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Women in the Military, the Equal Rights Amendment and the Silver Star
2008-04-01 19:06:00
The frontpage of the April 1st Wall Street Journal carried this news blurb: “The Army is letting married soldiers live together in the war zone, a move to preserve the unions and bolster morale.” Today’s army certainly isn’t the army I knew as a new army officer’s wife in the spring of 1970 during the Vietnam War. I also remember in 1976, in connection with the U.S.’s 200th birthday, being part of the audience of a taped debate on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment . Phyllis Schlafly, a vehement leader of forces against the passage of the ERA, and her supporters worried about the possibility of women serving in military combat units. It’s been a long time since that debate, but I recall Schlafly’s group was concerned about men and women sharing bathrooms a
Read more: Women , Military , Silver

“The Killing Fields” of Cambodia and Vietnam vs. American Freedom
2008-03-31 16:24:00
The March 31st Wall Street Journal’s news roundup “U.S. Watch” carried this brief article from the Associated Press: “Dith Pran, the Cambodia n-born journalist whose tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields ," died Sunday. He was 65 years old. “Mr. Dith died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Mr. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago. “Mr. Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Mr. Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War reached its end in April 1975 and both countries were taken over by commu
Read more: American , Freedom

President Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Vietnam 40 Years Ago
2008-03-30 17:33:00
Forty years ago tomorrow – March 31, 1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson announced to a surprised American public that he would not seek another term as President of the United States. Johnson’s exact words on national television were: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” In Clay Risen’s April 2008 Smithsonian magazine article “The Unmaking of the President,” Risen says that, after making this announcement, Johnson was “by all accounts a man renewed.” Johnson felt he now had “the political capital to get passed” several of his domestic programs as well as achieving peace in Vietnam . Yet just four days later on April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot and killed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Ki
Read more: Years , Martin Luther , Martin Luther King

The Vietnam War vs. the War in Iraq -- Who Should Serve?
2008-03-28 19:08:00
I received an email sent to the Alliance of Women Directors about a woman director’s film opening nationwide today – writer/director Kimberly Peirce’s STOP-LOSS. (She previously wrote and directed BOYS DON’T CRY.) According to the forwarded article by Peter Clines in “Creative Screenwriting” online magazine, Army Staff Sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) goes AWOL. He does so because he’s served two tours of combat duty and now he’s getting out of the army. Except that due to the policy of stop-loss, he’s not getting out even though he’s completed his service. “A moment of instinctive reactions sends him running,” Clines writes. And now he’s AWOL – absent without leave. Joanne Kaufman in her review of the movie in today’s Wall Street Journ
Read more: Vietnam , Iraq

Michigan State University – the Vietnam War vs. the War in Iraq and Afghanistan
2008-03-27 22:14:00
My forthcoming book MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL takes place in the spring of 1970, right after the Kent State National Guard shootings and during Nixon’s two-month incursion into Cambodia. The novel is told from the point of view of four women, one of whom is Sharon Gold. During the course of the novel Sharon reflects on certain events that took place a year or two earlier when she was Sharon Bloom and a student at Michigan State University . I graduated from MSU in journalism in 1969 and have not been back since then. Thus it was with anticipation that I looked forward this week to meeting Sarah Blom, the director of development and alumni relations for MSU’s College of Social Science. My husband Mitch (B.A. and M.A. from MSU) and I enjoyed hearing what’s ne
Read more: Vietnam , Iraq , Afghanistan

Life After Active Military Duty
2008-03-25 12:44:00
The front-page of the March 25th Wall Street Journal has this news blurb: “Returning veterans earn less than civilians and have a harder time finding work, a government report concluded.” An hour after reading this news item I received a message on MySpace from “Jay.” He told me about a website www.afteryourservice.com to help former military personnel earn good pay in civilian jobs. I’m not endorsing this website because I don’t know enough to do so. What I am saying is that this is a very important topic – civilian employers frequently do not adequately value the skills and talents that ex-military personnel have learned in the military. And this leads to the lowered earning power and harder time finding work. One reason for this may be because civ
Read more: Military , Active

