JE REGRETTE PLUS QUE JE PEUX DIRE

Joan of Arc by Janeen Banko, Toronto Art Expo


Regret and longing
can draw and quarter me
I wish I could take it back
I wish you had loved me more
I didn't notice, or I noticed but
I didn't know what to say
I ran through my chances like
M and Ms in a bowl while I
watched TV too much

It's amazing how little people
can get by on

I read that Jeanne wrote letters
in prearranged code: Any sentence
followed by a carefully inked cross
was a lie, her friends knew.

She recanted, then
found a second wind. I can only
imagine the Cardinals' fury.

I saw an old man who had been young
in the Battle of the Bulge, saying
in one pocket was an extra pair of socks
In the other some K-rations
He rolled his blanket with string and
hung it over his back; all else was
bullets. He didn't change clothes
for six months.
What kind of a father did he become?
When his child wept because the
mashed potatoes had lumps, was he
understanding?


© Maggie Jochild, 20 October 2007, 11:20 p.m.



(I struggled what to say about this poem. Finally, the simplest way to say what I mean, was just to copy (lightly edited) the personal letter I wrote Maggie asking reproduction permission.)


Dear Maggie,

Your beautiful poem,

JE REGRETTE PLUS QUE JE PEUX DIRE ...*sighs*

May I have your permission to post the whole of your poem to the Group News Blog?

I'd link back to you, commenting, putting a specific Copyright notice on the poem, and so forth. I suspect much of what I write below, would find its way into my comments.

(The art [the painting of Joan] of course I'll attribute to Janeen Banko.)

You're a full grown-up, so I doubt I need mention that Declining is always an acceptable answer to a Request (one of only four possible moves in the conversational dance of a Conversation for Action (requests & promises), other than bullshitting and speculating, both of which stop committed action. Again, because you're you I suspect I need not explain that there's no need to justify or explain a decline if you don't want to; one simply says "No" and that is sufficient with grown-ups, although hopefully the "no" comes attached with a smile and an offer to make requests on other issues in the future.

I do hope however you say yes, Maggie, and allow me to show your poem to a much larger audience. I want to lead folks back to your blog and your other work. *smiles*

It's a stunningly beautiful poem, my personal favorite of everything you've shown us so far. For me, it speaks right to the heart of all those late nights I'm home at 3 in the morning, still working away in boxers on my bed. Kyle (daughter #3, my seventeen year-old) gets up from her room across the hall from me to go the bathroom. I hear her door open, she stumbles down the hall, pee, flush, and then perhaps through the door, "Dad... go to bed!" The children don't understand, can't possibly understand how it is I work 18, 20 hours a day to keep them fed, keep a roof over their heads, keep the heat on and the water flowing. They don't get how while I love what I do, how I love them and wouldn't trade being their Dad for anything, how truly being their father is the best ever, simply the best... shit, I don't even know how to say it without turning it into a "thing."

It isn't a "thing." It isn't the best "thing" that has ever happened to me. They and taking care of them is not some "thing." Being the Dad of my children IS my life. Ask me who I am, and yeah, there's all this other stuff I say, but strip all that way, and under it all, who I am is I'm Dad. It is the privilege of my life to be their father.

So at 3 in the morning when I'm posting, or working on work-work stuff, or reading on something who the hell knows how it might relate to whatever someday, or when I've put in a 90-100 hour week (or four 110 hour weeks as I did in September, I don't expect my children to get it at all. I have a full-time job AND a start-up company. WTF am I thinking? Oh, and I'm a father. *cracks up* Not to mention being a great friend to a number of people, which takes a certain amount of time to do in a responsible manner.

Each of us has had to suck it up, carry our own lumps of potatoes back from our wars. All the death I saw. The ones I saved. The ones I didn't. And the ones I caused. All that is right there in the fucking lumps of potatoes, the clothes I went without changing for months and months, the years spent in my room alone with the television.

