Two Emails: Mostly to the Beloved TW [*Already* Revised!]

Sorry for messing up the time, older sibling.  It seemed necessary. What's terribly luddite o'moi, though? I have four Playlists that go with it, all the same, meant to differ, meant  to include some of yours, some of Kathryn's, Hank's, an amazingly creative musician friend of his Aviva (and the Flying Penguins ) -- but really all I desire is to figure if, when, and, approximately, where, you'll ever stop trying to figure out which number of personality disorders to limit me to. I'm thinking an ODD number (ar ar!) -- knowing the six most close, both genetically and environmentally, to my family:

Antisocial personality disorder 

Avoidant personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder 

Dependent personality disorder 

Histrionic personality disorder 

Narcissistic personality disorder

          Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

Paranoid personality disorder

          Personality disorders

Schizoid personality disorder 

Schizotypal personality disorder

So close your eyes, cross five out.  Not fair! They've one labeled "Personality Disorders," as if the APA could BE so powerful.  Harrumph.

I figure that's gotta be -- forever, wherever, however -- after the quiet and the music -- to send Robert one a'them greetings from Tête-de-Hergé home-drivin' Lisa-Irene-Bianca-Fred-Aunt Louisa-Uncle Haddock-my real ass' kickin' friends Alicia Harden, a cowgirl, and another real one who sends those tart lemon cookies from Cape Cod, as real a cow girl as I am, Eljay Nayr ---- WAY!  Then, if it is not taken, by too many crowds of floating, wifting, laughing folk, could I have dibs on a colorized Elvis? One of yours maybe?

Bob's attempt, and the fact that he never deigns to read this blog ["Too many words, kid."] is appreciated by his other siblings, mostly, [probably only] TW, maybe Kathryn and her attached, very "sweet" Joe X; $ those rude genetically sub-related siblings, who read without any talent for irony when needed, and with an excess of it, when a dearth would barely do$.

TW an I unnerstanz, az well az miz kathryn an mister Joe X, with more 'n more clarté 'n clarté, 'n laffter 'n laffter, those whose Appalachian ways wez thanks 'n wez refletz 'n giggelz..

By the way, we can call "Joe X" sweet because it's a direct quote from Sweetie/Grader Boob/Lumpy. Then I had my one-and-only conversation with Joe, and Lo! He is hysterical, and sweet.  He is wise, and sweet. He is understated, and therefore beats my funny to death, and I so enjoy the change. He and Kathryn are like -- I've got nothing -- not oil and water, not peaches and water -- just Joe and Kathryn, and they like to keep it that way.

And the Birth Mother, Jeanette, You Young SRA Readers, is NOT included in any of this, by ANY of you, got it?  For:  There does come a time...  She's earned it, raised her due, now has complete dementia, essential emotional and financial embezzlement, and all the nursing care that I do... and so I know how it sucks and is coopted (except in our house!)  

I look under my TV and I see happy gifts from both my brothers -- the complete Marx Brothers, Deadwood, all the Harry Potters (HANK!), all the LOTR (Bob, one twice!), The Wire, and many other things I watch over and over without admitting. To Anyone. One of the greatest plays we've ever seen (Hank loves plays, whistlingwhistling): The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade (or Marat Sade)* Don't compromise and get Marat / Sade first.

Separate from the boxes of books, tapes, pictures, patches, wonders I wonders at, and prisms -- I receive TW's tomatoes, peppers (several sorts, textures, heats, respectful seeds, a new way this coming year), but there's nothing like those tomatoes, organic, sun-dried; one comes to know them, as one can, by their tint and translucency.  One is sometimes wrong. Chewiness. Suckiness (What's the positive gardening word?) I'm only in my third year. I soak and pick. It's been great fun, and delicious, so slow we've eaten slow, in complement, compliment.  Then I discovered banana beans. And heavy, and light liquors.Vinegars.Ghee. Polentas. A krap load of sauces, with garlics, and mixed tomatoes, and nuts, cilantro, basils, cumin seed, cumin leaves, oh, and lettuces, lettuce leaves. Oh, we had fun. Not always together. A silly idea doesn't seem so dumb at 3am when there is no one to mock you at the cuisinart, art, art, heh, heh, heh. And a little pesto on the toast ain't so funny after all, eh?  For his part, Fred has become a cauliflower disguiser or presenter, at will, given an in-law-of-sorts' provisions. We keep ém, for safe keeping, in their original boxes.

