You hear it a lot: Men and women soldiers went to war. When they came home, they would not often speak of what they’d done and seen. Many in media have tried to lionize entire generations of vets for ‘not speaking,’ remaining silent, ‘stiff upper lip…’ These were touted as signs of character. ** And they can be in certain instances. But for many vets who seldom told their war stories, the media’s enchantment with ‘the strong silent type’...

Nowadays, USA military recruitment posters portray square jawed men and women of all races. Will they ever have one with a little Jewish soldier guy on it? Maybe with a great headline: Oy Vey! Join up today! Ok, maybe not. But if they made a poster of U.S. Army Lieutenant Kurt Klein, they might consider adding wings to his shoulders, and running a line at the bottom which reads “Our soldiers might be small in stature, but they’re huge in soul.” Auschwitz. 1998. Bumping along...

It’s a good match. Ever since I’ve been riding, ‘the rough bikers’ I’ve known have called their women, ‘my old lady.’ But now there’s a whole different kind of ‘lady’ associated with bikers too. Younger, older, and all in between. The American Gold Star Mothers are those who have had a son or daughter killed in war. Some of the mothers have white hair and walk with walkers now. Some are young mothers, not yet 40 years old; they lost their...

I find that the quotes of war Generals of times past are often the best prayers for peace. General MacArthur said many brutal things about brutal war. And, he also said this: “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” General Douglas MacArthur ** Photo by Jim Mahoney/Dallas Morning News ***The two soldiers in the photo are Houston James, a Pearl Harbor veteran survivor, and Marine Staff Sgt. Mark...

One more time, there’s going to be a dead-end argument about what liberals are made of and what conservatives are made of. Yet neither Elizabeth Hasselbeck nor Rosie O’Donnell are on TV as representatives of either group. They are/ were on TV to bring life to The View and to gain audience and advertisers. The underlying issue about The View, I think is about Miss O’Donnell’s bigness. And Miss Walters’ mouseness. There’s a saying where I come from in the northwoods,...

Where does the money come from to fund Pastor Fred Phelps’ church congregation air travel and hotel stays all over the country? The Phelps’ church is composed of about 35 family members whose sole activity besides maintaining a website www.godhatesfags.com appears to be protesting the funerals of gay people, military and most recently Jerry Falwell’s funeral as well. This, about Reverend Falwell from Phelps’ website: “As a young man, Jerry Falwell was a Calvinistic...

The Sun in the Senate grows hotter. Gonzales flies blind, by claiming no memory about critical questions in hearings, a bad omen for a man who is charged with keeping track of important details for an entire nation. The wax holding the feathers in the fake wings, is softening… it appears to be a matter of time If anyone wonders why the entire Latino ocean in the USA is not pulling itself out to sea in preparation for a huge tidal wave of protest about Alberto Gonzales being treated unfairly...

In a horrific Brigadoon, a place that only comes into view once every millennia, a place where everyone seems related by cousin kinship to everyone else, the police chief of Bashiqa in northern Iraq is being replaced. Authorities over him have arrested four men alleged to have participated in the ‘honor killing’ last month of Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi. Without any evidence the alleged killers (one of them a cousin) accused her of seeing a boy of another...

On Mother’s Day, this libretto excerpt is offered to those who were lucky enough to have had what I call, “a beautiful, imperfectly-perfect mother,” but one who too early passed from this world… especially hard when she has been the ground note for her sons and daughters. Some of us did not have a mother we can remember without fear, but that doesn’t keep us from recognizing a special bond between many mothers and their children wherever we see it… and blessing...

The collective unconscous remembers everything that modern culture has forgotten and covered over. So here, let us go behind the Hallmark card displays, where there is a little door, and entering through, we find ourselves in a muddy field where the land has been fed by boys’ blood. And, just this then whilst standing here on this field meant to grow life but which became a slaughter site instead…. Mother’s Day evolved from a specially coded day begun after the Civil War. In 1870,...

It would appear that the Queen is far more savvy or has a very savvy behind the scenes manager or manageress: The BBC reports that The Queen’s tour of the United States “is the Queen’s first carbon-offset state visit, where a donation is made to an environmental charity to offset the plane journeys made by the royal party.” This seems such a contrast to the recent City of Westminster’s UK report, “Air pollution in London is higher that anywhere else in the UK....

In a time of war, of such loss of life of the young, or no end in sight, to see dignitaries bowing and laughing and joking, surely a long, serious table grace is called for. SEED CORN SHALL NOT BE GROUND Seed corn: The best qualities of each green living thing, kept for seed so the next generation on earth will flower. I first worked at the VA as an aide and I saw them come back from hell… Hell! Hell was still smoking inside them: Front line men, artillery, tank and tail, helicopter, hand...

