LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Chapter 4

Bian and Jon began studying together in Butler Library. They read, they wrote, they laughed together. They got to know each other increasingly well. Their relationship, seemingly effortlessly, became romantic. They began to spend more time in Jon’s apartment. They became lovers.

Bian brought Jon a sense of happiness into his life that he had never experienced before. Not surprisingly, the same was true for Bian in a similar way, who previously, but not consciously, had always felt somewhat on the periphery of life in America. They complemented and enjoyed each other, so much so that full-blown love blossomed.

This is how the rest of the semester flowed. When Christmas break came, they decided to fly to Paris and spend the holidays there. Of course, they visited the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame. They strolled down Champs-Elysees and through Montmartre, ate mostly at bistros, and took a trip to see Versailles.

Among other excursions, they traveled to Amiens to see the famous cathedral there. Overlooking the Somme River, the Amiens Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1270. It was the largest cathedral in France, twice the size of Notre Dame. Jon said the skyscrapers in New York City paled in comparison to Amiens Cathedral.

Back to Columbia, New York City, and Spring semester. When the weather warmed, they spent many week-end afternoons in Central Park, visited many other sites, ate all kinds of ethnic foods, and, of course, had breakfast at Tom’s often. Furthermore, Bian’s parents were flying from Hanoi to New York City to attend Commencement.

But the highlight not only of the moment, but also, and most importantly, of the rest of her life, was Jon proposing marriage to her the week before they were to graduate, which, in a state of both shock and pure joy, she accepted. He gave her a diamond engagement ring he had bought at Tiffany’s.

“It is such an honor and a pleasure to meet both of you, Mr. and Mrs. Ly,” said Jon. Mr. Ly translated for his wife who knew no English.


Commencement at Columbia was always a transcendental exercise. That evening, the four of them celebrated by having dinner at Eleven Madison Park, courtesy of Mr. Minh. Three days later, Bian and Jon were married in St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus.

Bian and John rented a cottage on Cape Cod for the summer. A summer of love it was. Sailing, relaxing, chatting, making love–all that two human beings could wish for.

Early on, Jon had called Chad Willington, his roommate for all four years at Columbia, to thank him for coming to the wedding.

“Jon, I just have to ask you this one question,” said Chad. “Is Bian’s father, by any chance, Minh Ly?”

“Yes,” said Jon.

“Jesus, Jon! Did you know that Minh Ly is one of the richest men on the planet?”

Silence.

Finally, Jon said, “No, I didn’t know that.”

“Not only is Minh Ly one of the richest men on Earth, but he is one of the most connected in the entire world. But most people, even the richest, don’t know how internationally influential he is. He keeps an extremely low profile.

More silence.

“I didn’t know any of this, Chad. Bian never mentioned to me even an iota of what you have just told me,” said Jon.

“Well, Jon, I had to ask,” said Chad. “I hope you’re not disconcerted.”

“No, no, Chad. I guess I’m just flabbergasted,” said Jon.

“I found out about Minh Ly when I was invited to join members of the top brass at a Goldman Sachs luncheon and Minh Ly’s name popped into the conversation for a minute or two. That’s all,” said Chad.

“Fine, Chad. Thanks for telling me this,” said Jon, then hung up.

[Infernal Dialectic of Ongoing Struggle]

Spoke Mao Zedong to Kim Jong Ill:
We languish here in deep red hell—
Let us confer and analyze
What factors revolutionize
The contradictions still.

Replied Lil’ Kim: The running dogs
Beguiled by class and capital
Have overdrawn and overspent.
They bank on debt, and make lament
And flounder in their fogs…

Kim chee does stink, but tastes so good
Do have some more, oh comrade Mao.
Fermented cabbage goes so well
With Hennessey and blondes (in hell)
when Juche’s in da hood!

The Fearless Leader (now a shade)
Responded thus: Just give them time.
Our doctrines spread, their God is dead
Their sons shall sing ‘The East is Red’
Our party’s got it made.

