Michael: a poetic reflection from a southern perspective of your concerns
about your grandchildren:
Waiting and Watching for News of War
We waited for dispatches
In the colonial press
On fighting the Boers in Africa.
We waited for news from Europe
When a Balkan gun fired
On an empire's prince.
We waited for telegrams
Of our soldiers
In French trenches.
We waited for the newsreels
Of a false promise of peace
Held aloft in the wind.
We waited by the radio
For accounts of battles
On the ancient theatres of war.
We waited for news of troops
In Singapore and New Guinea
As war approached our shores.
We watched our sons conscripted
On nightly episodes
Of a bloody war in Vietnam.
We held our breath
As unerring bombs fell
On targets in Iraq.
We watched biblical hatreds
Render tidy villages buried
In mass slaughtered graves.
We watched hijacked aeroplanes
Fly into the tallest buildings,
And we feared again
For our children.
copyright Jim McDonald 20/9/01
Jim McDonald
Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations
Department of HRM & Employment Relations
University of Southern Queensland
Toowoomba Qld 4350
AUSTRALIA
+61 7 4631 2634; fax +61 7 4631 1533
[log in to unmask]
http://www.usq.edu.au/users/jmac/
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael CHUMER [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 21 September 2001 11:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Still more thoughts
As some on this list suggest and perhaps rightly so it is best to sort of
"chill out" , take a break, and enter into some reflexivity. AND that I
will do. I welcome individual and personal communications and will do my
best to answer them.
Whether you all realize it or not my need to do something was so great
that a form of relief and therapy for me was making some of the postings
on this list. If I turned some off I am indeed sorry. Very few can
comprehend the flood of emotions that I felt when witnessing this event
from my Newark office. Being a Marine Officer for 20 years exposed me to
the worst of humanity. While in Vietnam the traumas associated with that
conflict become internalized and over time become locked in a cognitive
box. The key to opening that box was the events of Sept. 11. It released a
flood of emotions that were dormant since 1966. Ken Gergen had it right
when he spoke of the "saturated self" in a book he wrote with the same
name. Wrestling with those previously dormant emotions of the past has not
been easy.
I consider all of you my friends even though we obviously don't
agree. After all respectful disagreement abounds in the USA. It should
extend to everyone. I am upset that the world my 2 young grandsons are
entering is one in which hate, envy , and jealousy are still allowed to
flourish.
Mike Chumer
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