected to power, today is a very good day to stop for a moment and asses our overall sociopolitical situation. We are at war on two fronts (again), and the costs are now coming due in increasing poverty and rising prices for every necessity of life. Will we again stoop to blaming the poor? Will we once again single out the religious for persecution and ‘elimination’? Will we allow the so-called “intellectual elite” to deny the lessons of real history in order to justify a renewed eugenics aimed (as always) at those they see as ‘lesser’ humans?

That seems a serious question to me. The quadrennial international convention of the United Methodist Church meeting on this day in Fort Worth, Texas, issued a historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of eugenics in the 20th century, apologizing for Methodist support of eugenic policies in America in the first half of the 20th century, and warning about a resurgence of eugenics in the 21st century. They are the first Christian denomination to issue such a resolution and apology, in recognition of the Holocaust such policies were used to justify.

Perhaps someday we’ll see a similar resolution from some organization of influence in biological/evolutionary science apologizing for the corruption of Darwin’s theory that was used to justify forced sterilization and miscegenation laws in this country and in Europe, and which did in fact get further corrupted by Hitler in his quest for “racial purity.” That too would be a step forward after more than 6 decades. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.

Links:

Marking annual Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day
Israel marks Holocaust Memorial Day
Eugenics Apologies

The Associated Press reported on Easter Sunday that the American Death Toll in Iraq Reaches 4,000 after a roadside bomb killed four soldiers in Baghdad.

At least 61 other people died across Iraq on Sunday, but the U.S. is not keeping any official records of how many Iraqis pay the ultimate price for the ‘freedom’ we have brought them. …and bought them, at a price so far to American taxpayers of ~$600 billion.

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, J.P. Morgan upped its bid for the bankrupt Bear-Stearns investment bank to $10 a share, 5 times the negotiated price agreed upon last weekend just in time for the Tokyo stock market opening on St. Patrick’s Day. The unprecedented bailout of an investment bank that is not a member of the Federal Reserve system was seen as necessary to prevent a worldwide financial market meltdown. The Fed is guaranteeing Bear-Stearns’ worthless investments up to $30 billion (of American taxpayers’ money).

Speaking of American taxpayers’ money, the Bush administration assures us that the $200 – $600 in tax rebates set aside earlier this year in hopes of stimulating the economy (perhaps we’ll all go out and purchase shares of J.P. Morgan?) will be mailed in May. Perhaps this will come just in time for millions of soon-to-be homeless Americans to buy a nice three-room tent to live in during the warm summer months. If they’re very careful with their budget, some of those families might save enough to buy kerosene space heaters for their tents before winter!

What did they do to us, again? I forget…

 Two “Unknown” Iraqi Casualties

American Dead: 3,990

American Casualties: 40,229

Iraqi Dead: Unknown

Iraqi Casualties: Unknown

Cost to the US: $504,000,000,000.00 

Yahoo News issued a release on Thursday evening (December 20) from the California Nurses Association touting the victory of their joint demonstration with the National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Armenian community at the CIGNA insurance offices in Glendale, California, CIGNA Capitulates to Patient Revolt…

In a stunning turn around, insurance giant CIGNA has capitulated to community demands, and protests that the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee helped to generate, and agreed to a critically needed liver transplant for Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old girl in the intensive care unit at UCLA Medical Center, says CNA.

Meanwhile, activists from all over the country were spurred into inundating CIGNA’s phone lines throughout the day after learning of the situation and protest on websites like Daily Kos, My Space and others.

Then came the sad news. Nataline Sarkisyan died of organ failure at around the same time of evening. She died because a bean counter at CIGNA Insurance overruled four of her physicians who advised – in writing as appeal for coverage denial – a liver transplant. They even had a suitable donor liver all lined up 6 days previously.

This might have been just another of the medical horror stories that seem to come depressingly often these days. Stories about what happens to the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance at all, and another 50 million whose coverage is ‘inadequate’ enough to be completely useless. It might be just another example of pencil pushers practicing medicine without a license and getting away with it instead of going to jail. It might have been just one more forgettable tragedy Americans could ignore because it’s too awful to contemplate. But that’s not what happened this time.

L.A. television news reported just 12 hours later that Nataline’s Father Blames Cigna in Daughter’s Death, and then it was announced that high-profile attorney Mark Geragos will be representing the Sarkisyan family. Geragos held a press conference to announce his interest and avenues of possible action against Cigna.

I think Cigna’s executives and the bean counters involved in denying coverage should be charged with both willful negligent homicide as well as practicing medicine without a license. I want to see them frog-marched off to prison, where counting beans won’t hurt anybody. I want to see a claim for punitive damages in excess of Cigna’s entire projected profits for the next year.

