Warriors from a Forgotten War--Korea and Dad

The Wisconsin Korean War Memorial was dedicated in 1997 in Plover. Chet Skippy, a realty developer and Korean War veteran worked hard to make it happen. On that summer day my brother, mom and dad came up for the dedication.

Dad stood apart from us, apart from everyone... on the sandy shore of the island memorial looking towards the Statues yet beyond them. He looked so vulnerable, so alone even though we all tried to reach him but none of us could.

After the ceremony with state dignitaries including David Obey who talked about the forgotten war (it wasn't even called a war until recently, but rather the Korean Conflict) we wandered in a discount tool vendor's tent on the grounds. Dad bought me a set of little clamps to use when I went to dog shows, then we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch.

I'm the toughest sonofabitch
this side of the Rio Grande.
If you think you can take me, come on, let's go.
Think you have it in you?
Think its going to be easy? ...you've another guess comin'
'cause I'll fight til I die and I'll not die easy.
I'm the toughest sonofabitch
this side of the Rio Grande.
--excerpt from "My Dad" by Bobbie Lee S. Kolehouse

Dad was tough. He had grit and stamina, but he wasn't a street brawler. He admired street brawlers. What he seemed to search for was confidence and he mistook reactionary possessiveness for it. He tried to tap it through other people. He depended on them to "have what it takes" in case he didn't. He wasn't possessive, he was introverted and spent much of his life in his head, then fogged it up with alcohol trying to escape. Thoughts made uglier from what he'd lived in Korea.

Now my dad was a farm boy and knew better than many about life and death and survival, but he didn't know about war except for the romanticized stories. His father and mother were farmers, not warriors. Quiet, stable, dependable people. He was ambitious and a bit willful. He always considered himself a bit of a rebel--but he wasn't one by nature.

He tried to enlist and was rejected because of a heart murmur, but he cleared the second time and landed in the Army. He was close to his brother Lee who was in the Merchant Marine. Lee was scrappy, and bold--different from my dad and most of his family. Dad was the youngest of eight. At home with his family he was always Bobby.

Throughout his life he grappled with and clung to his military experience. His closest friends were veterans, some highly decorated for valor and courage--all alcoholics. It was a nightmare they all shared and gloried in and fell victim to in the end. Throughout his life he'd quip, usually in an alcohol stupor, "Think you got what it takes?" He never got home again and we all miss him yet.

With planning this time we can provide resources to assure good transition programs are in place for our current military veterans returning from war. Their service doesn't have to cost them their lives, and the lives of those who love them, even if make it back safely.

All military veterans, thank you and your families for your service.

**Wallet pictured was a gift from my father to my mother's sister, Gloriann Meyn, brought back from Korea. My aunt gave it to me as a keepsake of my father.**

From the WKWM website, http://www.koreanmemorial.org/index.html

The Korean War - June 25, 1950 thru July 27, 1953

Forgotten by all but those that served.

War is truly hell and those who fought would never glorify it. Those Wisconsinites helped save a nation and then returned home, without honor or fanfare.

Wisconsin has long forgotten the 132,000 of her sons and daughters who served in the cause of freedom in the Korean War

	801 were killed in action
	4,286 were wounded
	111 were prisoners of war (54 of these died in POW camps)
	84 are still officially listed as missing in action

Amidoll--Amigurumi

The past few months have been a bit challenging and to get a grip I am knitting --and crocheting. Public television's Create channel with its Knitting and Crochet Today program, (as well as the garden programs) has helped.

If television doesn't have an influence on behavior, someone needs to rethink their studies...

So having invested heavily in fancy yarns, tools and books (and a small fortune in glass beads for one lovely project) I saw this cute little project the other night for a toy--a teacup. The craft is Japanese and is called "amigurumi". Most of these small, soft toys are distinguished with oversized heads, small arms and legs and bright eyes.

The tea cup was a free pattern and I added a saucer. It is cute but I don't think it is quite right. I captured the darling expression typical of the design, but think maybe my cup is too roly-poly cup when it should be a cylinder.

Not content with it and thinking maybe it is because I didn't use the exact yarn mentioned in the KCT pattern, I bought a new skein of Seafoam as noted on www.knitandcrochettoday.com. The artist Ana, doesn't say what yarn to use in her directions other than it be blue and worsted weight. I'll see if the second one looks more correct or if these will vary because they are sculptured a bit.

