Frank is Emptiness

September 16th, 2018

Father Jim is a priest and an Augustinian friar. He is erudite, witty, and eighty-eight years old. I try to imagine if I would be as spry as Father Jim if I was eighty-eight. Alas, I can only visualize being dead at that age. Karin and I went on a weekend retreat led by this priest. The purpose of the retreat was to learn more about St. Augustine, and to get closer to God somehow.

The Augustinian order is a small part of the Roman Catholic Church. There is a plethora of orders and groups, like the Augustinians, within Catholicism. This fact is sometimes a surprise to people, especially for those who have no direct connection with the Roman Church. Some people, viewing the institution from the outside, imagine that there is a monolithic Catholic community, with a rigid hierarchy that demands total obedience from the members of the Church. They assume that it is a highly disciplined organization whose members march in lock step.

Hmmm, not really. It’s more like herding cats.

The Catholic Church is this sprawling, mutating, living organism that currently includes over one billion people, each of whom has a different opinion on what the Church should be. The Church is a community where diversity and unity have wrestled for two millennia.  It is a family of sorts; a family that is profoundly dysfunctional, but also capable of constant renewal and reform.

There is a quote attributed to James Joyce. He was once asked to describe the Church. In reply, he said, “Here comes everybody.”

Exactly.

The problem with including “everybody” is that people have a wide range of interests and talents (“charisms” in spiritual terms). Different people are attracted to different paths to God. Thus, the Church contains a nearly limitless variety of groups, each of which appeals to a certain type of person. There are Franciscans; they are interested primarily in helping the poor and in protecting the earth. There Dominicans and Jesuits, who like to teach and preach. There is Opus Dei, which is very, very traditional (and to me, a little scary). There are the Catholic Workers, who are essentially Catholic anarchists. I like those folks a lot. Anyway, there is an endless list of groups and orders. The Augustinians just happen to be one of them.

So, what makes the Augustinians different from everyone else? Good question. Father Jim tried to allude to that question during the retreat, and he was somewhat successful in answering it. The answer is actually very difficult to explain in rational terms. A particular order appeals to a person in an intuitive way. It’s a heart thing more than a head thing.

From what I have gathered in the short time that I have spent with Augustinians is that they are deeply concerned with relationship. Father Jim spoke at great length about the Trinity, the doctrine of a triune God. The notion of one God consisting of three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is a mystery, in the sense that nobody will ever really understand it. It’s a bit like quantum physics: it makes no sense at all, but it is apparently true. The value of discussing the Trinity is that it provides a cosmic example of relationship; three persons in intimate and loving relationship with each other for all eternity. That’s pretty wild. It seems a bit Hindu (think about the relationship between Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva). Augustinians care about relationship, about connection. They feel in their bones that absolutely everything and everybody is connected. It’s almost Buddhist in a way.

Each order has a founder, someone who was charismatic and who still inspires people to this very day. The Franciscans look back to Francis of Assisi. The Benedictines admire and emulate St Benedict. Augustinians base their lives on the words and actions of Augustine of Hippo, a 4th century Roman living in Africa. Augustine had an early life that begs to be whitewashed by the Church. He despised Christianity in his early years.  He fathered a child out of wedlock. He partied hard. He also wrote the story of his dissipated youth and his conversion experience, The Confessions, and he left out none of the juicy parts. So, it is hard for the church to clean up his background and stick him into a stain glass window.

Augustine is quoted as saying,”God, give me chastity and continence…but not yet.” It’s hard to dislike somebody like that. Augustine was earthy and pragmatic, and somehow still intensely spiritual. He was totally human. He was a mensch. His present followers tend to be the same kind of people.

The Augustinians have other heroes. They look back at Augustine’s mother, Monica, who constantly prayed for her son’s conversion (and probably nagged him incessantly). They remember St. Rita of Cascia, and Thomas of Villanova. They also remember one other Augustinian friar, Martin Luther. Yeah, him.

The Augustinians have a sense of humor. They admire Luther in a backhanded sort of way. I have yet to meet an Augustinian who failed to smile when speaking about Martin Luther. He’s the rebel that they all wish they could be. He’s the man.

I don’t think that I will join with the Augustinians. I am more of a Franciscan/Catholic Worker kind of guy. However, I really do appreciate their path in life.