Back to Brother Bob's email of last week:

Those of of us who recommended the suit remember the face, the voice sincerely asking mostly, okay, only, the Mom, who gave good, not out-of-date advice. It was short, sweet, followed by a "Good luck, Sweetie, we love you. Let us know how it goes."

Clink.
Two icy cold Diet Cokes.
A Christian Brothers Chablis.-- quite possibly the last put to barrel, then bottle.

It's of the mid-70's, I think of, also, even earlier, back in Miami, swimming, water polo, Bob breaking away, me the only one I knew was cycling, playing tennis, softball, loving language, maths.  It was Phillipines-N.C.-Miami-N.C.... then a fairly happy split up. Bob to USF. Kathryn to Peace College. Me stuck in G'boro alone with Mom; Dad in Vietnam.  It was, I've said, without shame, the happiest year of my life. The end of the decade was not so happy. I shipped off to an insane little private college where everyone had too many words, and, that year, great basketball!  Then I decided to live in the mountains with true loonies, addicts, alcoholics, people on parole who drove stick-shifts up mountains, and weirdos. Carrot juices, and steam baths. Other amenities! Then I went back to school(s). Eight, to be exact. One, to be exactly worth it.

In case you were wondering, yes, we knew how not to accumulate, how to pack, quick and well, and how to stay out of each others' way.  Except me. And my "[t]oo many words, kid."

Later separations proved, proofed, punched back down, rose again, a little less, a little more, depending. Lacking stinky mother proofs, that bell jar, some jar stinky talent! (A reference to sourdough proof, don't freak out.)

Bob, before he gave up the moniker "Grader Boob" for "Lumpy," currently a contest too heavy for moi to elaborate, between Lumpy One and Lumpy Two--well, I'll present the little that I know, soon. Not my kind of contest.

I would imagine it was about the time one of Bob's students left this fetching review.  There are  worse. We've ALL received worse!  What "tickles"me, in the Southern sense, is this student's goldarn consistency.

Ryan is a bit harsh on grading and he can be a bit moody sometimes. He will help in anyway he can though with your essays. He does explain everything clearly though. He also expects you to do all the readings he gives. He will get very mad if you don't do that readings.

**********          ***********          **********          **********          ***********

From:  Robert Ryan

Mar 2X, 2015 (X days ago)

Howdy--

Ric just sent some pictures from way back, mid 70s.

One, with me and Steve in front of our vending step van, shows the shift changeover from one driver to the next. He did coffee machines; I did coffee, candy, sodas, and so on.

The other, with the vest and tie, has me in part of the suit I wore on a date with Teri to Bern's Steak House, a well-known eatery. And it was on that date, in that suit, that I horrified a waiter by asking for a well-done steak.

Visibly flustered, he stammered at me, "Sir, I'm not even sure that our chef will cook it that way. May I recommend at most, at most, medium or perhaps medium well."

The horror... the horror.

Who knew that the hair would go and...

Well, no more anecdotes today!

Love,

Bob

[Lisa, here: I believe this is "the suit," bought to take one Teri to dinner to ask her hand in marriage.
Teri declined. Her reason? He lacked sufficient ambition. Repeat after me: the phrase of your choice,
because this is a family blog. I know that, well, Jesus wept, but hardly least of all, for Kathryn, Mom,
and Moi, as well, huddled around the phone, weeping and cursing.The photo, so free of well-done steak
 juice (prob'ly the young Ryan's plan, the man lookin' so unfed, and ain't he got the hood up?)
Lisa, years gone now.]

We'll go with Bob's explanation!  He and Steve were vending machine hippy-dippy
machine refillers, which is where I guess that $+%;;@!) Teri got her ideas about
Ambition.She never followed him as he followed him into his classrooms in 
2015, I guess, the !@)(;;^$.
oops.

*by Adrian Mitchell (Adapter), Peter Weiss (Author), Geoffrey Skelton (Translator)


© 2015 L. Ryan

Dear Phan Thi Kim Phúc: Your Thoughts?

Nasty people provoke a nastiness in me.

I'm not proud of it, and have spent much of my life both regretting it and trying to change.  Although aging and fatigue are not valid reasons to cease trying to become an extraordinarily forgiving and non-snarky person, that's the only petition I can offer the court.

Adam Sorkin tweeted something today that ought to be the theme song of many lives, and which makes me laugh, at least, in the midst of my leftist, materialistic, smartass grinchiness:

–I will not be the subject of your mockery. 

–Oh, I think you shall.

I've been thinking, even against my will, about Syria.  My active will has been doing as much reading about Syria and the "situation" there as my weepy, waxing-and-waning-in-visual-acuity eyes will allow.  And then, of course, there are dreams.

An excellent beginning article comes from scholar Juan Cole's attempt at an independent-minded news analysis blog, Informed Comment:  "Top Ten things Americans need to Know about Syria if they’re going to Threaten to Bomb It."  I'd never heard the quote he leads with, and appreciated the addition of more Ambrose Bierce in to my muddled Devil's Dictionary of a mind -- “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”

Of course, Juan Cole most likely doesn't have the refrain "Nothing matters" as the running backbeat to that bit of Bierce irony.

I'm a hawk on this one.  A nasty hawk.

Perhaps it's that I know and trust in USAmerican air power and ability to surgically strike.  Obama was right when he said the "US doesn't do pinpricks."  It's the understanding of how disabling an air strike will be that has al-Assad issuing cocky demands today, via Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.  The proposal that Russia has fabricated is going to be, my omniscient self foresees, woefully inadequate.  It certainly ought not be the basis for a war criminal's demands.

Ouch.  

That's right, I shock myself whenever I toss around that label, knowing that the USA is signatory to the League of War Criminals. I could also argue that any war, any military action, is criminal.  But reductio?

That's arguing for wimps.

Or that's arguing for the angelic.

I don't fall into either category, though I've wimped out often enough.  Still, neither wimpiness nor halos are basic to my character.

I dream of napalm and agent orange.  I dream about 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phúc and Nick Ut's iconic photo.  

She lived, and now lives in Canada, where she has the gall to say such things as: 

Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?
-- Kim Phúc, NPR in 2008

No, Kim Phúc, I can't.

Because the iconic photos keep rolling in.  Because you survived, in large part, not by love, hope, and forgiveness, but by the actions of Nick Ut in getting you to a hospital.  Because someone (guided by human decency, yes) DID something.

At least I can definitively give Bierce's guiding "nothing matters" a resounding "ef-off" at this point in life. Sadly, though, and in high contrast to most of my dearest friends and those relatives of mine who actually think about things beyond what they will inherit, I also give the Grand Whiff-Off to platitudes that impart worldly usefulness to notions of personal improvement.

Of course, I've no idea what Kim Phúc thinks of the gassed dead in Syria, particularly the children.  She may be a stern master, an avenging well-armed angel.  I don't know.  

22 August 2013, Duma neighbourhood of Damascus, REUTERS

South Vietnam, 9 June 1972 | Nick Ut

"I slept in two hootches two stories tall..."

My Dad died last July 3, and I cobbled all of the below together on July 5, and whatever it is, it isn't my usual.  It's a classroom report, something to cut and paste on those posterboard set ups they sell kids who have a presentation to make.  It's pure as gold and it's pure crap, both.  Anyway, it's draft clean-up time again, probably the quickest road to fallen pride, if not humility, that I know.

"Better late than never, though there's nothing much wrong with 'never,' really..."
-- My Family Creed

******************************************************

G'morning, Faithful Readers.  Probably one of the most important, or influential, times of my father's life was as a co-commander of a base in Viet Nam.  We'll call it PRAB because that's what they called it.  I know only a few things about what happened to him and to his men and to his enemies and to the civilians he overflew there, and these memories are filtered through a kid's desperate desire to not understand, so I'm posting, instead, photos from that time and place.

Also, I found a neat archive of a guestbook where USAF personnel stationed at PRAB left a word or two.  It's a place of considerable understatement, which jives with my lifelong experience with The Colonel.  You had but to look in his eyes -- and who could do that for longer than two seconds? -- to see that he would never ever speak to you, or anyone, about what happened to him and to his men and to his enemies and to the civilians he overflew there.  Anyway, I do know that we heard some FUNNY stories about purported antics committed by Our Colonel.  A few were corroborated with photography, some with involontary snorting, and there are a few that I think were just made up.  It's apparent from the entries at the online guestbook that humor was a Saving Grace.


