Tom Glenn's Blog, page 56

Being an Artist

I might as well admit it. Despite all my efforts to portray myself as primarily a veteran or linguist, I am an artist through and through. By the time I was six years old, I knew I was born to write—I was to be an artist with words. That meant that my vocation was to create beauty using words.

As reported here before, I tried to escape my fate. I trained to be an actor, then a dancer. Because languages came easily to me, I became a linguist. Writing didn’t pay, so I became a spy which pays very well. But through it all, I wrote.

Because of the thirteen years I spent mostly in Vietnam supporting troops on the battlefield, much of my writing was about Vietnam. Because the war was so unpopular, publishers refused my stories and books. Then, when a new generation of Americans curious about what happened in Vietnam came along, my work started to sell. I now have six books and seventeen short stories in print.

To me, the role of the artist, to create beauty, approaches the divine. It is a sacred duty. And if it requires penury and sacrifice, so be it. I am blessed with a generous annuity, thanks to my years of spying, so that I am free of financial worries and can devote full time to writing. That said, writing is the hardest work I have ever done and the most fulfilling. It doesn’t matter what I think of it. It is my calling. I must do it.

My curse is writer’s block. I’ve been subject to it ever since my partner, Su, died a year ago last March. One of the two novels I was working on at the time was based on the 1967 battle of Dak To in Vietnam. The other was drawn from the twenty-plus year relationship with Su. I have been unable to make any progress on either of those books since Su’s death.

So here I am committed by fate to work that I am unable to do. Maybe time will heal me.

The Hail Mary

As a child growing up Catholic, I was taught to pray to the Virgin Mary using the prayer called the “Hail Mary.” In high school, I studied Latin and learned the words of the Hail Mary in Latin, the Ave Maria. Those words are as follows:

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Amen.

The words in English:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord be with you. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen

The name “Hail Mary” is well-known to the non-religious public because of its use to describe a desperate football pass that saves the game. According to History.com, “In 1975, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach popularized the term ‘Hail Mary’ to describe his miracle, winning touchdown pass to fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Drew Pearson in a playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings. Hail Mary thus became ingrained in the American sports lexicon . . .”

Even today, people still describe a last-minute frantic action that saves the day as a “Hail Mary pass.”

Student Debt (2)

I wouldn’t have been able to afford college at all if I were I graduating from high school today. The tuition at Cal (University of California, Berkeley) these days is $14,254 per year of study. Some 38 percent of students get grants and scholarships, but my high school grades were poor enough that I would never have qualified.

The same is true at the George Washington University (GW) where I did my graduate work. The tuition there per credit hour is now is now $1,995.

Thanks in part to my education, I went on to multiple successes. By the time I retired from the National Security Agency (NSA), I had reached the upper levels of the Senior Executive Service (SES), the highest paid ranks in government. I wrote and published six books and seventeen short stories. And I have become a successful book reviewer with well over a hundred reviews in print. Perhaps most important, I was able to retire from the government with a handsome annuity that allows me to write full time.

Were I starting out today as an impoverished youth with high school grades not good enough to warrant a scholarship, I would be unable to continue my education because tuition costs would be unaffordable. I would be stuck with nothing better than a high school degree. I think I’m a good example of why governments should offer higher education at affordable prices with financial help for those too poor to pay the tuition. Other nations do that. Why not the U.S.?

Government payment of student debt is the first step. Then let’s find a way to make it possible for ordinary people to go to college. Otherwise, we make college available only to the rich and super bright. Ordinary people are excluded and thereby prevented from finding lucrative jobs.

This is one more way that we can make the U.S. a country blessed with freedom and justice for all.

Student Debt

I’ve been following with interest the public discussion of student debt and our need to forgive it. My own story is relevant.

I grew up in poverty. As reported here before, my mother was an alcoholic and my father was in prison. Some days I didn’t have enough to eat. So I became self-reliant. While in grammar and high school, I took part-time jobs to feed and dress myself. When I graduated from high school in 1954 with mediocre grades (due to lack of time to study) and it was time for college, I applied to Cal, that is, the University of California in Berkeley, a short bus ride from where I lived. The tuition was around fifty dollars per semester. That was something I could afford.

I graduated from Cal in 1958 and joined the army to go to the Army Language School. I had a year of intensive study of Vietnamese. When I graduated, the army assigned me to the National Security Agency (NSA) near Washington, D.C. I enrolled at Georgetown University to study Chinese because the tuition was low enough that I could afford it. Years later I enrolled in graduate school at the George Washington University (GW) to complete my education with a doctorate. Tuition was moderate, and the GI Bill covered most of the cost.

I was, in short, able to get through college and graduate school because the government, both state and federal, maintained low fees for public universities and assisted me financially.

More next time.

My Buddy (2)

Continuing my account of grief over the loss of fellow combatants: What others did not know was that the outer roughness they perceived in me concealed an interior anguish that will never diminish. Like the curse of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), the grieving over the loss of buddies on the battlefield will never cease.

So the song “My Buddy,” music written by Walter Donaldson and lyrics by Gus Kahn, has profound meaning for me. The song was published in 1922 and was presumably based on experience from World War I. So characteristic of the way we men express ourselves, the song never mentions love and downplays the pain of loss. That makes it, for me, all the more moving. Here are the lyrics:

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.

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand,

Just long to know that you understand,

My buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you.

End of quote. That brings back so many memories of buddies long gone. The bond endures.

My Buddy

My blog post of yesterday about the salute brought to mind the men who fought next to me in combat. As I stated yesterday, the strongest love I have ever felt was for the men who fought by my side on the battlefield. And when one of them died in combat, my grieving was intense. Time has not attenuated that intensity.

