LETTER TO A SOLDIER; HANG IN THERE SUU KYI AND NEW CROPDUST CIRCLES IN EASTERN WASHINGTON STATE

Ralph, a neighbour. Photos by MS(R)M

With thanks again to Siobhan

Hi again, folks. Nice to see you and I hope all has been well in your house. There’s been some interesting things going on in the world of Northstar and I’ll certainly get to them in a moment. But because this is a reader-interactive column, what needs to come first is a letter from one of you about a young American soldier who is going to war.

Hey Mick,

How are you? I enjoyed all your articles. I have been busy with a friend who's son is going to War. He has a son (just a babe) and a wife and is 26. He is going to be a foot soldier in the Infantry. First Tour of Duty. Family is proud of him and what he has accomplished, but, Mom is sick with worry as well as his wife. We are all praying for this war to end and bring our troops home.

Seem's like we have been in war forever through out the ages and it doesn't get any easier does it? Only new technology. When we mention to other vet's re: a foot soldier their response is (oh not good) under their breath. And this is very unsettling. Since you were in the war in the 60"s I thought maybe you could write an article for all those who are new to this world of war. And for the mother's family of those just getting started on their journey.
Thank you for listening and again a fan of your writing.

Your friend,

Lara,
dragonflychild4@aol.com
North Carolina

Lara, between your letter and my response? There is no way to sanitize war. Despite the fact that this soldier has had the finest combat training in the world, there is no way to truly EMOTIONALLY prepare for battle, no more than there is for life in general because each person experiences it differently. I know this from my own experiences and the experiences of others.

The battlefield does not judge. It executes the judgments of others and it does not discriminate between the noble and the base, the brave or the timid, the honest or the immoral. A battlefield has no conscience, no compassion, so sense of justice. It is a place where people are killed and the last discrimination it does not make is between military and civilian.

This is the baseline reality of war and as much as I wish there was a way to soften that, I cannot because it only makes reality harder to face up the road.

It sounds like this soldier has a good family who will support him while he's there. I would urge his mother not to worry so much as to simply plan out the next few months and be in contact with him as time and circumstance allow.

This young man also has the backing of his nation. Even those who do not agree with any of the wars still support the Americans sent to fight them. Morale is a critical factor in any war and in these regards, this generation of American warriors is far better off than some past generations have been. Yes, to have the love of family and nation often does make heroes and survivors of every son and daughter who serves.

I would counsel the family of this soldier to put their son's life in the hands of God now and to continue to live as though he was coming home at the end of his tour. Statistically, he has a much better chance of making it than he does not. That's not a guarantee but it is realistic. How free are we to truly love someone if all we can see and feel is the tragedy of a loss that may not, in fact, occur? Is it not better to mourn when mourning is appropriate?

And until then to celebrate each moment, each day that is to be shared?

Mick
aka Rusty

Okay, take a second with that. I sure did. Maybe a couple more seconds because this next one involves an American veteran who swam across a lake in Rangoon and ended up getting the already house-arrested Burmese opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate and her housekeeper five more years in prison. They let him stay there two days and he got caught swimming back.

What really just pops the flipping lid off this particular jar of briny pickles is that this yo-yo would still be in prison had it not been for the intervention of one of the most respected men in this country, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA), who, for all his military, journalist, legal and legislative credentials and influence could not get Suu Kyi or her housekeeper released.

I respected Jim Webb when we served in some of the same theatres of operation and I respect him now. This American veteran was not a soldier and he had no business being over there in the first place. The idiot tried the same thing the year before.

Meanwhile, here’s the Asia living Statue of Liberty who has been under house arrest for the last fourteen years and is not in the best of health but whose stand earned her the Nobel Peace Prize, frail in health, and facing five years in prison.

To me, it’s not a matter of leaving no one behind. Someone got left behind and she was far more a soldier than this rescued American was. What got left behind? WHO got left behind? A frail, softspoken symbol of Burmese freedom got left behind. I’m hoping Captain Webb’s not quite done with this yet. I wouldn’t be.

Well, under critter stories this week, we’ve got a couple of them which strongly suggest that humans are NOT at the top of the evolutionary ladder, but a rather loose and precarious rung in it.

Bobcats have joined black bears and cougar in wandering Seattle’s suburbs as if they owned the place. Local residents are not real thrilled with this newest wave of immigration but appeals to State Fish and Game are to no avail because the bobcat is not classified the same way cougars and black bear are.

