Sunday, March 26, 2023
In bed at 11, up at 8, muddy-minded, no thoughts, good sleep. 28℉, high of 38℉, wind WNW at 5 mph, low wind day, gusts up to 13 mph, a wintery mix of 1.1" expected, 2.75" in last 24 hours. Sunrise was at 6:42, sunset at 7:11, 12+26.
Mendelssohn's Elijah. Geri was Caela's guest last night at the performance by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. I drove her down and picked her up. Caela declined our offer to pick her up and hired a Lyft driver. By the intermission, they had had enough of the performance, which is not exactly scintillating, and Geri texted me to pick them up, which I did. After dropping Caela off at her home, we got on the freeway to return to Bayside. I came very close to causing/having an accident when I had to serve to avoid an orange and white striped construction barrel rolling about in my lane of traffic. I swerved directly in front of a car in the passing lane to my left, very narrowly avoiding a collision. I don't like driving in the dark and I don't like driving on I-43. I especially don't like the combination. It seems as if there are millions of those orange and white striped construction barrels around with all the construction underway on and near I-43. I'm a bit surprised that last night's was the first one I've seen 'unmoored' and loose in a traffic lane.
It disappoints me that my days of attending concerts and plays are over. With my various aches and pains, plumbing and mobility problems, I can't see myself climbing over or being climbed over by other theatergoers. I especially miss the opportunity to attend concerts with the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, of which Anne was a member for many years and also a volunteer administrative helper of some sort for the great Margaret Hawkins, the chorus' founder and artistic director. I saw on the marquis last night that the next performance by the orchestra will feature the wonderful choral group from Africa Ladysmith Black Mambaso, recalling to me their great album Missa Luba. I have 2 other albums in my music collection, Shaka Zulu and Ling Walk to Freedom which I will try to listen to today. I'll also try to get a copy of Missa Luba. I'm remembering that there was a time when Anne and I had season tickets, or partial season tickets, to the symphony, the repertory theater, the ballet, and Marquette basketball, and that all the outings became onerous, too much. I recall too attending some performances of the symphony by myself, buying a cheap seat in the last row of the upper balcony with hardly any others around me, wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt and stretching out to enjoy the live performance - so long ago.
Words of Wisdom. “I’m old, you know, and I see things repeated, and something that is very common is the change people feel toward someone when they meet them. At one time they ridiculed and hated them, and then they confess that they now like them, because they saw them as they were. Or a friend told them how kind or funny they were, and conversions keep happening. I think we need to imagine people as loved and kind and funny, and any dislike is based on our limited knowledge and kindness. What I’m saying is that most of the time, we are the problem, and we need to constantly adjust our vision.”—Marian Seldes
Upcoming 50th Anniversary. Wednesday will be the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. The newspapers are carrying stories about authors who have written about the war and its aftermath, Carl Marlantes, Tim O'Brien, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nguyen Phan Que Mai, and others. I don't believe I have ever read a novel based on the Vietnam War. I did read Bernard Fall's history Hell in a Very Small Place, about the defeat of the French in Dien Bien Phu in 1954. I avoided watching any movie about the war until 1982 or 1983 when I rented Apocalypse Now from Blockbusters Videos, about 17 years after I left the country. I watched it alone in my apartment at the Shamrock East on Bradford Avenue. I had a bad reaction to it such that it took 3 separate viewings to get through all of it. Sometime later, I watched The Deer Hunter and perhaps Platoon (I can't recall) and most notably Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, which struck me emotionally not only because of the battle scenes In Hue, but also the brutal scenes of Marine boot camp training. More recently I've watched Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War, about which I've written in an earlier journal entry, especially Peter Coyote's line that the war was "started in good faith by decent men." I wonder if there was ever a time I felt good or righteous about our invasion of Vietnam. I keep pausing as I write these lines as I think back on my time there, from arriving in Chu Lai on a C130 Hercules to leaving from DaNang 8 months later on a big military transport. I remember the frightening nose down 'combat landing' at Chu Lai and meeting the ATC captain I had served with in Yuma and I remember the delays because of a fire warning light problem on the big transport in DaNang and me thinking what a great target it was for a mortar or rocket attack, parked there so big, bright and shiny. I remember getting a haircut from a Vietnamese barber on the airbase and wondering whether he was a 'VC sympatiser' who could cut my throat with his razor - irrational fears. I remember going into the exotic city on liberty when that was still permitted, of a water skiing trip at an Air Force Special Service facility at the harbor, and seeing an asian defecaing off his sampan into the water and me subsequently climbing back into the boat with some dark stuff on my body, fearing it was shit and happy to find it was an oil slick, I remember evenings at the Officers Club and occasional visits from RVN officers whom we all disliked. More blurred are the memories of a couple thousand hours spent on duty at the Tactical Air Control Center outside of Wing HQ, keeping track of thousands, maybe tens of thousands of aircraft takeoffs and returns from bombing missions in RVN, in the North, or in Laos. Each of those missions by Marines piloting A4s, F4s, and F8s were intended to bring death and destruction to some Vietnamese, "our enemies." We were there to 'defend freedom' in the South, whose government we had financed and propped up since before 1954. In fact we had financed and propped up the French in their miserable attempt to preserve their Asian empire. In due course, we got our butt kicked by the Vietnamese and pulled out 50 years ago. Now we gladly do business with the communist government. In 2021, the United States was Vietnam’s second largest trading partner (after China), and Vietnam was the United States’ ninth largest trading partner. More than 3,000,000 people died in that war including 58,000 Americans. The number of people wounded, injured, hurt in one way or another is incalculable. Bombs, bullets, chemical defoliants, napalm - we used whatever we had against the Vietnamese, with the exception of nuclear weapons and there were many back here who urged the use of nukes against the North. And now Vietnam is a piece of ancient history for most Americans. I feel sick thinking about it.
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