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Storytime Tapestry Newsletter
The newsletter devoted to
spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.
January 14, 2008
Today’s Announcements
Both Contests are now closed. You have until January 14 to vote for the
Christmas Stories to complete our annual contests.
Please make the effort and submit your
votes. Our writers are counting on you!
The Latest on Matt’s Mom is that she has
kidney stones. Matt’s mom is going back to the hospital on
January 18th to have the stones removed. She is still in pain but they cannot do
anything about it before then. Please
continue to pray for her.
Don’t forget to order your copy of
Angels Watching Over Me, the story of an ordinary woman facing less than
ordinary challenges. Angels Watching
Over Me is a story of family love, sacrifices, poverty and an undying faith
that makes heroes out of all of us. Here is the link in case you have forgotten
it: http://www.lulu.com/content/964306
Important notice: Storytime Tapestry is a
free e-zine, however donations are always needed to help with the operating
expenses of running the newsletter and to keep Storytime Tapestry the quality
newsletter you are so accustomed to. You can make your donations to paypal at:
winterose@videotron.ca, or if you would prefer to use the mail system contact
the publisher at the same email address: winterose@videotron.ca
Today’s Stories
~**~**~
HOW MUCH?
Sharon
Bryant
How things have changed through the years. How
frustrated we get at some of these changes.
Yesterday, I heard about a big change that I was not
happy with.
My vehicle wouldn't start so I had to call a
wrecker. Since 1975, I have belonged to the Amoco Motor Club. In
all those years, only one time have I ever needed to use the club. Many
years ago my transmission went out on a vehicle and I had to be towed to a
garage.
BP has taken over Amoco, so my club membership changed
names as well as my credit card.
Yesterday when the wrecker dropped my vehicle off at the
garage, the man handed me a bill and I paid him cash. I got a ride
back home then called my motor club to see how much of the towing bill they
were going to pay. They told me I couldn't pay for the wrecker, that the wrecker
company had to send the bill to them. I was surprised at what I was
told. I informed the BP motor club man, it was too late, the bill HAD
been paid by me and I had the receipt and I'd be sending it in for
reimbursement.
He told me I could not do that.
I told him I wanted to speak to his supervisor, that they were not getting away with this.
Here comes the supervisor, who had very broken English.
I informed him that I have been a member of this club for over 30 some
years and have paid my membership dues on time, and have only used the club one
time in all those years. I asked him what difference did it make WHO
submits the bill, me, the membership holder, or the wrecker company, the bill
was the same either way.
He became flustered and I told him if they didn't get
this straightened out immediately, this was not the last time they would be
hearing from me.
Suddenly he says, "Oh you can send the
bill." I said, "Oh really, then why did the other guy tell me
the wrecker guy had to submit the bill?" He didn't answer.
He asked me why I paid the wrecker man, and I said,
"WHAT? Listen buddy, in the state I'm living in, when a wrecker
comes to tow your vehicle, the people want paid, so I paid him."
He said the club should get the bill from the wrecker
company, not me.
Again I asked, "What difference does it make WHO
sends in the bill?"
Again, I didn't get an answer.
Then he asked how far the garage was from where it was
towed. I told him right around 5 miles. He informed me if it was
over 5 miles, they weren't going to pay for anything over the five miles.
I asked why not, Amoco never had silly rulings like this.
The distance was exactly 5.8 miles from my house to the
garage.
Finally he gave me an address to submit. I said,
"How much am I covered for on towing?" He put me on hold, came
back on and said, "You're covered for $60.00."
I said, "Good, scratch the .8 miles, the towing bill
was $50.00 and I due expect a check in the amount of $50 when you get the
receipt."
So much for motor clubs of today.
Sharon Bryant
1946@bellsouth.net
Poetry Corner
~**~**~
Bless the wives of Vietnam vets! For they, whether
they knew what they were getting into or not when they married Viet Vets, have
a very difficult calling to deal with, requiring an abundance of patience,
understanding and love. I salute these wives of veterans for going
above and beyond the call of duty and understanding ... with full realization
that often theirs is a most trying and difficult task, one that
too often goes thankless.
