Jeanette DeMain's Open Salon Blog

Alternate OS Cover Page For Memorial Day

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:05:56 -0400

I think it's somewhat disappointing that there wasn't a special Memorial Day cover page for the weekend because, although I think my own Memorial Day post is pretty cool, I feel bad that that post is hanging out alone there, when there have been so many other stellar pieces of writing in remembrance of those who gave so much in our nation's defense. I published early to "beat the rush", but publishing something first shouldn't mean that other work is ignored.

A couple of the posts below have received well-deserved EPs, but they are still not on the front page. Maybe it will be changed on Monday, but just in case, I thought it would be good to create a post that reflects what the cover should have looked like all weekend. (A word to the Editor: Open Salon may be, overall, filled with left-leaning non-conformists, but we can also be a rather patriotic and sentimental bunch, so I think we like to see holidays like Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Veterans' Day recognized with theme-oriented cover pages. Perhaps an open call in advance of the holiday, to give everyone a chance to publish something in time for the weekend?)

I have done my best to collect in one place all of the fine posts for Memorial Day 2012. Some are already very popular, but some may have slipped through the cracks. If I have missed any, please PM me with a link. I realize there will probably be more posts coming today, tomorrow and Monday, and I will try and update when time permits. I am hopeful that many of these will end up on the front page on Monday.

SpiritManSF: To My Father-For the Love of Soldiers!

Scanner: The War Whistler

kenneth houck: Memorial Day-Shell Shock

Boanerges1: Reflections on Memorial Day (Update)

Ben Railton: May 26-27, 2012: Memory and Memorials

Ben Railton: May 28, 2012: Remembering Joshua Chamberlain

Steel Breeze: No Words Necessary...

Barbara Weicksel: Memorial Day 101

Kim Tutt: Remembering Always

jlsathre: In Memory of a Soldier I Never Knew

Blinddream: Memorial

MichelleD: Army Strong

jmac1949: War Stories: A Convoluted Salute to Memorial Day

mary gravitt: Memorial Day~A Day of Reflection On No-Peace and No-War

toritto: High Indeed the Price of Honor

toritto: Chevy Van (Repost)

toritto: The Messenger - 1967 (Repost)

toritto: The Wall (Repost)

toritto: Green Cathedral - For Memorial Day (Repost)

toritto: Death of the Monk

toritto: Tearless the Enemies of Peace (Repost)

toritto: Picasso in Kandahar (Repost)

(toritto has been very busy this week! And I always say, if you didn't see it the first time, it's new to you!)

Leon Freilich: Memorial Day 2012

James M. Emmerling: My Memorial Day Post to the Warriors I Have Known

janicephelpswilliams: How We Remember Together: Public Memorials and More Memorials: How We Remember Together, Part Two

SheilaTGTG55: This Memorial Day & One American Soldier

Chicago Guy: A Soldier Comes Home

Blinddream: A Soldier's Story

Joan H.: Memorial Day in Washington, D.C.

Spike the Chicken: From the War

Kent Pitman: Accelerated Memorials

middle aged woman talking: For My Father on Memorial Day

cheshyre grin: I don't feel like a hero. (An alternative viewpoint, but relevant.)

Pensive Person: Pancakes in Honor of a Marine

Steven Rockford: Our fallen soldiers

older/exasperated: Memorial Day Reflections: A Soldier's Thoughts

Brassawe: My Memorial Day Memory

Don Rich: What Memorial Day Reminds Us Of: Most Important Citizens

Jali 17: A Service Man Always In My Heart

Cranky Cuss: For Memorial Day: Let There Be Light

Jeremiah Horrigan: Making Peace with the Point

Natalie K. Munden: From Under a Black Sky: Thanks for Serving in Vietnam

Jonathan Huie: Memorial Day

froggy: Memorial Day Song

amputeemommy: Happy Memorial Day!

