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EarthAirWater: Fading from History: Vietnam Peace Campaign
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Sunday, May 3, 2015. Fading from History: Vietnam Peace Campaign. Rep Barbara Lee speaking to peace marchers (photo: Jan Barry). 8220;It was the power of your protests that ended the Vietnam War! 8221; Congresswoman Barbara Lee shouted out to a history-making group of graying peace activists who marched past the south lawn of the White House and trooped across the Mall to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC on Saturday. Vets for Peace march in Washington, DC 1967. 8220;The curtain is go...
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EarthAirWater: June 2014
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Monday, June 30, 2014. From War to Peace Poet. Not many poets these days embrace being peace activists. Based on poems published in popular magazines, readers would have no clue what contemporary poets think about Americans’ addiction to waging—and continually celebrating—an endless litany of wars. Doug Rawlings embraces being a poet and a leader of Veterans For Peace. His new book, Orion Rising: Collected Poems. 8220;As a veteran,” he writes in his book dedication, “I feel a specific obligat...In “...
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EarthAirWater: September 2014
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Monday, September 22, 2014. Saving the World: Where’s the Cavalry? US Cavalry in Yellowstone Park (photo: PBS). With our nation now threatened by industrial pollution’s impact on the world’s environment, the question is where is today’s cavalry? Where is the modern version of General Sheridan’s campaign to save a corner of the earth from the destructive forces the U.S. Army blazed the trails for and ushered into the American West? It wasn’t as dramatic perhaps as the U.S. Cavalry riding to ...A shock wav...
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EarthAirWater: Bookends: The War at Home
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Tuesday, February 3, 2015. Bookends: The War at Home. Citing a new book about the Iraq War by a harshly critical war veteran, President Obama says Americans need to think more clearly about the costs of sending troops into our Middle Eastern wars. 8220;Over vacation, I read a book of short stories by Phil Klay called Redeployment. A few days before Obama’s shout out, the author drew a standing-room-only crowd for a discussion about his book, which won a 2014 National Book Award, with students and f...
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EarthAirWater: March 2015
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Tuesday, March 10, 2015. In a case of historical overkill, the United States Government is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War—not just this month, but for 13 years. In an attempt to provide some historical perspective, the Obama Administration began commemorating the 50th anniversary of the war in Vietnam on Memorial Day 2012. This means that the Pentagon’s official history now says that the war started in 1962. How cruel these words must sound to the ghosts of tens of thousands of Vietn...
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EarthAirWater: December 2014
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Tuesday, December 23, 2014. From winter’s darkest night. Earth rejoices, as do we…. Friday, December 12, 2014. Christmas Truce (Painting by Angus McBride). This spontaneous truce took place on Christmas 1915, a year after such truces sprang up in so many places where armies of several nations were faced off in trenches bristling with massed rifles and machineguns backed by artillery barrages that the world war Christmas Truce was enshrined in history books. We all grew up with the story of soldiers from ...
earthairwater.blogspot.com
EarthAirWater: February 2015
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Tuesday, February 3, 2015. Bookends: The War at Home. Citing a new book about the Iraq War by a harshly critical war veteran, President Obama says Americans need to think more clearly about the costs of sending troops into our Middle Eastern wars. 8220;Over vacation, I read a book of short stories by Phil Klay called Redeployment. A few days before Obama’s shout out, the author drew a standing-room-only crowd for a discussion about his book, which won a 2014 National Book Award, with students and f...
earthairwater.blogspot.com
EarthAirWater: July 2014
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Sunday, July 27, 2014. Learning from a Therapeutic Poet. WD Ehrhart is not the sort of rarified poet readers ponder in The New Yorker. He doesn’t teach at a famous university. And yet, his poetry and memoirs are so widely taught in the U.S. and abroad that a veritable emporium of essays about Ehrhart’s life and literary works has now been published. Ehrhart is perhaps best known as the author of Vietnam-Perkasie: a Combat Marine Memoir. He is also the author or editor of a bookshelf-ful of poetry collect...
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EarthAirWater: October 2014
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Thursday, October 30, 2014. Another Kind of Poetry. Imagine a poetry opera: seventeen poets presenting an array of poems that wove a tapestry of battle-battered, yet persistent themes on war, accompanied by a jazz band and a trio of singers whose wistful harmonies were bell-ringing clear and eerie as funeral hymns. The eclectic cast included Dodge Poetry Festival featured poets Jehanne Dubrow, Elyse Fenton, Charles H. Johnson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gardner McFall, Marilyn Nelson, Brian Turner plus—...Music w...
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EarthAirWater: The Day after Holidays
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Tuesday, May 26, 2015. The Day after Holidays. Spring near Ground Zero, NYC (photo: Jan Barry). But grief is unruly. It has its own timeline. Sometimes, the hardest time is the day after the official social rituals. The day after Memorial Day 2014. A Marine vet I know. Tried to kill himself—. This is what he said. To a group of fellow vets:. 8220;The day after Memorial Day,. I tried to kill myself—. Woke up in the hospital. I’ve had 17 friends commit suicide—. I’ve lost more friends to suicide. Park Cent...