ROTC – Reserve Officers Training Corps – in the U.S.
2008-03-24 19:31:00
In MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL, the husbands of the four newly married women each earned an officer’s commission in the U.S. Army by participating in Reserve Officers Training Corps – ROTC – on their college campuses. At the start of the novel in the spring of 1970, anti-Vietnam War protests have frequently targeted these ROTC on-campus programs. The Wikipedia entry on ROTC gives the history of the program: “The concept of ROTC in the United States began with the Morrill Act of 1862 which established the land-grant colleges. Part of the federal government's requirement for these schools was that they include military tactics as part of their curriculum, forming what became known as ROTC. “Until the 1960s, many major universities required compulsory RO


Shakespeare, Jealousy and “Mrs. Lieutenant”
2008-03-24 01:09:00
I’ve just seen the terrific production of “Othello” by the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company. The playbill notes of producing artistic director Lisa Wolpe state: “(T)he story is not just about racism, but also classism, sexism – and even heroism.” She believes Iago’s motivation for what he does to Othello comes from being a working-class career soldier whose deserved promotion goes to someone else who has “advantages of breeding, position, and class, regardless of his inexperience in the field.” In my opinion, Shakespeare wrote this play about one primary human emotion – jealousy. Shakespeare dramatically portrays how jealousy provokes even leaders of men to easily believe the worse without seeking any contrary opinions. In my forthcoming no
Read more: Jealousy , Lieutenant

Barack Obama’s “Race” Speech
2008-03-21 19:50:00
No, I am not discussing politics in this post. I don’t even discuss politics with my friends, preferring to keep them as friends. Why then bring up this speech given in Philadelphia on March 18? Because in this speech Obama addresses a history of discrimination against blacks in America that is still present today. And one of the main themes in my upcoming novel MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL is that very prejudice against blacks, along with one person’s overcoming of her ingrained prejudice. When I was a new officer’s wife at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, in the spring of 1970, something happened for which no explanation was given. And thus I set out in my novel to find an explanation for myself, an explanation in keeping with the social and political climate of
Read more: Barack , Speech , Barack Obama

Etiquette Rules for the Wives of Military Personnel
2008-03-20 18:28:00
I found Whitney Bailey’s article on milspouse.com about what to do and what not to do while accompanying your uniformed husband quite interesting. In my forthcoming book MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL the four main characters of the novel in the spring of 1970 must learn what to do from the pages of the booklet “Mrs. Lieutenant” (Third Edition) by Mary Preston Gross. Some of the rules in 1970 -- including “outlawing” the wearing of pants -- seem somewhat silly in hindsight. Yet I know from personal experience that following the rules of military etiquette can save people from embarrassment. I’ll never forget when a captain said to a visiting colonel at religious services: “Colonel, what’s your first name?” The rest of us gasped at this audacity. I
Read more: Military , Etiquette , Rules , Personnel

Support for War Widows – Vietnam vs. Iraq and Afghanistan
2008-03-19 16:22:00
I was reminded today of one of the most dramatic differences between the Vietnam War and the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan . This difference is the same thing that enables me to write this blog: The internet. In an article on the website milspouse.com, Nikki Lomax-Larson writes about a young wife – identified only as Emily -- who two years ago at age 22 became a widow after being married less than a year. Emily’s deployed husband had been on patrol handing out pamphlets to encourage Iraqis to vote when a sniper’s bullet killed him. The new widow posted a thread titled “My DH was just killed,” and the other members of the military spouse board responded online with comfort. Some of these other wives drove or flew in to attend the funeral. Back in 1970 this onli
Read more: Support , Widows

Wounded Warrior March at Pentagon Is a Little-Known Event
2008-03-18 10:16:00
The March 13th Wall Street Journal front-page article by Yochi J. Dreazen entitled “Wounded Soldiers See the Pentagon in Private Parade” describes the Wounded Warrior March, which takes place at the Pentagon about every six weeks and is a little-known event. The article describes the Pentagon visit of 22-year-old Marine Corporal Kenny Lyon, who lost his leg in a mortar attack on a small U.S. outpost near Fallujah in Iraq. Though he had hoped to walk on his prosthetic leg for the Pentagon march, he had to be pushed in a wheelchair by his mother, Gigi Windsor. According to The Wall Street Journal article, hundreds of Defense Department employees lined the corridor to cheer for Cpl. Lyon and the other military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. I especially connected to