My biggest challenges were getting 
throttle actuators for the J-85s and Type II cleaning
solvent for docks so they could clean the R2800s.
Depot never could get the actuators and they
finally broke the solvent problem by getting it in
Singapore instead of a stateside depot. Also, we
had quite a time getting straight brooms so the
crew chiefs could clean out the cargo bays after
hauling elephants, nauseous native personnel and
leaking diesel fuel bladders. Flashlight
batteries were a problem as were the cargo
rollers. Other than that, a piece of cake.

shop area at PRAB

My first night on base was the night we 
had a mortar, rocket and sapper attack. A bomb 
loaded F-100 was hit below the tower and tower
personnel could be heard on Giant Voice telling
someone to get them out of there. The next
morning at Security Police building, all the
failed sappers were laid out for photographers
to take their pictures. Not a good night for
Charlie. As I remember, a K-9 alerted to the
attack before Charlie could make it to the 

flight line.

Panoramic PRAB

I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I
believed it 

was my duty and the least I could do. 

I met a 

great bunch of guys that loved to drink J.B. I
lived on cans of pineapple slices because I was
always hungry. Worked on the F-100's and the F-
4c's. I loved the Aussie B-47's especially when
they started up with the cartridges. Really cool
looking. I have some old slides of the guys and
the field. Remember hitch hiking and taking the
bus down town and getting some barbequed dog.
Really tasty. lol..

 Movie theater area. Movie Projector shack is
on the left. Movies were projected onto the side wall of the
inflatable warehouse. 

 I was crew chief on F-100D 56-2911. 

Had "Ding How" painted on the nose. It was the 
Sq. C.O. acft "Buzz Sawyer". We lived in tents, moved

into hooches and wooden barracks were being

built just before I left. 

I painted several sleds with 

nose art. Sure 

wish there were pics of them now. 

Often wonder 

where the old aircraft went and 

all the guys that 

crewed them. Its been so long now. 

All the pics 

I had from that era have been lost but sites like

this bring back so many memories....

I retired in 79 and went to the wilds of Maine

where I could enjoy mountains, four seasons,

trees, wildlife and escape the roar of the J-57.

Phan Rang is actually composed of twin towns; Phan Rang and Thap Cham. It is a small town on the coast with its main attraction being Cham historical remnants and towers in the surrounding area. The Cham Empire thrived in and around Phan Rang from around the 8th century its fall in the 17th century. The Phan Rang region is very dry, as it manages to avoid the summer and winter monsoons. It averages only 60cm of rain per year. The immediate area around Phan Rang is very beautiful and is interspersed with grape gardens and is the home of the best dragon fruit in Vietnam.

The main attraction in Phan Rang is a small group of Cham towers which sit by the roadside 7 km on the road to Dalat. These towers were built in the early 14th century as Hindu temples during the Cham Empire. They have been beautifully preserved. The towers were named after the King who invented a system of irrigation used in local villages. As the tourist buses from Nha Trang to Dalat pass through Phan Rang, the Cham towers are seen as a convenient place to take a break along the way. The result of which is that the towers are periodically swarmed by travelers heading north and south. In the center of the largest temple is an ancient linga (phallic symbol) with a human face painted on it. The other towers still retain their beautiful shapes and the carved details are clearly visible.

1000 lb bombs ready for loading

I remember when we were infiltrated in Jan and 

then in Feb 69 by CHARLIE. If I remember

correctly an F-100 and a B-57 were damaged.
The Super-cops shot I think 11 VC and then
displayed them in the parking lot in front of
the BX. One VC was a barber who used to cut my
hair at the barber shop.

"Viet Nam Baby Lift," Wayne Day

I was an aircraft Loadmaster on the 
Bookie Birds. I arrived from Travis AFB, CA where I flew 
on C-141s and after leaving Phan Rang went to
McGuire AFB, NJ, back on C-141s. Went back to
Travis in 73 and retired in 76.
Lot of memories GOOD & BAD. Few scary occasions. 
Always looked for and counted bullet holes upon 
landing back at Phan Rang.

Members of No. 2 Squadron’s Australian Airfield Defence Guard (ADG)
prepare to fire on suspicious movement while on patrol outside the perimeter
of the base at Phan Rang in 1969.