Paul Nevins: Memorial Day, 2012

toritto: Peace Train (a repost)

Chicago Guy: Willing To Lay Down All My Joys

Sam Post: Memorial Day: Thinking about peace (video)

Blu Speck: In Memory of a Fallen Marine

Hesham A. Hassaballa: Grateful on This Day

Peter Breschard: Almost 70 Years Ago

CoyoteOldStyle: The Last Full Measure

Lynn Colwell: We Remember

SheilaTGTG55: You at Arlington

Reflections of a shallow pond: One Hero's Story

Just Thinking...: Fighter Planes, Video Games, and my Brother's Father

Francesca Biller: Honoring Japanese-American World War II Veterans

Cindy Prochnow: In memory, Pearl Harbor, a teenage survivor's poem

Amy A: An Old Man Visits The Wall

Spike The Chicken: Memorial Day

Spike The Chicken: From the War

As always, it's an honor and a pleasure to be part of such a fine community of writers and thinkers.

P.S. No need to rate or comment on this post. Just click on the links above that you haven't read yet and get them back into the feed and onto the Top Rated list!

P.P.S. I am glad to see the other two Memorial Day EPs on the cover today (Sunday).

Memorial Day, Jaws and the U.S.S. Indianapolis

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:05:38 -0400

There's that scene in the movie Jaws, the one where Amity Island Police Chief Martin Brody, oceanographer Matt Hooper and Captain Sam Quint (played brilliantly by Robert Shaw) are all sitting around after dinner inside The Orca - the boat that ends up being too small - engaging in a friendly competition involving their various scars.

At one point, after listening to tales of close encounters with moray eels and thresher sharks, Brody looks forlornly down at his appendectomy scar and decides that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to share. Hooper also cracks himself up when he points to his chest, which looks unblemished, and then mourns that his poor heart was broken by a girl named Mary Ellen Moffatt. The drunken humor of the scene hardly prepares one for what comes next.

When Brody asks Quint to explain the tattoo on his arm, he launches into one of the most riveting monologues in movie history - the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Although Jaws is a work of fiction, there are probably some who don't know that the story of the Indy's doomed final mission is, tragically, very real.

(The quality of the video is poor. It is very hard to find an uncut, commercial-free, embeddable version of this scene online. If you would rather watch the HD version with a commercial at the beginning, you can find that here. Also note that Quint gets the date wrong by a month and a day.)

Seeing Jaws when it first came out in 1975 - on a family vacation to the beach, no less - was when I learned that my father's first cousin was a crew member on the Indianapolis. Unfortunately, he wasn't one of the lucky ones.

My dad was only about nine years old at the end of World War II, so he never knew Albert R. Kelly, S2 (Seaman Second Class) all that well, but Albert and his parents, Julie and Joe, lived just a couple of doors down from my dad's family on Flowerdale Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

Listening to Quint tell of his harrowing ordeal, I find it quite chilling that he mentions encountering a dead shipmate from Cleveland while waiting to be rescued. Although the name is different - and there is, in fact, no Herbie Robinson listed as a crew member on the Indy - the description of the fate of this fictional young man from my hometown gives me pause. I wonder if this could have happened to Albert.

I have only vague memories of my great aunt Julie and my great uncle Joe. Julie was the sister of my father's mother, Rose. She was a very quiet woman and I remember Joe as being a slightly-built man with a rather cranky disposition. But I was only a little kid when we went to visit there. Much too young to fully understand or even care about how the loss of an only son, an only child, can leave such an empty place in the hearts and lives of two people. I do, however, remember the sadness. Even as a child, I could sense that.

In the house where I grew up, then in the house that my parents moved to when my dad retired, and now in the house where my mother lives alone after my father's death, there is a collection of old family photographs on the walls. Dozens of photographs. People that I've never met. People who are, for the most part, long gone. There is one of Albert and three other sailors in uniform, all sitting around a table drinking beer, looking into the camera and smiling as if they have their whole lives ahead of them. The feelings of time and place that it evokes have made this photograph one of my favorites, in spite of the tragedy it foreshadows.

I don't know exactly when or where it was taken, but by researching the label on the beer bottles, I learned that the brewery that made Regal Pale Beer operated in San Francisco from 1934-1953. And since the Indianapolis left for its final mission from that city on July 16, 1945, I think it's safe to assume that the photo was taken in or around San Francisco in the early summer of 1945. I also don't know who the other three sailors are, or what became of them. This may be the last photo taken of any of these young men.

And here's another strange parallel from Jaws. At one point during the "scars scene," Quint says:

Well, Hoop, now listen. I don't know about that, but I entered an arm wrestling contest in an Okie bar in San Francisco. [puts his arm out] I can't extend that. You know why? I was in the semifinal, celebrating my third wife's demise. Big Chinese fella pulled me right over.

In the picture above, do you see the white circle on the table? See what it says? As near as I can tell, it says "OKIE." I don't know if there is a letter or two missing in front, or what the significance of it is at all, and I haven't been able to find out. I would assume that an Okie bar was actually more a type of bar - probably a rough kind of honky-tonk, named for those who migrated to California during the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s - than a proper name. But still, it's just another coincidence that makes me wonder.

Albert, who is on the far right of the photo, looked quite a bit like his mother, Julie, and so, when I see his face, I feel a sense of blood memory, of family. I'm not sure when he was born, but it was most likely sometime in the mid-1920s. He enlisted in the service right after he graduated from West Technical High School. The U.S. Navy records his "Date of Loss" as July 30, 1945, just over a month before the Japanese surrender and the end of the war.

He couldn't have been more than 20 or 21 years old. His body, of course, was never recovered.

Now, when I first published an abbreviated version of this blog three years ago, I didn't even have a copy of the photograph above, and I think about seven people on Open Salon read it. But you never know who else is reading, do you? Several months ago, I received a call from Mary, a woman living in Texas, who told me she is Albert's cousin on Uncle Joe's side, a part of the family I knew nothing about. Apparently, someone from that branch of the family tree had done a search, encountered my blog, and tracked down my telephone number. Mary said that she and her siblings had visited with Albert many times when they were children and that, as they were all getting older now, they had been thinking about him quite a bit.

After all these years, they still wondered exactly how he had died, and what his last hours onboard the Indy might have been like. She also told me that, for many years, Julie refused to believe that he was dead, and even sought out advice from psychics, hoping to learn where her son was and why he hadn't contacted her.

She asked me if I had any further information about him. Unfortunately, I didn't (I'm still searching), but I promised her that I would send several copies of the photograph from my mother's collection. After I did, she wrote me a thank-you note and enclosed this, a copy of the only photograph she had of Albert.

Mary didn't tell me where this originally came from. My feeling is that, possibly, there were either volunteer groups who put together hand-made memorials like this to give to the families of those who were lost, or perhaps high schoolers made them for classmates who died in the war. Whatever its origin, it cuts through my thick layer of cynicism pretty thoroughly. And so I dedicate this writing to the 316 survivors of the last voyage of the Indianapolis and the 880 men who perished. Of the survivors, only a handful are left today, nearly seventy years later.

Albert Kelly is the only person I know of in my family who died in service to his country. I honor his sacrifice this and every Memorial Day.

In gratitude to all those who gave their lives.

I hope that their stories will always be remembered.

Going to Great Lengths

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:05:59 -0400

Every day at 6:00 a.m. when I check my email, I am greeted with a new bunch of spam, usually trying to sell me a drug for erectile dysfunction, a condition for whose sufferers I have the utmost sympathy. It is truly a scourge of epidemic portions, judging by the amount of Viagra and Cialis that someone is manufacturing and trying to sell to every man, woman and child with an email account.

Until recently, these were nothing more than a nuisance. But my new goal in life is to try to find, if not meaning, then at least entertainment, in even the smallest things, if you'll pardon the expression. Which means that I have actually been reading and categorizing the subject lines that appear in my spam-box.