Help Children of Fallen Soldiers (www.quietlyworking.org)
2008-03-12 18:11:00
Ever since I decided that, on the website for my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT, I want to have information about organizations helping military personnel, their spouses and children, I’ve been discovering many worthwhile organizations. One such organization is the Quietly Working Foundation. Here’s what the website of this organization says: The Quietly Working Foundation is a non-political, non-denominational, non-profit organization focused on meeting the needs of children who have lost a parent serving in the United States Armed Forces. The driving motivation behind every effort the Quietly Working Foundation undertakes is that we want each of these children to know that the citizens of the United States of America recognize their loss, and are committed to helping them achieve their h
Read more: Children , Fallen , Soldiers

Provide Prepaid Calling Cards Through CellPhonesforSoldiers.com
2008-03-11 12:27:00
Yesterday I got a book in the mail from Amazon. Given how many books I order from Amazon, this was no big deal. Except that this time, enclosed with the book was a postage paid mailer to send in old cell phones in order to support the mission of cellphonesforsoldiers.com. I ran into the bedroom and got two old cells that I had wanted to give away to some place where the cells could help out. And lo and behold, here was an opportunity where these two cells could do real good. Here’s what the website for this organization started by young teens says: The Cell Phones for Soldiers program was started in April 2004 by 13-year-old Brittany Bergquist and her 12-year-old brother Robbie of Norwell, Massachusetts. Robbie and Brittany's goal is to help our soldiers serving overseas cal
Read more: Prepaid , Calling , Cards

Are We Careful What We Say to Spouses of Deployed Military Personnel?
2008-03-10 13:58:00
Last week I read a post on SpouseBUZZ.com from a woman who said that she was happy to be living in military housing at this time when her husband was about to be deployed to a war zone. She said that, if she had been at a sports event with civilians instead of with military personnel, the civilians would have asked her how she was going to survive her husband’s deployment or told stories of grueling business travel schedules. The military spouse who posted this comment went on to say that she understood why civilians responded this way, but it was tiring for a military spouse to repeat answers over and over. She said that when you live on military base housing “your closest circle of friends understand your life.” I really empathized with this woman’
Read more: Military , Personnel , Careful

The Quiet War: Iraq vs. Vietnam
2008-03-09 17:54:00
The front-page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried the article by Michael Phillips entitled “The Last Letter Home: When a soldier falls, commanders face a profound task: Accounting for a lost life to the family.” After I read the article (and wiped away tears), the phrase “the quiet war” popped into my head. At first I didn’t know what this could mean. Then it dawned on me that this was a comparison between Iraq today and Vietnam over 30 years ago. Because today it is an all-volunteer army and there are not frequent mass anti-war protests and because of the multitude of news channels (tv, cable, radio, internet), the reality that the U.S. is fighting a war in Iraq and Afghanistan does not seem as much of an everyday realization for the majority of Americ
Read more: Quiet

The Book "Mrs. Lieutenant" Is Now a Reality
2008-03-07 10:32:00
Ever since my husband finished two years of active army duty in the spring of 1972, I've wanted to tell the story of our two years in the army during the Vietnam War. I say "our time" because the army considers an officer's wife also in the military.Over the years I've told pieces of the story to people, and many of them have said "that's a movie" or "that's a book." And over those same years I've been working on crafting a fiction story that would reveal what life was like in that distant past of a universal draft for all American men.Ultimately I've divided the story up -- with the first part being a fictional telling of my first nine weeks as a new army officer's wife in the spring of 1970 at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. And this "Mrs. Lieutenant : A Sharon Gold Novel" will be available on Ama


Vietnam and the U.S. 1970 – Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S. 2008
2008-04-03 17:52:00
Given the current daily news from Iraq and Afghanistan , I thought it would be interesting to look at the news headlines from the first week in April 1970 – one month before the Kent State National Guard shootings as well as the opening of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL. Here are some news briefs from “Day by Day: The Seventies,” Volume 1, 1970-1975, by Thomas Leonard, Cynthia Crippen and Marc Aronson: April 1: Communists launch a major assault across South Vietnam , striking at military bases and bombing major cities. April 2: South Vietnamese and Communists delegates at the Paris Peace talks react with coolness to a French proposal for an international conference on Southeast Asia. April 4: Increased fighting in Vietnam is reflected by 138 U.S. fatalities for