The Wife of the Man
Still Fighting Battles From Vietnam
http://namtour.com/wife.html
Song playing: "Ciari
Dejavu."
Wife
of the Man
From Vietnam
by Gary Jacobson
Life can be so very hard
At the drop of a hat frenetically marred
When in love and living
Hell and heaven pursuing
As the wife of the man
Still fighting battles from Vietnam.
A vet’s wife has to be emotionally willing
With gathered strength daily moodiness encountering
Forever enduring to go the whole nine yards
Never knowing what hand is dealt by his fickle cards
Borne tolerance on special dates walking on egg shells
Tip-toeing through life on pins and needles.
Veteran wives have to be students of PTSD
Know well its ins-and-outs you see
Bearing with stamina seeming apathetic indifference
Directing in moments you least expect violence
Triggered by a churning, stifling, suffocating sound
In a crowd suddenly confining, in confusion milling round.
Time and again you must with fortitude exonerate his guilt
His suffering from surviving war’s battles in psyches built
His guilt assuage, wondering why brothers had to die, not me
His vital force forever infected by Nam’s tumultuous melee
For he's seen carnage deeper than the normal eye can see
Reality lying just beyond the senses his life decree.
Forget about that word "normal"
For a 19 year old boy who’s seen death’s face abysmal
Normal does not apply...
I’ll tell you why...
He lived with wall-to-wall putrid fear unfathomable
He lives with profound misery he doesn’t understand
Senses still short-circuited send him round the bend.
What a poor wife deals with can make her want to scream
For always he contrasts one world with the other extreme
Back and forth, one foot here, then back there...ad nauseum
Back where he learned to kill...or be killed!
React quickly, without thinking, to bring harm...or be harmed!
To act with violence...or be victim of violence!
Men seduced by war's barbarously bizarre world
See horrors in dreams, sights and smells unfurled
Reliving memories of what they saw, what they did
Forever imagining devastation to fractured souls deep down hid.
Fragile boyhood’s innocence lost in Nam’s destruction
Men wasted in the ugly business of killing’s confusion.
Existence entire was an obsession of Nam’s survival
Killing the man, their Vietcong archrival
Living earned by murdering
Just to get back to “the world” in dreams they clung to
These brothers-in-arms bonded through and through.
Only those who've ridden the beast can begin to understand
The depth of a brother's love comprehend.
And while they were gone,
Fighting for their country in hell and beyond
“The world” they so loved, turned against them
Dishonored and spit upon them
So those returning with so much to get off their chest
Could not lay this evil war to rest.
Therefore, trusting no one, they turned to isolation
Demons eating at their weary soul’s conflagration,
O the unholy desecration!
Still lost forever between that world, and this
Painful memories tear at life’s moments of bliss
Hiding deep Nam’s unhealed scars
Invisible to the human eye suffering a world of scares.
From youth's painstakingly taught morality
He learned the soldier’s art of immorality!
Life in Nam spent balancing his moral budget to cope
Living there with no morals, no conscience but hope
Living in a place you just had to survive
To stay alive...
where conduct disallowed back home...is customary
Killing in the precarious quagmire
just something you had to do...mandatory.
Vietnam, the catalyst for constant internal war
Way down deep in their soul, themselves they abhor
Forever unforgiving themselves for the surviving
Themselves...and those closest to them...punishing.
Bearing guilt...feeling always Out of step, out of rhyme
Lost in this new generation’s pace in time.
To many people, Veterans appear almost catatonic
Warily obsessing on a thousand yard stare lethargic
Driven to times they must be alone
Yet at other frightening times they cannot be alone
Skeptical of authority that let them down in war’s charade
By people they most loved, fought for, trusted, betrayed.
Veteran wives can only support their men
Try with wisdom of Solomon to understand them.
Learn to give more than received, a woman’s touch bestow
For often veterans need more love than wives ever know
For wives must know, learning to live again...is killing him
For Nams memory still lies repressed, still biding deep within.