Ill Kim displayed a wicked grin:
Our rocket-launches make them fear
They scold and cluck, and then they duck
While Hillary tries to pass the buck
I think we still could win…

The Chairman thought and sipped some fire
in communistic reverie, and feeling very clever, he
Replied to Ill: This place we’ll fill
with dead reactionaries still—
fifth columns to inspire.

Now let the thousand flowers bloom
And let one thousand thoughts contend.
Remember **? Remember ‘Nam?
We triumphed over Uncle Sam—
He’s limping toward his doom.

A wizened ghost now drifted in
Because his name had been proclaimed
A wispy beard (as yet unseared)
Revealed the mastermind once feared:
Old Uncle ** Chi Minh !

** **—old friend! Draw near! Draw near,
Spoke Mao: In solidarity
We hail your work upon the earth
You showed them what a war is worth
You’re always welcome here.

Ill Kim and I were wondering
How best to make the forward leap—
conspiring ******* their cow
and smoke their duck and drain their sow
while they are buying bling.

** Chi, old warrior, why the frown?
Upon your wisdom now we wait.
The forces red you bravely led
You staked your claim until they bled
And brought their nation down.

Old uncle **, the sage revered,
did smolder with his cigarette.
Viet Cong thought is hard to grasp
It slithers like a jungle asp…
** paused and stroked his beard:

You speak without the people’s light!
I criticize in strongest terms
Your revolutionary thought.
We need to ask our friend Pol ***
How best to steer this fight.

Such gradual change, a halfway measure
stalls the Bourgeoisie’s demise.
Our true Khmer Rouge was not a stooge
of Kapital. His fame was huge
for plundering their treasure.

True, he had to purge his nation
such is revolution, gents…
The traitor classes see the masses,
through reactionary  glasses.
Death or re-education!

We ought to sow his rural seed
for pure agrarian reform.
The bodies in the rice can rot
to fertilize the harvest plot—
the people’s mouths to feed.

When Pol *** heard his tactics lauded
he flew in to join the jabber:
Take a tip from Kampuchea!
Listen well and I will teach ya!
Kim and Mao applauded.

City folk are useless eaters
glasses-wearing foes and cheaters!
let them slave – and always save
their corpses for the fertile grave
Until they love their leaders.

From the barrel power grows—
(I don’t mean kim chee barrel, boys).
Now learn my way.We’ll have our say
Their weakened states will wither away.
The Red dictator rose.

Prepared to ramble on for hours
(the way Fidel so loves to do)
Pol ***’s harangue now fired the gang
like rockets falling on Da Nang
emitting sparks in showers.

Hell is known for lack of stasis—
Sudden throes of quaking fire;
fitful flares from from Satan’s lairs
and constant similar affairs
the population faces…

Thus Saint Pol ***, still naming names
along with Mao and Kim-Jong Il
while ** Chi screamed, and then blasphemed
were swept en masse, and unredeemed
into the surging flames.

Yet still they plotted in the blaze
with dialectic deviousness.
Philosophizing, strategizing
stinking sulphur brimstone rising;
ghosts in the yellow haze . . .

        ☭ END ☭

Winnie the Pooh is trying to think
As are Plato and Socrates
While The Little Rascals get rambunctious
And The Marx Brothers cause calamities
Jim Jones stirs the Kool-Aid
And Georgie Porgie makes his move
Bo Peep and Miss Muffett start to blush
Red Ridding hood just swoons
The Muffin Man does a deal
With Johnny Apple seed
These beings and people our real
In our Surreal Reality

******* lets the paint splatter
And Moses parts the sea
Belushi buys an eight-ball
Bruce is on trial for obscenity
Rorschach is on the case
Right behind Sherlock Holmes
John the baptist goes for a swim
Along with Brian Jones
Jack and Jill meet Hansel and Gretel
They're hungry, they're thirsty
These figments of imagination do exist
In our Surreal Reality

Rasputin was so evil
As bad as Captain Hook
Now was it ** Chi Minh or Nixon
Who said "I am not a crook?"
Mao Zedong looked at Stalin
With a shared murderous grin
Booth stormed the Ford theater
And shot President Lincoln
Kennedy and King we're both casualties
Of the process of the deciphering
Of our Surreal  Reality

