Check out the comentary on the website

Please check out the commentary on the website makingandunmaking.com I have just posted two articles of interest the first titled "Memorial Day" the second "An Accounting"
it worth your time.
Larry

Memorial Day 2007

Memorial Day 2007
Flags hang limp in the summer heat, as a few come out to meet the parade of old men marching down Main Street. I didn’t think much of these men when I was a boy; just old guys my dad drank with. Most of them were nice guys and the only time I associated them with war was on Memorial Day, when they got into their uniforms and marched in the parade. What I have come to learn these many years later is that these men are hero’s, they’d offered their lives for their country. Not everyone I know has done that.

Only after putting my own life on the line in Vietnam did I understand what this means. It’s rather simple, you either do it or you don’t. If you have done it, that should mean something to those who did not. Honor is what it should mean, a word that seems not to fit well in our vocabulary anymore. We would all do well to revisit this word.

Listen to man speak

If you have not checked my website calendar I wanted to let you know about an up coming radio interview that will be happening on June 2, 2007 on WJFF. Gandalf was the man who interviewed me. What a pleasure to have someone ask questions after they have actually read the book, not only that, he sent me the questions to read before the interview, which made our conversation go deeper. It was a pleasure to work with this man who said he had tears in his eyes when he was reading my story. The day after the interview I will be doing a book signing at the Henry & Hamish Booksellers 34B Main Street, Livingston Manor, New York 12758, 845-439-8029. My wife Helise tells me that Hamish means inviting, cozy, well tended in Yiddish. If you have not checked out the Press menu on my website makingandunmaking.com go there and you can listen to my interview with Doug Grunther on The Woodstock Roundtable on WDST (100.1 FM) Woodstock Doug did this interview with me on Sunday April 15, 2007, its worth a listen. There are also recorded poems on my website also worth checking out. Any and all feedback welcome.

Umbilical Cord was being streatched

I will be doing a reading at the local New Paltz Library this coming Tuesday June 22, 2007 as I was looking for what to read in the book I decided to choose something that both had a little to do with New Paltz the town I grew up in as well as something that had to do with the small town boy going off to the Marines. I decided to read chapter 16 in The Making and Unmaking of a Marine, which focus’s on the bus ride from Albany NY where I went to get the final physical to Parris Island boot camp. There are many men through out our history that have taken such a ride, and like me felt the umbilical cord being stretched during the trip. When I stepped off the bus onto the yellow footprints painted on the asphalt and heard the DI bark orders the cord snapped. Anyone out there who may have traveled a similar trip from childhood to adulthood in one day let me know what it was like for you.

The Book War and the Soul by Dr. Ed Tick

Edward Ticks book War and the Soul a tremendous healing tool.
Some of you may know that what I do for a living is work at Four Winds Hospital in Westchester NY. I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor LMHC and work with group of adults in a dual diagnosis setting in other words drugs and alcohol and psychiatric diagnosis, thus making up the dual. In my twenty years at this job I have treated many war vets as well as holocaust survivors, 911 victims, and abuse victims of every sort. Post Traumatic Disorder better known as PTSD is a common diagnosis. Anyone who has an interest in understanding such disorder would find reading Dr. Edward Ticks book War and the Soul a tremendous tool. Ed has gone beyond the common understand of this illness and has put a lot of the responsibility for healing veterans back on the community or county that sent their soldiers to war. He has done an historical study gleaning from the ancients’ knowledge that has long been put aside. During the reading of Ed’s book I would spend nights weeping along side my wife whose warm hand was comforting. It was the most powerful tool I have found for my healing from the war. It has my highest recommendation. Ed Tick has also started a nonprofit organization called Soldiers Heart a term that comes from the Civil War meaning PTSD “That man has soldiers heart”. Check out the link at the bottom of the page for more info on Soldiers Heart. I have gone to a workshop in Jan and am going again in June13-17, 2007. The info’s in the newsletter you can get from the link. If you’re a vet, someone interested in veterans and how to help them in their return, or simply someone who has been affected by war or knows a loved one who has been, there is no stronger medicine. I will be speaking more about Ed and his work, he and I are going to be working together in the future, keep posted.