For my little blue tea cup, I made do with batting salvaged from one of my Cocker's fleecy beds. Danny, (the Ripper) loves to pluck batting out of the little roll around the edge of his beds. Because batting can kill a dog (block their intestines) I have to take it all out once he's got one open. That is what I used in my little blue tea cup-- used dog bedding. Not to worry, it is clean and to be sure it doesn't smell like dog, I dumped lavendar oil on it. Enough to choke us all, so my little blue tea cup doubles as an air freshener.

Today when I was in the yarn shop again, I bought a skein of white and a skein of Irish setter red for a new toy I want to make. A Cocker Spaniel and name it for my Ami, my beautiful red and white Cocker who died tragically on May 2. I can't write much because it hurts too bad, but she is my model for my own Amigurumi Cocker Spaniel doll. The doll's name will be Ami, for Ch. Kindred Playin' By Heart. Part of the reason I paid attention to the pattern was because of the name of the craft--I heard Ami.

When I have pictures of my new Amidoll, as well as my cute purses, lovely shawl and this awesome knitted vest pattern I bought today too, I'll share them with you. In the meantime, here is my fat, little blue tea cup--sweet expression, don't you think?

Oh, too, I'll share pictures of my strawberry pot next. It is another project I learned about on Create's Cultivating Life program.... Check it out! http://www.cultivatinglife.com/Alpine-Strawberry-Pots.html

Peepers

It never grows old, this watching the world wake up. It teems with life. And though it is always there, in spring it is as if everyone shakes off winter's wait to stretch and feel life tingle.

Songs fill the air. Cardinals, bluebirds, buntings, goldfinches, phoebes, and busy robins sing warnings of territories and mating lures. Somewhere in the still stick-bare woods a jay calls, an echo that is the spirit of wildness. As each day grows longer, warmer and moist, the maples push redbuds into the air and popples start to look like children's sponge paintings with their yellow-green shadows of new leaves.

Bulbs push through to the air, some trapped by dried maple leaves that bind them until they cannot hold them in their dry embrace. Then the bulb leaves snap the tight hold of last year's leaves. Flower heads of hyacinths, jonquils, daffodils, fill the air with scents of spring.

I arranged a group of them in a pretty blue-grey pottery vase I bought at a local gift shop. The vase is the first piece in my remake of my front room changing from the warmth of ruby, burnt orange, and browns to ocean blues, sunshine yellows, sandy tans and sage green to freshen this farmhouse for the new year.

The vase sits on my desk holding four fresh daffodils and one blue-violet hyacinth. Next to it is a charming egg jar decorated with drawings by Beatrix Potter. The lid is the top of the egg and has the little rabbit with his blue coat as the handle--Peter Rabbit. It was a birthday gift from my mom and was filled with the most exquisite floral arrangement of carnations, mums, freesia, a blue spiked flower I don't know the name of, and flat waxy leaves. It was breath-taking with flowers, and is beautiful as a jardiniere.

Twilight closes in. Earlier I opened all the doors and the kitchen window so a gentle breeze filled the house. The kitchen window is still open and sounds of peepers are loud as they pick up where the birds left off.

Spring.

Celebration of Hope and Faith

When people talk about holiday celebrations, their most memorable stories are usually about making-do. Maybe because less-than stories are easier to tell, are not so threatening than stories about plenty.

Maybe we feel less guilty telling the making-do stories but Christmas memories are as different as the people who remember them and the most treasured are often those threaded with sharing, the capacity to give, and renewed hope.

There were six children in my family, a large working class family. My father had a small glass and paint sales business and our lives rattled up and down with the economy. Usually Christmas meant oodles of brightly colored paper wrapped gifts tied with curling ribbon mounded around our tree. Never mind that most of them were socks or underwear, we knew there was the one special one buried there with our name on the tag signed, “From Santa”.

But then there were less happy times, when our Christmas toys came from charity organizations. One year a group of used toys almost didn’t make it to our house, but were delivered to my aunt’s house Christmas Eve where my mom wrapped them and then carried them home for us the next morning. Another year there were boxes of nameless foods delivered to our house where logs of processed cheese were stashed among canned vegetables and a frozen turkey. And then there was the year we received one present each, but we did get that one.