September 17th, 2018

The doorbell rang late yesterday afternoon. That always makes me a bit edgy. There was a time, not too long ago, when the only time the doorbell rang was when the local cops wanted to discuss the activities of a certain family member. When I went to the door, I was relieved to find that it was not an official visit this time.

Duane was waiting for me on the front porch. Duane and his family live in the house on the corner. Over the years, our neighborhood has slowly become more diverse: we have Muslim families, Latinos, Hmong. Duane’s family is, thus far, the only black household. The folks on our street tend to get along pretty well. Duane and his wife have been to our house a couple times. They always greet us with a smile, and they are, quite simply, good people.

Duane often sees me walking our daughter’s border collie, Shocky. Karin and I take of her pet while our daughter is away. Duane is aware that I take Shocky for very long walks along Oakwood Road. Oakwood, at one time, was a quiet country lane. Now, after the building of several subdivisions in the local area, it more closely resembles a race track. The road still only has two lanes to it, and there is no shoulder or sidewalk. A pedestrian, like myself, is by necessity on the road. Sometimes drivers have trouble understanding that fact.

Duane greeted me as I walked out the door to talk with him.

He said, “I brought y’all a present. I know you walk that dog at night, so I got you a leash that lights up in the dark. I don’t want you to die, Frank.”

That was very neighborly of him. It’s not often that people on our block show that much concern for my welfare.

In all honesty, I am somewhat negligent about safety precautions. I generally do not  wear reflective clothing. It is not unusual for me to walk the dog along Oakwood Road at 4:00 AM. A portion of the road is completely unlit. I know for a fact that some of the people going to their shitty jobs at that hour of the morning are either inattentive, or bleary-eyed, or both. They don’t see me and my black dog until the last possible minute. That probably scares the drivers more than it scares me.

Duane told me, “Frank, I almost hit you one time on the way to work. Well, you know, it’s because I didn’t see you.”

It’s comforting to know that Duane didn’t try to hit me on purpose. That wouldn’t be so neighborly.

I thanked Duane, and we talked for a bit. Then he went on home.

I walked Shocky this morning at 4:00. It was a clear night, with a sky full of stars. Oakwood Road was dark as the inside of a cow. I used my new, illuminated dog leash. It worked great. It kept Shocky safe. That’s a good thing.

Our daughter would be really pissed off if her dog got killed while I was walking her.

September 13th, 2018

This letter from me was posted by the Capital Times in Madison, WI, yesterday.

“September 11th, 2001, is a date that I will always remember, just as millions of other Americans will. What strikes me most is not the actual terrorist attack that occurred on that day. What I find most disturbing is the after effect of the attack, our country’s seemingly endless over-reaction to that act of horrific violence. The 9/11 attack killed thousands, but our actions since then have killed even more. During the last seventeen years, the United States has been in a number of wars that were somehow initially triggered by the attack on 9/11.

My oldest son fought in Iraq. He was deployed to fight in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, but we invaded that nation anyway. My son got shot. He killed people. He came back a very different man. In a strange way, his experiences can be traced back to September 11th, 2001. Would we have ever invaded Iraq if 9/11 had not happened? Would my son have gone to war? How many more young people will go to war because of 9/11?”

September 12th, 2018

The shofar is a strange instrument. It has a rather limited musical range. The ram’s horn  has only one note on its scale. The person blowing the shofar can make the sound of the blast short or long, or loud or soft, but those are the only options. However, the shofar does look pretty cool. I have to admit that.

Rabbi Dinin gave his sermon, or “drash”, prior to his blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. “Drash” is an interesting word for me. Many years ago, I studied Arabic, and one of the first words that we learned in class was “darasa” (درس), which means “to study”. Even though “drash” comes from Hebrew, it seems to me that it is related to “darasa”. Both words somehow have to do with learning. This may be a small and insignificant connection, but it is a connection nonetheless. I spend most of my waking hours looking for connections. I look for the things that bind us together, and I rejoice when I find one.

