The stories no one asks for

And where to find them in time for Veterans Day

In this issue:

• Absolutely no mention of presidential elections because there is, as yet, nothing to say and we are all very tired and on edge, right?

• An absolutely gorgeous picture of “No Water Mesa” that will drop your pulse rate as you look at it

• Finally, here are some thoughts and links in anticipation of Veterans Day

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Veterans’ Voices

“For twenty years now, veterans have been trying to tell Americans what has been happening in their name. The wars. The suicides. The deployments and the homecomings. The reunions. The successes. The failures. Every day, veterans have been writing, tweeting, posting, and filming it all, and sharing it online. Did we get through? Did they hear us? Because we are running out of spaces where people will listen.”  - Peter Lucier

A few weeks ago, I read these words in an essay by Peter Lucier and I’ve been thinking about them ever since. Lucier wrote the essay after learning that the New York Times was winding down its At War section of the Times Magazine, formerly a blog hosted by the Times itself. At War was established as one of the few platforms set up to examine the “experiences of war and the toll they’ve taken on both Americans and the citizens of other nations for whom the cost of recent conflicts is almost insurmountable, yet too often forgotten,” as founder and co-editor Lauren Katzenberg put it in her farewell announcement.

I used to read this blog regularly. Eventually I would read a story from the blog if someone I followed tweeted one out. Now, I cannot remember the last time I sought it out. That gives me pause. 

There was a time when I was reading everything I could find written about going to war and coming home— fiction and nonfiction. I went to blogs like Matt Gallagher’s Kaboom before it went away (it is now available here as an archive). I went to My Space (yes that’s how long ago I started) to read posts and see photos. I combed newspapers and magazines for stories, especially first-person stories and articles. I read books ranging from The Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Things They Carried to The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families by Andrew Carroll. As veterans emerged from the military (or in some cases remained in) and began to turn their experience into books, I began to read novels like The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, the short stories in Phil Klay’s collection Redeployment which won the National Book Award. I discovered the voices of women veterans through the work of writers like Kayla Williams’ Love My Rifle More Than You and Plenty of Time When We Get Home about the perspective of a military partner from Siobhan Fallon (You Know When The Men Are Gone and The Confusion of Languages, Andria Williams’ The Longest Night, and Kristin Tsetsi’s Pretty Much True. These are just some of the books I’ve read over the years and the ones I’ve read are just a fraction of the many good memoirs and novels that have been written by veterans including our most recent wars.

I started reading and listening to stories by veterans because I wanted to learn. I had moved to a military city in a country that went into Iraq a year after we arrived in San Diego. I kept reading because I wrote a novel that centered on the mother of a veteran who came home from the war suffering the effects of PTSD. Long after the novel was published, I followed the writing of veterans. They had stories to tell. Funny stories. Hard stories. Stories that took place in war zones. Stories that unfolded on domestic soil. I read the stories of wives, children, boyfriends/girlfriends, siblings, fathers, and mothers of veterans. The world of those who have served in the military was a world apart but, through these stories, I found a window and it began to open. They led me to conversations with veterans of all ages including my own father whose military experience I’d discounted because he had not seen combat. I learned that most veterans do not see combat but still have stories to tell. Like this one from Derrick Woodford who tells the story of coming out to his mother and then joining the U.S. Air Force where he is stationed in Alaska. Or, this short gem from Gil Sotu who describes spending December 31, 1999 aboard a Navy ship rolling in the middle of the ocean. Both stories come to you courtesy of So Say We All, a San Diego organization that helps writers of all kinds find their voices and an audience and has particularly focused on veterans with its productions, classes, and with Incoming, an excellent series that has run since 2014 in partnership with NPR’s local station KPBS.

Until I read stories written by veterans and later spent time in conversation with them I didn’t realize that my ideas about veterans had been shaped by largely by civilians like me -- journalists, movie makers, writers, and entertainers who either sparked or reinforced images of battle-scarred heroes, traumatized victims, and, almost always, the white male warrior. It was a world so outside my experience I could not access it until these stories showed me the vast variety of humans who make up the military and then leave it to find the next stage of their lives among civilians like me who have never served. No one has done a better job of capturing that point than David Abrams in this 2017 essay. 

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“I was in the Army for 20 years and over the course of those two decades, I worked with liars, adulterers, gamblers, and murderers.

I also served alongside mothers with tissues tucked up their sleeves, ready to swipe at runny noses; a blues musician who’d give B.B. King a run for his money; marathoners with calves strung taut as bows; a beer-bellied dude who published poems in obscure literary journals; and a woman who kept so many exotic birds in her house, I always left her parties picking feathers out of my mouth.” - David Abrams, LitHub, “Soldiers Are More Than Just Symbols”.

