Food Basket Day

Good Wife Sue pointed out to me that the ECW ladies had green beans on Wednesday, not corn. I had corn at my Thursday meeting with the Board of Directors for Kaskaskia Workshop, Inc., a non-profit on which I serve. I knew it was a vegetable of some kind! AND, the symphony was "Reformation" not "Revelation." Anyway, it was good music. More later......

Well, later has now come. I'm doing this on my new laptop - a Dell Inspiron. So far I like it, but the transition from XP is rather large. Vista seems to want to do things its way, not the way I have grown comfortable with. When I first loaded some photos from my camera, I didn't pay attention to where they were going. Trying to find them later was a real chore. But as I have grown more comfortable with the machine things are getting easier.

Today at church we did our annual Thanksgiving Food give-away to 16 families, which included 43 people. That doesn't sound like much, but it is a nice thing for a small family sized church (25 - 50 members) to do. Each box of food cost us $29.44 and it will feed a family of four for three days. Given the state of our economy here that three days can b really important. So I am glad to be able to do it. Helpers this year were Bill and Chonita Smith, Wayne and Sandy Garner, Marcia Lever and Good Wife Sue.

Wayne and I drove to the Save-a-Lot store in his pickup to get the groceries, then everyone chipped in to put them into boxes. After that Wayne, Sandy, and Marcia left while Bill, Chonita, Sue and I stayed to do the actual give-away. From 10:00 AM until noon, people drove into our driveway and picked up their food baskets. All were very thankful, but that isn't why we do it - we do it because we have been told to care for the least of Christ's brothers and sisters.



Good Wife Sue and I are off to Nebraska to spend Thanksgiving with family. I don't know if I'll have time to blog, so in the meantime,

Sleep well and God bless all. TAD+

People This Week

The last week has been both hectic and enjoyable. A week ago I visited Virginia Griggs in the hospital and her prognosis was still "TBD." Then, last Friday, she was released to home to continue her rehab there. Her husband, Bob, has converted a downstairs room into a bedroom for her, so now she won't ave to fight the stairs going up and down each day. She has a long way to go, but at least the first lap has been covered and now she and the family can concentrate on the rest of the race.

On Wednesday morning I drove north to Effingham where Tom Carr, my Eucharistic Visitor, entered the hospital to undergo surgery fot prostate cancer. I anointed him and visited with his wife, Margaret, for a bit before driving back to Salem for the afternoon.

A bit after 3 PM I visited Earl Moldovan at his rehab and he had fantastic news - he would be released to home on Friday. After that he would have a health care worker come in on a daily basis for a couple of weeks to get him started on his home rehab PT. In a visit to his home several days earlier, the therapist put Earl though his paces and determined that with the addition of a grab bar in the shower and a stool for him to sit on while bathing, the house didn't need any further modifications. Earl's son, Sandy, had installed a ramp for Earl to use for entry and exit to the house, but the therapist said that she preferred that he just use the steps since he now had the strength to do that and it made no sense to use a "crutch" that wasn't necessary. That is great news and all of Earl's friends at church and Rotary Club are looking forward to his return.

Wednesday evening, the ECW (Episcopal Church Women) held their Thanksgiving Dinner meeting. The main dish was pork loin and that was accompanied by salad, potatoes au gratin, and corn with a freshly baked dinner roll to accompan the meal. For dessert, everyone had their choice of raspberry pie or peanut butter pie. I settled for the raspberry pie and only gained two pounds in the meal!

I took most of Thursday off since I am already well over my hours for the month. Then, today, Good Wife Sue and I went to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for a lovely concert of Handel, Hayden and two pieces by Mendelsohn. The main Mendelsohn piece was "Revelation" which celebrated (in 1830) three hundred years of the Lutheran Augsberg Confession. Luther's great hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is our God" was a significant feature of that symphony, albeit, reworked greatly by Mendelsohn. A great lunch at Red Lobster followed and tonight I rang the bell at Wal-Mart for "Minister's Day" of starting the Ministerial Alliance fundraising efforts for the season.

We're hoping and praying for something more than $25,000 this year to use to feed the needy and help out with emergency assistance on Rent and Utilities. We've asked for the same amount every year for the last four or five years. We've always made it, but just. This year we hope that the recession doesn't cut down too much on giving - the need always goes up. Unemployment in Marion County is now over 11% - the official number. But the real rate is probably 16 - 18%. Wherever you are this year, give to your local charities. They really need your help if they are to keep helping others.

