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Ozzie Conners and the Need for Jobs for Veterans in the Government

Here is the link for Thomas Joseph “Ozzie�� Conners on the Virtual Vietnam War Memorial:



I knew Ozzie in college. We both played football for Bridgewater State College. He was a senior and I was a freshman, so in no way were we close friends. Ozzie graduated in 1965 and a little over a year later, the bottom half of his body was severely damaged in combat in Tay Ninh Province, South Vietnam. His rank was only Private First Class and an infantryman with the Army. I can’t help but wonder if he even had enough training to be sent into combat so quickly. He would eventually die in the year 2000 because of his wounds. His name would be added to the War Memorial.

Once Ozzie finished with rehab, he could have been just sent home with monthly disability checks. Instead, he was given a job in the Veterans Administration. I think the country owed him that. It was the least we could do to pay him back for losing half of his body. It provided him with a sense of dignity.

Now fast forward to today where the Trump administration is cutting jobs for veterans and others who need those jobs for the sake of their own dignity. Government jobs are an important part of a stable democracy. Let’s please stop with all the criticism and see their value.

Every Monday at 7 PM ET, I moderate a Zoom event that encourages audience participation. It is called A Conversation with Jimmy and Friends. I have been Doing this since the start of Covid. If interested, send me your email through GR message system.

*  A look at the tentative schedule for the future conversations:

Mondays at 7 PM ET:

—March 10, Hedy Habra on An Inter-Artistic Dialogue Between Visual Poetry and Visual Art.
—March 17, Deirdre Hines and Jimmy Pappas on William Butler Yeats.
—March 24, Alicia Rebecca Myers on Obsession in Poetry.
—March 31, Robbi Nester on Food Poems.
—April 7, J. I. Kleinberg on Found Poetry.
—April 14, Erin Murphy on Demi Sonnets.
—April 21, Jim Kates on Poems from Psalm 137.
—April 28, Jimmy Pappas on Dropkick Murphys lyrics and music.
—May 5, Jimmy Pappas on Ukrainian War Poetry.

Some ideas I am working on:
(Gerard Manley Hopkins.)
(Jimmy Poems)
(Bob Dylan)
(Stephen Crane)
(Atheist poems)
(Wallace Stevens)
(Song Lyrics)
(the blues)

Collateral Damage

On Friday, November 17, there was a shooting at the New Hampshire Hospital, a secure psychiatric facility. A man entered with a gun and shot and killed a security guard. The shooter was then killed by a State Police officer. Because of the shooting, an active shooter alert was sent around to all police officers. And that alert almost got me killed or injured in a traffic accident.

It was around 4:00 in the afternoon with people coming home from work so the traffic was slow and crowded. I was on a state road with one lane going east and another lane going west. In the middle was a left turn lane because it was a commercial area with lots of stores.

The driver in front of me put on his right blinker and began moving off road. Apparently, he heard a police siren or saw a vehicle in his rear-view mirror. I never saw a police car or heard a siren, so I began to move slightly into the left turn lane to go around the car pulling over.

Just at that moment, a police car was booking it at about 80 or so miles per hour down the middle lane. Suddenly inches away from my left side, he narrowly missed me, or, perhaps more accurately, I narrowly missed him. If I hit him, he would have been sent careening and/or I would have done the same. It could have been a massive accident.

I appreciate his willingness to risk his life to save lives. Hearing “active shooter�� must have been chilling. But I think he made a terrible mistake traveling that fast down a left turn lane. It could have ended in a much worse disaster.

P. S. I am sick and tired of guns in America. We are awash in them thanks to the NRA. The gun makers are making filthy, bloody money. If you are a member of the NRA, ask yourself why.

Here is another story on Dickey Chapelle's life from the Vietnam Veterans of America journal:

Remembering William "Billy" Cyr and Norman "Bubbles" Napierata.

Bubbles and Billy were on the same Boys Club basketball team as I was. We created our own team of five guys. I used to pick up the two of them as we walked to the Club. It was a good mile or so walk for me. I think all that walking I did to school and such made me the handsome guy I am today.

One of my favorite conversations with those two guys was about whether or not we should add a sixth man to our team. If we did, of course, it meant someone would have to sit down occasionally and no one wanted to. We debated what would happen if someone did not show up. How could we play with only four players? Eventually we came up with a brilliant solution: We asked a little kid to be on our team. He was just happy to be there with the big boys. We could throw him into a game for a minute or so just to be fair.

When we graduated from high school, Bubbles and Billy went to Vietnam where they would die in combat. The three of us were working class kids, the type that bears the brunt of war. What separated me from them is that I went on to college. That saved my life. I would eventually go to Vietnam, but on my own terms. No regrets there.

Here is Billy Cyr on the Virtual Wall:

Here is Bubbles Napierata on the Virtual Wall:

I learned about the death of Bubbles and Billy one Sunday morning while reading the Boston Globe. They had a special pullout section called "The Massachusetts Dead in Vietnam." They were listed by town. I looked for my town and there they were staring at me from their pictures. I knew then I had to get my butt in gear and prepare for how I was going to handle the war going forward.

* Remembering Dickey Chapelle, the first American female journalist to die while covering combat:

Closing the Book on George Fell

Here is a repeat of an old post as I remember George Fell today:

My poem "Closing the Book on George Fell" was published on New Verse News today, May 23, 2020, the 50th anniversary of the death of my friend George Fell in Cambodia. George and I were very close friends. We double dated and hung around together with the same crowd. Unfortunately, George flunked out of college.

The title of the poem refers to a Saturday night when George was desperately studying, trying to stay in school. But we, his friends, let him down. While the other guys lifted him off his chair, I literally closed the book he was reading, thus one meaning for the title of the piece. We were too young and stupid to understand the consequences of our actions. Like the butterfly effect, I keep wondering if that moment changed George's life forever, even led to his death years later. Could he have hung on and passed his courses with a little more study? It is a nagging question that I keep on asking myself.

Here is the link to the poem:


Here is the link to the Virtual Vietnam Wall photo of George:

Caregiving

I have not written in my blog for over a year. Instead I have been caregiving for my wife who had a stroke. It is an incredibly difficult challenge to maintain my normal life and continue with all the duties of a caregiver. Even now I am jotting this down at 4 in the morning. I hope to write bits and pieces in the future as best I can.

Jimmy

My Poem "Who We Are" at The Penmen Review

I have my second poem just published at The Penmen Review, the journal for Southern New Hampshire University. I wrote it using lines from my notebooks that I thought might make good endings to poems. In a way, the poem is a collection of endings.

Here is a link to the poem:

Haiku at Pulse

I had a haiku posted this week at Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. Feel free to read and comment: