Anglico

Veterans Day arrives every year like a hand grenade that has been rolling around the floorboard of my life for months. My earliest memories of the day go back to my father’s military service, back when he wore the uniform of a US Navy hospital corpsman.

My father, I suspect, was a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome. If not that, he was a least clinically depressed. Not because he was shot in the leg during the Korean War, but because of the hundreds of Marines he watched die on the battlefield. As a corpsman, he spent more time than anyone should spend in blood up to his elbows, working against hope in one of our many wars without end.

Not sure why I'm all disclosing today, but what the heck. Here's some of the art I make in my very rare spare time. They're gourds.

I'm passing through a crowded coffee shop on the way to the library. No power at home. A freezer and refrigerator full of wasted food. Minor inconveniences. A short temper.

The events of the world are helping to keep things in perspective. A few powerless days for me . . . big deal.

The people in New Orleans. The people in Blacksburg. The people in Iraq. The people in need all across this country and around the world.

I have no idea what "powerless" actually means. I have not stood in their shoes.

NOTE TO BLUENC VETERANS: April 19th is BlueNC Veterans Day. Many of you said you'd write posts about your perspectives and experiences, and I'm counting on having five or six entries to front-page on Thursday. Please let me know if you're in.

Hi everyone.

I'm heading to Virginia this afternoon to visit colleges with my daughter. I'm not even taking my laptop, which will be the first time I've traveled unaccompanied by a computer in more than a year.

Yikes!

Thanks for holding down the fort.

James

Back at Annapolis, where I graduated a long, long time ago, we called the daze between Christmas and spring break 'the dark ages.' Pouring through the single-paned windows of Bancroft Hall, chilling your bones on the banks of the Severn River, the cold hard winds of February carried nothing but gloom and despair. Larry, a goofy kid who lived across the hall from me, tried to kill himself the first winter I was there. Vic actually succeeded the following year, giving in to the misery of too much discipline, too much testosterone, and too little sunlight.

Twenty-five years later, my own father killed himself during the dreariness of the Dark Ages. Left alone in their little brick house after my mother's quiet passing, he must have found too little to live for in the skeleton trees and brown grass that surrounded his tidy home. Depression runs deep in my DNA.

What do a Greek politician, a Hindu god and a heel have in common? Do you need a hint? I'm waiting.......... Man! You people are slow.

It's their IP address silly.

Allow me to introduce BlueNC users demosthenes, shiva and heel_dem. They also have a few other things in common. All three have posted only one diary at BlueNC and all three of those solo posts have been attacks on Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue and one on our very own Anglico.

Follow below the fold for the shocking story....