Tom Glenn's Blog, page 55

My Books (2)

Continuing from several days ago the story of my books and how they came to be: I discussed earlier the first three books, Friendly Casualties, No-Accounts, and The Trion Syndrome.

Next came Last of the Annamese. It was published in March 2017. I used this novel to confront my memories of the fall of Saigon from which I escaped under fire. Once again, the image of the boy-child recurs, as the protagonist, Chuck Griffin, a retired Marine, grieves over the loss of his son, killed in combat in Vietnam. He returns to Vietnam as a civilian intelligence analyst after the withdrawal of U.S. troops but before the North Vietnamese conquest and encounters Vietnamese boys whom he tries to save during the conflagration.

Secretocracy, published in March 2020, tells the story of a federal intelligence budgeteer persecuted by the Trump administration because he refuses to approve funds for an illegal operation. Coming to Terms, out in August 2020, is a new collection of short stories about people trying to work through the downturns in their lives.

So that’s the six books published so far. But I’m a long way from being finished. I’m currently working on two more novels. When they’ll see the light of day is open to question.

I knew at age six that I was born to write. Writing, in other words, was my vocation. I’ve worked hard to carry out the orders given to me by fate. And I’m not finished yet.

Christmas

The biggest, most celebrated holiday in the U.S. is Christmas. It commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, who, according to Christian churches, was both God and man. The coming of Christ marked a change in humanity and the way people think of themselves that resulted in today’s concepts of democracy and freedom.

I have always suspected that we humans invented Christmas and New Year’s to distract us from the bleak prospect of months of cold weather and short days. And it turns out that winter festivals happen all around the globe, even in non-Christian countries. I’m not alone in hating cold, dark times.

But Americans have taken Christmas far beyond the observing of Christ’s birthday. It, along with New Year’s, has become an annual feast of eating, drinking, gift giving, and partying far outstripping any other holiday in the year.

As regular readers of the blog know all too well, music is one of the most important elements of my life. And some of the greatest music ever written celebrates Christmas. In addition to the hymns and carols we all know so well, two of the greatest pieces ever written honor Christmas. One is Messiah (HWV 56), an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Händel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and from the Coverdale Psalter, the version of the Psalms included with the Book of Common Prayer. The other is The Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) by Johann Sebastian Bach, intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. Recordings of both oratorios stay on my CD player all through the season. I listen to them as often as I can.

The odd thing for me about Christmas is the generosity that the holiday inspires in me. Prompted by the Christmas spirit, I am far more willing to share my plenitude with others, especially those less fortunate, at this time of year. And I’m not alone. As the press and media make clear, Americans are more generous at Christmas that during any other season.

So let’s hear it for Christmas, a time when sharing becomes commonplace. May it always be so.

Incarceration in the U.S.

I have written here before about the U.S. leading the world in the number of firearms in the hands of the civilian population and the number of citizens killed every year by gunfire. We have 20 percent more guns than people, and so far this year we have killed by gunfire almost 44,000, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Equally shocking and almost certainly related is the number of people we put in jail. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest number of prisoners, roughly 2.12 million.

My research was unable to determine why we have such high incarceration rates, but several factors are obviously important. First, unlike many other countries, we punish almost all crime with jail time. Second, we punish drug offenses with prison, accounting for the incarceration of almost half a million people. Police still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences. A persuasive argument could be made that people using drugs should be treated medically rather than imprisoned.

What I find strange is that we Americans accept both our death rate from guns and our millions in jail as being ordinary. We do nothing to lower the number of guns in the hands of civilians and make no effort to reduce the numbers incarcerated. Because we are the leading nation of the world, we fail to learn from the example of others.

It is long since time that we took a hard look at ourselves and moved to correct some of our failings.

Looking Young

All my life, up to today, I have looked younger than I am. The fact that my birthday is in November made it worse—I started in the first grade when I was five and began high school at thirteen. When I showed up for class the first time in the first grade, the other kids didn’t think I was old enough to be one of them. I started college at seventeen and was regularly taken to be a child prodigy. I graduated at twenty-one and immediately enlisted in the army for language school. Once again, the other troops treated me more like a kid brother than an equal.

And so it has been my whole life. These days at senior centers and gatherings for the retired, I am invariably taken to be barely qualified by age for admissibility when I am actually one of the oldest people present.

Despite that, my body is slowly failing as I age. I hurt my left arm many years ago in a fall on the ice. These days, it periodically aches. The surgeon botched my knee replacement surgery in 2015; I walk with a slight limp and can’t bend my knee very far. I suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), presumably an aftermath of the lung cancer which resulted in the removal of the upper lobe of my right lung, also in 2015. As a result, I suffer from nasal congestion (a runny nose) and regularly cough up mucus.