For years, after the suicide attempt, as my doctors and I didn't even know enough to try different drugs -- didn't know I was missing -- my children, brave and alone in our home sat in their room or played with their friends, just across the hall from mine, as I sat quietly in my room, all alone, not even home.

They are so glad I'm home now.

JE REGRETTE PLUS QUE JE PEUX DIRE

"I didn't notice, or I noticed but
I didn't know what to say

* * * *

It's amazing how little people
can get by on"

You speak directly to my heart. I want to share you with the world.

*hugs* to an old dear friend, whose history I'm only beginning to know.
Jesse


Note: Maggie's poem, the photo of the painting of Joan of Arc, and my letter are copyrighted © 2007 to their creators: Maggie Jochild, Janeen Banko, and myself, respectively.

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Ain't nobody home

Click for high-def

Traumatic Brain Injury Is Major Iraqi War Injury

Thousands of returning soldiers are unable to do simple tasks -- go to the store for milk, remember to take out the trash, drive a car. They have Traumatic Brain Injury.

And the problem is getting worse.

Washington Post

Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.

"I've been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they're saying to me, 'We're seeing things we've never seen before,'" said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University's brain injury rehabilitation program.

Doctors also are realizing that symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that both must be treated. Odd as it may seem, brain injury can protect against PTSD by blurring awareness of what happened.

But as memory improves, emotional problems can emerge: One of the first "graduates" of Vanderbilt's program committed suicide three weeks later.

"Of all the ones here, he would not have been the one we would have thought," Schneider said. "They called him the Michelangelo of Fort Campbell" - a guy who planned to go to art school.

As more troops return from the war, brain injuries are a growing burden - for them, for the few programs to treat them, and for taxpayers who pay for their care and disability if they cannot hold jobs.

Most TBIs are mild, and most of these patients recover within a year. But one-fifth of the troops with these mild injuries will have prolonged or lifelong symptoms and need continuing care, the military estimates. Nearly all of the moderate and severe ones will, too.

Though the full number of those suffering from TBI is still unknown, the problem is straining the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Until now, "they were dealing with a cohort of aging veterans with diabetes, heart disease, lung disease," said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and a VA adviser.

Now, these young, brain-injured troops need highly specialized care, and how much it will help long-term is unknown, he said.

People with TBI have frequent headaches, dizziness, and trouble concentrating and sleeping. They may be depressed, irritable and confused, and easily provoked or distracted. Speech or vision also can be impaired.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military was "much smarter about this now," and urged troops to watch for signs of TBI and post-traumatic stress.

"They are every bit as much battle injuries as is a bullet or shrapnel. It is OK, it is OK to seek help for those kinds of war wounds, and I ask you all to help your buddies understand what you see in them," he said.

Journalism Now

“I went home - R&R for 10 days - and the day I got back is the day I got hit,” Bryan Malone said.

“It was two weeks, you moron. It was 15 days,” scolded his friend, Eric O’Brien, adding to others: “The problem with him is he’s as dumb as a box of rocks to begin with. We’ve got no baseline on him.”

Their jokes and sarcasm mask a serious worry.

These guys forget names, directions, appointments, where they put their keys, what they need at the store - things that are innocent memory lapses when they occasionally happen to normal people.

But their minds do not work like most people’s minds do. Not since an explosion left them with the “silent epidemic” of the Iraq war: traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

Some brain-injury cases have been misdiagnosed as personality disorders. Some with brain injury have lost jobs because of unrecognized and untreated symptoms.

“It’s the so-called invisible injury. It’s where a troop takes 10 times the normal time to pack his rucksack ... a complicated injury to the most complicated part of the body,” said Dr. Alisa Gean, a neurosurgeon at the University of California at San Francisco.

One of the interesting things about war is the advances made by medicine. From field sanitation to malaria, from trauma surgery to dustoff, trying to keep soldiers alive in the long run helps keep civilians alive as well.

A study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine points at possibly treating one of the causes of TMI. The typical combat soldier "gets their bell rung" once every 4-6 weeks. Concussion is one of the apparent precursors to TMI.