The bobcat is considered a nuisance, which means, “deal with them but don’t kill ‘em.” And because there are also rabbits, squirrels and a host of other natural prey in the area, these small wild cats are not going after pets or small children. As Darwin has suggested, survival is not about the strongest but the most adaptable. Yep, I’m leaving that one just hanging there.

This other one involves a Canadian couple on vacation and a squirrel popping up in a photo these humans had taken with a self-timer. There seems to be some controversy about whether this photo was enhanced and my experience tells me it probably wasn’t. I got mugged by an American/Seattle squirrel several years ago while taking lunch at the Convention Center, where I was also working at the time.

It wanted my peanut butter sandwich and I was so stunned and yet somehow refreshed by the straight forward and unvarnished single mindedness of purpose of this creature that I did not put up much resistance.

I did not, however, eat lunch in the same place again. Until I figure out where that squirrel’s going with this, I’m not feeding it. Human being of some 6’3 and 170 versus a creature about six inches long and maybe three pounds. The squirrel took the round and probably the match.

And what’s really weird is that I am really okay with that. Just like I am having bald eagles, black bear, bobcats, cougars, raccoons, Republicans, rich folks, two mountain ranges and three volcanoes for neighbours.

Speaking of which and NOT something I need to be reminded of daily, the Cascade Volcano Observatory is getting $2.4-million in federal funding to upgrade its monitoring system. We’re being told that this is just to provide us earlier warning in the event of an eruption, not necessarily that one is anticipated. Yet in this same story is a reminder that Mount St. Helens still rumbles to life occasionally. And get this. Washington’s not the only state getting this kind of money.

According to the KING 5 story, “There is also $7.56 million for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, $3.3 million for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, $950,000 for Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, $800,000 for upgrading networks in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, and $200,000 for the Long Valley Observatory in California."

Yep, you can run like a hyper-caffeinated hamster in an exercise wheel but you can’t hide. If there’s a volcano with your name on it, right? Sometimes you really pay a lot for the good view up here.

Well, this last one sort of redefines “weird” to me but there’s a possibility than extraterrestrials may be vacationing in a tiny wheat farming community 65 miles west of Spokane, Washington. Last week, five new rings and a circle were found impressed into a wheat field out there and this is the second time ~ not the same field ~ that this has happened in as many years.

So, a lot of people from University of Washington scientists to folks wearing tinfoil hats to at least one naked dancing troup have been flocking to Wilbur again, spending their money and going home. This despite the fact that some crop circles have been proven hoaxes in the past. It’s got to be real entertainment for this village of some 900. It’s also a good weekend vacation getaway from most of the Northwest what with the oscillating cost of gasoline and limited discretionary funds.

Are we making the trip “east of the mountains”? Ummm, nope. Something tells me UFOs really are visiting Wilbur, Washington. I’m not so sure some of them aren’t staying. I know my luck. I’d meet one of them.

And I honestly can’t imagine what I’d say to someone in a John Deere t-shirt, denim jeans with a butt crack and an accent somewhere between Spokane and Sirius the dog star. Wilbur is not Disneyland and if it worth traveling 8.6 light years to visit, I shudder to think about how amusing life must be on the home planet.

Until next week, folks, take care, stay well and God Bless. And thanks once again for the ear.

Mick
Aka Rusty

NORTHSTAR RECOMMENDS

To Your Health
If you’d like to know how your eating habits are either adding years to your life or taking them off, take this RealAge quiz. It will not only score your real age against your health age but give you a program for improvement. I’ve been working this one for about a month now and yep, I feel a lot better.

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Other Blogs
The Tomatoman Times – a life commentary blog with the blended stylings of John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Jack London and Will Rogers. Poignant, at times rancorous but very contemporary and ultimate celebration.

Lords and Ladies of Leisure is sooooo misnamed and it’s an example of the humour with which a Seattle high tech victim deals with the wonderful world of unemployment. Kerri Marshall’s admittedly offbeat sense of humour spices up a blog also rich in practical advice. The comments from her readers are almost as entertaining of she is. If you’ve got a few minutes and want a little perspective on your own hard times, I highly recommend this one.

Ask Barbie, Advice Columnist. -- a blog that delivers the amiable maternalism of Ms. Landers, the slightly off-centre humour of Erma Bombeck and the ingenuousness of an unreconstructed romantic with no axes to grind.

Media
Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean – Live from the smallest record store in North America. Canadian humor, entertainment and commentary at its maple leaf best. Popular on National Public Radio in the States.

Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – The “United Press International/Reuters of the American West/ Updated and informative news shorts with links to the source. Its editors draw from a coverage area which includes Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Update and informative collected news shorts from those sources. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition.

U Got Style is a monthly ezine dedicated to independent films. Fully illustrated, it features hard news, interviews, reviews and a wide variety of other information. It’s also fun to read.

The Vancouver Sun, outstanding source for Canadian and world news.

Online Tools for the Kit
Free People Search – This is an American online White Pages that I found really simple, quick and user friendly. I looked for myself under the several versions of my name and it found them all. It’s also free and doesn’t involve anything to download.

Talent For Hire
Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist -- Yep, a little self-promotion here to help pay for the blog. Take a look at the services offered menu on my writer-for-hire homepage and samples of my digital lens work on my photography website. If you see something you like, email me and we’ll get together on it.

Are you a travel editor looking for colour shots of Seattle? Are you an art dealer looking for new work to carry on consignment? You might enjoy checking out a gallery of my work for sale.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

In the weeks to come, we’re going to create ~ in addition to Northstar Recommends ~ a Northstar General Store in which you, the readers, will have an opportunity to market your own goods and services and, as well, to shop here. We’re going to get real creative with this and whenever possible, we’ll have tried what we’re carrying on the shelves, as it were. We’ll be taking a straight ten percent for this, via Paypal. We’ll also consider barter and trade.

If you’ve got any recommendations of your own and are interested in the General Store, email me and we’ll talk.

FROM MY OWN BOOK OF LOVE, WAR AND OTHER REMEMBRANCES

USS Blue (DD 744) off Hawaii

Hi again, folks. Since it’s Valentine’s Day, this a love in war story, It’s true, except for her real name and a condensing of some events. It’s also a chapter from my own Book of Love, War and Remembrances. (With appropriate acknowledgement to Herman Wouk for the title.)

We need to go back a few years, to the Fall of 1968. The Vietnam War was raging furiously and the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. High school classmates were returning, sometimes walking and sometimes in body bags. The voting and drinking age was 21. A small matchbox of pot could get you hard time at Folsom, a 45 minute drive from where I lived.

There was a Draft on and I was holding a student deferment while attending Sacramento City College behind a busted home, two jobs and a devout attempt to keep the small dance and show combo which had been sustaining me in several ways, alive. My generation was fighting for its life and in my world, those who were not preparing to do duty for God, country and whatever were protesting the war and suffering their own casualties. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground.

Autumn is a lonely time in Sacramento. The harvest is over and the seemingly endless delta, with its network of rivers, levees and vast barren fields stretches to all horizons under grey skies that mark the flights of southbound Canada geese.

In some ways, I was a lot older at 19 than I am at 59. For the last three years, I’d been leading six other teenagers into a career union musicians twice our age envied. We played everything from the USO and high school proms and balls, to military base service clubs and for private parties at such Class A houses as the Sacramento Inn and the Mansion Inn. We had one motto that served us real well. Don’t play for the money, play for the people.

With all that was going on around us, we figured we’d be lucky to see 21. So we broke some rules and assumed a few of the rights of the adults we actually were. We worked hard and we played hard. We were tough, prematurely cynical and had less than no patience with anyone who tried to suggest a different way of living. It was like, if you can’t handle it, fine. Just don’t (expletive deleted) with it.

Kirsten was about the last person I should have met back then. She was slim, lithe, doe-eyed shy, and her thick ash blonde hung in long, loose natural waves, draping her slim shoulders and brushing them, like angel wings. She was from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east, and she reminded me, in a lot of ways, of Heidi. She was down in Sacramento, living with her sister and family and going for an AA degree in art.

I worked for the school newspaper and she helped print it. There was a glass partition between the newsroom and the print shop and I one morning, I looked up from my typewriter to see this Hallmark and Campbell Soup young mother holding a baby in her arms. (It was the print shop teacher’s daughter but I didn’t know that at the time.) I was just blown away by this incredible wave of gentleness that was suddenly washing over me. I felt vulnerable and that’s not always appropriate. I was tough because I needed to be and there was room for sex but there was not room for romance.

So I turned away and made it a point not to look at her working on a layout table about a foot and a pine wainscoted and glass wall away. I "heard" her humming softly to herself and remembered my own time in her mountains. Half of me needed and enjoyed it. The other half of me was telling me to focus on the tasks at hand. I was running on about 12 cups of coffee and a pack of Winstons a day and about the only time I had to myself was lunch.