Though they desperately want to, and know that they must
Is it any wonder they find it so hard, again to trust
To merge back into society they offered their very lives for
That left them wounded, bleakly forsaken on a foreign shore
Society’s gang totally embarrassed by them
Offering no ticker-tape parades, for them...
Veteran wives must learn the three C’s
These thoughts must run through them easy as a summer’s breeze.
Create their problems...they did not!
Control how time and events effect them...I cannot!
Cure them...I alone cannot!
Veterans must heal themselves with therapeutic lessons taught!
For he’s now witness to cruel war’s deadly cost
Seeing just how much of “him” is irrevocably lost.
Learn to forgive him, caring not who is wrong or right
For true love has imperfect eyesight.
Close the unforgiving mouth, for right sorts itself out
When you tune sensibilities to the primal shout!
A wife must keep vets they’ve selected
To “this World” connected...
Listen with open ears
To make more pleasant after-war years
Hear behind his manly voice the fears...
Caress his wetted tears...
Vet families find it so hard to find their cloud nine
Often unable to have friends, who did not too walk the line
Friends...veterans feel they can’t afford them
For back in the day...they lost too many of them.
The hatreds, the fears, the guilt, too often combine
Strangling hearts intertwined in Nam’s awful jungle vine.
How can a still young wife hope to cope
With war’s inbred horror grope...
To keep her man, her family...herself, able
Searching for a sane life that’s half-way stable?
She must have the soul of a saint's sense
Turn bubbling hate to love with patience...
Then find within, more patience!
O how did she get herself into this precarious situation
Find a vet to bestow her adulation...?
Emerge as the wife in love with the man
Still fighting battles from Vietnam!
*******************
************
I would
appreciate your vote for "Vietnam Picture Tour!" as a "Top Military Site," at "Veterans
Topsites." Just Click this link to vote: http://www.worldwidetopsites.com/php/in.php?id=knights
Vietnam Picture Tour is presently in 3rd place
on "Military Topsites" thanks to your efforts ... so
whether you vote once, every day, or now and then...I sincerely Thank You!
Gary
Gary Jacobson
 "My Thousand Yard Stare." You asked for a book of
my poems ... well, here it is, 270 pages with over two hundred full color
pictures and graphics in this book of my most popular poetry. Buy my book
instantly at, http://namtour.com/marketplace.html with
the security and ease of PayPal or your choice of credit cards.
If you wish it signed by the
author, email me.
"Vietnam Picture Tour," http://namtour.com/namtour.html A
walk in "the park" grunts called Vietnam, with the 1st Air Cavalry on combat patrol. Experience chilling
reality to leave the sweet and sour taste of "the Nam" pungent on your tongue, the smell of "the Nam" acrid in your nostrils, and textures of "the Nam" imbedded in you as though you were walking beside me in
combat.
My poignant poems directory, pictures and artwork to show the essence and
feeling of war on young "boys next door," http://namtour.com/nampoemsNpix.html
Read my online novel, "A Walk in the Park, One Soldier's Vietnam."
http://namtour.com/Nam.html
"Realm Of Poetry," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/SiteMap.html Poems
of love and romance, spirituality and meditation, Golden Oldies, comedy, Quests
of the regal knight Richard Lionheart to the crusades and seeking the Holy Grail,
dueling dragons, frolicking fairies, and comedy....and also links to my site of
riding that bestial ogre called war...
~**~**~
Story Feedback
Thank
you our beautiful Winterose for your work and labor of sharing with us your
fans and as always another cool writing from our JoeCool. God
bless as this gal Leona goes right on being blessed again today
"Dancing With Life."
Here are the Published Christmas entries to
Date. If you want to review the stories
or poems before voting which will come only at the end of this contest, just go
to the archives: http://archives.zinester.com/98907
Stories
Here is our Storytime
Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank those of you who chose to
be a silent angel and gave an anonymous donation to keep Storytime
Tapestry up and running.
Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider,
Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen
Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd,
Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu, Bob Shaw,
Carol Meeks, Charlotte Hilliard, Maria Keller
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