Tom Glenn's Blog, page 161

The Steinway

I mentioned several days ago that my daughter, Susan, bought me my piano, a magnificent six-foot Steinway. That story of how that came to be is worth retelling.

It starts with my divorce from my first wife, the mother of my four children. During the hearings, my wife had testified about me and offered evidence why she should be awarded the lion’s share of out joint holdings. I had just taken the witness stand to tell my side of the story and recount her misdeeds when I spotted a neighbor coming into the courtroom with one of my daughters. I clammed up. I wasn’t about to narrate my wife’s considerable failings and egregious acts before one of her children.

I learned later that my wife had arranged for one of my children to be present during my testimony. She believed, correctly, that I would not level severe criticisms against her with one of her children listening. The end result was that I lost everything. My wife was awarded all our property, and I had to pay alimony. I was destitute. I was reduced to living in a rented attic in a joint house with five other men.

Over the years, I gradually regained financial equilibrium. Then my ex-wife died suddenly. I was free of the onerous alimony.

Meanwhile, my oldest daughter, Susan, now an adult, and I subscribed to the ballet series at the Kennedy Center every year. Often, before the performance, we would visit the opera house lounge. We would arrive early in the evening before the hired pianist was on duty. I’ve never been able to resist a playing a piano sitting idle and waiting for attention, so I asked if I could try the Steinway grand that was in the lounge.

Over the years, I tried a number of different pianos. One I played enthralled me. It had the most beautiful sound I had ever encountered. I played it before each of the performances that season. The next season, it was gone—replaced by another piano.

More tomorrow.

Music and Peace (3)

Today, I return to my series of posts on music and the peace it brings to me.

I try to carve out time from my overloaded schedule to play the piano every day. I favor Mozart because of the excellence of his music. I’d play more Bach, the greatest composer who ever lived, if I could, but his music is for the most part too difficult for me, and I don’t have time to practice the hours required to play him well. I also play Beethoven, Satie, Chopin, and some of my own compositions.

Listening to music brings me peace and an escape from the torments of Post-Traumatic Stress. But playing music lifts my soul. The process of using my hands and feet to make the notes on the page in front of me come to life transforms me. I become totally absorbed in the ebb and flow of a master’s aural creation. The panic attacks, irrational rages, nightmares, and flashbacks are left behind.

Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) I have always with me. It will never fade or weaken. But my soul is stronger than the disease. I rise above it. And making music gives me a peace and fulfillment available nowhere else.

Trump and PTSI

I interrupt my series on Music and Peace to go back to a subject of a few days ago. I expressed my outrage at Trump’s suggestion that a mass shooter did the deed because he suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), commonly referred to as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As I explained, I call it an “injury” as opposed to “disorder” because it’s a condition caused by an external wound to the soul, not the mind going awry from internal malfunctions.

Today the New York Times published an op-ed on the subject. I quote it below:

 

Lauren Katsenberg. At War editor


Dear reader,


Last Friday, while speaking to reporters about the Thousand Oaks shooter, President Trump insinuated that the gunman’s actions may have been a result of military-related mental-health issues. “He saw some pretty bad things,” Trump said. “And a lot of people say he had the PTSD. That’s a tough deal.”


People within the military and veterans community were angered by the president’s comments, which risked reinforcing stereotypes about veterans being ticking time bombs, susceptible to committing violent crimes. We asked readers to tell us about stereotypes they have encountered about veterans and post-traumatic stress disorder and the ways in which they have challenged them. Below is a selection of responses.


People Can Be Dismissive of the Severity of His Illness


My husband has PTSD. Together, we own a small business, so we have many opportunities to show what PTSD can look like. People expect him to look unkempt, confused and messy in dress and appearance. When he doesn’t fit “the look,” people, including health care providers, can be dismissive of the severity of his illness, so we are to be more open about our private struggle. While we have so far been reluctant in sharing too much, we are increasingly trying to discuss these issues with our children, as well as their teachers and peers. — Niki Leffingwell, Missoula, Mont.


Most of Us Are Dealing With PTSD Pretty Well


I keep my PTSD to myself for the most part, because people seem to clam up when I let it out. What people don’t realize is that most of us are dealing with PTSD pretty well, even if it sometimes takes drugs and therapy to get by. But it is sometimes very hard to watch the world go about its business as if nothing ever happened, when there’s a whole group of people who are suffering in relative silence and watching the rest of the world be happy and get rich. — Roger Johnson


We Serve Our Nation Out of Uniform, as We Did Before


I am a combat veteran who, by virtue of my role in health care, saw the impact of violence and war every day I was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have PTSD, yet I have an incredibly meaningful life after service without issues of violence. I have many friends who have served as well and who also have PTSD. We continue to serve our nation out of uniform, as we did before. Many of us have shifted to saying “PTS” and removing the “D” to eliminate the “disorder” and move to the cause of the stress. That’s a simple but practical example that anyone can do to take a stigma and help eliminate it. — Richard Morton, Ponte Vedra, Fla.


