In June of 2009 when the Tucson Citizen editor Mark Evans extended the offer to join the ranks of a handful of bloggers and lend some attention to Veterans Affairs, I accepted, but not without some trepidation about holding my own with genuine journalists. The likes of, Rene Shaefer-Horton and Hugh Holub, have decades of journalistic integrity and a loyal reader base.
With the guidance and tutelage of Mark Evans, a University of Arizona journalism instructor, and the the occasional rebuking and syntax correction of fellow blogger Carolyn Classen, I have managed to hang in with content that I hope is timely and compelling.
The feedback from the TC.com software indicates that Veteran Veritas, when disciplined, hovers in the 45-50 percentile range of reader interest. Sports rules! That tells me that it has been worth the modest dedication and rigor it takes to keep this Blog chugging.
There are days I feel like the “little engine that could,” yet in reading over the past two years of comments and private emails I am assured that Veteran Veritas has been helpful and occasionally enlightening for our community of veterans. It is for them I write and remain invigorated.
Cliche as the journalistic dictum may be, “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” it remains as a guide.
When I received a call from the Department of the Air Force Public Information Office about a posting that spoke of planes at Davis Monthan being contaminated with Dioxin,(Agent Orange), I knew we were serving the interest of our population of veteran readers. They have not called again.
I write to connect. It seems to be have been my lot in life since childhood. Even as a young paper boy for both the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen, (my brother and I delivered for both in the same day), I was connecting my subscribers with each other. As the first paper boy for El Con Mall in 1959, everyone on my route knew of all the special sales at Dave Bloom and Sons, Mills Touche and Steinfelds and Gruenwald Jewlers. Connecting is a joy and blogging permits the flowering of a natural tendency.
The one aspect that provides the most fuel for blogging is the outreach to our veterans who bore the weight of battle. They deserve the best and most useful information available to enhance their quality of life.
Veterans of war frequently do not hold the same divisive and charged viewpoints as the dominant culture. It is vital that we remain connected and with solidarity–if only for the sake of vigilance. To protect our democracy we must grasp the historical meaning, burdens and ramifications of war, with all its consequent impact on society and the individual psyche.
Many of the postings of the past two years are no more than informational direction, with attribution, while others have been intended to heal and advocate for the disabled veteran. I try to leave editorial for the pros. There are plenty of them, including the self proclaimed ones! At times it is hard to resist or may even seem irresponsible to not add opinion, especially when a commenter is off base. But then that is the beauty of entering dialogues that only blogging affords.
As a 100% disabled veteran of the Marine Corps and a combat squad leader in Vietnam, I know well the dark night of the soul and the travails my comrades have experienced. For 12 years I worked as a Veteran Service Officer shepparding hundreds of men and women through the disability claim process. I have walked Point on that patrol and know well the nuances of the Congressional Federal Register Title 38 that dictates the process. Never did I imagine that we would be engaged in a now 11 year long war sending home so many wounded men and women. August was the deadliest month in the Afghan war.
It is for them I write and connect, with the full awareness that the validation of their experiences and the fellowship, as temporal as it may be, is the space that heals. I pray that Veteran Veritas has served that end.
As a student of history, it strikes me that the ecology of our society is more transformed by the connectors than the trench workers. Without the connectors, the bankers, politicians, automakers and pharmaceutical companies, have no juice.
The waterways, railroads, highways and phone companies have connected us for a century. It is now the Internet that trumps and transcends all of them as the world above the world that connects us in cyberspace and is the new unregulated democracy.
Journalism will survive and blogging is its ship. Veteran Veritas is a small cabin on that big boat. I invite you to continue to sail with us.
“Only the dead know the end of War.” Plato
” I am but a small pencil in the hand of God.” Mother Theresa