I have become fascinated by the originality and panache exhibited by these online pharmacies. Each one presents a different character, trying to insinuate himself into my subconscious and break down my defenses. So far, none of them have succeeded, but here is a list of some of the more interesting pitches I've come across. Worthy of "Mad Men" they are not, and I can only wonder if they have ever enticed anyone to buy.

The General

My gigantic tank will conquer your depths!

The Eternal Optimist

Every day you use it, it's getting longer!

The Worry-Wart

Be careful using this wonder! Your girlfriend can blow up!

The Comparison Shopper

Desired size for lowest price.

The Dirty-Talker

You'll feel him deep in your cunt!

The Braggart

I have a tremendous Gulliver in my pants!

The Realist

A cutie's sexy ass won't pardon ur regress.

The Feminist

Chicks are fond of wood - make them feel good!

The Economist

Men are likely to experience long-term unemployment that often leads to potency problems.

The Fortune Cookie

Quite often impotence comes without warning and changes your habitual daily life.

The Elizabethan

Leave your sorrow! She'll kiss ye bow!

The Biologist

An erection always requires the interaction of your brain, nerves and blood vessels.

The Sociologist

Men make up 96% of the world prison population. It is often caused by potency problems.

The M.D.

Even spinal cord injury can damage your nerve connections and cause erectile dysfunction.

The Adventurer

I could reach another side of world with my prick!

The Exaggerator

You know: your penis skin reach your knees and your chin!

The English-as-Second-Language Poet

It's not a piece of meet! It makes you sweet!

The Flasher

I hide the longest arrow in my slip! Wanna' see it?

The Concerned Friend

I know what has happened to your sexual life. This cruel disaster is impotence.

The Musician

I shake my long cock! It sounds erotic!

The Party Animal

I'm singing in my pants! My cock asks me to dance!

Um...Yoda?

Also a small man should have a great size.

Gee, I wonder what they'll think of next. Maybe I'll find out tomorrow morning!

Today in Doublespeak News

Sat, 5 May 2012 12:05:33 -0400

Arizona bans funding to Planned Parenthood in abortion fight

By David Schwartz

PHOENIX | Sat May 5, 2012 3:19am EDT

(Reuters) - Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a bill banning abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving money through the state, her office said in a statement.

The Republican-backed Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act cuts off funding for family planning and health services delivered by Planned Parenthood clinics and other organizations offering abortions.

"By signing this measure into law I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the use of taxpayer funds for abortion," Brewer said in a statement.

Arizona joins six other states with similar laws, officials said. But three of those states -- Indiana, Kansas and North Carolina -- are facing legal challenges.

Arizona does not provide tax dollars for abortion, but backers said the law is needed to make sure that no indirect monies are funneled to organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide abortion and other health services. There were no estimates of how much money is involved.

But officials at Planned Parenthood Arizona, the state's largest abortion provider, said the law means that thousands of women in the state may now go without life-saving cancer screenings, birth control and basic health care.

"We are most concerned about the women and men who could be forced to go without health care as a result of this bill," Bryan Howard, Planned Parenthood Arizona's president and CEO, said in a prepared statement.

"We remain committed to providing Arizona communities with the professional, nonjudgmental and confidential health care they have relied on for 78 years," Howard said.

The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List called the bill a "major victory" in its fight to bar funding of abortion providers.

"Abortion-centered businesses like Planned Parenthood do not need or deserve taxpayer dollars," Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs for the organization, said in a written statement.

While Planned Parenthood suffered a setback in Arizona, it won a temporary battle in court on Friday with Texas. A federal appeals court ruled that the organization could participate in a health program for low-income women in Texas, despite a new state rule there that bans affiliates of abortion providers.

Let's review:

1) The Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act cuts off funding for women's health services; and

2) A law stating that no tax monies be used to provide abortion services in Arizona is necessary because no tax monies are used to provide abortion services in Arizona.