Geragos will do what he can, and we can all hope that what promises to be a very high profile case will at long last obviate the need for single payer health care in the United States. On the day of the massive protests and Nataline’s unfortunate death, the New York Times published an editorial entitled, Slowing the Rise in Health Costs…

The Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation, issued a report this week analyzing 15 policy options for the federal government that could reduce national spending on health care by as much as $1.5 trillion over 10 years – even after spending more than $200 billion to provide health coverage for all Americans.

We can afford $17 billion for two or three months of war in Iraq, but we can’t afford basic health care for the citizens of the “homeland” these shrubberies tell us they’re protecting? How stupid do they think we are?

Here’s hoping this one doesn’t get buried beneath primary season hit jobs about Obama’s middle name, Hillary’s corporate connections or Mike Huckabee’s religious wingnuttery. This is one we should not forget…

It was May of 1985, we had been called to D.C. to testify at a hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on a matter related to our past life. We brought the kids, 15 and 16 at the time, since they had few memories of when we’d lived close enough to Washington to be there for the 4th of July, to visit the Smithsonian museums regularly, to picnic and fly kites on glorious spring days on the Mall.

Because it had been more than a decade since we’d visited, we of course had to make the pilgrimage to The Wall – the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial finally installed below a berm years after that ill-advised war was over. The overall impression of the polished black granite wall etched with the names of the dead is somber, almost buried, unspeakably sad. My Vietnam-era veteran husband and I were in tears before we even got close enough to read any names.

The cherry blossoms were still hanging on, loosing wafts of pink petals elsewhere to entice the normal crowds of tourists on that day, at the time we got to the wall. So we had it practically to ourselves, a few individuals and small clusters of people here and there along its length.

Today is the Monday holiday of Veteran’s Day, when honoring the fallen in America’s many wars – along with veterans of those wars still living – is the traditional activity. When my husband stopped with the kids to look at some of the little shrines of homemade crosses and flowers and notes folded and stuck into the joints of the wall, I walked on to find the name I’d come to touch. They would catch up.

They’re alphabetical, those tens of thousands of names. So it wasn’t hard to find the one I sought, even as the ghosts of those names I was not seeking floated past my eyes and through my mind in a seemingly endless stream. So neatly capitalized. So many.

When I found him, I reached out to touch him. Remembering a life, not an ugly death. I ran my fingers over the etched letters of his name, nestled so comfortably amidst so many others and not out of my reach. I closed my eyes and leaned into that half-buried wall knowing it would never yield to my weight of pushing back. My hand on his name, tears quietly flowing down my cheeks, falling like rain on the cobbles at my feet. It felt good to cry. It was a good time and place to cry.

As I stood silently weeping a large, warm hand covered my own and I felt the closeness of a man next to me, his other hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw the age in that hand covering my own, knew this was a stranger reaching out with me. For some long moments we stood there leaning together into the name on that wall, until his touch lifted and my tears slowed. I turned to him, thinking to express my thanks – if I could find the words.

Tall and thin, I had to look up to see his face, the tears rolling down his cheeks. It was Jimmy Stewart. Yes, THAT Jimmy Stewart. Before I could get any words past the lump still in my throat, he squeezed my shoulder gentle and walked on, not looking back. We’d not spoken a word, we had just shared a grief. I was, to put it mildly, rather amazed. What a very odd thing, on a day when so few people were here, to have shared those tears with this famous, kindly and so fatherly figure.

Of course I wondered why he was there that day. Just in town, sight-seeing? Visiting old friends and colleagues from his days as Brigadier General in the USAF Reserve? Making a round of memorials after visiting his own and remembering the 60 B-17 flight crews – his own men – lost on that fateful mission he led in 1943 to bomb the German ball bearings works in Schweinfurt on “Black Thursday?”

It was not until years later that I discovered Stewart’s son Ronald McLean was killed in action in Vietnam in 1969. He’d been there grieving too, as privately as me. Perhaps felt a need to make that simple physical connection with me, for those few precious moments. He was a a courageous warrior and career veteran whose face and bearing are familiar to generations – a famous man. I was no one at all, just someone touching a name on a wall, crying.

Perhaps that is something all of us who remember can share. For all the dead in all the wars, all the veterans coming home from current wars who will have no monuments of remembrance with which they can connect, for those wars are not scheduled ever to end. When will we ever learn?

Links to Worthy Veteran’s Day Salutes:

The Visual Veteran

To the candidates and elected officials and the nation from a veteran

I Got the News Today – Done too soon

A Personal Veteran’s Day Memorial