[Oe List ...] Have you been watching the Vietnam series on PBS?

[McCabe, Diann A via OE]

Terry and I have been watching the series (usually a day or so late) with deep interest. I was a junior in high school in the spring of 1968, exposed only to mainstream headlines and TIME magazine. (I remember reading an article about a Vietnamese farmer who was overjoyed to find, finally, after much bombing, earthworms surviving in his field. I was moved to tears reading this at age 17.) When Terry and I met in the fall of 1969 at college, he organized the moratorium against the war on campus. I began to be exposed to the war below the headlines--but not enough to feel that I understood much, and as J. Wiegel wrote, there was a lot of life going on around us.


Taking in this series is in many ways like swallowing difficult large pills--but I find myself so grateful to have these stories to fill in some of the spaces in our national and global story about this war. And about all wars. The other night on one of the episodes a North Vietnamese veteran said, "War awakens a savagery in people." And U.S. veteran, Matt Harrison, said quietly after describing some horror he witnessed, "The veneer of civilization is very thin." And I think of a line from one of my favorite novels, STONER, from a professor commenting on the start of WWI: "A war doesn't merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that's left is the brute, a creature that we--you and I and others like us--have brought up from the slime."


Another line from the film struck me came when a North Vietnamese veteran talked about noticing how American soldiers reacted when one of their fellow soldiers was killed. He said something like, "They gathered together around him and comforted each other in respect for the fallen solder.           Just as we do.        And I realized that we share a common bond with humanity.        And that gave me something to think about."


http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/home/

[https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVP.nn56ncjAJ3dyojKr6Ox5fAEsCo&pid=Api]<http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/home/>

The Vietnam War<http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/home/>
www.pbs.org
The Vietnam War is a ten-part, 18-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that will air on PBS in September 2017.



Here's to our common bond--Diann McCabe


________________________________
From: OE <oe-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 10:48:49 AM
To: laurelcg at aol.com; oe at lists.wedgeblade.net
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Have you been watching the Vietnam series on PBS?

Sorry. My computer sent that before I finished. The Cambodian film was from the point of view of a family forced to leave their home by the Viet Cong when they took over N. VietNam. Very painful but if you could take the Ken Burns series, you might be interested.

Praying for peace,

Jann



-----Original Message-----
From: via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
To: hfgreenenc <hfgreenenc at gmail.com>; oe <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Wed, Sep 27, 2017 8:43 am
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Have you been watching the Vietnam series on PBS?

Fred and I lived in Brazil June, 1968 -June, 1970, so got our news via Time magazine. The news kiosks had huge pictures of one of the girls killed at Kent State with blood spilling out of her head. There were kiosks everywhere. That's what awakened me to the horrors of the war. Last week I watched a movie made in Cambodia, "First They Killed my Father.


-----Original Message-----
From: Herman Greene via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>>
To: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com<mailto:jfwiegel at yahoo.com>>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>>
Sent: Wed, Sep 27, 2017 5:31 am
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Have you been watching the Vietnam series on PBS?

Last night there was the story of Kent State. I knew the broad outlines but learned the story in a new way. I wasn't even aware of the burning of the ROTC building or the ruthlessness of the Ohio Governor or that all the Guardsmen had live bullets.

My wife remembers some of this from television. I said to her we didn't watch television very much (right?), so we missed a lot of what others were seeing. And yet we had a front row seat to the drama as well when it was played out in 5th City and Chicago.

In my mind I thought 5th City was my Vietnam (better than Trump's). Now I see being a soldier in Vietnam was altogether different. Being a civilian in Vietnam was altogether different from the violence we experienced. Being a member of the Viet Cong, the South Vietnam army or the North Vietnam army was altogether different. And being a prisoner of war in North Vietnam is beyond my tragic imagination.

I was struck in the series that one poll found that 64% agreed with the way the protesters were treated at the Chicago convention and 58% agree with the way the National Guard handled Kent State. I feel I have been living in a bubble. What to me is the underbelly of America that propelled Nixon and Reagan and now Trump to victory may not be the underbelly at all.

Even my generation that grew up in the 60s and were in these marches and protests is not so progressive now.

In last night's series the back and forth between Woodstock and Vietnam was so moving. We hippies and New Left people were so far removed from the reality of Vietnam. So many of the privileged in the US were able to avoid the war. I was a 1st LT in the reserves after completing ROTC and was on deferment. I became ordained and was able to resign. I received an honorable discharge. That's my story.

Herman

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 12:32 AM, James Wiegel via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote:
Aiee, another episode tonight, and more material available on the pbs website.  Herman, I recall going down to Lincoln Park one evening and there were a lot of activists there and someone was explaining about "guerrilla theater".

With morning collegiums, daily office, scripture news conversations, teaching school, guild and division meetings, summer programs, security, enablement, eg structures, ecclesiola, some social life(Pat and Joe's, etc.) and week II assignments, either I was preoccupied or blocked out a whole lot of the drama of the Vietnam War.  Wasn't the moon landing in there someplace as well?

What I am marveling at is the way in which our country went in, got sucked in, and kept digging deeper, and of course the killing.

Oh, and I got the email where you asked if anyone got the email . . . Plus the replies of all the other people who got that email.

In Rob Work's book, A Compassionate Civilization, Peace and Nonviolence is one of his six ingredients, as is Participatory Governance.  Good emphases, I would say, though I cant see the technology and structures that would be required to really prevent the sort of thing we got ourselves into back then.



Jim Wiegel
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Ernest Hemingway

On Sep 26, 2017, at 09:04, Herman Greene via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote:

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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

(Thanks to all who let me know my email showed upon the listserve. I
haven't received any responses to this message I sent, however, so I am
resending.)


On Sunday night the Ken Burns series dealt with the issues of the first
half of 1968, including the Tet offensive, MLK's death and the urban riots,
and Bobby Kennedy's death.

It brought back so many gripping memories for me. I remember the riots in
Chicago and how it affected us. I remember the Collegium we held with Joe
after Bobby Kennedy was killed. He asked us if we wer

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