These are sad, futile memories. Not because there we didn’t get many toys, but because my parents’ struggle left them emotionally empty. No tree, no gifts, no gentle snowfall could mask the defeat in their hearts, but they put one foot in front of the other. Despair pushed aside.

When I was five there were only two children in my family, me and my brother. Christmas was young and joyous. We stenciled our big picture windows with elaborate scenes using Glaswax, a kind of pinkish wax for windows, coached by our mom. Sometimes she’d use poster paints with the window as her canvas and Santa would sail across a starry sky with the little family nestled below.

Christmas was golden. Tiny Tears dolls, Barbie, Tonka trucks, coloring books with a new box of 64 count Crayola crayons, not an off brand, were under our sparkly tree for me.

Cookie bake days at my aunt’s farm usually ended with us throwing up all the raw dough we’d snitched. Mom and Aunt Dynie helped us make snowy Christmas trees out of cardboard thread spools from the local sock factory. She'd whip up Ivory Flakes soap into a frothy mix that dried hard on the cones. We dusted them with glitter and topped each with a tiny glass ball. We made net trees, and plastic dry cleaner bag wreaths, and decorated them with small colored glass balls and we'd give them to our aunts and uncles on special holiday visits.

Times and fortunes change with some years more plentiful than others, but most haunted by sadness. Disappointing not because they lacked for gifts, or because they didn’t look like the scenes in department stores or stories on television, but because they were spiritless.

This year department stores look a bit like those used toys from so long ago, a little plain and hollow-- without soul, even a cold commercial one.

Still, days will grow long and spring rains will bring growth and plenty. Goodness and compassion twinkle at the edges if we look for them. “Kindness matters,” it really does, and this season we celebrate our gifts, our chance to be, and our potential for genuine contribution to this world in ways that will give us all sustainable peace though shared purpose and unity.

Happiest of holiday seasons to you and yours.

Poppy People

My father stood at the water's edge to watch the memorial dedication to Korean war veterans. A local war veteran and businessman had rallied community support to create the small, isthamus monument, and my dad had come up from down state to see it dedicated.

Standing there in the fading autumn light, years of sadness seemed to flood over him. Losses too deep, could not be erased by bronze, rock and official speeches.

My dad was a gentle man who grew up on a farm in the 30's and 40's and wanted to be like his older brother he admired. So he enlisted in the Army. He spent 18 months on the ground in Korea, seeing things no sane person could endure, like so many before him and after him. They called him home when his father was dying, but all the bravado faded. Time and again he'd try to collect fragments of his spirit, but he could not hold them together. No marching songs sung in the car, or drunken claims to toughness could change the broken man who tried over and over to be himself again.

In those days military veterans were not screened or treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD). They weren't treated for anything, but told to be men. Be tough. Warriors.

But they were warriors without a warrior society. Cut loose, left to find their way when the nightmares raged inside of them. Dad kept a few warriors close to him; mostly older men who served in WWII and kept ribboned medals in velvet boxes. One man died when his house burned down from an eternity candle meant for his grave. He fell into a drunken sleep mesmerized by its flame. Another died bloated with liver failure.

As he grew older, the conflict raged more fiercely inside of my father with ghosts more taunting and frightening. We thought it was some failure of character.

Only last year did I learn his behaviors are typical of veterans with PTSD; a problem that must be treated, it only grows worse left untreated. We know now that PTSD is increasingly reported in our military veterans returning from war, and it is our duty to help them through early screening and treatment. We need to save their lives, the lives of their families, and to save their communities from the loss of their unique capacity. Military service must not ask them to lose a living life too.

My gentle-spirited dad, a misplaced warrior, died of cancer the following spring. You can see the little island where the memorial is built on, from the highway. Its bronze bigger- than- life soldiers stand side by side supporting each other. Warriors in a warrior society. You were not flawed, dad, just left behind in time. We will not leave anyone behind again. Promise, dad. I promise.

Gentle transitions

Switching October winds are moving into place taking us from balmy autumn to the steel gray skies of November. Dried maple and oak leaves swirl on blustery breaths of air. From low circles on the ground they spiral up, floating gaily on the currents and drop to the ground again.

