Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

March 30, 2008

 Today’s Announcement

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

 ~**~**~

 In The Sky, A Beautiful Woman
by
Ellie Braun-Haley
 

I can not imagine the pain Sara endured in this life. She buried four babies. Sara's first three children, all boys, had been born with heart defects and none of them survived long after birth. After a few years, Sara gave birth to a little girl, Emily, who soon began to have health problems too. The doctors discovered that, like her brothers before her, she had a hole in her heart. When Emily was almost ten months old she went in for heart surgery. She was just not strong enough to recover from the ordeal. She died. Sara and Bryan, her husband, mourned for all four infants again and Sara felt they would never have a child to keep. She was having a particularly difficult time handling the death of little Emily.

Some months later, Sara was driving up a hill. She was crying as she drove, her thoughts on the child she had most recently said good-bye to. Something told her to look up. There in the sky, she saw a beautiful lady with a child in her arms. Sara recognized the baby as her daughter, Emily. The lady spoke to Sara and she said, "Please don't cry. Don't mourn anymore. All is well and fine. Your baby is well taken care of."

After that day Sara cried no more for little Emily. She said, "I had no reason to mourn. I knew my baby was taken care of. I know I will see her."


Story by Ellie Braun-Haley from her book, A Little Door, A Little Light.

Available at http://www.eaglecreek.org/doorpdf.html
Also available at: evrcanada.com

Also available at:
http://alittledoor.inframind.net/ellie-braun-haley.html

Testimonial regarding A Little Door, A Little Light

This book is simply incredible. I am a Registered Nurse and have worked almost my entire career in the Emergency Department. Obviously, I have seen many, many deaths, all which affect me although I must maintain my professionalism. The book touches the soul of those of us left on this side of the veil, the light, whatever it is, it helps us to understand in a positive loving and gentle way that God never leaves us or lets us down. The book not only comforts, it inspires and gives hope. Ellie Braun-Haley has written a book filled with love and wisdom.

  - Peggy McConnell-Dobbins, R.N.,
Director of Nursing Emergency Services, Largo, Florida

FOR MORE TESTIMONIALS VISIT
Available at http://www.eaglecreek.org/doorpdf.html OR
http://alittledoor.inframind.net/ellie-braun-haley.html

  ~**~**~

Poetry Corner

~**~**~

http://namtour.com/GetOverIt.html

One Tin Soldier
by Gary Jacobson © January 2008

One tin soldier
American warrior
Left his valley of milk and honey
Abundant life so rich and sunny
To bring peace unto the world
Spread before him in great vastness unfurled.

He wanted naught but mankind to help
This freshborn na?ve whelp
Still abiding in carefree callow youth
Drawn unknowing into war’s violence uncouth
Innocent to horrors, life and death on the line
Intrinsic values in spiraling decline.

One tin soldier
Marched to be his country’s savior
Taken far, far away
Thrust headlong into battle's heated fray
Facing men preoccupied with killing, handed a gun
Killing was at first indeed no fun.

Some soon became addicted to the killing
Some could not live without its fever thrilling
Losing the love once held so essential
To being’s essence now grown dysfunctional
Reborn into a hard corps fighting machine
Most efficient warriors the world’s ever seen.

Lost forever was the young boy's naivet?
He forgot how to pray
Only living to survive
Fighting so he and buddies might stay alive
To make it back to the world
To find again his lost peace like gold.

Now the man-boy at last comes home
Looking for his soul to atone
The war aching in his belly like a stone.
He had lost himself
In war's treacherous gulf
His ideals long abandoned on a shelf.

He was to others, himself included, adversarial
Hostile with only one thing in mind antisocial
Humanity a bartered credential
Lost was the boy in shadowy forest lair
Hot home of the Vietcong who dare
Dare these but callow youth to venture there.

Still he sees enemies smirking
Their eyes red coals burning
There waiting to kill in every crowd
Wartime adrenaline talking overly proud, too loud
Finding it hard again to trust
Trust lost in mud, blood and dust.

Beaucoup violence now become a learned way of life
Dinky dau antagonisms gained in the warrior’s strife
Drinking too hard to quell nagging memories
Giving no peace to these wounded in spirit ambulatories
Visited at night by flash-back-stories
Rife with anxious anxieties cruel war’s depositories.

He's afraid to make friends, because they too will die
He’s lost the connection he once had on high
Now visited nightly by brothers who died
Painfully, bloodily, swept up in war’s tide
Seeing one-by-one grinning faces grown grotesque
Statuesque men he killed in macabre war burlesque
Oceans of tears belie a war once thought humoresque
Bound forever to remember his walk in the park picturesque.

~**~**~

 Why can’t you just get over it?
by Gary Jacobson © January 2008
Recently, said a well-meaning friend who constructively pled
Use your head...
Why can’t you thoughts of that evil war eschew?
There’s so much else you can do
Don't waste time back-there in Nam’s sweet-and-sour dew!
Why can’t you just get over it?
Why do you spend all your time just thinking about it?