We Are Just as Human as You Are


I see no connection between the service and violent crime myself, but I can easily see how uninformed people can make that knee-jerk connection. Just because you have familiarity with a tool, people can presume you are prone to using it, and this is not true. We are just as human as you are; we just have a different and more professional experience with life and death, all of us. I talk about what it was I did, particularly the places and events, because those bring meaning to people who have an ability to listen. I draw intentional comparisons between the military and the first responders whom people are around everyday and trust with their safety and security. It’s no different, this relationship, save for the fact that the police, E.M.T.s, doctors and car companies kill far more people than the military does, year in year out. — Chris McFarland, Toms River, N.J.


I Am Open and Honest About My Experiences


I believe a lot of people see combat veterans as “damaged goods.” They look at servicemen and servicewomen as a certain warrior class, and once veterans are done with their time in service, they are seen as a liability. I am open and honest about my experiences. My past has made and almost broke me. I have received inpatient mental-health therapy and given speeches with the president of the United States in attendance. I received a diagnosis of PTSD, but with help from the V.A., I was able to work for a United States senator and finish my undergraduate degree. I currently work for the National Park Service, am married, have a beautiful son and am enjoying life. — Joe Bykowski, Westhampton, Mass.


I’ve Had People Ask if I’m Scared He Will Hurt Me


I’m married to a decorated disabled combat veteran with PTSD. I’ve had people ask if I’m scared he will hurt me, ask if I’m afraid he will “snap” and make statements implying that they believe because he’s been in a war zone and has PTSD that he must have violent tendencies. I always respond that the only thing I ever fear is that he will take his own life. Veterans are more likely to die by suicide than to harm others. — Page G. Whorl, Cambridge, Md.

Music and Peace (2)

My captivation with music continued throughout childhood. I taught myself to play the piano before I was ten and finally scraped together the funds to buy an ancient upright as a teenager. In college, I began with a major in theater—I wanted to be an actor—but soon switched to music. I composed reams of pieces and studied composition, voice, and conducting. After college I formed and directed folk groups in churches. I was attracted to the folk genre primarily because I found the standard hymns mostly to be stodgy and of low aesthetic quality. I learned to play the guitar so I could lead the players, and I arranged the music we played and even composed new folk hymns. On the wall of my office is a photo of one group I led. It shows thirteen people including three of my daughters and a complement of instruments that includes guitars, a flute, and a clarinet for which I wrote arrangements.

During my thirteen years on and off in Vietnam, my devotion to music never flagged. I even formed folk groups for the small English-speaking Catholic congregation in Saigon. After our defeat in 1975, I came to depend more than ever on music to help me cope with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). I found that the complexity of Bach and the grace of Mozart did more to soothe my anguished soul than any other remedy I tried.

Some years ago, my oldest daughter, Susan, bought me a six-foot Steinway grand piano. Where she got the money is another story to be told here at another time. That piano is the most glorious instrument I have ever played—I selected it from a collection of Steinways. It has been the source of much peace and joy ever since.

More tomorrow.

Music and Peace

Throughout this blog, I’ve often mentioned my struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). I’ve talked about my methods for coping with the malady. I’ve written about my success in living with the condition. What I haven’t mentioned is the contribution of music.

My fascination with music goes back to childhood. Quite early, I came to realize that the logic inherent in music does not apply to any other facet of human life. That discovery paralleled my learning that language rules varied from one tongue to another—Italian and French, languages I taught myself as a child, used systems of thinking similar to each other and to English but not identical. My appreciation for the variance in language logic ballooned when I studied Asian languages.

What I didn’t understand as a child was the common factor of sound and pitch that music and language shared. Only when I worked with tonal languages did I comprehend that, for example, the meaning of the sentence “That’s right” depended on the intonation of the speaker. That is, a rise in the voice on the word “right” altered the meaning from a statement to a question.

In other words, I discovered as a child that the rigorous rules of logic changed depending on the milieu. Mathematical logic was accurate for dealing with numbers but didn’t work for aesthetic or spiritual reasoning.

In short, music and language taught me as a child that the rules for accurate thinking varied with the subject of thought. Only later did I realize that music can offer peace.

More tomorrow.

Unfairness in U.S. Congressional Elections

The results of the recent mid-term election made clear to me, once again, that we are long overdue to reform the way we elect our national legislative representatives. The House, the lower legislative body, reflects the actual population in the country. That’s fair. But the upper and more powerful body, the Senate, is elected by a badly warped selection system. As Paul Krugman put it in his 8 November New York Times op-ed, “The Senate, which gives each state the same number of seats regardless of population—which gives fewer than 600,000 people in Wyoming the same representation as almost 40 million in California—drastically overweights those rural areas and underweights the places where most Americans live.”