And coming up next...We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Breastaurants, Hypocrisy and Sexual Kitsch

Wed, 2 May 2012 08:05:45 -0400

What do you think of when you hear the words "twin peaks"? Until recently, I would have thought first of David Lynch's deliciously bizarre television show that had us all asking who killed Laura Palmer over twenty years ago. But now, instead of fond memories of damn good coffee (and hot!), the Log Lady and a dancing dwarf in a red-curtained room, I'm stuck with this:

Get it? It's an ice cream sundae, but it sorta' kinda' looks like a pair of boobies!

That's right, I said boobies!

Yes, here in the buckle of the Bible Belt, where you can't say "gay" or talk about "gateway sexual activity" in the classroom, where the number of women and children living in poverty continues to climb, and where the legislature introduced a bill requiring the online posting of detailed demographic information about women who have had abortions, we are opening a brand new franchise of Twin Peaks, which is part of a trend that I wish I didn't know about, called the "breastaurant".

The hypocrisy should be obvious to anyone, but I guess that's what makes it hypocrisy, as opposed to plain old stupidity. We certainly have plenty of both here. Sex is bad, the gays are going to hell, and women who have the nerve to get pregnant without being married are sluts who, instead of being able to have an abortion, should have to raise their children without enough to eat. But hey, stop in to Twin Peaks, have a burger and a beer, and ogle some titties after your Wednesday night Bible study!

Statistics show that these establishments, which usually feature "comfort" food, multiple TV screens showing a variety of sports, and scantily-clad female servers, are among the fastest-growing segment of the restaurant industry at a time when other casual dining restaurants have hit a sales slump. In addition to industry stalwart Hooters and perky upstart Twin Peaks, you can also find Northern Exposure, The Tilted Kilt (with its comely Scottish lasses), Grand Tetons, Show-Me's, The Man Cave, The Honey Shack, Bone Daddy's, Brick House Tavern, and - I can hardly even type this out - Mugs 'N Jugs. (These companies must put up ads on middle school playgrounds offering prizes to whoever can come up with the most, um, middle-schoolish name.)

It's not that I object to this sort of thing on a moral level, at least not in terms of pretty young women showing some skin and guys lusting after breasts. As a species, it's more or less what we're designed to do. A Twin Peaks server quoted in an article in our local paper says, "If people are going to gawk at me, I might as well get paid for it." Well, shake your money-maker and count up your tips, honey. But I would much rather that you didn't have to be gawked at in the first place in order to get paid.

And, of course, it's not much of a surprise that sexual harassment complaints are popping up more and more at these businesses. I know, I know. Go ahead and have your Captain Renault moment now. The article linked above makes an important point, stating that, "The reliance on tips to even make minimum wage is a problem for many restaurant employees—putting them at the whim of market fluctuations and unpredictable customers—but much more so [in so-called breastaurants] where many tipping customers expect a sexual dynamic that would likely be considered a 'hostile workplace' in most other professional settings."

But what I really take issue with here is the leering and juvenile approach to female sexuality, as well as the idea that women exist solely to serve men while half dressed. From the "About Us" section of the Twin Peaks Website:

Seriously: What guy doesn't crave incredibly tasty house-made comfort food? Or draft beer so cold that ice crystals form in the glass? Or his favorite sports on state-of-the-art TVs in a rugged mountain lodge setting? Twin Peaks has all of that - and to top it off, it's all offered up by our most prized assets: the friendly, attentive, and beautiful Twin Peaks Girls.
Twin Peaks is the ultimate man cave; everything is rarefied to make you feel special. Our entire menu is prepared in-house and to order, and endowed in generous portions to satisfy the healthiest appetites. We pour beer at 29 degrees into huge frosted mugs for you to wash down hearty man fuel like hand-cut Mozzarella Sticks, succulent Pulled Pork Nachos, a juicy Twin Cheeseburger, & savory Venison Chili. We show the sports you want and need to see, including every important local contest as well as major boxing matches and all UFC fights - and up at the Peaks, every seat has a knockout view.