And, as much as I’d like to deny it, I’m not as sure on my feet as I used to be. Nor do I have the energy I once did. Worst of all, my memory regularly fails me, particularly when it comes to people’s names.

All that said, I go out of my way to stay healthy. I stick to a strict diet consisting mostly of vegetables and fruits. I get plenty of sleep. I adhere to a weight lifting routine of several hours every other day.

It’s working. Even though my body, including my brain, is slowing down, my writing is better than ever. I have believed since I was six that I was born to write. I’m currently subject to writer’s block as a result of my grieving over the loss of my partner, Su. But I know the problem is temporary.

So here I am, among the oldest men I know, yet regularly taken for twenty-plus years younger than I am. That’s all right. I’m used to it. It’s been going in since I was a child. And being mistaken for younger than you are ain’t all bad.

My Books

I posted early on in this blog about my books. Since then, I have published more books. Time to update the story.

I have been writing since I was six years old. I now have six novels and seventeen short stories in print.

My first published book, Friendly Casualties, was a novel in short stories derived from experiences in the thirteen years I trundled between the U.S. and Vietnam to provide signals intelligence support to U.S. Army and Marine combat units fighting in South Vietnam. The first half of the book is a series of short stories in which characters from one story reappear in another. The second half is a novella that draws together all the preceding tales.

I first published Friendly Casualties as an ebook on Amazon.com in 2012, but Adelaide Books of New York will be bringing it out in hard copy in June 2022.

No-Accounts, published in 2014, came from my five years of caring for AIDS patients. It tells the story of a straight man caring for a gay man dying of AIDS. I got into caring for men with AIDS to help me cope with the horrors of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), a malady that resulted from all my years providing intelligence support on the battlefield. When I was with my patients, men suffering more than I was, my unbearable memories went dormant.

Next, in 2015, came The Trion Syndrome. It begins with a Greek legend about a demigod so brutal to the vanquished that the gods sent the Eucharides, three female monsters, to drown him. The protagonist, Dave Bell, is haunted by half-remembered visions of the war in Vietnam. At his lowest point, he recalls that he killed a child. Dave considers suicide, but a young man appears and helps him. It is his illegitimate son, a child he had tried to kill through abortion, who now helps him find his way home.

More next time.

Thanks for the Memory (2)

After my day of celebrating the release of my friend from prison, I continue the lyrics from the song, “Thanks for the Memory”:

Thanks for the memory
Of tinkling temple bells
Alma mater yells
And Cuban rum
And towels from
The very best hotels
Oh how lovely it was

Thanks for the memory
Of cushions on the floor
Hash with Dinty Moore
That pair of gay pajamas
That you bought
And never wore

We said goodbye with a highball
Then I got as high as a steeple
But we were intelligent people
No tears, no fuss
Hooray for us

Strictly entre nous
Darling, how are you?
And how are all
Those little dreams
That never did come true?

Awfully glad I met you
Cheerio and toodle-oo
Thank you
Thank you so much

End of quote. The pain not expressed but hinted at in those words continues to resound in my soul.

Celebration Day

I interrupt my discussion of “Thanks for the Memory” to mark a day of unparalleled celebration: my friend is being released from prison today.

My friend will remain unnamed to protect his privacy. The release comes after he has served more than twenty-seven years. Although we have never met face-to-face, we have been exchanging letters for the last four years. It began when he read my novel, The Trion Syndrome, about a man suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), as I do. My friend explained to me in his letters that he, too, is subject to that curse as a consequence of his military service in Vietnam in 1967. I was there at the same time, serving on the battlefield as a civilian under cover as military, in the same section of Central Vietnam as my friend was, but we never met.

Although my friend has never claimed that PTSI contributed to the acts for which he was imprisoned, I have to believe that the soul damage inflicted by combat must have played a role. It changed my life, leading me to write to vent my anguish. It was the underlying basis of two of my books, Last of the Annamese and The Trion Syndrome, both written to help me face my PTSI. The disease changes the victim’s life. It had to have affected my friend deeply.

Miraculously, despite years of serving on the battlefield, I was never wounded, but my friend wasn’t so lucky. He was wounded twice. And he was decorated for his service. He received a Purple Heart, a Gold Star (for the second wounding), and a Bronze Star with “V” for valor.

So today is my Halleluiah Day. I’ll spend the day celebrating my friend’s return to freedom at long last.