Sweet Dreams and God Bless All. TAD+

The Forever Wounded

From a USA Today news report on suicide among troops in Afghanistan:

Though findings of two new battlefield surveys are similar in several ways to the last ones taken in 2007, they come at a time of intense scrutiny on Afghanistan as President Barack Obama struggles to craft a new war strategy and planned troop buildup. There is also new focus on the mental health of the force since a shooting rampage at Fort Hood last week in which an Army psychiatrist is charged.

Both surveys showed that soldiers on their third or fourth tours of duty had lower morale and more mental health problems than those with fewer deployments. And an increasing number of troops are having problems with their marriages.
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I began the workup for my first deployment in March 1966. At the time I think almost every sailor I knew (enlisted and officer) was in favor of the war in Vietnam, each, no doubt, for his own reasons. We deployed in October of 1966 and served in the northern Gulf of Tonkin until June of 1967, when Long Beach returned to California.

My second tour began in September of 1967 after a few weeks of Terrier Guided Missile School. Our time was spend in the Tonkin Gulf and one or the other of the Search and Rescue Stations or on the Positive Identification and Radar Advisory Zone (PIRAZ) station. We served until July of 1968, when Reeves also returned to the states. During that tour, I sensed no lessening of enthusiasm for the war.

My third tour began in January of 1969 and lasted until August of the year. I was now the Weapons Officer on the Staff of Commander, Cruiser and Destroyer Forces, Seventh Fleet. We spent our time riding in gun cruisers Newport News and St. Paul, along the gun line. For the first time I began to hear officers talk about whether or not this was a good war for us to be in. There was much frustration owing to the official "Rules of Engagement," which informed us as to what actions we could take in various situations. For the first time I heard big time complaints about "having our hands tied by people in Washington." Others were increasingly aware of the rampant corruption of the South Vietnamese government and the untrustworthiness of increasing numbers of RVN troops. We began to conduct operations without first informing our "allies," since to do so meant that the Viet Cong (and increasingly the North Vietnamese Army - NVA) would know all about our plans.

Owing to injuries and school, I did not deploy for my fourth tour until October of 1971. By now I was the Weapons Officer on USS Parsons DDG-33. We divided our time between the Tonkin Gulf sations, where we would provide gunship cover for the cruiser on duty, Yankee Station, where we ran shotgun for a carrier, and the gunline, mostly in northern I Corps, near the DMZ, providing gunfire support to RVN troops in the field. Most of our time was on the gunline, where we engaged the bad guys on a daily basis. They only shot bakc at us about 3 or 4 times, without ever doing any major damage, only minor and no injuries.

By then the dissatisfaction among the enlisted men was growing into a problem. We had to check the small arms lockers numerous times each day to be on the lookout for disaffected men trying to steal hand grenades to "frag the Officer quarters or the Bridge." Some of the men talked about pressure from the wives to kiss their careers "good bye." My wife had earlier (1970 as I prepared to return to Vietnam - but was in a car accident that killed her and left me hospitalized for over four months) expressed the desire that I desert my post - both out of fear that I would be hurt or killed and out of a growing distaste for the war. Men began to report a desire to "do anything" to avoid going back into the combat zone. One man, a fellow named Teddie Short, did desert and ended up at a press conference in Moscow, USSR.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for infantry people on their third or fourth tour. Once, after a small action, someone said that navy life in the combat zone consisted of weeks of boredom and routine, punctuated by 90 seconds of terror! What the toll must have been upon the ground-pounding troops, who faced enemy action very frequently, can only be imagined. Anyone who has been in any combat is wounded for life, whether or not a shell found their body. There is no escape from those ghosts.

I sincerely hope that President Obama takes lots and lots of time to consider what to do next in Afghanistan. The life-long health of thousands of men and women depend upon his decision. He doesn't need to listen to the right-wing critics and bloviators who always urge rapid use of combat troops and some kind of panacea.

May God bless him as he thinks things through. And may God bless all of you this day. TAD+

Veteran's Day Reflection

I am ambivalent about Vietnam. It has now been almost forty years since I left the coast of Vietnam for the last time. I find that now I don’t think about it every single day – there can be periods of maybe a week when it doesn’t even enter my mind. But there are always reminders.

I used to have the wall of my office covered with pictures of the ships in which I served, but a couple of years back I took them down. Looking at them made me think about my life then and I didn’t want to dwell upon that. There are other things more wondrous that I can contemplate. The centerpiece of my wall now contains a copy of the Painting "A Welsh River Scene" by Robert Gallon.

Lately there has been an increase in the number of magazine articles and on-line items about the war in Vietnam, so it is hard to avoid it all of the time.