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When I read Pulcier’s essay, I realized that I haven’t been seeking out the voices of veterans as I used to. My second novel has sent me in a different direction and much of the reading and research I’ve been doing is not connected with the military or wars or the world of the veterans who walk among us. At first I felt guilt then, after I got over that bit of self-centered emotion, I realized that it was my loss. Writers who are veterans or closely related to them have written some of my favorite novels. They’ve made me laugh, cry, or both with stories that are true. Like all good story tellers, they have opened my eyes and my heart. The editor of At War, Lauren Katzenberger, ends her announcement of the planned changes with an entreaty to the contributors who have written for her to “keep talking about your experiences…it will be up to you to tell your story.”

A story starts life when it is written but it doesn’t come fully alive until it is heard.

There are about 18 million veterans today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That number is down from a few years ago but that represents a lot of stories. We will, hopefully, be seeing or hearing about some of them next Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day, a day set aside to honor veterans and thank them for their service or, as former Marine Benjamin Busch suggested in this brief but eloquent essay, stop a minute, call up a veteran you know, and invite them to tell you a story. Ask them what they miss most about their time in the military or what it taught them. Ask them about one person they met that they will never forget. Or just say hello, how are you doing and see where it goes.

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“We mention sacrifice on days like this, but sacrifice likely isn't the thing a veteran will recall. It will be the stories. It's these tales that make military experience comprehensible to those who never serve in this way. What if today — instead of thanking a veteran for their service and then passing by — you take a moment to ask them for a story? We've all got one to tell.” - Benjamin Busch

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If that’s not possible, you can also go to any of these places, read or listen to a story, and leave a comment letting the writer and the publisher know how it made you feel or how you appreciated what you heard. Nothing says thank you like the sound of being heard.

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Short Reads

Fiction: This short story, “Signatures of Ghosts” by Lisa Erin Sanchez is piercingly beautiful as it captures the connection and the distance between a woman and her Air Force boyfriend, a medic. And here’s “Soldier,” an homage by Franciso Martinezcuello to Jamaica Kincaid’s story “Girl.”

Nonfiction: In this sign-off from At War editor, Lauren Katzenberg, you’ll get an instant sense of what this section has been about and find links to a sampling of stories that show why this work has been so valuable. Find the entire collection of At War stories and reporting here.

Poetry: Discover the work of Lisa Stice a poet whose work is shaped by her perspective as a military spouse. Here you will find out more about her and where to find and read her poetry. Here’s a sample from Poets And War, “Widows Receive A Free Ticket To the Birthday Ball.”

Watch, Listen, Laugh, Learn

Would you rather listen to a story? Then go right over to Incoming Radio and Incoming Live where you can choose your story from a list of episodes or videos of veterans telling their stories.

Here’s another sample from Incoming Live by Coast Guard veteran Tenley Lozano called “49 Steps to Owning A Service Dog.”

And, if you have ever struggled with how to talk to a veteran, check out this series “Permission To Speak Freely” by So Say We All and the KPBS Coming Home project. Five really short, fun videos full of good advice served up with humor.

If you like what you hear, consider a contribution to So Say We All so veterans will continue to have this home for their stories.

Online and In Print: Publications

Wrath-Bearing Tree - A gorgeous platform loaded with the kind of original writing, excerpts, poetry you expect to find in a publication dedicated to the beauty and power of the written word. Founded by veterans and led by a group of veterans, military spouses, and writers, its mission goes beyond the war story to injustice and its consequences. Among my favorite features of this site are the contributor readings you’ll find here on the About page.

0-Dark Thirty, the Literary Journal for the Veterans Writing Project, offers a platform for veterans to tell their stories including a quarterly review.

Again, if you like what you find in either of these publications — let them know with a contribution so they can continue to amplify the voices of veterans for all of us.

Books

I’ve already listed some of the books I would recommend. Many more books could go on this list and many more have been written since I read these for the first time. I’ve started a new list called “Veterans Day” on the the bookshop.org site and will keep adding to it over the next few days. You’ll find any book listed there also on the Spark Community Recommendation Page. Please add your own finds and favorites and keep checking back often.

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Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”

Here’s your chance to share your “moment of Zen” that ends every issue of Spark. It’s going down as one of the most fun things ever. This week’s comes to you from Navy veteran Jim Ruland taken on a day when the sky and road both seemed to go on forever.

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

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Okay, deep breath. Soon we will know who our president will be and we can get on with the business of putting each other back together. In the meantime, let me know how you are, and what you are reading. If you have a veteran you would like us to remember on Wednesday, let us know. And don’t forget - all books mentioned here are available through the Spark Community Recommendations page at bookshop.org where every sale benefits local bookstores and helps us raise money for literacy programs.

Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…”No Water Mesa” from Navy veteran Jim Ruland who explained in this story why he will never agree to a parent’s request to urge their child to enlist in the military. It has to do with beef, as in the meat, which you may never regard in quite the same way ever again after hearing this.