Women Veterans

May 18, 2007

My friend Dave president of the New Paltz VFW has been telling me that the public attention is now on women vets and their issue. I am sure the proportion of men to women in combat is so much greater that less is being said about women vets. I also have been told that there is no safe place in Iraq including the green zone so all soldiers men and women are possible victims to PTSD. The added issue for women is sexual harassment from fellow male soldiers. I would love to hear how women vets understand this issue and what kind of support do these returning women need? How should it differ from what men are getting or not getting? I would love it if some one would begin to write me about this issue.

Long Over Due Support

Posted from Bethany Beach Delaware where my wife and I are vacationing: For you folks in blog-land I want to give you a heads up on what kind of comments my book has stirred up in people coming to the readings. I just recently did a book signing at the New Paltz VFW. Several vets were in attendance. I spoke on the issue of Vietnam vets not being recognized for the service they had preformed during the Vietnam War. I read a new poem titled “Now” that attempts to capture some of the pain of the returning soldier. Buy the end of the reading I had several men and women come up to me to share a war experience they or a loved one had. There were tears released for addressing a topic so long over due.

Most of the welcoming home I have experienced as a Vietnam vet has come in the form of other vets welcoming me home. I went to a Soldiers Heart works shop run by Ed Tick author of War and the Soul a book I can not recommend highly enough. At this work shop I was in my room reading the workshop info and saw that there were over twenty vender's who had contributed time, materials, and money to make the workshop happen. This was the first time in forty years that I felt my community acknowledge what I had done by going to Vietnam and I wept.

Now

I first wrote this poem after watching a ticker-tape parade honoring the Vietnam veterans ten years after the end of combat -- "ten years too late." With the present relevance of that experience I rewrote the poem in 2007.

Now!

Now! It's the style, it's the vogue.

Now! Writers are finally writing about blood that's nothing but red dust.

Now! Kids are wearing camouflage to school and packing plastic M-16s

Now! It's the rage to think about him, 'cause the rage in the Vietnam vet is old. Tears and beers have grown cataracts over eyes that once sighted M-60 machines guns.

Now! Step up. It's hip to notice him after forty years down the road.

Now! It's safe to slap him on the back; his metals are still hidden, family broken.

Now! Don't be afraid; he's no longer the baby killer, he long ago slipped into the darkness of the seventies, to cool.

Now! Don't you worry that you gave him a parade ten years too late. You watched him slapping leather down New York City's main drag while he got ticker tape in his gray hair as the media ground one last dry hump out of him.

Now! You can raise your hand and slap a thanks gig on the 58,000 boys who laid down in the Nam. Over 100,000 lay down here at home, and we don't count them, suicide man, our kids know about that.

Now! Let's thank the old vets for selling those hearts and minds so cheap so we could keep what we could keep.

Now! Let's not forget today's young vets who are finding out their lives are just as cheap.

by Larry Winters May 5, 2007

As I become more aware of the returning soldiers I wonder what they need from us here at home?

Do they want the yellow ribbons around the tree in the front yard? Do they want their families to ask questions? Do they want you to be interested in their war stories? Do they want to be left alone? Do they what you to stop asking where the person you knew before they left went? I'd like know what your thinking about these questions is.

Larry

The book The Making and Unmaking a Marine is now Published

Press Release: The Book The Making and Unmaking of a Marine is now available please check out my website to purchase it makingandunmaking.com you may use Pay pal to buy the book.

Rocket Attack

Sirens scream.
A card table hangs for an instant in the air
kicked by a retreating player.
The screen door slams and the hooch is empty.
Twelve men scramble in to a would be grave.
Deep in the guts of the bunker their
bodies pressed into the sandy floor.
Scared men telling jokes.