I’m proud of the way in which I served. From my first training sessions while on USS Long Beach (at Gunnery School in March 1966) to my final leave taking from USS Parsons in January 1973, I worked as hard as I could to learn my trade as a Naval Officer and as a Combat Systems Specialist (Weapon Systems). In the end, I grew quite proficient at my job. I enjoyed the work, the men, and the excitement of working with such "high tech" toys.

Opposed to that feeling of pride is the never-ending feeling of some (rather significant) guilt for that very role as a weapons person. Naval warfare is warfare "at a distance." Rarely does one actually see the enemy. Only once did I think I saw a North Vietnamese tank behind the sand dunes just below the DMZ. But, as best as I can recall from the actions in which I was a minor part, I was present and played a role, however minor, in the death of 1 – 2,000 people. People I never knew, but who, as Captain Wallace noted, had families and maybe even children waiting for their return home.

It is too easy to say that "it was the tenor of the times, when communism was seen as the ultimate foe." That is too easily coupled with that concept of "warfare at a distance" to yield an all-too-cheap grace, in which I forgive myself for what should not be forgiven. It’s also too easy to say that I was "just doing my job," for that is, in the end, an attempt to escape moral responsibility. I wonder if perhaps sailors, especially, have a need to consider the morality of their actions, to remind themselves that war is a violent affair between people. It’s too easy to forget that.

I know that I did. After all, we weren’t shooting at "people." We were shooting at a MIG on the radar scope, or a "concentration" of forces over in some jungle region, that a spotter had assigned to us or an enemy site at coordinates X and Y. Our targets never had faces or lives. They were just out there wishing us, and our allies, harm, so we killed them.

I think that much of the pain comes from the realization that "they" did not have to be our enemies. We were the first to arm and support Ho Chi Minh – during World War II – when he was a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese. He admired American ways, for he spent part of his young adulthood working as a dishwasher in New York City. He was familiar with The Atlantic Charter and hoped to free his people from French domination. But with the coming of the Cold War, and our acquiescence to the French colonial re-establishment, his only home was with the anti-colonial forces of communism. He had hope that his friends, the United States, would stay with him as he sought to forge a new and free Vietnam. But by then "communism" had become the boogey-man and Ho and his people had needlessly become our enemy. Ho remained true to his patriotic vision, while we lost our will to free people from colonial oppression.

My guilt stems in part from the fact that I had become aware of these historical facts by the time of my third tour, on CTG 70.8 in 1969. And most of the killing that I was directly involved with came in my fourth tour, with Parsons, from December 1971 through December 1972. My career had become more important than my basic American principles of serving the cause of freedom. I had become an American mercenary.

I have prayed for God’s forgiveness and, as a Christian minister I know that God’s forgiveness is mine. Someday I hope to be able to forgive myself.

All Saints Ends a Busy Week

What a week! It went by in a blur of activity. A bunch of people oriented events took place - none of which were expected. But that seems to be the life of a small family-sized church.

On Sunday, when Good Wife Sue and I went to the Salem Hospital to visit Earl, Tom C and family were just coming out of the ER. It turned out that Molly C., foster child of Tom's daughter Jennifer had just died. Tom told me that she woke up that morning in breathing distress and finally, at the ER, just stopped breathing altogether. Tom quickly baptised her before she was pronounced dead. Tom & Margaret were quite visibly affected by all of this as were Ryan and Teyah*, Jennifer's children. Jennifer was still in the ER with Molly's body. We visited Earl, but when we came back out Jennifer was gone from the hospital.

On Monday I had a growth removed from my forehead. I now have three stitches sticking out which my cat Serendipity insists upon rubbing with her chin when I am in bed at night! I wore a dressing on the wound for about 72 hours, but have since left it to "air cure." I'll see the doctor on Thursday to have the stitches removed. In the meantime I just have a dark spot on my forehead.

Monday night I got a call from Peppy Kay, Earl's daughter, that he had been transported from Salem to Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJC) in St. Louis. Earl's wife, Lorna, was still in Salem. Peppy Kay asked if I could bring her over to St. Louis the next day. I said, "Sure," and called Lorna who didn't want to go over until around noon on Tuesday. Lorna, Sue and I drove to BJC in the rain on Tuesday afternoon. Earl's blood tests were very confusing. In the end they figured out that he had suffered a mild heart attack, had gotten dizzy, and had fallen in the shower. His leg muscles were quite weak since he hasn't been getting much exercise lately. But all of that didn't become obvious until sometime Wednesday.

