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

[Herman Greene]

Thanks so much David.

My wife, Sandi, and I just sat silently for a long time after the end of
the series.

Herman

On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 12:12 AM, David Dunn via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net
> wrote:

> Colleagues.
>
> Burna and I have been glued to "The Vietnam War” for all ten episodes.
>
> Tonight, for lots of reasons, the last hour of the last episode of the
> documentary broke my heart wide open. I cried a lot.
>
> David
>
>
>
> *Footnotes.*
>
> 1. *Apropos "the upheaval of all that has been"*—The Introduction to a
> little book of poems, *Poema dla Russki Druzye*  (*Poems for Russian
> Friends*), 19 August 1992
>
> A two-week visit in Moscow at the time of the abortive coup of August 19,
> 1991 and the reflection that followed during the next few months, is the
> occasion for an observation. A force is at work in the world with which
> historians, politicians, and sociologists have not yet reckoned—the
> powerful attraction between people once separated by ideology and
> ignorance. Even ten years ago, who could have imagined that on such a
> global scale the familiar, the prudent, the expected would all be set aside
> by life demanding to be reunited with life. Tourists, citizen diplomats,
> and entrepreneurs alike will be captured, broken open, and transformed by a
> passion for connection that arises in spite of all attempts to hold i back
>
> These poems are a way of saying thank you to may people who have become
> new friends on this journey of transformation.
>
> I know that the upheaval of all that has been is first and last an assault
> on the heart. I hope that you find courage to build what must be built.
>
>
> 2. *Apropos the Viet Nam War veterans from both countries *who were drawn
> together in Viet Nam to meet, remember, forgive, and serve: a poem from *Poems
> for Russian Friends*.
>
> Electric Arms
>
> You and I have been imprisoned by years of lies,
> held hostage by terrorists of heart and mind,
> afraid of letting either of us know the other.
>
> We strain at the bars keeping us apart
> with desperate longing to find the truth
> and courage to embrace it.
>
> Charged souls so long apart
> must feel somewhere deep within,
> so great a need to be united,
> they will do foolish things
> to find each other’s electric arms.
>
>
> 3. *Apropos expanding one’s context* through long term international,
> cross-cultural friendship—Burna’s and my friends, Alexey and Liuba Kuzmin
> in Moscow
>
> Alexey and I met in August 1991 at a Russian-American Family Camp
> (Virginia Satir model) in Moscow. Our families have spent time together in
> both Moscow and the US. Alexey and I check in with each other more or less
> weekly over Skype. He’s teaching about Program Evaluation in Turin, Italy
> this week.
>
>
> 4. *Apropos the image of Russia and America* as two exhausted prize
> fighters locked in a sweaty clinch—another poem from *Poems for Russian
> Friends*
>
> Mirrors
>
> We live in a world of mirrors,
> each nation reflected in another.
> Only other eyes
> see what we avoid;
> only other hearts
> forgive what we reject.
>
>
>
> On Sep 28, 2017, at 8:24 PM, Herman Greene wrote:
>
> On the one hand we fought to defeat Communism and keep our promises to our
> allies, on the other we fought for a mistake. The lives of the people
> involved in the war on all sides, perpetrators and victims, were forgotten.
>
>
> —
>
>
>
>
> David Dunn
> 740 S Alton Way 9B
> Denver, CO 80247
> 720-314-5991 <(720)%20314-5991>
> dmdunn1 at gmail.com
>
>
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>
>


-- 
__________________________________________________
Herman F. Greene
2516 Winningham Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
hfgreenenc at gmail.com
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