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    Vietnam War tagged posts

    After Watching the Final Segment of PBS’s Vietnam War Documentary

    September 29, 2017 Posted in Andrew Hidas Poems, Poetry, Politics/Culture 6 comments

    ***
    the Fog
    the Pain
    the Loss
    the Grief
    the Waste
    the Carnage
    the Courage
    the Sadness
    the Madness
    the Heartache
    the Brokenness

    the Remembering
    the Forgetting
    the Suffering
    the Forgiving
    the Renewing
    the Honoring
    the Healing
    the Hoping

    the Redeeming

    the Madness
    the Madness

    the Echos

    the Madness
    the Madness

    ***

    ***

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    Twitter: @AndrewHidas

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    Deep appreciation to the photographers!

    Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for the books) grace the rotating banner at the top of this page. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

    Library books photo by Larry Rose, all rights ...

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    To Be Young and of Fighting Age: Two Takes on the Vietnam Era

    November 10, 2014 Posted in Personal Reflections, Politics/Culture 4 comments

    As a worship associate in my church, I periodically help produce services, assisting the presiding minister by doing readings and planning various other activities that help shape what takes place in the sanctuary every Sunday. In our congregation, it also involves presenting a personal reflection that is tied to the topic of the service.

    At yesterday’s Veteran’s Day service, I reflected on my own experience of grappling with the Selective Service System draft as I came of age in the late 1960s, just in time for the Vietnam era. After I got home, I sent the text to my longtime friend (40 years and counting) Kevin Feldman (nickname “Gar”) with a brief note that said:

    Hey Gar,

    Does any of this overlap with your experience, or did you 2S all the way and then lottery out of the draft?

    Seeya,

    A

    ***

    What Kevin wrote me back struck me as such a stirring perspective on the times—different and in many ways fa...

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