We're excited that you're here, so take a peek at our goods: specific location info, appetite-whetting menus, revealing pictures, fun merchandise, and more. Remember: YOU'RE THE MAN! So get up here and enjoy the scenery at Twin Peaks!

Seriously? Wait, I think I hear something. It's the sound of every set of female eyeballs that just read that rolling in disbelief. It's as if a man never has to grow up and leave the frat house anymore. From suckling at his mother's breast, to being served by an anonymous set of breasts, life is just an endless series of pulled pork nachos, frosty beer and busty babes, all here for his entertainment.

There is something else that bothers me about the whole concept. I thought back to a recent article by Laura Miller in Salon after the death of Thomas Kinkade, and something clicked. Just as many of the places in Thomas Kinkade's paintings, with their eerily-lit cottages sitting only feet away from meandering brooks with little bridges that lead to nowhwere can't really exist (at least not without serious drainage problems, mold, and outrageously high electric bills) so too is a place like Twin Peaks a completely engineered fantasy. I call this sexual kitsch. As Miller says in her article: "Kitsch is, first and foremost, a lie; its very existence is founded on bad faith."

Miller also references Czech author Milan Kundera, who defines kitsch as "the absolute denial of shit." Wikipedia further states that Kundera wrote that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find it difficult with which to come to terms, offering instead a sanitized view of the world in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions." The Twin Peaks Girls will never ask you to pick up your dirty socks because YOU'RE THE MAN!

Photos found on the Twin Peaks website reinforce this theory. Each location, aside from a few minor architectural differences, is blandly generic, but is supposed to make you feel like you're in a mountain hunting lodge. In fact, in a video on the website, Twin Peaks founder Randy DeWitt says, "Some people think it's not about the mountains, but it is. You can look around - it's an authentic mountain lodge, and you know, we feel like every guy deserves to relax in an authentic mountain lodge, drink 29-degree draft beer and be catered to by a beautiful lumber-jill."

But DeWitt saying "authentic mountain lodge" twice doesn't make it so. The truth is that you're really just in a strip mall or "theme restaurant" wasteland, and the faux rough-hewn "timbers", old-timey pictures and dead animals on the walls are pretty much the same whether you're in Odessa, Omaha or Oklahoma City. No doubt, there is a central warehouse somewhere that supplies all of the decor items. (I'll take a dozen deer heads and throw in some of those canoe paddles!) And, yes, he said "lumber-jill" with a straight face. So, his kitsch has actually turned into camp without him even realizing it. Someone really ought to let him in on the joke.

I have no doubt, however, that the women who toil at places like Twin Peaks are fully aware of the inauthenticity of what they're doing, and I only hope that they can approach it with enough ironic detachment to let them survive their shifts, take off their silly costumes and go home to live their real lives.

Because in my darker moments, my mind wanders to more sordid extremes, and in my science fiction version of the story, when waitresses pass the age of 40, they are taken into the back room, where their manager explains to them that, since their twin peaks are starting to sag and that C-section scar is a little distracting, their usefulness is at an end, and they are unceremoniously tossed into a giant meat grinder, to be served up the next day as a "Well Built Smokehouse Burger" (actual menu item). Patrons invariably get a wistful, faraway look in their eyes, exclaiming, "Wow, this tastes just like Mom...used to make! What's in it?" "It's Twin Peaks' secret ingredient - they won't even tell us!", says the new 22-year-old server with the perky breasts, as she saunters away with a wink and a smile.

Of course, in real life, we are thrown into a more metaphorical meat grinder as we age, so I'm working on a concept restaurant geared toward middle-aged women. Each customer gets assigned her own waiter for the evening. It doesn't matter what he looks like or what he's wearing. While you enjoy your meal and a bottle of wine, he does a couple loads of laundry, talks to your mother on the phone, and rubs your feet. He also doesn't make a comment about your weight when you order dessert. That's my kind of kitsch! I'm trying to come up with a clever name, but I really don't think the name makes much difference. Anyway, the best I can do right now is "In Your Dreams".