It seems that when Earl first talked with the doctors, he told them about his fall, but overlooked the dizzy spell as, in his words, "having nothing to do with my legs getting weak." When I heard that I went to GQ ("General Quarters" in military terms) and pulled both Earl's son and daughter aside and told them that the attending physician did not have a complete picture at what happened since Earl was filtering the information he gave them. They made sure that the cardiologist, Dr. Norlich, had the info, then things began to pull together.

By Thursday Earl was showing his basic strength and was improving by leaps and bounds. His blood tests, which had been "all over the map" (or so I was told) were stabilizing and it was decided that staying at BJC was not going to add anything. So Peppy Kay came over to Salem with Lorna and I took them out to one of our best nursing homes, Doctor's Nursing, to look over the rehab situation there. Doctor's had just added a new entire wing to the facility and the therapy staff was very enthusiastic - not in a "sales-pitchy" sort of way, but as professionals looking forward to helping Earl (it didn't hurt that most of them know both Lorna and Earl). Peppy Kay is a health-care professional in the great state of Georgia and knew all of the right questions to ask.

So it was decided to have Earl go to Doctor's for his rehab. He arrived on Friday night - a bit out of sorts, but who wouldn't be after all that he had been through. I went over on Saturday for a long, long private talk.

In the meantime, St. Thomas' Halloween Party for the City Kids built up to a crescendo of activity on the parts of Good Wife Sue and me. And then fell totally apart. The party - a cookout in the church garden along with games, etc. - was scheduled for Friday afternoon, to run from 3:30PM - 5:00PM. We were prepared for about 100 children plus their parents and had advertised the event with a big sign in the front yard of the church, fliers at the main businesses, and a flyer distribution program on Monday afternoon that left me exhausted (I walked about four miles putting fliers in door handles and handing them to people I met). Then, on Thursday the weather forecast called for 1 - 2 inches on rain, followed by another 1 - 2 inches on Friday.

I held off as long as I could, but early Friday morning, after checking latest weather forecast, checking the radar imagery, and looking at the motion of the storm on video, I ended up cancelling the entire thing. We had to call the radio station, I e-mailed all of the participants, and Sue called most of them just in case they weren't checking their e-mail in the AM.

Friday evening we had our semi-annual Poker Tournament. For that event, 25 guys and gals show up and pay a $10.00 entry fee. In return, they get a evening of fun and fellowship, a really neat "guy-type" supper, beer, soft drinks, and coffee. The three top "chip gatherers" get a small plaque and I take their picture with Danny S., the organizer of the event. On Saturday morning 20 Bridge players get their turn. The big differences are that they get served Bloody Marys, Virgin Marys, coffee or water, and the meal they enjoy is a small soup, a jello fruit salad, and a chicken salad croissant, along with dessert. The bridge folks also pay their $10.00. The basic income from both events was $400.00, but a few contribute extra, so altogether we got almost $600.00. Doing it twice a year brings in over $1,000, all of which is used for out food outreach to the less fortunate. Along with some other funds, I spend about $2,500 each year for food - reaching out this year to about 200 people.

Today was All Saints Sunday. That was the "normal" part of the service. At the Prayers of the People, I added a short liturgical set sending one of our young men off into the Marine Corps. I gave him a "military cross" and a "military prayer book" that Bishop Beckwith gave to me for him. Then I presented a "Remembering Cross" to Margaret C. to give to Jennifer for Molly.

After the service Sue, Sue F., and I went to a restaurant named "The Leaky Bucket," located at Forbes State Park Lake. This was their last open Sunday until around April 1. They serve, on Sunday, an "all-U-can-eat" fried chicken dinner that is very popular. I think I'm still stuffed from that! Afterwards Good Wife Sue and I visited Earl and gave him his Sunday Communion, along with his wife, Lorna.

Then it was back to the church to start getting ready for the semi-annual Episcopal Church Women (ECW) Rummage Sale. A crowd of six or eight showed up and we all joined together to pull out of storage what seemed like a ton of items for the sale, along with shelves and clothing racks. Now for the rest of the week ahead (until the sale on Friday and Saturday) the ECW folks will sort, stack, hang, display, and price the items for sale.

I always end up saying "I'll sure be glad when this is all over with." But I look forward enormously to working with the people in St. Thomas to help one another in our church family as well as so many people in the community. There remain other things I want to accomplish in my life, but this time as a deacon, then priest, has been filled with the joy of Jesus Christ.

Sweet Dreams and God Bless All. TAD+

* In the original post I had spelled this "Kayla," because that's what my 70 year old ears heard! I have much trouble with hard consonant sounds (ka-ta-pa, etc.). My apologizes to Jennifer and family.