No, I don’t want to discuss it!
How can you really bear even thinking about it?
Why choose to remember that awful war good men abhor
Which shouldn’t consume one minute of your precious time
Mucking about in grime and blood good senses malign
Thinking about it all the live-long time should be a crime
For it will skew you out of step, out of rhyme!

Don’t you know these thoughts are not healthy?
Why do you to the good life show endangered apathy?
Dwelling in the far-away war downright filthy
Why, that war’s no longer even newsworthy!
You choose ... to fill yourself with war’s empathy
It'll bring nothing but troubling mental neuropathy.

You are what you choose to be. It’s your own fault
This sullen assault on morose senses default
It’s up to you. Just out of this caustic pit vault.
Don’t let war bother you. Why can’t you just get over it?
Why do you spend all your time thinking about it?
Know you not, you warrior boys of summertime
Death freezes the soul in biting wintertime coating rime.

Why are you emailing me at four in the morning?
You need not about the glum long-ago keep mourning!
You know, don’t you know you need your sleep?
Surely there’s nothing that will not till morning keep
Why do you let moody moldy doldrums o’er you creep?

You know, it’s all your choice!
You can pity yourself, or with the world eat, drink and rejoice
Get on with your living ... leave horrible thoughts behind
Banish abominable thoughts of a destructive kind
Roust melancholic thoughts of evil that bind.

Oh my naive friend, I say ... don’t you know:
I’m forever lost in my thousand yard stare...
Remembering brothers who fought and died back there
Horribly bloody in deepest despair.
It was back there I killed my first man
Fading light in his eyes left a feeling I’ll never understand.

I still live filled with war’s violent fare
Raising beaucoup memories fair and square
How can I forget fear still filling my soul in Nam’s vapid air
Days turning cherished values upside down devil-may-care
Constant sounds of artillery still rings in my ears from back there
Forget damnable hell pouring out that I must now share.

I still regurgitate long hidden memories of warfare
Of a sweet-and-sour time when I bore the brave lion’s share
Coming only now out of shadowed time lost in grieving
Stinging. Conceiving. Remembering...
Betimes neither here nor there
Where Vietnam’s broken bodies fill memories raw and bare.

I’m still abandoned and so all alone in war’s crosshair
Mentally beating myself for the killing once so rampant o’er there
Berating guilt derived from Nam’s killing fields so fair
Visiting that hallowed wall and seeing that vacant chair
Tears stream from down deep from a silent place unaware.
Why do I continue weary life to persevere?

The Nam’s pain
Will always in my soul remain
You can't wash it out
You can't tear it out
Think it out, beat it out, wear it out...
I remember brave brothers who gave all
Wounded egregiously in a time where back-flashes pall.

Unbidden rivers-of-tears my heart still ravaging tear
Leaving unseeing eyes in that thousand yard stare
Covering verdant bloody jungle everywhere
Plucking heart-strings within me swear
Remembering Nam's sweet-and-sour staining gall
Remembering red sticky blood on boys that fall...
Wondering why my name's not beside brothers on that wall.

Remember ... that heated September
An ambush back in that Vietcong lair
Silently crying out in deepest despair
Where still lies the pit of my soul
My young being whole
Impair my very fear ensnare
Eulogies given when bloody death rode sweet-and-sour air
Remember ... Part of my soul lies forever there.

Do you really think I should not now care?

Brothers and sisters, ATTENTION:

The good people of Morton Illinois (near Peoria) are sponsoring a display of a traveling replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall, May 1st - 4th ... and I will be there reading my poetry, and displaying my pictures. I would like to invite all of you to come by during this gathering of patriots, as well as those who need to know, to honor and remember our brothers who gave the ultimate sacrifice. American Legion Post #318 MORTON, Illinois, and Larry Stimeling (larrynamvet), are putting on a wonderful display to open the hearts and minds of AMERICA, and to honor with solemn remembrance the sacrifice of so many of our young princes ... our soldiers, our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, our brothers, our friends, who went into harm's way for us.  This long black wall honors those who paid the highest price, their all, for what they believed.  So come on by and pay tribute ... and say howdy ... I'll be there, and I will proudly shake your hand. For more info, contact: http://nam-vet.net/wthhome.htm 

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...

Announcing a March Madness 20% off sale for my book of Vietnam poems ... "My Thousand Yard Stare."  There are over two hundred full color pictures, beaucoup poems in this book of my most popular poetry. To get the 20% off you must purchase from me directly @: 

 Gary Jacobson, 6325 south Old Hwy 191, Malad, Idaho 83252

where I will gladly sign it.

Price during march madness is $20 - 20% + $6 postage = total $22 USA dollars.

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," due to your efforts ... only a vote or two out of first ... so whether you vote once, every day, or now and then... I sincerely Thank You! 

~**~**~

.    Readers Feedback

 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, Marilyn Sink, Victor Buhagiar, Clarice Hinson, Conrad