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wMelissa's AP stories |
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Here are my stories whose links are no longer available. Only the ones with bylines are included here, for the non-bylined ones that I found more interesting, go to melswar.blogspot.com. Thanks! Let me know what you think!
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wTuesday, November 11, 2003 |
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Nov. 11, 2003
Veterans go on organized tours to Vietnam to reconcile their feelings in war's aftermath
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
TROY, N.Y. (AP) _ The first time Ivan Van Laningham was in Vietnam, the mountain of Cu Chi was a combat zone.
Thirty-two years after serving in the Vietnam War, Van Laningham returned and found a resort area where rubber-tired trains cart tourists around and rabbit-shaped trash baskets dot paved trails.
"It was incongruous to visit the mountain that had once been the target of so much firepower and see such cutesy trash containers," said the 56-year-old Salt Lake City man.
Van Laningham went back to Vietnam as part of a Learning and Reconciliation Tour organized by a doctor and professor to help Vietnam veterans come to terms with the war and its aftermath.
Edward Tick, a psychotherapist in Albany, and Steven Leibo, a history professor at The Sage Colleges in Troy, have led three such tours with some 70 veterans, historians, teachers and students from across the nation. Veterans pay for the trips.
"Part of the philosophy of healing is returning to the scene of the crime in safety," said Tick, who has worked with survivors of severe trauma, especially war, since 1979. Many of the veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, which can include flashbacks, nightmares and agitation.
Combat "traumatizes and petrifies the mind," Tick said. "The best way to change it is to go back and thaw the frozen psyche."
These trips bring veterans back to a living, peaceful country _ very different from the one they left.
"I was holding on to an unchanged vision and the country of Vietnam had changed," said Terry Miltner of Rexford, who was 18 when he was a dog handler in An Son. The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a conclusion first based on his multiple marriages and drunken driving arrests. When evaluated by the VA three years later, he couldn't maintain eye contact with his interviewers.
When Miltner, now 52, returned to An Son, there was no trace of combat.
"I felt as though the last 30 years were lost," Miltner said. "This opened my eyes and allowed me to see much more."
Jim Doyle, a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans of America, has been back to Vietnam seven times and recommends the trip.
"It replaces all the negative memories and photographs in their minds with the positive memories and photographs of the way things are now," he said.
Tick looks forward to veterans meeting former Vietnamese soldiers during the journeys. Many participants talk about "Mr. Tiger" _ a man in his 80s who runs a garden nursery and shares special "healing" wine.
"He explained how governments fought the war, but those involved on both sides were just doing as they were told," said Beth Marie Murphy of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan who was a 22-year-old Navy nurse during the war. "He said that time was past and now we were his friends and he was glad we were there visiting with him."
Tick remembers "Mr. Tiger" saying, "We're all brothers and sisters. We went through the same hell."
Bob Cagle of Atlanta, a rifleman in 1965, met with "Mr. Tiger" and other former soldiers _ enemies and allies alike.
"Each day I met someone along the way who made it a special time for healing," said Cagle, 57. "Every person I met was gracious, wanting to talk, share what they had and bestowing on me new insight on humanity."
Tour of Peace, a similar group based in Tucson, Ariz., brings family members with the veterans. Organized by Jess DeVaney in 1998, the tours go back to battlefields and villages where the veterans do service projects. Vietnam Veterans of America did not know of any other groups.
When he first went back to Vietnam, DeVaney kept looking at the orphanages and homes for the disabled and wanted to keep going back.
"We heal by helping others," he said.
He plans to bring two groups of veterans back this year.
"We don't pretend to erase Vietnam," he said. "We can't do that. But we do try to get people to accept how they have been affected by the Vietnam experience in order to live in the present instead of the past all the time."
"To Americans, it's still not a country, it's still a war," said Leibo.
___
On the Net:
www.mentorthesoul.com
www.topvietnamveterans.org
posted by
Melissa at 3:14 PM
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wSaturday, November 01, 2003 |
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Bands, fans give back to communities they visit
By MELISSA MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
October 30, 2003
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ Jamie McGinnis and Jorge Gomes often donate to food drives near their home in Gardiner.
So when they came to the Palace Theater here to see a bluegrass jam band called The String Cheese Incident and heard there was a food collection, they brought along bags of food and some flowers for the volunteers.
"I think we're lucky that we have never been hungry," said McGinnis, 25. In exchange for their offering, they got an event poster and a ton of "thank yous."
The October concert brought in more than 1,100 food items for a local food bank. It's part of a growing trend in the $1.7 billion concert industry, which last year drew 42 million people to venues across the country, according to Billboard.
"We recognized early on that giving back to those communities that the band visits was something we wanted to do," said String Cheese bass player Keith Moseley. "We're very grateful to be surrounded by a community that wants to be involved and contribute to positive change."
Fan Justin Baker approached the band in the spring of 2002 about his Colorado-based group, Conscious Alliance. The food service organization became a "Gouda Cause," nonprofit groups the band endorse by allowing them to collect donations at concerts. In Vermont, fans had committed to helping cut and clear a half-mile mountain trail while a summer Gouda Cause was Solar Cookers International, which taught fans about solar ovens and poverty.
Baker, who collected close to 4,000 cans at that first event in Colorado, got 8,000 cans in seven nights as The String Cheese Incident performed from Philadelphia to Boston. The band gave him free tickets for volunteers and Baker looked for help nightly.
"A lot of good people in the String Cheese community have stepped up and helped out," he said. Since high school, the 23-year-old Baker has been helping get food to people who might not otherwise eat. He has raised enough money to build a food storage facility for the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
After collecting more than 1,000 cans in Rochester the night before the Albany show, Baker drove the donation to FOODLINK, a regional food bank that redistributes food to more than 550 agencies, soup kitchens, shelters and pantries in central New York.
"For an emergency food network to survive, it has to rely on the good energy and good efforts of groups like this," said Jaime Wemett-Saunders, vice president of operations for FOODLINK. The agency estimates the 1,000 cans would provide 1,200 meals.
Bands give back in other ways, too.
The popular touring band Phish, which in August drew 75,000 fans to northern Maine for a two-day show, created the Waterwheel Foundation, an organization that raises money for environmental and social non-profits. During the past summer tour, the Waterwheel Foundation raised $55,000 for 18 groups. Since its inception, the group has raised about $420,000 for 180 groups. Recently, Phish has been registering fans to vote.
"It was very important to the band members to do what they could to ensure they left behind a positive impact whenever they played," said Waterwheel's Amy Skelton. This year's beneficiaries have included prison literacy programs, women's shelters, community music programs and a camp for children with HIV.
Panic Fans for Food, made up of devotees of the jam band Widespread Panic, have collected 18,222 pounds of food and $27,311 since 1999.
"This is people giving dollars and fives," said Joshua Stack, director of the Washington, D.C., based group. He now runs collections at a third of the band's concerts. "We've helped a lot of people, that's for sure."
And fans of other bands including Ekoostik Hookah and Strangefolk have collected tens of thousands of food items for local distribution.
"As I tell everyone who stops by the table, one item can make a difference in someone not going hungry," said Strangefolk volunteer Donald Pearson.
"I think people have realized that music and good causes go very well together," said Moseley of The String Cheese Incident. "Music lovers just have the right kind of heart."
___
On the Net:
www.StringCheeseIncident.com
www.ConsciousAlliance.org
posted by
Melissa at 4:52 PM
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