The rabbi spoke about the significance of Rosh Hashanah. It is first and foremost, the beginning of the Jewish year. He tried to explain why the Jewish people used the shofar on this particular holy day. It was bit hard for me to follow all of what he said, but my understanding is that Rosh Hashanah is both a day of rejoicing, and a day of judgment. On a day of rejoicing, a day when the King is here among us, then a trumpet would be used to celebrate that day. However, Rosh Hashanah is not just a day of rejoicing, it is also a day when the King (God) judges us. A trumpet is not intense or deep enough. The shofar, despite its obvious musical shortcomings, is very moving and very visceral. The sound that it makes comes from the heart.

Rabbi Dinin also talked about how we are judged. I found that part of his drash to be intriguing. He was speaking about the Jewish people, but he could have been talking about almost anyone. The rabbi described the view of the sages that a person is perhaps judged more harshly by God as an individual, than as a member of a group. A single Jew, standing naked and alone before the judgment of God, is more at risk than when he or she can be judged as part of the Children of Israel. The good deeds of the “people” can make up for the failings of an individual. This is not to say that each person is not responsible for their own actions. It is more that our individual actions are considered within the context of our community.

There is an echo of this view within my own tradition, Catholicism. Catholics place (or used to place) a huge emphasis on community. With Catholics it is never the idea of “me and my God”. It is always “Our God and us”. This is in stark contrast to the view of some of the Protestant Christians, who focus intensely on a personal and exclusive relationship with God. The Jewish perspective, and the Catholic perspective, is that we are all in this together. There is no such thing as a private sort of salvation. Looking out for number one is not an option. We are all inter-connected.

Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, once said that when she died, God might ask her, “Where is everyone else?”

The point is that we all go to God together. Or, we don’t go to Him at all.

Happy New Year.

September 4th, 2018

My Old School from Steely Dan

I just stared at the name of the sender of the email. It was from John. I didn’t open it. I was curious as to what the message would say, but I also suspected that its contents would cause me endless frustration. The email was in response to one of mine, and I kind of sensed where this interaction was going. I have often traded messages with this person in the past, and most of the time, our exchange of words has been amicable. The exception to that is when we start talking about our alma mater, West Point.

John and I both graduated in the Class of 1980 from the United States Military Academy (USMA). We were actually in the same company, B-4. We were in daily contact with each other each and every day for four years. We came from radically different family backgrounds, but we were (and are) friends. John and I spent much of the summer of 1978 together in Alaska, courtesy of the U.S. Army. Over the years, we have maintained an intermittent Internet relationship. We haven’t seen each other, or heard each other’s voices, in thirty-eight years. In a way, it is remarkable that we have any relationship at all. Perhaps, in truth, we don’t.

Our paths diverged upon our graduation. We were both Army officers, but John went into Field Artillery, and I went into Aviation. At the end of John’s service, he moved into a position in the defense industry; not an unusual transition for a West Point grad. When I got out of the Army, I got a job in trucking, and then I became an anti-war activist; a very unusual transition for a West Point graduate. One of John’s sons went to war in Afghanistan. My eldest son, Hans, went to war in Iraq. John seems to be okay with the fact that his son fought in a war. I am not. I am proud of Hans, but I wish to God that he had never enlisted. I don’t think the war did him no good at all.

John has stayed very connected with our old school. He is involved in many activities with alumni and current students (cadets). He really likes to maintain that connection with USMA. More power to him. Somebody should keep the faith with the Long Grey Line. However, that person is not me.

I have not set foot on the campus of West Point since 1981. I have no plans to ever do so. Karin and I traveled up the Hudson River Valley a year ago, and there was a clear opportunity for us to stop at my school. I declined to do that. There is nothing there that I miss. There is nothing there that I want to remember. Karin didn’t know me when I was a cadet. It is probably best that she doesn’t know that experience, even vicariously.

West Point is a strange place. The experience of a student there is a cross between attending an Ivy League college, and doing time in prison. For me, it was a four-year-long mind fuck. After nearly forty years, I am still a bit off kilter.

Oh, back to the email…

John cannot understand my feelings toward USMA. He truly cannot. He writes to me about West Point and the alumni functions, and I, like an idiot, respond by saying that I want no part of such affairs. Then we get on to a seemingly endless exchange of emails, where John tries his best to convince me that I should revere our alma mater, and where I tell him to go pound sand. It never ends well.

In my last message to John, I told him, “I was there, things happened, and it’s over.”

The message from him, that I refused to open, no doubt had a pithy response to my statement.

