Tom Glenn's Blog, page 121

Why Go to College (3)

It’s true that the master’s and doctorate led to more promotions in the government. I was inducted into the Senior Executive Service and finally was promoted to an SES-4, only two steps down from the top grade. But the principal reason I reached such high levels was my performance on the job. That performance was due to my enhanced ability to think. I learned in the process that leading—enabling subordinates to be the best they can be—rather then managing—controlling subordinates—created the conditions for outstanding achievement.

When I look back on my career advancement, I see that two factors predominated: luck and my ability to think. It was sheer luck that the army chose to teach me Vietnamese in 1959, when Vietnam was of no importance to the U.S. And it was by chance that I happened to be comfortable in the three languages of Vietnam—Vietnamese, Chinese, and French—during the 1960s and 1970s. But it was not luck that I was ready and willing to be sent to Vietnam repeatedly during the war.

And the major reason that I was promoted time after time was that I was exceptionally good at my job. Thanks to my education, I had sharpened my ability to think. I even learned how to think like the enemy, the Vietnamese Communists, and was able to predict what they would do next.

Yes, my education led to good jobs. But my degrees were minor factors in my career. Most important was my ability to think and, as it turned out, to outthink the enemy.

Why Go to College (2)

Learning to think meant tailoring my thinking to the suitable mode. The study of languages proved most useful, because I discovered that the internal logic of one language does not apply to another. And families of languages tend to share some rules but not others. Romance languages, that grew out of Latin, are the most alike. Germanic languages that I know (German and English) likewise use similar grammatical rules. And all western languages resemble one another in their basic grammatical structure. But no two follow exactly the same rules.

Asian languages I know, Vietnamese and Chinese, share an internal logic that is dramatically alien to western languages. In these languages, there are no parts of speech as we westerners understand them. In principle, any single syllable can function as a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. There are no pronouns in the western sense. Meaning derives from combining syllables into compounds and from word order and context. And both languages are tonal—the rising and falling of the voice completely changes the meaning of a syllable.

I learned those languages partly by chance. After I finished college, I enlisted in the army to avoid being drafted. The army sent me to language school for an intensive year’s study of a language I had never heard of, Vietnamese—in those days we called Vietnam French Indochina. Then I was assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). In my off hours, I studied Chinese at Georgetown University. When my enlistment finished, NSA immediately hired me as a GS-11, an unusually high pay grade for a new hire—GS-5 and GS-7 were the standard—and sent me to Vietnam.

In short, my college degree helped in getting a high pay grade, but it was my facility with languages—and my ability to think in those languages— that led NSA to hire me.

A few years later, I decided that I didn’t know enough and that my brain needed more training. So I signed up for graduate courses at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I ended up earning a master’s in Government and doctorate in Public Administration. In the process, I learned that wasn’t so dumb after all. I easily outflanked my rival students and got straight A grades. And my ability to think grew yet again.

More tomorrow.

Why Go to College

I recently heard a man speaking on the radio say that he went to college so he could get a better job. I checked on the statistics. He’s right. College graduates earn on average some $32,000 a year than high school graduates. Their prospects for getting hired are much higher, they’re less likely to become unemployed, and they have more career opportunities.

But the greatest benefit of college is not financial. It’s mental. I didn’t go to college to get a better job. I went to learn. In the process, I gained something I didn’t even know about: my ability to think greatly improved.

It turns out the real reason to go to college is to learn how to think.

When I graduated from high school, counselors recommended that I not go to college. In their opinion, I simply wasn’t intelligent enough. I went anyway. I was determined to improve myself.

I lived in Oakland, California. The University of California in Berkeley was a bus ride away. The tuition for a California resident was less than a hundred dollars a semester. How could I pass it up?

All through the four years of college, I worked part-time—usually between ten and twenty hours a week—to support myself and pay expenses. My grades were mediocre. I believed I wasn’t smart enough to be in college, so I didn’t expect to do well. Besides, I was hard put just to make it from week to week, working every afternoon and evening, going to classes during the day, and studying when I should have been sleeping. I ended up missing my own graduation ceremony because I was in the university hospital suffering from exhaustion.

But I got what I went for: I learned to think.

I discovered that many modes of thinking are valid for the discipline they apply to but not to other disciplines. The rules for music don’t work in mathematics. The underpinnings of economics are meaningless in poetry. The guidelines that drive architecture are invalid if applied to chemistry. And yet the rules internal to any discipline are completely valid unto themselves.

More next time.

Post-Traumatic Stress Injury Presentation

On 26 February, I gave my presentation on Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) for the first time at the Oasis adult learning facility in Bethesda, Maryland. PTSI is a subject I find very difficult to talk about. It has taken me many years to learn to control my emotions when the indelible memories of my time in combat in Vietnam come flooding back. The memories will never fade. They are with me always. That’s the nature of PTSI. Simply talking about the malady is hard for me. Describing it in detail to an audience was a major challenge.

But I decided it was important for me to do the presentation for two reasons. First, I’ve learned that the only way I can cope with the condition is to face my memories directly and teach myself to calm my emotional reactions. That means I have to be able to speak of them openly. What better way than to describe them in a speech before an audience?

Second, I can help others. Those of us suffering from PTSI believe that we are the only ones damaged by the experience of combat. Others seem to have come through it fine. So we’re defective. We’re failures. We say nothing. If I can reach out to my brothers and show them that they are not alone and that we can help each other, I have done something worth the pain I have endured.

I had to rehearse the presentation numerous times before I could train my emotions to stay in check as I spoke of my damaged psyche. And I was very afraid that I’d spark the symptoms even as I spoke of them—panic attacks, flashbacks, irrational rages. But my practicing worked. I got through the presentation with my emotions under control. Granted, I choked up and got tears in my eyes when I spoke of the young men—average age nineteen—who were killed by my side in ways so grisly that I can’t talk about it.

In the discussion that followed the presentation, I learned that what I’d told the group was a revelation to a good many who’d seen the symptoms of PTSI but didn’t know what it was. At the end, a man roughly my age came up to me and told me that I had described exactly his father’s behavior after he came home from World War II. Only now, the man said, could he understand what his father was going through.

So my struggle to speak openly and in public of my psychic wounds was well worth what it cost. I have been able to help others. What more could anyone ask?

Gun Control In Virginia

I see that, according to the Washington Post, a Virginia state Senate committee has advanced seven of eight gun-control bills advocated by Governor Ralph Northam. This came only a week after the committee failed to pass a proposed assault weapons ban.

Two events brought about the committee’s action. First was the Virginia Beach shooting on May 31, 2019, when a disgruntled city employee fatally shot twelve people and wounded four others before being shot dead by police.

The other was the election last November when Democrats took over control of the state government. Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, had been pushing for greater gun control, but Republicans had defeated his efforts. Now, with Democrats empowered, it looks like gun control bills are finally going to get passed.

I’m hearing that Virginia gun support advocates, including some local sheriffs, are declaring that they will refuse to enforce the law—despite the fact that much-needed gun control is overwhelmingly popular in the state.

Let’s look at the numbers. Close to 1.4 million people died from firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011. The numbers have grown in recent years. The U.S. gun-related homicide rate is 25 times higher than that in 22 other high-income countries.

And according to one study, the Small Arms Survey, U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms. We have 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents. The comparable figure for Germany is 19.6. For England and Wales, it’s 4.6. In the U.S., we have more guns than we have people.

The argument I’ve heard from Virginians and others who support gun ownership is that guns are a part of American culture and tradition. My answer is that to the degree that that is true, it’s time we change our culture. Far better to alter our traditions than to accept more than a million deaths by firearms.

I suspect that only a man who has seen combat can fully appreciate the damage guns inflict on the human body. Maybe if more combat veterans spoke out, people would understand better why we need to banish guns from our civil society. I earnestly urge all my brothers in arms to bear witness.

Being a Buddy (2)

Being a buddy to AIDS patients had a different meaning from being a buddy to a soldier on the battlefield.

I volunteered to work with AIDS victims starting about ten years after the fall of Saigon even though I thought at the time that it might mean risking my life for the good of others. At the height of the AIDS crisis, we didn’t know how the disease was transmitted. Volunteering to help men dying of AIDS might mean exposing oneself to contamination. And back then, everyone who contracted AIDS died. But men were dying on the street because no one would help them. I reasoned that if I could face the danger of death on the battlefield, I could do it helping sick men.

Some years later, we learned that AIDS is transmitted when tainted body fluid—usually blood or semen—enters the bloodstream. I was safe from infection so long as I was very careful to avoid needle sticks when I was doing injections. In fact once I did accidentally stab myself with a tainted needle after I’d given my patient a shot. By sheer good fortune, I didn’t contract AIDS.

On the battlefield I loved my buddies. American men, especially those in the military, avoid the word “love” when it comes to other men. But the feelings I had were too strong to be called anything else. I was willing to give up my life for these men, my buddies, and they put their lives on the line for me.

And I loved all my AIDS patients. They were more like my sons than my brothers. I bathed them, dressed them, fed them, soothed them when they frightened, celebrated with them when they happy. My job was to help them die with dignity and with as little pain and sorrow as possible. I still grieve over the loss of each one.

So the word “buddy” has become sacred to me. A popular song published in 1922, about a buddy lost in World War I, expresses the grief better than my words can:

Nights are long since you went away

I think about you all through the day

My buddy, my buddy, no buddy quite so true

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand

Just long to know that you understand

My buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you

Being a Buddy

The word “buddy” has two distinct but related meanings to me. One comes from my time in the military and my years as civilian under cover as military in Vietnam. My buddy was the man fighting beside me. The bond I formed with men who stood beside me in combat is the strongest bond I have ever experienced.

The second meaning comes from my years as a helper and caretaker for men dying of AIDS. I was their buddy. In the gay community back in those days, a man who was a buddy was not a lover but a committed friend, there to help out with no sexual ties or even implications. I was straight. All seven of my patients were gay. They all died.