Sacramento City College is situated across Freeport Boulevard from one of the most understatedly beautiful parks I’ve ever been in. Back then, it includes the Sacramento Zoo and a duck and boating pond. Trees all over. An amphitheater, some baseball diamond and tennis courts. I liked to go over to the duck pond, dine on peanut butter and/or baloney sandwiches, a bag of potato chips, and a half pint of milk. I brought old bread for the ducks and we had some interesting conversations. I always ate alone, except for the ducks.

So when noon came, I shoved Kirsten to the back of my mind and made a beeline to the duck pond. I remember that day as particularly Canada goose lonely, with an east wind blowing off her mountains. I’d just found out two of the guys in the band had been reclassified 1A, which meant "first available". We had weekend gigs through New Years. After that, my job was pretty much over and my outfit and way of life scattered to the winds.

Her shadow flickered across me before I actually saw her. She was dressed in a nice Weinstocks car coat with a mock fur collar and I remembered she’s been in a man’s workshirt and levis under that. She had a khaki knapsack that I later learned her grandfather had worn in Belleau Wood and the Argonne. She glanced at me and the only bench available, which was also the one I was sitting on, in the middle, with my own kit spread out on both sides. She arched a delicately feathered eyebrow and I stared back at her, without moving.

I read loneliness in her eyes and half of me wanted to tell her to just truck on because I had enough on my own plate, including a girlfriend with whom I was also having a real interesting time. The wind off her mountains rose a bit and scattered the bag of bread, the waxed paper open with the sandwiches, and the partially consumed bag of potato chips. By the time I recovered what didn’t land in the duck pond, she was comfortably ensconced on one end of the bench, drinking vegetable soup out of a plaid thermos and feeding the ducks from her own bag of stale bread.

Kirsten and I got to be friends after that. It turned out that we lived just a half mile apart so we were together most of the walk home from school we managed to make every late afternoon. It gave us a chance to talk and to get to know one another.

I learned that the war hadn’t left Kirsten untouched. On her right wrist was a bracelet with the name of her high school sweetheart, by then a Marine Missing In Action in Vietnam. She talked about the plans they’d made for him to come back and get a good job in the woods, while she found work in Placerville, the county seat. There was some land they could save for and he’d build the cabin. And together, they’d raise a son who would be, like their father, a football hero, and their daughter, like her mother, good with animals and art.

Kirsten tried to get me to talk about my life but since there wasn’t a lot of good news to report, she didn’t have a lot of luck with that. Instead, I listened to her and her dreams. They were modest and they were wholesome. And they depended on a Marine missing in action.

When grades came out in December, I found out, not to my total surprise, that I’d flunked most of my classes and was no longer eligible for a student deferment. By then, it was a lot colder and it got darker a lot earlier so Kirsten and I met in the cafeteria before starting home. That night, when everybody else was comparing report cards, she read the look on my face and tears gathered in her eyes.

She held my hand when we walked across the street to the bus stop. She hugged me tightly with her face buried in my chest on the ride home. We got off at her stop and I walked her the half mile in the thick tule fog to her sister’s front door. She held me even tighter and before putting the key in the lock turned and faced me.

"Please don’t do this to me, Please don’t leave."

Neither of us had a lot of choice and I did, by enlisting in the Navy and volunteering for Vietnam. The first time I returned to Sacramento, a some two years later, she was living with a hippie musician and sharing his needle. The second time, seven years or so later, she was running a flower shop in a real mellow part of downtown, near Sutters Fort. She said she wasn’t in love with anyone and hadn’t been in a long time. She was just as lovely then as she was the first time I met her. But when I went to cup her cheek and tell her that gently, she withdrew and shook her head.

"Nor do I ever intend to love again. It hurts too much."

It’s been some thirty years now and several other wars. I wonder how many other Kirstens there are out there. I suspect there’s a few.

On Valentine’s Day, I dream of a time when there won’t be quite so many.

A PRAYER FOR A PROMISE MADE

One of the young people in my life recently celebrated her 40th "escape from the gallows," as Mark Twain once put it. She sees it as a milestone in her life and considering what this very special and gifted individual has survived to see the sum of those sunsets and sunrises, I’m inclined to agree.

She’s an extremely gifted writer and a sensitive and caring human being. She’s quick to accept personal responsibility and slow to apportion it. She’s got a beautiful Native American face that can be read like an epic Jean Auel novel or experienced like Aaron Copland’s Ode to the Common Man.