Keep in mind that John is a very good man, and that he is smarter than I am. He really is. I am helpless against his logic and reasoning. The problem is not that John chooses to be the keeper of the flame for our old school. The problem is that he expects me to do the same. I can’t and I won’t.

I agree with John that our time at West Point changed our lives immensely. There can be no question about that. The real question is: “How were our lives changed?”

John became a staunch defender of the status quo with regards to the U.S. military. I became a pacifist and a friend of the Catholic Workers. I am still both those things. How did this all happen? I have no idea. It just is.

I deleted John’s email. It was a cowardly act. I just couldn’t deal with it.

I plan to write to John in a month or two, and pretend that I never received his email. We can start over. Maybe.

September 4th, 2018

We had a big crowd tonight. I went with a couple other people to the psych ward of the VA hospital to visit with the patients. As usual, we brought them snacks and drinks. The ward was full up. Twenty-one veterans came to hang out with us. Some of them just stopped by to grab some cookies or fruit. Some of them stayed to play cards. A few of them stayed to sit and talk.

One man stood off by himself. He was tall and gaunt. He had long, grey hair that hung down limply to his shoulders. He had a beard that matched his hair. The man wore glasses with thick lenses. The lenses made his grey eyes look abnormally large. His arms were thin and blotchy.

The man had a curious look. By that, I mean he looked like he was curious about something. He seemed interested in his surroundings, but perhaps a bit befuddled.

I spoke to him. “Hi, how are you?”

He smiled and replied, “Oh, I’m okay. I just wish I knew where I was.”

“Ohhhhhh….”, I replied.

The man looked absently around the ward and said, “I don’t know where I am. It seems like a nice place.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The man went on, “I wonder how long I’ve been here. Maybe I got here today. I don’t know…maybe I have been here a year.” He shrugged. “It’s okay. It would just be nice to know.”

“Yeah”, I said.

I asked the man, “What branch were you in?”

He smiled, “I was in the Army.”

“Me too.”

Then he asked me, “So what did you do?”

I told him, “I was a helicopter pilot.”

His eyes lit up, “Really? Wow. I don’t think I would have had it up here to do that”, as he pointed to his head.

“What did you do?”

The man answered, “I was a medic.” He laughed. “They pointed to three of us, and told us that we were all going to be medics. I remember some of that time, but only bits of it. I wish I could remember more.”

I told him, “I got out thirty years ago.”

He thought for a moment. “I am seventy years old, or maybe I am going to be seventy. I’m not sure. I got out, hmmmm, it must be fifty years ago. Something like that. Yeah.”

“That’s a long time.”

The man looked at me and said, “Oh yeah, it is.”

Then he paused, and said, “I would like to see my brothers and sisters. I wonder if they are still alive. They were all older than me.”

We looked at each other for a moment.

I told him, “I’m glad that I talked with you.”

He smiled again, and replied, “So am I. I think I will grab some of those grapes.”

I meditate with a Zen sangha. We strive to achieve a “don’t know” mind. We try to get to a point before thinking, before judging. We work so hard to accept things just as they are. We attempt through sheer force of will to be in the moment.

I just met a guy with a “don’t know” mind. He doesn’t work at all. He just is. 

I envy him.

September 2nd, 2018

James and I were standing next to each other in the plaza in downtown Chicago. We were both holding signs explaining the reason for our group’s political demonstration (i.e. our opposition to the sale of American munitions to the Saudis, which the Saudis then use to murder Yemeni school kids). It was still mid-morning, and much of the plaza was in shadow because the sun was hiding behind the skyscrapers. I was tired, and my thoughts were confused. I was just watching the endless flow of traffic. James attempted to make conversation, and I was giving him monosyllabic responses. Finally, he asked me,

“What gives you life?”

“WTF?”

I was dumbfounded by that question. I mumbled something back to James. I couldn’t come up with an answer. I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t feeling very alive at that moment.

He looked around at our protest, and then he asked me, “Does doing this give you life?”

These were rather profound questions. They were definitely not what I expected to hear. James is an intelligent and thoughtful young man. He is given to asking penetrating questions. He doesn’t make small talk, so in a way it wasn’t that much of a surprise that he asked me about what gives me life. Thinking back on it, that is exactly the kind of thing he would ask.

Silence prevailed.