 I slept in two hootches two stories tall no air conditioning
in a 2 man room. Next moved to new 35 AMS
Sqadron hootch 20 rooms open floor plan 2 people
per cubicle that if you slept in the top bunk and
jumped out of bed you hit the two lockers that
were a part of the room. Where was the air
conditioned 2, 4 and 6 man rooms...hmmm? Dusty
yes NCO club yes, Airmens club was pitiful.
Entry to down town Phan Rang banned so Dodge
City was the primary choice of recreation to the
Airmen. Mayor of Phang Rang was the reason for
banning visiting the city do to Pathet Lao,
Chicom and NVA activity in the area. Someone
asked the question someplace about getting hit
with rockets and mortars. 1969 Phan Rang by
number not volume beat out Da Nang meaning we had
more weapons dropped on us than they did and I
can testify to that in that working graveyard
shift a month didn't go buy where I didn't find
myself in the bunker next to the 35 AMS building.
One last thing the 3rd snack bar was next to the
hanger across the street from the AMS building
had the worst hamburgers in the world. After 6
weeks and Mess Hall food they tasted pretty
good!

When Dad had things he thought were "heavy" to explain, I was always summoned to the Master Bedroom, my stepmom usually intensely, obsessively engaged in the application of moisturizer to her face, neck, arms, and legs.  We were supposed to pretend she was not there. And so we did.

He asked me if I knew the story of Washington crossing the Delaware, and though I did not (I could, however, reference several paintings of that watery passage, with Washington idiotically standing upright in what looked to me like a rowboat) -- I nodded an assent.  Then came the brilliant segue, that to this day leaves me aghast and close to drooling:  "Well, what if no one had volunteered to row the boat?"

That was his way of explaining that he'd been assigned to go to Vietnam.

The emphasis on volunteerism was a nice touch, especially since he certainly owed no service time to that war, having flown in it and around it for many years already.  And especially since he fought his superiors tooth-and-nail in an effort to get them to tally his air time over Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and *then* dare to tell him he owed a year "in country."  Didn't flying "hospital" planes, heavy lunky dumpy planes, didn't flying the wounded out to Clark AFB for medical minsitrations count for something -- flying low, flying invisible, in one of the heaviest planes in the world -- so deft a touch, so one with the mission, keeping it light so the nurses would not scare, an Albert Schweitzer of the air -- was that all for naught?


The year and a few months that he was gone were the best years of my fucked-up family's life, and I felt ashamed for every day that I was happy.


The day that he came home, I broke my stepsister's hair dryer, and was so afraid of starting out his return in trouble that I gooped it back together with some inappropriate glue and when it wouldn't stick, I hid it.  When my StepMom drove the car into the driveway, and we all stood there, in a line, waiting, mourning our days of freedom fun, all I could think was "I broke her hair dryer and now I'm going to get in trouble." Look in the eyes, and bullet understatement trouble.


What you don't understand is that I was never forgiven for anything I ever did wrong. Never. Not for a broken hair dryer, for not eating my eggs, or for the most horrible sin you can imagine.  Wrong was wrong, and wrong was not forgiven.


When he got out of the car, he looked like he needed us.


His head was shrunken, all bone, all old. His eyes looked too big for that shriveled face.  And his voice cracked.  "I'm home," he said, his voice cracking, and he cried.

LodeStar

In the Senate chamber, George McGovern stood to promote a bill co-sponsored by Mark Hatfield of Oregon to stop the funding of the American war in Vietnam.  He wanted to start bringing American troops home.

September 1, 1970


Mr. President, the vote we are about to cast could be one of the most significant votes Senators will ever cast.

I have lived with this vote night and day since last April 30 - the day before the Cambodian invasion - the day this amendment was first submitted.

I thank God this amendment was submitted when it was, because as every Senator knows, in the turbulent days following the invasion of Cambodia and the tragedy at Kent State University, this amendment gave a constructive rallying point to millions of anguished citizens across this war-weary land.

I believe that, along with the Cooper-Church amendment, the pending amendment helped to keep the Nation from exploding this summer.  It was the lode-star that inspired more mail, more telegrams, more eager young visitors to our offices, more political action, and more contributions from doctors, lawyers, workers, and housewives than any other initiative of Congress in this summer of discontent.  

Now this question is about to be resolved.  What is the choice it presents us?  It presents us with an opportunity to end a war we never should have entered.  It presents us with an opportunity to revitalize constitutional government in America by restoring the war powers the Founding Fathers obliged the Congress to carry.