Zeus said to Aphrodite
"Wow, you look real good tonight"
And Handel says "Hallelujah!"
As the Wright Brothers take flight
Baby Face Nelson
Teams up with Dillinger
Moe, Larry and Curly
Mengele, Mussolini and Adolf ******
Three bears, three little pigs
Along with three blind mice
Sit together, while Maurice Sendack
Cooks them chicken soup with rice
Charlie Bucket had a buy out
Wonka gave up his factory
Fiction or nonfiction it's all a apart
Of our Surreal Reality

Chicken Little tried his best
To warm The Little Red Hen
Of the sly trickster
They call Rumpelstiltskin
Rimbaud applauds Leonidas
And his 300's final stand
Da vinci  paved the way
For both Newton and Edison
Folklore and war heroes
And those with intellectual mentality
Are all just pieces
Of our Surreal Reality

Wee Willie Winkie's scream
Wakes up Rip Van Winkle
But not Sleeping Beauty who's been asleep for thirty years
But has no acquired a single wrinkle
Caligula has lost his mind
And Nero's lost his fiddle
What does Beethoven's hearing aid
Have to do the March Hare's riddle?
Abbie Hoffman fights for civil rights
Thomas Jefferson for democracy
Products of the conceptual
In our Surreal Reality

Berryman writes an ode
To Washington's wooden teeth
Manson speaks of Helter Skelter
Neruda damns the fruit company
Charles Schultz frames the story
And Seuss gives it rhyme
Some where far, far away
Taking place once upon a time
And the villagers all had omelettes
Thanks to clumsy Humpty Dumpty
It's all food for thought
In our Surreal Reality

Santa brings us presents
And Cupid bring us love
But we can never get back
The members of the 27 Club
Warhol makes his movies
And Buddha meditates
Joseph Smith reads the golden plates
Mohammed and Jesus save
Theses figures bring people hope
In life's dualities
Trusting faith
And our Surreal Reality


Han Solo is in carbon freeze
Don Juan's preoccupied
Sinbad sets his sails
Simple Simon didn't get his pie
Caesar looked at Brutus
Brutus looked at Saddam Hussein
Hussein looked at L. Ron Hubbard
Who prayed to Eloheim  
Dionysus can out drink us all
We cringe at Achilles fatality  
As Ra soars through the skies
Of our Surreal Reality

Aristotle says to Shakespeare
"Well Billy you old bard"
Frodo trades the ring of power
To Fidel Castro for a Babe Ruth Baseball card
Biggie and Tupac write their lyrics on paper
Ted Bundy is put in jail
They're making another skyscraper
For King Kong to scale
Hemingway is too far gone
Kant's take on morality
Einstein says it's all relative
In our Surreal Reality

Churchill said victory
John Lennon said peace
Judas gave back the silver
Then hung himself in a tree
Tojo and Kim Jong-il
Wanna be as cool as Brando and Dean
George Carlin warned us all
Now Hermes leaves the scene
So do the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker
Followed by Old King Cole and his Fiddlers Three
As they make their way to find
A sense or Surreal Reality

Odysseus pines for Ithaca
Paul Bunyan chops the trees
The Jersey Devil has not been found
Noah herds the animals by twos not threes
Anubis wraps the mummies
And Augustus leads Rome
Bugs Bunny laughs with Pryor
All at the expense of Job
So what can we all make of this
Is this all actuality?
Symbolism or nonsense?
Realistic Surrealism or Surreal Realty?