Thanks for the Memory

Maybe because of my history of failed relationships and my continuing grieving over the death of my partner, Su, a year ago last March, the song “Thanks for the Memory” is special, no sacred to me. It expresses for me the unspoken pain of a broken relationship in way not approached by any other song or poem.

The song, composed by Ralph Rainger with lyrics by Leo Robin, was introduced in the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938 with a cast headed by Bob Hope. I want to quote all the lyrics here, even though it will require more than one post. I thank you for your patience.

Here are the lyrics:

Thanks for the memory
Of sentimental verse
Nothing in my purse
And chuckles
When the preacher said
For better or for worse
How lovely it was

Thanks for the memory
Of Schubert’s Serenade
Little things of jade
And traffic jams
And anagrams
And bills we never paid
How lovely it was

We who could laugh over big things
Were parted by only a slight thing
I wonder if we did the right thing
Oh, well, that’s life, I guess
I love your dress

Thanks for the memory
Of faults that you forgave
Of rainbows on a wave
And stockings in the basin
When a fellow needs a shave
Thank you so much

More next time.

Music (2)

As I tried out all the pianos on the stage of the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, one piano stood out. Its sound was clear, sharp, resonating—magnificent. I realized that this piano was the one I had played in the lounge and fallen in love with. To my astonishment, Susan bought that piano and had it delivered to my home.

That piano, new, was then priced at $85,000. I’m sure Susan didn’t pay that much, but the cost must have been in the multiple thousand-dollar range. She never told me where she got the money, but my guess is that it was from her share of her mother’s estate.

Here’s the background: Her mother and I had separated some years before. During the divorce proceedings, just as I was about to testify about my wife’s failures during the marriage, a neighbor came into the courtroom with one of my daughters, at the behest, as I learned later, of my wife, and timed to coincide with my testimony. I wasn’t about to describe in detail my wife’s sins in front of one of her children, so I clammed up. The result was that I lost heavily in the divorce. My ex-wife ended up getting the family house, for which I still was required to make monthly payments, plus a generous alimony. As a result, I was so poor that I ended up living in a rented room in a joint house.

One of my children sided with my wife during the divorce; the other three, including Susan, expressed no allegiance to either side. Years later, when my ex-wife died, her estate, consisting of the family house and her savings from the years of alimony, was divided among her four children. My belief is that Susan used her share to buy me the piano, her way of reimbursing me for what she saw as the unfair distribution of wealth at the time of the divorce.

Today, that piano sits in a room dedicated to it—I call it the piano room. The space is ideal for music-making. The room is two stories high with one wall windows, so that sounds in the room are bright and crisp, unmuffled. My glorious piano has found a proper home.

Hence my life in music. Although it didn’t end up being my profession, music has been an unparalleled joy to me throughout my many years of living.

Music

My post yesterday about being an artist reminded me that I pursued music as a profession before I surrendered to my fate of being a writer. It started when, as a child, I taught myself to read music and to play the pianos at school (we were too poor to own a piano). When time for college arrived, I majored in music and took a BA in it. Later I headed folk groups in my local parish, arranged music for my performers (singers, guitars, woodwinds), and wrote scores combining the forces of folk group, choir, organ, and woodwinds. I still have recordings we made. My judgment these days is that the music I wrote is quite good.

Nowadays, when I have time, I listen to radio broadcasts and my own recordings of classical music (Bach and Mozart are my favorites), and I still play the piano. I own a magnificent Steinway grand, a gift from my eldest daughter, Susan. How it came to pass that she bought it for me is a story I’ve told before in these blog posts, but it’s worth repeating.

Some years ago, because of Susan’s interest in dance, we regularly bought season tickets for ballet performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. We always arrived early so we could have a cocktail in the lounge before the performance. There was always a Steinway grand in the lounge, but it was too early for the lounge pianist to be there. I’ve never been able to resist pianos, so I asked if I could play the ones there. One year, the piano in the lounge was the most beautiful instrument I had ever played. I gloried in being able to make music using it. The next year, it had been replaced by another Steinway that was not nearly as wonderful.

Several years later, my daughter’s husband called me and told me to come to their place right away. I said that I was in jeans and a tee shirt and would have to change. No, he said, come immediately without taking time to change clothes. When I arrived at their place, they told me to get in the car. We were going for a drive. We drove into D.C., and I remarked that we were getting close to the Kennedy Center. We parked in the center’s underground garage and proceeded to the stage door of the Eisenhower Theater. Once inside the theater, I discovered that the stage was filled with grand pianos. Susan told me to try them and see which one I liked best. I was delighted to be able to play all those wonderful instruments.

More next time.