The numbers: as of July 2018, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. I have no figures on how independents voted in the November 2018 mid-term election, but the press states that the majority voted for the Democrats. In short, Democratic voters greatly outnumber Republican voters. And yet the Senate went to the Republicans.

With the current population distribution in the U.S., that means that Republicans, who predominate in low-population rural states, are unfairly given a great advantage over Democrats. And it explains how it came to pass that in our most recent mid-term, Democrats took the House, but Republicans took the Senate.

That, in sum, gives the white well-to-do unearned and unfair advantage.

It’s long since time we reformed the way we elect the Senate.

Veterans Day: A Quote to Remember

A long-time friend, Elizabeth May, the mother of fellow-writer Greg May and widow Gerald May, responded to my email about the Baltimore Sun article mentioning me (you can read it at  https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/arbutus-lansdowne/ph-ca-at-vietnam-salute-20181105-story.html) by giving me a quote from her husband. Gerald May was a widely recognized American Psychiatrist and Theologian.

As Elizabeth told me her email, “Jerry was responsible for the recognition of the Vietnam Vets at the 1987 Memorial Day Service on the Mall. They asked him to write a piece—he said he’d do it if they included the Vietnam Vets . . . Charles Durning read it—had trouble getting through it. After the event, at the reception, Justice Brennan asked to meet him.”

Here’s what Jerry had to say:

“All of us who have lost loved ones know the searing pain of grief. We know how difficult—even impossible—it is to let go. Grief is our wound, the hole inside us left by each precious life that has been taken from us, an emptiness that, indeed, can never be filled by anyone else.

“We go on with our lives. We must. But tonight, as we remember those who have died for our country, let us be reminded that grief is a sacred wound. But let us respect our own grieving, for it is, after all, an expression of our love. And it is an honoring for those who died for us. Let us be assured that the feeling we call grief—the shock, the sadness, its anger and confusion, and, most of all, its loneliness—is our way of saying we love you.”

Jerry May

Written for the 1987 Memorial Day Concert

Trump and PTSI

I’ve made it a practice in this blog to steer clear of politics. I don’t approve of president Trump, and I’m opposed to many of his policies. But that’s not what this blog is about.

Until now.

Trump’s speculation, beginning last Friday, that Ian David Long, the shooter at the country-music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury and hinting that PTSI was the underlying cause of the crime is ignorant, insulting, and outrageous.

I speak as one who suffers from that malady. And I know many other veterans similarly affected. I’ve never met or even heard of a PTSI victim who is violent towards others. If we set out to hurt anyone, it’s ourselves. Suicide rate among veterans is far higher than among non-veterans. Every day, twenty veterans and service members kill themselves.

I agree with Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, that the condition should be called Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) rather than Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is the direct result of an externally inflicted wound to the soul. Combat is one cause. Rape is another. Any violent experience, such as an automobile accident or an earthquake can cause it. It can’t be healed. The victim’s only choice is to learn to cope.

But violence towards others is not among its symptoms. Such acts result from psychosis, a very different disorder. And I stand with other veterans in condemning Trump’s words.

Poppies and Remembrance

Yesterday, I distributed red paper poppies to passersby along with my fellow American Legion members. Last night I attended a party in celebration of the Marine Corps birthday. Today I’ll be on the National Mall joining with other veterans in readings to commemorate Veterans Day.

These are activities I’ve been participating in for many years. Every Memorial Day and Veterans Day and every Marine Corps birthday, we veterans celebrate the contributions our military members. And we remember those no longer living.

In that spirit, I quote once again John McCrae’s beloved poem, dated 8 December 1915:

In Flanders Fields 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place, and in the sky,

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the dead; short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe!

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high!

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Presentations (2)

As I write, I have just given the fall of Saigon presentation three times in five days. I’m scheduled to do it twice more before the end of the month. I marvel at the emotions the story still calls up in me. Every time I do it, at three moments in the story I choke up and gets tears in my eyes. My grief over what happened is like my Post-Traumatic Stress Injury: it will be with me always.

I mutter complaints about my heavy presentation schedule, and I grumble about the time it takes to do this blog daily. I whine that the reason I haven’t finished the novel I’m currently writing is that public speaking and daily reporting take up too much time. But when I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that I genuinely enjoy both. I do them because I want to.

Nothing quite matches the pleasure I get when someone I don’t know comments on something I have reported in my blog. And I know of no fulfillment like that of looking out over my audience and seeing that they are transfixed by my story. Most satisfying for me is the knowledge that I am adding to people’s understanding of what happened in Vietnam and during the fall of Saigon. I want people to know.

And public speaking boosts book sales. The presentations I’ve given since the beginning of the month have resulted in the sale of more than thirty copies of Last of the Annamese. I’m not making any money from selling my books—I sell them at cost. My fervent desire is that people will read what I have written and gain new understanding of what happened in Vietnam.

So grumbling and whining notwithstanding, I’m doing what I most want to do. The task before me is to be more efficient so that I’ll have time to blog and do presentations and still have time to write.

I’m working on it.