She’s breathtakingly beautiful, this child of God. Intelligent and endowed with a sense of humor devoid of all shred of malice, she has, as well, an intimate understanding of this planet as the goddess Gaia and the same rapport with the deity which governs beyond.

She was a medic in the Persian Gulf War and before she shipped out to Operation Desert Storm, she asked me to talk about what I did in a long ago war of my own and how I survived it. I gave her the volume of poetry I’d written against the day one of the young people in my life faced this particular contingency and asked her to read it on the plane over.

That’s never worked for Samantha and it didn’t this time, either. So I read it to her. It helped her remember life up ‘til then. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she cried and sometimes she stared at me without really seeing me.

We had popcorn and drank canned Coca Cola. We listened to music we’d experienced together a lot before. We broke out Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, her favorite movie and mine. I tucked her into bed that night and the illumination of my computer screen as I worked on cast her dreams as Technicolor shadows about and beyond me.

Samantha shipped out without ever hearing about my war experiences. They weren’t the same. I didn’t want her burdened with mine or doing this weird comparison and contrast when she needed to focus on what SHE was doing, tending to the hurt and dying.

She came back different. They all did. After a brief reunion, I didn’t hear from her for quite awhile. She said she needed time to work things out. I knew what she meant. I had that volume of poetry I wrote and the music we enjoyed together.

She’s come a far piece but she recently lost of third friend in Iraq. The hauntedness has returned to her eyes. Now when she sleeps, the shadows’ danse is macabre and violent. She cries out in her sleep for lost brothers and awakens disoriented and with deep shadows ringing her eyes.

She’s losing interest in her art, her music and her writing. She goes for aimless walks along the Ship Canal and ends up sitting in a coffeeshop, staring into space for a long time, remembering what she cannot forget, even in sleep.

She wants the American government to stop sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. She’s tired of saying good-bye. Her numbers are legion in this country and they are just as much victims as the veterans of any other war the citizens of this nation have chosen to fight. Samantha knows what every combat veteran knows.

War is an atrocity with no real rules of engagement. And no one who takes a life ~ under any circumstances ~ is ever truly whole or happy again.

Soon, we will witness the inauguration of a man we voted into office because he said he will get us out of both places. I hope we hold him more responsible for that promise than we have some others we have elected to lead this nation both in peace and in war.

This young person, Samantha, is very special to me and I do not want to lose her again.

VETERANS DAY 2008

A VETERAN REFLECTS

I am a veteran but I do not believe that wars are good or even necessary. I am, however, proud of every human being on the face of this planet who died in the service of family, neighbours, community, cause and nation. Honoring those who gave the ultimate sacrifice should not, and never has, respected demographics. It is said that history is written by the victor. I suggest that it is remembered by all.

I am glad we no longer blame warriors for wars. I came back to a nation which had apparently forgotten that. I saw what it did to those who fought the hardest and the best. According to one Veterans Administration study I read, 50,000 veterans of my generation’s war killed themselves after they got back. That’s almost as many as who died in battle or from battle-related causes. That seems so incredibly unfair to me, even some 35 years later.

It’s taken me a long time to live down the guilt I feel for the death I helped bring to civilians as well as "enemy" military. It took a Vietnamese University of Washington student whose father was in the North Vietnamese Army and who visited here and welcomed me like a comrade in arms, to let go of a measure of what has haunted me down almost four decades now.

"Rusty, soldiers do not make wars. They only fight them."

I leave you with a poem I wrote 37 years ago and updated at the end after two of the young people in my life served in Operation Desert Storm. I leave you, as well, with a final heartfelt plea, because as Americans, you can do this.

ATONEMENT

It was Christmas Eve and even the Buddhists were turning out.
While their former European masters gathered in basement pubs
to dance and wassail, while from their towers beyond,
Red Chinese border guards smiled knowingly.
We're just come off the gunline and I was tired of killing.
I'd known even then that a single death buries a thousand dreams.
My ship alone snuffed out Paradise several times over.
I watched it all again on a Hong King ferry plying the harbour to Kowloon.
White mingled with yellow' Confucius with Commodore Perry;
the Mings with MacBeth and the Mandarins with Richard the Nix.
Back and forth I rode, sometimes forward, other times aft,
but mostly amidships, like Gulliver in an artillery barrage.
Each trip, a few more of my own dreams died.
It was an act of penance which continued until another gulf
and another war gave both Jesus and God
something else to regret.

Hong Kong
Christmas 1970

Please, put an end to this madness.