“And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.” Laura Bush Dear Mrs. Bush, With respect… You are an older woman of a certain age and so am I. You try to help people, and I try to help people too. You are a mother who loves her children; I am a mother who loves her children also. You support adult literacy projects, and because my family of immigrants...

Let us pray. My God. My God. Let us pray. My first understanding of the madness of some few from the cultures from the Mideast came here in the USA when Iranian-American women and their children fled to our shelter for battered women, one of the first in the country, back in 1970. Their family men battered the walls and locked doors with their bodies, broke windows, screaming insanely without cease. Rage. Rage with no skin. The bellowing aggression of the abused women’s family men… rivaled...

Once upon a time, some brilliant souls conceived the idea to hire many photographers and memoirists who would, all on the same day, all across the country, make photographs and gather vignettes of the people… working, playing, debating, sorrowing, enjoying, challenging. I liked the subsequent books called, One Day in the Life of America; One Day in the Life of Russia…. On a much smaller scale, analyzing a set of terms of American Congressional bills, in the life of our Federal Congress...

They were identical decaplets, split ten times from the same zygote, and hard to tell apart. Tonight, all ten GOP men who want to be president of the free world, lined up behind tiny podiums as though they were about to play Jeopardy. They vied just as hard as any time-limited contestant on a game show. They were eager to hit the questions running as soon as they were called on by the moderator, Chris Matthews. But the deciding factor in the presidential race is going to be authenticity, realness...

If I were from Mars, I would wonder why human beings concentrate so hard on what I once heard a human being refer to as the “real estate” of the body… those ‘parts’ without armor that occur at the joining of their legs and torsos. Modern humans seem to focus on this one tiny area on their bodies to the exclusion of all the rest of the body. What about the ears? The head? The brain? The heart? There must be something about those ‘parts’ that is as vital...

From the Headquarters of Sir Winston Churchill near Blenheim Palace May 3, 2007 Dear President Bush, Just this my dear man: “Let us learn our lessons… Never believe any war will be smooth and easy… or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. “The statesman who yields to war-fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable...

Telling Truth To Lies on Capitol Hill re Falsified Stories about Her Captivity in Iraq Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense –shouldn’t he be called to ‘The Hill’ to answer about his oversight, or lack of it, on this matter? and not one more time let ‘the who, what, why, where, how and when’ of this seeming ‘failed publicity stunt’ fall to his subordinates… who are then forced to engage in a circular firing squad using finger pointing...

6:43 MST, on MSNBC April Tues 24, 2007 On television tonight, I thought I was seeing things… the headline under Karl Rove’s photo on a newstory about Rove scrutiny deepening, read in large letters: Karl Rove, TurdBlossom The next screen said “Blossoming Investigation.”

This is a collection of various comments by 6, 7, and 8 year olds with regard to giving them only Karl Rove’s name and his title. I work from time to time in schools as an Artist in Residence for the State. I tell the children ‘a mystery,’ in this case the very long title belonging to Mr. Rove. Then each child writes or speaks, wrestling with what all the words mean together and separately. Sometimes I use a news headline of the day, and an image, idea or brief news-story or...

Will Alberto R. Gonzales become the newest Icarus of this Administration, I mean, this ancient Greek tragedy, now? It can be a terrible thing to love a father so much that even though you are falling fast, your father only cheerily bids you to flap harder… The young Icarus so trusted his father Daedelus, that he believed him when his father said, “Here just put on this leathern harness and these sad feathers stuck into wax on this frail wooden frame of office, I mean, wings. Now, see,...

Heads up: Calling all sister and brother bikers for funeral patrol… bring ’round those fatheads and flatheads, shovelheads, and ironheads, and make ready to ride the pegs if need be… your services may be called upon very shortly. Pastor Fred, a/k/a/ Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., who refers to himself and his grown children as “the most hated family in America,â€? claims he and his Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist ‘church’ –which is made up almost entirely...

I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH I met Nikki Giovanni when our respective book tours crossed paths many years ago. She is one of the most accessible, generous, and fierce warrior women on the planet, definitely written into my Book of the Blessed. Below is her chant-poem she spoke this morning at the convocation, the first meeting of the student body, faculty and administration since the massacre yesterday. (See and hear her high oratory at http://www.cnn.com/ under heading “Cheers, ‘Let’s...

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés is a Psychoanalyst and Specialist in Critical Incident and Post Trauma Recovery, who developed psychological recovery protocol for the Armenian earthquake rescue, served at Columbine High School and community for four years after the massacre. She continues to work with 9-11 survivor families on both coasts. This morning, Dr. Estés released the complete protocol letter developed and used to train therapists and citizen-helpers for post-trauma recovery at disaster...