Was participating in the protest giving me life? I don’t know. It felt like the right thing to do, but it also felt a bit pointless. A political demonstration is an act of faith as much as anything else. My faith in God, in myself, and everything else was at a low ebb that morning.

Finally, I said to James, “In response to your previous question, about what gives me life, I would have to say that it’s my kids that give me life.”

I went on, “My children give me a purpose. Even when they struggle and suffer, and they do, they give me life. They need me. I need to be needed. That’s important to me. I can’t fix their problems, but I can help. That’s why I am alive.”

James replied, “They just want your love and support. That is all I want from my parents.”

“I’m not sure how good I am at supporting them. They call me. Hans calls me a couple times a week. I just listen to what he has to say.”

James responded, “Well, you’re there for them. You listen to them. A lot of parents don’t do that.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We talked about Hans for a while. I told James about Hans’ experiences in the Iraq War. Then we talked about vets. Then we talked about the Native Americans, because they know how to deal with returning vets. The conversation flowed from one subject to the next.

It got to be almost 2:00 PM. I needed to catch the train back home. I told James that I was going. He put down his sign and hugged me. As I left, he said,

“Keep on living.”

August 31st, 2018

I helped to unload Bob’s car. Bob was temporarily parked in the center lane of Dearborn, which is a busy, one-way street heading north through the heart of the Loop in Chicago. Bob and Kathy had Bob’s car packed with stuff. There were signs to hold, flyers to hand out, and forty-four blue backpacks.

Forty-four-blue backpacks?

They were small school bags, all identical. They were the kind that a small child would carry. There were exactly forty-four of them because forty-four Yemeni boys got killed in August during a bombing attack. One bag for each of the children.

Note: I just found out that ten of the boys survived. So, there were actually thirty-four students killed in the attack. That is still thirty-four too many.

The United States, for reasons that seem obscure, has been backing a Saudi-based coalition that is waging war against a Houthi-led rebellion in Yemen.  In essence, The U.S. is supporting one side in a civil war in a country that is almost unknown to us. On August 9th, the Saudi coalition dropped a bomb on a school bus packed with children. The reasons for this attack are also obscure. In any case, the kids had been on a school trip. The bus received a direct hit from a five hundred pound bomb that had been manufactured by Lockheed Martin and sold to the Saudis. Photos from after the attack show a bus that has been reduced to a pile of twisted, burned metal. There is also a photo of burned and bloody school bags. Blue school bags.

This attack is only the most egregious example of the crimes that the Saudi coalition has committed during its war in Yemen. For several years this coalition has done its best to create am overwhelming humanitarian crisis in Yemen. People are starving there. People are dying of cholera. For some reason starvation and disease don’t get the world’s attention. A burning bus full of schoolkids does.

We were going to protest against this attack by standing in the plaza of the Federal Building on the corner of Dearborn and Adams. The demonstration was not just about this particular bombing attack. After all, there are bombing attacks going on throughout the world every day. We were protesting the U.S. policy that allows munitions manufacturers in our country to sell arms to people like the Saudis, who then use these weapons to kill civilians. By extension, the United States is complicit in war crimes. The tragedy is that nobody in this country seems to care about that fact, or even to know anything about it.

There is a large metal sculpture in the plaza, called “The Flamingo”. There is also a large flagpole in the plaza, where the American flag currently flies at half mast, to remember Senator John McCain. We decided to place the forty-four bags on the pavement in front of the the flagpole. It made for a good visual display. Bob had placed cans of beans and newspapers inside the backpacks to keep them upright. Kathy wanted the school bags arranged in a neat pattern, like a World War I cemetery in Flanders, or like Arlington.

We had seven signs to hold up. Bob explained to me that the signs had to be in order, because they spelled out our message. He said, “It’s like a Burma Shave advertisement along a highway.” The fact that both of us actually know what “Burma Shave” was, and how their ads looked, should tell you something about our age.

We were generally short handed during the course of the demonstration. Sometimes each person had to hold up two signs. Kathy usually handed out the leaflets. She was good at explaining what we were doing to people passing by. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic on that corner. Some people ignored us. Some people stopped to look for a moment. A few people even stopped to talk to us. I think that some folks showed a genuine interest in reason for the protest. Some others just figured that the circus had come to town.