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 10


Jon was thinking about Minh Ly. Jon knew he was beyond genius, but more importantly, Ly made Jon think of what Jorge Luis Borges had once written, that every person’s most important task was to complete successfully the transmuting of her/his pain into compassion. Ly had been the youngest General ever appointed by ** Chi Minh, and, in short, General Ly had had to order North Vietnamese soldiers into battle. 1,100,000 of them had died during the long, ugly, brutal Vietnam War. Minh had spent many days in tears. That he had had the fortitude to persevere and ultimately transmute his unbearable pain into compassion is what Jon most respected about Minh Ly. Because he was so brilliant, Ly initially threw himself into the throes of worldwide business at war’s end, amassing, over a number of years, massive wealth:  billions and billions and billions of dollars. Concurrently, however, Ly, overtime, experienced a life-changing metamorphosis. He came to realize that wealth was not worth, as Jon had written in his commentary PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE, that compassion was humanity’s most important goal, that only love could save Earth. And that was why he ultimately decided to use wealth not to buy as much of Earth as he could, but to use it to save Earth, to eradicate all the vicious inequities that had ineluctably killed billions of human beings over many millennia. Moreover, he secretly went around the world and met with his mega-wealthy friends, asking them to join him in this lifelong endeavor that he titled SOCIETY FOR PEACE, and many of them did join him. Now Ly and his friends were warring against war, fighting every injustice that caused horrid hell into which all the poor, all who suffered from myriad forms of racism through torture and death, fell. Ly was hell-bent on saving Earth and all living creations upon it. Then he met Jon.  

Bian, thought Jon, was as incredibly intelligent as her father. Of course, she was soft-spoken, but that belied her brilliance. After all, Bian has just completed the most rigorous, as well as the best, undergraduate liberal arts education to be found on Earth, graduating Summa *** Laude, an incredible academic achievement. Jon knew how much she loved her father, and he believed as well that his wife yearned, probably unconsciously, to emulate him. That notion alone was enough to cause Jon to fall in love with Bian, then propose to and marry her. Now she was co-parthers with Jon and her father to realize her wish:  to heal Earth.

“I wrote a new poem yesterday, Bian. Would you like to her it?” said Jon.

“Of course,” said Bian.

“OK,” said Jon who then reached into his satchel and pulled out the new poem and began reading it.


SOLITUDE AND GRACE

I will wander
into wilderness
to find myself.
I will leave behind
my accoutrements,
memories of medals,
of past applause
and accolades,
accomplishments that
warranted degrees
and diplomas
portending future
successes. I like
who I am, who
I have become. No,
I love myself, and that
is my greatest achievement,
the acme most men
are blind to as they
mistake wealth for worth.
Most would say
I will be lonely,
but they are wrong,
because I will always be
with my best friend ever,
my real self. And I will
share my joy with
squirrels and rabbits
and deer, with bushes
and broken branches
and brush, with rills
and rivulets and rivers,
with rising and setting
suns and countless
stars coruscating in
night's sky. I will say
prayers to piles of pine
and sycamore limbs
that once were live,
but now make monuments
I worship. I am at one
with all I prize.  My eyes,
even when they are closed,
see their beauty. I know
I will be blessed forever.
I lie on my bed, Earth,
and wait to join all
in solitude and grace.


“That was beautiful, Jon,” said Bian as she sped toward Logan.

“Thank you, my dear,” replied Jon.

“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum

MEMORIAL DAY May 26th, 2014

****************

To all of you that have ever worn "The Uniform",

the uniform of safety and security, the uniform of pride

the uniform of freedom, the uniform of liberty

THE UNIFORM OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

**

THANK YOU

Thank you to all, in every branch, in every time From:

The American Revolution (most of us have roots to our founders)

The Civil War (North or South)

World War I

World War II

Korea

Vietnam

Cambodia

Laos

Panama

Nicaragua

The Falkland Islands

Somalia

Yugoslavia

Bosnia

Kuwait

Iraq

Afghanistan

­Pakistan

The Persian Gulf



areas and battlefields such as

(not all locations are listed with no dis-respect)



Lexington/Concord, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, Midway Island, Normandy, D-Day, Berlin, Tripoli, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, The 38th Parallel, The Bay of Tonkin, Me Lei, Hanoi, The Hanoi Hilton, Saigon, The ** Chi Minh Trail, Baghdad, Kabul, Ground Zero Manhattan, Pentagon 9/11, a field near Shanksville PA.

and many many more,



you are all heroes and role models, not for a nation, for the world, not for American Patriots, for all humanity, not only on this Memorial Day, for all days and all days to come.



You are appreciated! because freedom has high costs and you pay the price for all of us.

**********

Godspeed, safety and peace where ever you are.



Sincerely,

Warner C. Baxter Jr.

American Patriot

Scottsdale, AZ. U.S.A.



God bless America