Veteran's Day

November 11. Veteran's Day... a national holiday to honor those who've served in the armed forces. Originally proclaimed as Armistice Day in 1919 by Woodrow Wilson to observe the end of WWI "... with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service..." at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month.

In 1945 the purpose of the holiday was expanded to include all veterans, and in 1954 Congress replaced the term "Armistice" with "Veterans."

This year, 2012, is the first Veterans Day celebrated, ironically, without a living veteran of the First World War. Yet approximately 2 million WWII vets survive, as well as vets from Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day is our holiday recognition of the sacred dead. But the living too, deserve our respect and ongoing concern. More and more we are recognizing the cost of service to those men and women who have witnessed the horrors of combat; the psychological and emotional price paid by veterans of all ages, in all wars. PTSD, battle fatigue, combat stress, and shell shock are terms used since World War I to describe their trauma. "Irritable heart" or "Da Costa's Syndrome" were Civil War nomenclature for those same afflictions, which have been noted as far back in history as Herodotus.

I recently finished reading "Dispatches," Michael Herr's brilliant memoir of his experiences as a correspondent in Vietnam, and I was particularly struck by his description of  the face of one young GI:  "He had one of those faces, I saw that face at least a thousand times at a hundred bases and camps, all the youth sucked out of the eyes, the color drawn from the skin, cold white lips, you knew he wouldn't wait for any of it to come back. Life had made him old, he'd live it out old."

It made me wonder how many of those faces we as a nation have created, war after war, since 1776. No, freedom is not free. It is historically a bloody enterprise, a brutal, demanding dream, killing and maiming its defenders as surely as it benefits those willing and fortunate enough to take advantage of its blessings. Veterans Day, if it stands for anything, should serve as an everlasting reminder that we owe the living veteran everything we can do to erase - or at least mitigate, as best we know how - the scars he or she bears for having served.  And survived.

Left: My dad, PFC Edwin G. Mortensen, awarded the Bronze Star for action in the Po Valley, Italy, 1944. Recalling the deprivations and violence of his service would bring him to tears. He described combat as a "seminal" experience, saying,  "A man cannot come out of it the same fellow."     

Warrior

He rode upon the land knowing all he needed to know, as did his forebears and those before them. This land and no other was their world, unchanging, violent, imposing its harsh will on all who dwelt upon it, and those became its children. And the earth was their god and its ways became theirs and the path the man followed was theirs also, leading to the same end.

COLUMBUS DAY

Last year I uploaded this image of Apache warriors on Twitter with the description that it was my wife's family getting ready to celebrate Columbus Day. My wife's family includes Native Americans, and given our nation's history I thought I was being cleverly ironic.

Bad taste? Perhaps. But I also think when we celebrate a holiday that was created in 1937 as a political ploy to secure Italian-American votes, we should devote at least some energy to remember that what Columbus really "discovered" wasn't what he was looking for, nor was the "New World" an uninhabited Eden, free for the taking by European explorers.

What happened in the Americas over the subsequent 400 years was nothing less than the conquest and suppression, and in many cases, the annihilation of Native American populations already living here. Europe and European settlers obtained land and wealth while the indigeneous people misnamed "Indians" were subjected to treatment not dissimilar to that visited upon European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

 Genocide is not too strong a term to describe the impact of white European/American culture on Indians. Nor have its long-term effects been limited to North American native populations. I have a cousin who worked as a stringer (news correspondent) for Reuters news agency in the 60s. He lived in Venezuela at the time, married a woman from that country and had a child. In the early 60s the Venezuelan government decided to sell parcels of land in the Amazon River basin. The land was wilderness, completely undeveloped, inaccessible for the most part except by water and air, offered at low prices "as is."

My cousin decided the land might be a good investment, so he investigated the proposition. He learned that indigenous people already occupied much of the the available land, and he asked  how their occupation would be handled. He was told by a government representative that once  the land was sold it was the owner's responsibility to deal with the Indians however he saw fit... pay them, evict them, eliminate problems by any means necessary. In the 1960s.

My cousin didn't buy.

The point is, there are two sides to the Columbus Day coin. One is decorated with parades and platitudes regarding Manifest Destiny and the myths surrounding the glorious age of European exploration and civilization. The other is awash in blood and broken promises, promises whose abrogation continues to haunt us... all of us.

Happy Columbus Day? Depends on how good your memory is, I suppose.         

TWO YEARS

Two years. It's been over two years since I've posted on this blog.

OK, so I'm not Mr. Consistent. Truth is I've been working on a book. That's right. I'm a soon-to-be published author of a book about golf. Actually, a coffee table book about golf.  It's entitled, "GREEN GLORY: A Visual Tribute To The Courses That Have Hosted The Majors - Golf's Renowned Venues."

It's really a tribute to the work of Patrick Drickey, my friend and world-renowned course photographer, and Linda Hartough, a gifted landscape painter whose work is well-known throughout the sport. It will have an Introduction contributed by Jack Nicklaus (I ghosted) and a tribute to Course Supervisors written by Rees Jones. The rest of it I wrote, except for  a piece by Bob Denny of the PGA, duly credited.  All capably edited by Sally Sportsman.

 

Anyway, the book is in production. I expect it will be on press in November, and released before Christmas.

 

That's what I've been doing the last two years, but it doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about the blog or what's written here. Some of this I like very much.  Some is not very good, but I had to get it out... out in the open somewhere. Maybe now I'll begin rewrites, maybe not. I think it was a mistake not publishing it in sequence, but the whole thing needs rewrite so badly perhaps that's the least of its problems.

 

If you've read it, any of it, thank you.

You might check back here from time to time to see what else happens.

Don't know right now what that will be, but I know this:

It will happen here.

 

M