Demonstrations don’t often change hearts and minds. Mostly, they create a momentary awareness. I am convinced that most of the people who looked at our display had known nothing about the massacre in Yemen prior to seeing us holding our signs. Even after seeing the school bags and reading our signs, many of them may not have cared. I saw a number of people shrug and then go on their way. However, for a minute or two, they thought about those kids. I look at it this way: maybe a thousand people walk past our  demonstration. Of those people, maybe one hundred give some thought to the issue. Of those one hundred people, maybe ten write to their Senator or take some other sort of action to stop the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. As far as I am concerned, even ten people who get involved is a win.

All sorts of people took pictures of us with their phones. That seems to be the way of the world. If a person sees something interesting to them, they take a photo, and then maybe put it on Facebook or Instagram. One young woman approached us while carrying a sketch pad.

She asked us, “Could I draw a picture of you all? I want to remember this scene.”

We eagerly gave the young woman permission to do so. She spent several minutes with her pencil and paper, scribbling as she look at us from the sidewalk. When she finished, she thanked us and showed us the image she had drawn. I wonder how she will post that.

A family walked in front of us. There was a mom, a dad, and two young boys. They read our signs. One boy looked very perplexed. He kept staring at the backpacks. His mother knelt down by him, and she spoke to him about the school bags. She talked with her son for quite a while. When she got back up, she came over speak with us.

She had a Slavic accent. The mother said to us, “I want to thank you for doing this. The bags, they helped me to explain all this to my children. The bags, they are very good. Thank you.”

A guy came up to us, and looked quizzically at the bags and the signs. He had a “Trump” button pinned to his jacket. He came up to me, and asked,

“So, what’s this all about? Do we hate all the Arabs now?”

“Uh no, there a lot of different kinds of Arabs.”

The man went on, “Okay. I just want to know what your message is here. What are you trying to say?”

I replied, “We are against the United States selling weapons to the Saudis so that the Saudis can kill kids in Yemen with them.”

The man told me, “All right. I’m not being critical. That’s good. I’m with you on this.” Then he smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

Another man approaches us. He seemed outraged.

“Why isn’t this in the news?! Here we are in the middle of a five day memorial for a war criminal, and nobody even knows about this stuff happening in Yemen! Thanks for doing this!”

Not all our visitors were happy with us. I was standing next to James, when a black man came to talk with our group of sign holders. The man had no shirt. His eyes were blood red and feverish. He held a Bible in his left hand.

“What all this about?”

Bob tried to explain that it was a way to tell people about the killing in Yemen.

The man looked confused. He asked us, “Can I have one of them backpacks?”

Bob told him, “No.”

“You all got a bunch of them backpacks. Can’t I have just one?”

Bob explained that we had a school bag for each child. We needed all of them.

“I only want one!”

The man didn’t get a backpack. He wasn’t happy about it. He walked away.

Later he came back to the plaza. He lied down on a stone bench.

James said to me, “Our friend is back. This time he has on a jacket, and he has a backpack.”

I looked at the man trying to sleep on a rock hard bench. I shook my head. I said,

“He’s just suffering…

“Like we all are”, said James.

Yeah, like we all are. Like the families of those kids in Yemen. Like the homeless people in Chicago. Like every person who walked past us. Every single one of us is suffering.

What do we do about it?

August 29th, 2018

She sat alone at the back table. She had just walked into the break room of the psych ward at the VA a few minutes earlier. The young woman had looked over the table covered with snacks, and she had taken a paper cup full of popcorn. Then she had huddled into a corner of the room, sitting by herself at the furthest table from everyone else, nibbling idly at her popcorn. Physically, she had isolated herself, but she listened intently to the conversation in the room.

Jim and I were talking about my son, Hans. Hans is an Iraqi War vet. We were discussing his credit score, or lack of one. The last that I heard, Hans had a credit score in the low 500’s. I suggested that Hans had such a screwed up score because he had been in a combat mode with regard to finances. If a soldier (or veteran) isn’t sure that he will live to see tomorrow, he tends to spend money he may not have. The young woman, who was sitting alone, nodded to herself when I said that.

Jim asked, “So, how long does it take to recover from that low of a score?”

The woman in the back chimed in, “Six years.”

Jim turned and asked her, “Really? That long?”