In both settings, men who accepted me their buddy did it knowing that I was not one of them. The army and Marine enlisted men I worked with on the battlefield in Vietnam knew I was a civilian signals intelligence operative there to help them by tipping them off to what the enemy was doing, where he was, and which units he had deployed. The gay men I worked with during the AIDS crisis knew I was straight. Yet both the soldiers and Marines and the gay community accepted me without bias.

The men I stood beside in combat were young. The average age was nineteen. I lived with them—slept on the ground next to them, ate C-rations sitting in the dirt beside them, used their latrines, went into battle with them. Some of these fine young men were killed by my side. Their deaths scarred me for life.

More tomorrow.

Where My Time Goes (2)

I do presentations at least several times a month. And occasionally I show a DVD of an opera with commentary and musical examples I play at the piano. I hold a BA in music, and music has always been an important aspect of my life. I try to play the piano every day. I own a magnificent six-foot Steinway grand, a gift from my daughter.

I also teach a class in fiction craftsmanship, emphasizing the rules a writer must adhere to if he expects to get published. That class has proved popular enough that I’m now considering a presentation on how I write, actively alternating between the right-brain intuitive state and the left-brain rational mode.

And then there’s this blog. I offer new posts six days a week. I never seem to have a problem finding subjects to blog about.

Beyond professional work, I have a house to keep up. I’ve only lived here since last June. It has required a great deal of time and effort to get the place in the shape I want. I also work out with weights three or four times a week, a routine that takes just under two hours. I’ve been lifting weights since I was in my twenties. I do it because I enjoy it, not to maintain my health. I was a runner all my life, until I had knee replacement surgery several years ago that got slopped up. I can’t run any more and walk with a slight limp.

In short, I have too much to do. I’m spending too little time on my vocation, writing, and too much time on other less important matters. That has to change. I’m considering saving time by posting blogs less frequently, say three times a week.

I have an extraordinarily rich and full life. It is possible only because of the generous retirement my career as a spy has provided. I generally accept no fees for speaking, and the money I spend promoting my books reduces the amount they earn. I live on my annuity.

I am, in sum, living the life I want to live. I am the most fortunate of men. All I need to do now is discipline myself to spend more time writing and less on other things. I won’t live forever and I ardently wish to finish the two books I’m working on. I’d better get cracking.

Where My Time Goes

Several readers have recently asked me how I find the time to do research on such issues as income disparity, failure of corporations to pay taxes, and the national debt—subjects addressed in this blog that are obviously outside my expertise.

The answer is that I delve into these matters by devoting time to research instead of to writing.

I was born to write. That is my vocation and my mission. I now have four books, 17 short stories, and several nonfiction pieces in print. Next month, my newest novel, Secretocracy, will be published followed by a new book of short stories, called Coming to Terms, in July. I’m currently working on two new novels. It will take at least the rest of this year to finish satisfactory drafts of both.

I also do book reviews for the Washington Independent Review of Books and the Internet Review of Books. Hence, my reading time is nearly always taken up with books I’m reviewing rather than ones I want to read for my own edification. I’ve just completed a review of Benjamin Runkle’s Generals in the Making (Stackpole Books, 2019). I now have more than fifty reviews in print. A copy of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale awaits my attention when I again have time to read for myself. I hope that happens soon.

Besides writing, I do presentations with slides. I’m currently offering three different ones. Far and away the most popular has been the presentation on the fall of Saigon which I survived escaping under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets. By the end of last year, I had done that presentation more than sixty times. I’ve quit counting. The other two are on the 1967 battle of Dak To in Vietnam’s western highlands and on Post-Traumatic Stress Injury, which I suffer from.

I do these presentations because I want people to know what happened in Vietnam. I’ve done them in a great variety of venues, from schools to retirement communities. I welcome invitations from readers of this blog to offer the presentations in their locales.

More tomorrow.

American Income Inequality

The American economy is robust. As President Trump will be the first to tell you, we have great wealth and low unemployment. And yet, if that’s true, why are so many Americans struggling to get by?

To answer that question, I did a survey of financial reporting by a number of sources. Here’s what I learned:

One quarter of American workers make less than $10 an hour. That means that they live below the federal poverty level.

The rich benefited from the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis while the poor and the middle class did not. In 2012, the top 10% of earners took home 50% of all income. The top 1% took home 20% of the income.

By 2015, America’s top 10% averaged more than nine times as much income as the bottom 90%. Americans in the top 1% averaged over 40 times more income than the bottom 90%.

And wealth—the value of a household’s property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts—is even more highly concentrated than income. The share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from 30 percent in 1989 to 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33 percent to 23 percent.

To change this situation, we need to alter the way we do business in this country. We can start by passing a minimum wage law requiring that all workers get paid at least $15 an hour. We can change the tax bias so that the wealthy pay their fair share—these days, some of the richest and many corporations pay no tax. We can work together to strengthen unions and rid ourselves of anti-union laws, ironically called right-to-work laws.

Most important, we can vote out those who have created or abetted the current situation. That means the Donald Trump and his supporters.

I avoid political discussion in this blog, but income disparity demands that we act together to change our government and help the poorest of our citizens.