In the upper Midwest Great Lakes area seasons move slow then fast and back again. Summer is a transition to autumn. Autumn a transition to winter. Winter transitions to spring, and spring into summer. Dynamic and powerful in its capacity to shake humanity out of its groggy, grey numbness of mediocrity.

The puppies Ricky, Adam and Danny are 17 months old now and are playing outside in the run. The winds are high, and the air is warm. The puppies watch leaf action, good for their minds. We are to have snow by the end of the day, they say. For now, the early morning blue sky is dappled gray.

The puppies' maternal grandmother Crystal, who is over 14, perks her ears and tail alert to chase the pesky flighty leaf-birds. She catches them and stands pleased with her mouth full of red and brown leaves. Her dark eyes sparkle with the challenge.

Cockers live to chase up birds, even when they are only dried leaves. Crystal's grandsons reflect that bred-in-them trait with their excitement over spinning leaves. Crystal doesn't hunt anymore, but she was a fine gun dog into her late middle age. She earned her first AKC hunting title when she was over 9 and wowed the hard nosed sportsmen with her courage and persistence. She'd find birds, put them up into the air and bring them back without a feather ruffled. Her daughter, Molly, dam of the rowdy boys, was more gentle. So much so that sometimes her bird would fly out of her mouth. Ricky has his mother's soft mouth and disposition. He is a thoughtful, calm dog where his brother Adam is goofy and happy go lucky, much like his sire, Brewster. Danny is my little clown who is content to play with his toys. Ricky already is a fine retriever. Adam is a quick study but is easily distracted. Danny is learning to track when he focuses on the work and isn't smiling at me.

Their sister, Christina is with her handler working on finishing her AKC championship. She has three major wins and only needs one point. We're hoping she earns it soon so she can come home. I bought her a little harness for the car when she went away. I hope she will accept riding in the seat wearing the belt.I've always crated my dogs to travel for their safety, but people say the little harnesses are secure. I'd love to have her ride with me when I go home for holidays, or run short errands.

Christina is named for her grandmother Crystal, and will be the third puppy from Molly's litter of four to finish their AKC championship title. Ricky was the first to finish in June to become, Ch. Kindred Star Studded Samba. Adam finished next, quickly and is now Ch. Kindred Rumba Dancin' Star. When he came home in August, little Christina went and is now one point away from being Ch. Kindred Cheeky Cha Cha. Danny, Kindred Jive Dancin' Shoes is on a different path as a tracking dog.

Transitions... young to old, season to season framed in the heartbeat of gentle dogs.

Over the peak and moving forward

Whether it is true or not, it seems that the best way forward now is to consider oil if not at peak, then quickly becoming too expensive for average people to use as an energy source.

The difficulty for most of today’s culture, because they all seem to be shifting to the dominant perspective of possession, is that energy should be shared, and should be regenerative and that runs contrary to possession.

Wind, reconfigured hydro-plants, solar, ocean current… maybe someone will dream up a way to capture energy from storms. I heard a story yesterday how Newfoundland fishers were harvesting bits of ice bergs, “bergie bits” they called them, for drinking water. Sells for a fortune in Texas, bottled. Is that a good thing for the sea? I don’t know, but I thought it was creative.

Reducing access to travel will have its own complications. As fewer people travel, we return to the isolationist attitudes that always risk intolerance. And as resources are perceived as diminished, people tend to become more aggressive, risking …well, everything on the planet.

And while we are constantly hearing of the shallowness of the American people, they underestimate us. We might have been the rejects of other places, one professor I had for a graduate history class said we were, “the dregs of Europe”… (he was a funny old guy), still… even if that is so, we had grit, survival instincts, and resilience. Resilience is a key descriptor. Rural people are known in almost any definition, for their resiliency, resourcefulness, and creative application.

Like the FDR electrification programs, let’s collectively invest in passive, regenerative, non-polluting energy sources. Whatever that takes…. we need to figure it out and git-er-dun.

Taking control back before the average person is suckered into selling its wind-rights (happening already), or losing its water rights (on everyone’s radar around the Great Lakes) or quality of water. Enough is enough.