She only nodded.

I moved from where I was sitting over to her table. I looked more closely at the woman. She was curled up almost into a ball, her legs pulled up close and her arms wrapped around them. She was actually thin and tall, and attractive in a punk rock sort of way. I had seen that when she had checked out the snack table. She had long, straight, blond hair. The woman had numerous tattoos. They started at the backs of her hands and extended all the way up both her arms.

The conversation shifted to vets getting disability. The young woman was obviously experienced in this area. She had already received a certain level of disability, but she wasn’t yet at 100%. She told Jim,

“It takes a long time for an application to go all the way up the chain to a person who can actually make a decision. It took me seven years to get any kind of answer.”

Jim said, “Well, I bet it doesn’t take as long for Medal of Honor recipients. Their requests probably get pushed right along.”

The woman gave Jim a rueful smile, “I don’t know about Medal of Honor, but a Purple Heart didn’t do anything for me.”

Jim asked her, “You got a Purple Heart? Where were you? Iraq?”

She nodded.

Jim asked her, “When were you there?’

“2006.”

I did some mental arithmetic. If she had been in Iraq in 2006, then she had to be at least thirty now. She was probably Hans’ age. But he was in Iraq much later, in 2011.

I looked at her again. She had lines in her face that didn’t belong there. Mostly, I noticed her eyes. Her eyes were always restless. They darted from place to place. They were hyper-alert, wary. The woman had the eyes of a hunted animal.

Jim asked her if she had any support. She said that she had some people that helped her, but she was somewhat vague about it. Jim asked her about her family.

She looked intently at him and said, “I don’t have any contact with my family any more. They detached themselves from me.”

That was an interesting word: “detached”. It sounds so neutral. It was like her family members had just cut her loose like an anchor that had snagged on the sea bottom. Her voice was almost without emotion when she spoke. Almost.

Jim smiled at me. “Well, Frank, he isn’t detached from his girl. He’s still hanging with her.”

I said grimly, “You’re right. I won’t abandon her. Not until I have to put her in a box.”

The blond woman looked away from me for a moment.

The woman told us about how she had a PTSD flash back experience, and the cops were called on her. They handcuffed her, and tried to force her into an ambulance. The young woman has an intense phobia about ambulances, and she resisted the police. They hurt her, and they charged her with battery and other offenses. The young vet is still trying to sort out those legal issues. She still has medical problems from injuries sustained during her arrest.

I talked to the vet about the young woman who is important to me. I told her about the struggles of that girl.  The tattooed woman nodded at times. Sometimes, she just looked into the distance.

The vet asked me, “How old is this woman?’

“Twenty-seven.”

She nodded and smiled, “We would probably get along really well.”

I replied, “I think you’re right.”

The vet told me about her pet cat.

She told me, with a hint of sadness, “I don’t have any kids. My cat is my baby.”

I told her, “That is exactly what my girl says about her dog. She is her baby.”

The young woman smiled. It was a thin, sad smile.

Jim and the others were getting ready to go. I was going with them.

I got up and I told the young woman, “I am really glad that I could talk with you.”

She looked up at me from where she was sitting,and said, “You have a lot on your chest. I hope that your burden gets lightened for you.”

I thanked her. I left.

August 28th, 2018

This article from me was printed/posted in the Capitol Times of Madison, WI yesterday.

“Back in 1988, Lee Atwater ran the presidential campaign for George H.W. Bush. Atwater is best known for running ads against the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, that featured a murderer and rapist named Willie Horton. Willie Horton committed horrific crimes while on prison furlough while Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts. Atwater ran those ads in order to show Dukakis as being soft on crime. Since Horton was a black man, the ads also aroused racial fears among voters in that election.

Fast forward thirty years. Mollie Tibbitts has just been found murdered in Iowa. Her alleged killer is an undocumented immigrant. Already, President Trump is using this terrible tragedy to smear immigrants, legal or otherwise. It is unlikely that Trump cares at all about Mollie Tibbitts. Likewise, I don’t think that Atwater cared anything about the victims of Willie Horton. Trump and his cohort care very much that her alleged killer is useful to them politically. We can expect to hear a great about Mollie Tibbitts and her accused murderer from now until Election Day.

This is Trump’s Willie Horton moment.”