It gives us an opportunity to correct the drift toward one-man rule in the crucial areas of war and peace.

All my life, I have heard Republicans and conservative Democrats complaining about the growth of centralized power in the Federal executive.

Vietnam and Cambodia have convinced me that the conservatives were right.  Do they really believe their own rhetoric?  We have permitted the war power which the authors of the Constitution wisely gave to us as the people's representatives to slip out of our hands until it now resides behind closed doors at the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the basement of the White House.  We have foolishly assumed that war was too complicated to be trusted to the people's forum - the Congress of the United States.  The result has been the cruelest, the most barbaric, and the most stupid war in our national history.

Every Senator in this Chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave.  This Chamber reeks of blood.

Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land - young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces, or hopes.

There are not very many of those blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious venture.

Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor, or courage.

It does not take any courage at all for a Congressman or a Senator or a President to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed.

But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes.

And if we do not end this damnable war, those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.

So before we vote, let us ponder the admonition of Edmund Burke, the great parliamentarian of an earlier day:

A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.

(July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012)

The Nod

this is a repost from july 2009, reposted as it speaks to my present frame of mind, and particularly to my newest post, Mitigating Factors.


Just try to ignore Robert McNamara over there on the left. I may or may not get to him in this post, but -- even dead -- I need to keep an eye on him today. Let me know if he makes a move.

I'm in a downsizing frame of mind, an excellent thing.

Thrift: It makes me think of my nana and her wax paper milk cartons full of food scraps, ready to be taken out to compost. Her homemade biscuit dough, rolled out and cut into circles with a drinking glass (that little pfffft sound as she sinks the edges in!) somehow never leaves enough scrap to fashion more than one last deliciously flaky, leavened offering.

She didn't care about the world much. The vegetable and flower gardens, yes. Where her son was busy dropping bombs? No. His career in the Air Force meant that she collected jewelry from around the world, baubles never worn but carefully stored, to be given to me, the only granddaughter, when she died. It never seemed to occur to her that there'd be a kind of natural redundancy, given that I traveled with the man -- he "won" custody of us after Mommy Dearest walked away. I was 4; Brother Grader Boob was 8; and Brother Tumbleweed led the pack at 12.

And when Brother Tumbleweed [TW], now of draft age, raged against the Vietnam War during that long hot summer we spent with our grandparents, she responded by fussing at him about how he dried her dishes. How he left water spots on her silverware by not carefully drying each piece. He preferred letting them sit a few minutes in the drainer, then laying them all on a towel and doing a group dry job.

TW made a lot of money that summer, working as a caddy at the nearby country club.
The following year, he would be gone. No Vietnam for him! No more water spots for Nana!

Nana and Grandaddy were CBS folk. They believed Walter Cronkite was talking to them and sat themselves down in their parlor -- not a living room, but an oriental-rugged, loveseated parlor -- to watch him present and explain the nightly news.

Ha! It just occured to me... Nana's greatest claim to fame, in her opinion (I have my own ideas about her areas of greatness), was having taught Connie Chung to read. I tell you, the inroads my family has made in the educational history of this fine republic! Ms. Chung sent her an annual Christmas card, so I will always know her as a kind person, for those cards meant the world to that old pre-ESL-era schoolteacher.

Connie Chung's career spanned most all the networks, but for our purposes, Gentle Reader, we will consider her time at CBS as Washington correspondent during part of Cronkite's 19-year run at the helm of the CBS Nightly News, as being formative.

But Nana is long gone -- and whatever personal secretary saw to the delivery of those holiday cards to former teachers? Doubtless long gone, too.

And now Walter Cronkite is gone. Niney-two is an admirable age to have achieved, though I would have wished him more. I'm surprised I wrote that. I even paused and allowed my index finger to hover over the delete button -- but decided it is Too True. I would have wished him more...


Two things I choose to remember about Walter Cronkite. That's not to say that I don't know about, or enjoy learning about, the many things there are to recall and celebrate from his life.

I'm just being thrifty.

The one I share with many: those moments when, young as I was, I felt The Nod. For some reason, most of my young nods took place at the dining room table, and unless disguised, were usually met with open derision by my father, and sometimes with punishment.

The Seige at Khe Sahn.
The Tet Offensive.
Summary executions with the evening meal.
Cronkite travels to Vietnam.