I need to explain, as I have before in this blog, that during my time in combat, I was not a soldier or Marine but a civilian employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) operating undercover as military. Because of my unusual ability as a linguist and success at using signals intelligence (the intercept and exploitation of an enemy’s radio communications), I was called upon repeatedly to work with friendly troops on the battlefield. Between 1962 and 1975, because I was comfortable in the three languages of Vietnam (Vietnamese, Chinese, and French), I spent more time assisting friendly forces in combat in Vietnam than I did in the U.S.

Until 2016, that work was classified. Now that the job I did is declassified, I can tell you about it. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, from which I escaped under fire, I went on working with friendly forces for another twenty years, using other languages (I speak seven) though where, when, and with whom is still classified.

To be successful in my job, I had to be indistinguishable from the soldiers or Marines I was supporting. That meant I had to live with them—wear their uniforms, sleep beside them on the ground, eat C-rations sitting next to them in the dirt, use their latrines, and go into combat with them. I got to know them at a level of intimacy only possible among troops willing to put their lives on the line for each other.

The repeated losses of fellow combatants over the many years I offered signals intelligence support on the battlefield toughened me in the eyes of others. People remarked that nothing seemed to faze me, that I could withstand fortune’s buffeting and face death—as I did during my years of volunteering to care for fatally-ill AIDS patients—with impunity.

More next time.

The Salute

Ever since I enlisted in the army straight out of college, I have been hand saluting at the proper time. These days, that means saluting the American flag, the stars and stripes, rather than saluting a military superior or returning the salute on an inferior. Saluting others ended when my three-year army enlistment was over in 1961. Nowadays, my saluting is mostly limited to American Legion meetings where we stand at attention and salute as a color guard brings the flag into the gathering at the beginning of a session or removes it at the end. The command, given by the post commander, is “Present Arms!” We hold the salute until the commander says “Order Arms!”

The hand salute is a gesture intended to show respect. When directed to a person, the saluter should make eye contact with that person. When directed to the U.S. flag or while listening to a playing of the national anthem, the saluter should remain at attention and look straight ahead.

As used in the U.S., the hand salute consists of raising the right hand to the upper right corner of the right eye, then returning the hand to the side. The motion raising and lowering the hand should be sharp and quick. According to the website MilitaryBenefits.info, the salute is a “‘one-count movement.’ The right hand should be raised sharply, fingers and thumb extended with the palm facing down. The tip of the right forefinger should meet the rim of the headgear visor to the right of the right eye.”

The hand salute is used everywhere in the world with slight variations. In some nations, the palm of the right hand faces outward. In others, the fingers are slightly curved. Sometimes, the right hand ends the salute by moving outward away from the face before returning to the side. Variations notwithstanding, the salute is invariably a gesture of respect.

To me personally, the salute expresses not only respect but the intense attachment that connects people who work together in a military setting, especially during combat. As I have written here in earlier posts, the strongest human bond I have ever experienced is that between men fighting side by side. American men don’t like to use the word “love” to describe the feelings they have for one another, but the bond between combatants is the strongest love I have ever experienced.

So for me, the salute symbolizes my commitment to put my life on the line for the men fighting next to me. That makes it sacred.

Trump’s Damage (5)

Final in my list of Trump’s damages to the U.S. is his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election in which he was defeated and Joe Biden was elected president. Well before the election, Trump claimed it was “rigged” against him. Despite plentiful evidence that the election was free and fair and that Biden won by a considerable margin, Trump continues to maintain, even to this day, that Biden’s win was due to “fraud.”

The American Republican Party, to its shame, has chosen to remain faithful to Trump and to insist that he really won the election. According to U.S. News and World Report, most Republicans and supporters of Donald Trump don’t believe the 2020 election results were counted legitimately. That leads to worldwide distrust of American democracy and weakens the U.S.’s role as a world leader.

Once again, Trump’s behavior has undermined the U.S. in ways that will continue to hurt us far into the future. As I said the beginning of this series of blog posts, as time goes on, the damage that Donald Trump inflicted on the U.S. becomes more apparent.

It’s up to us, American citizens, to repair Trump’s damage and restore our nation. Most of that work still lies ahead of us. Let’s get on with it!

New Book Review

The Washington Independent Review of Books has just posted my most recent review. It’s of Willem Frederik Hermans’ A Guardian Angel Recalls (Archipelago Books, 2021). You can read the review at https://www.washingtonindependentrevi...  

Let me know what you think.

Trump’s Damage (4)

Another harm Trump inflicted was his exploitation of the presidency to make money. Granted, he handed day-to-day management of his companies to his children, but, unlike presidents before him, he held onto ownership of his assets after taking office, ensuring that he would continue to profit while serving in the White House. From 2017 to 2019, the president’s businesses raked in an estimated $1.9 billion of revenue. Figures from 2020 are not yet available but are probably comparable.

Typical was Trump’s lease of D.C.’s Old Post Office building in 2013 which Trump then turned into the Trump International Hotel, within walking distance of the White House. Visitors who came to D.C. during Trump’s presidency to confer with the president knew very well that staying at his hotel at inflated prices—$374 to $415 per night—would bias Trump in their favor. Trump profited handsomely.

Now, according to the Washington Post, Trump is poised to sell his lease on the Old Post Office building for a record-breaking $375 million, earning Trump more than $100 million in profit.

Those seeking to curry favor with Trump knew very well how to win his support. They not only contributed to his reelection campaign but held fund raisers and galas at his resorts, clubs, and hotels, assuring that the proceeds went to Trump.

Trump’s time as president will stand throughout history as an example not of how to serve the American public but rather how to exploit the office for profit. That he succeeded shames us all.

More next time.