The Canadian Press

An unusual study by doctors treating blast victims at a field hospital in Iraq has found that ruptured eardrums may help reveal which troops are at risk of hidden brain injury.


The finding is important because many such brain injuries have been missed in the past, especially when more severe or obvious wounds demanded attention.

Researchers report their observation in a letter in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Diagnosing brain injury, especially mild damage, is based largely on subjective symptoms like irritability and forgetfulness. Imaging tests like CAT scans do not help, and neurological function tests are not very useful without baseline information.

Researchers led by Air Force Lt.-Col. Dr. Michael Xydakis checked all troops brought for treatment from roadside bombs and other explosions to the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, Iraq, during the last three months of 2005.

The study focused on the 210 surviving U.S. troops who were evaluated for eardrum rupture and loss of consciousness. Of those, 35 per cent had ruptures and 36 per cent had lost consciousness; the two were closely linked.

Those with ruptured eardrums had a nearly threefold greater risk of concussive brain injury.

The eardrum is only half a millimetre thick - thinner than a contact lens - and ruptures easily, Xydakis said. It is only half an inch from the brain, so "whatever hits the eardrum is going to hit the brain," such as the pressurized shock wave that follows an explosion, he explained.

At least a fifth of these soldiers will need lifetime care. At least.

Every day more and more soldiers are killed. More and more soldiers are injured. We can not win. Can't do it.

It's time to go. Now.

There's more...

Bush Motorcycle Cop Dies

Bush "In Rare Form" Hours Later

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A police officer died Monday after crashing his motorcycle while riding in a motorcade as President Bush prepared to leave the city following a fundraiser for Sen. Pete Domenici.

Rio Rancho Officer Germaine Casey, 40, was rushed to an Albuquerque hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The motorcycle was near the front of the motorcade, and the president saw the wreck as he drove past on the way to the airport, said Rio Rancho Police Department spokesman Officer John Francis.

Bush issued a statement saying he was saddened by Casey's death and extraordinarily grateful for his protection.

Other motorcade crashes: A Honolulu police officer, Steve Favela, died when his motorcycle crashed while he was part of a presidential motorcade traveling across Hickam Air Force Base last November.

Afterwards, President Bush flew to Puget Sound where he held a fundraiser for embattled congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA08):

Salon

Sally Gorton, wife of former GOP Sen. Slade Gorton, who was overheard gushing to friends after a private photo-taking session with the president said that the president was "in rare form." Reichert later informed the group that Bush "wanted to have fun" at the reception.

The event raised at least $500,000 for Reichert and the state Republican Party.

The Domenici event, held behind closed doors, brought in at least $430,000, an amount that had Domenici chief of staff Steve Bell marveling. "We didn't think we'd raise this much, with the president in the 30s approval in our state," he said.

He said the good news, though, was marred severely by the news of the death of the 40-year-old, the father of two.

President Bush has yet to attend a funeral for a single one of the 3,732 US fatalities to date in his wars. Issue statements written by others while not smirking; mostly no problem. And then *sings*Presidents just want to have fun*sings*.

The man utterly lacks empathy. He is incapable of putting himself in another's skin. All that exists for Bush is himself and the very few around him who feed his pathologies.

Rest well Officer Casey. Tat Tvam Asi.

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Chickenhawk Help

Here is Master Chickenhawk Chris Vucovich of Alabama harrasing the mother of a dead soldier. 31 and never served, but he has time to join the Montgomery Alabama's republican club. What a shitbag.

Now, here is my question. Was it wrong of me to submit his information to the United States Army in the interest of recruiting him? I mean, on the tape he says he would if they needed him. Well they do!

The U.S. Army fell short of its active-duty recruiting goal for June by about 15 percent, defense officials said yesterday. It is the second consecutive month the service's enlistment effort has faltered amid the American public's growing discontent over the war in Iraq.

I might have broken some blogger ethics rule, or 2. I cant help it, I'm just a good samaritan

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