My Dad was flying mission after mission, first doing ancillary things from Travis, then eliminating all the middle men when he flew from Clark. He had local fame as pilot of the Flying Hospitals, that fame coming mostly in the form of cheering nurses calling out his various nicknames when their jeep pulled abreast of his Cadillac avec famille. Kudos to him that he always grew flustered.

He got no shout outs for later cruising Laos and Cambodia, though you certainly didn't learn about that hobby here. Nor will we discuss his stint as co-commander of an air base in South Vietnam a few years later -- I remember naively protesting that he surely didn't need to actually serve in-country when he had logged all those hours in the air, flying in peaceful silence in the skies over Cambodia -- what were known as "incursions." (Shhhh. *Those* never happened, and I don't know *where* I got the idea...)


I think, though, that if you hear "incursion" instead of "mission," you may feel comfortable Doing the Nod. Or, if you like, you can continue the folklore of those USAF visitations as pure reconnaissance, simple map-making trips that were best done at night, without running lights. Or permission.


(Stopping the train of my thought: I just have to direct you to something I read in preparation for writing this post. In case you had any doubt about the lengths to which I go {sigh}? Check this crap out! How anal is it to research the origins of running lights? Have I nothing better to do? Choooooooooooooooooo!)

Then, on February 27, 1968 Cronkite delivers the famed op-ed at the end of the regular news broadcast, saying:

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won’t show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that — negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

The Nod happens when you hear the truth, put simply, usually after a lengthy period of evasion. The Nod takes place when something long awaited finally happens.

There's little joy in it, though the sense of relief can be palpable. These truths don't set anyone free; They are more, simply, in part of the Order of Things.

Dad came back a different man, as of course does every person who prosecutes a war. He oversaw bombing missions that proved wasteful of human life and property, as the Pentagon failed to send in ground troops afterward to claim the territory he had so meticulously... cleared.

He dropped Agent Orange.

A barracks full of his men was blown up by mortar shells early one morning, while everyone slept. My Dad was, and is, a good man -- with whom I have rarely agreed, and from whom I remain estranged. I am old now and know that what seemed so easy to navigate in my eyes was a true moral conundrum in his, and that he followed his conscience.


By the way -- my punishments were basically for dinner time grunts in agreement with Uncle Walt. When I cheered him on at the '68 Chicago convention ("I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, if I may be permitted to say so."), I was sent to my room. Look, I was a kid. I probably just got off on the word "thug."


Cronkite did nothing special, I don't think, when he reported the four dead in Ohio on 4 May 1970, but I'll never forget it. Dad was in Vietnam at the time. I was, of course, and in world record time, stuck in my room. What I said at the kitchen table that evening was construed as a slap in my father's face.

There was a third blow up, but I was older, Dad was home, but tired of war, my step-Mom -- well, she didn't know what to think, and it didn't involve Walter Cronkite because we had switched to NBC. We had the distinct pleasure of shaking Tricky Dick's hand after his reelection -- down at Homestead AFB, during our temporary existence as Floridians. I was horrified by the WETNESS. It was like shaking hands with a damp sponge.

It was Watergate, of course. I went ballistic over something -- maybe over everything. And for the first time, instead of rigid-spined established consequences (No TV! Go to your room! Do the dishes for a week! You're grounded!), he yelled and said... things. All I remember is that every thing he yelled began with "I'm so tired of..."

He was so tired of protestors, draft-dodgers, disrespect. He was so tired of pulling all the weight.

So many of us back then had the war, not just on the telly, but in our homes in more insidious ways. It was an interesting find -- the article pictured below in Hal Humphrey's column to the LA Times, on Thursday, April 28, 1966.

Given what came later, it's interesting to read:

"This is the first war which TV has been able to cover and get on the air in 24 hours, but just because we have the film, and sometimes at great risk, by our correspondents, that does not mean we should always use it." Constant televising of American GIs weary and shot up may even weaken our resolve at home to continue fighting, Cronkite suggests.

There's only a few who can draw The Nod out of me now, all grownup and no wiser. I like to think of a place where Cronkite and Tim Russert might be gabbing happily away.

How many of us noticed that Robert McNamera made it to Hell a few weeks back -- 6 July? I saw it as a headline, felt The Nod. I mentioned his passing to a friend who said, "Good." Now we can always know where he is.