April: “Month of the Military Child”
2008-04-02 19:49:00
Thanks to Spousebuzz.com – “where military spouses connect” – I have just learned that April is the “Month of the Military Child.” Then, from the American Forces Press Service, I learned that this month-long recognition has been celebrated since 1986. Leslye A. Arsht, deputy under secretary for military community and family policy, said: “Our military children are unsung heroes. This is our chance to thank them for being so supportive of their parents.” According to the American Forces Press Service article, half of all current military children – or 1.2 million – have had a parent deploy to a combat area. In my forthcoming book MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL, one of the four new officers’ wives grew up as an “army brat” – someone who is th


Exploring What’s Behind the Curtain of the U.S. Military
2008-04-04 16:17:00
Today, thanks to the internet, there are so many places that young people can get information on possible careers. And this is a very good thing, because most high schools do not prepare their students for life in the real world. Yes, there’s a lot of emphasis in high school on passing AP exams and doing well on the SATs, as well as doing well on federal standardized tests. Yet where is the exposure to possible career paths needed in order for young people to fully consider their options? In 1970 in the world of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL, the U.S. Army for most young men meant fighting in Vietnam, a country halfway around the globe. Some young men enlisted and some young men went R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officers Training Corps) and many, many young men were drafted. Ye
Read more: Exploring , Curtain , Military

Lessons from Vietnam for Iraq: Are the Stakes Simply Too Great?
2008-04-07 20:14:00
Yochi J. Dreazen’s April 7th Wall Street Journal article “Officer Questions Petraeus’s Strategy” got me thinking about the other U.S. war that had so many Monday morning quarterbacks – Vietnam – the setting for my upcoming book MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL. During the Vietnam War and in the 30 plus years since the war has been over (depending on what date you count as the end of the war), people have visited and revisited what the U.S. did right – some say very little – and what the U.S. did wrong – some say a great deal – in the fighting of that war. During my senior year of high school (1965-1966), two school friends and I visited Michigan State University. We were on an official college visit, and thus were scheduled to sit-in on “representative
Read more: Lessons , Iraq , Stakes , Great

To Stay or Not to Stay in Iraq: That is the Question
2008-04-09 13:52:00
I’ve just finished reading The Wall Street Journal’s April 9th article by Yochi J. Dreazen about General David Petraeus’s Iraq report to two Senate panels. As I’m not writing a political bog, I’m not going to give my opinion on what Petraeus said. And even if this were a political blog, I believe it’s ludicrous for people in the United States to make pronouncements about an extremely volatile situation halfway around the globe. That’s what the concept of “boots on the ground” is about – you have to be there to have even the remotest chance of knowing what’s really going on. What I want to say concerns Dreazen’s following comment about the testimony of U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker: “Mr. Crocker tried to reassure lawmakers that an emerging agreement betw
Read more: Question

“Kosher for Passover” in the U.S. Army
2008-04-08 16:41:00
Today I’m experiencing somewhat of déjà vu. I’ve just read the most recent post on Jewsingreen.com concerning an Orthodox chaplain -- Army Captain Shmuel Felzenberg – serving in Afghanistan. The article is by Lee Lawrence, correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor. In describing Chaplain Felzenberg’s kosher dietary needs, Lawrence says that Felzenberg has “Army-supplied kosher meals. For holidays like Passover , the Army provides supplies, right down to Passover-approved wine.” The U.S. Army has obviously come a long way from my time as an army officer’s wife in Munich, Germany, where the Orthodox chaplain stationed there our first year influenced my husband and me to decide to keep kosher. In those days we did not get kosher food items for Passover from the
Read more: Kosher

Erica Jong’s Novel FEAR OF FLYING and MRS. LIEUTENANT
2008-04-10 17:26:00
The April 14th New Yorker in “The Talk of the Town” section under the heading “The Canon: Still Flying” had a short piece by Rebecca Mead about a recent conference sponsored by Columbia University to celebrate Erica Jong’s 1973 novel FEAR OF FLYING “as a feminist classic.” Apparently many women in the audience agreed with this designation, and some did not. I fall squarely in the group of those who do believe it is a feminist classic. In fact, as I write this, a 1973 copy of the book sits only a few feet away from me in a plastic box with other mementoes of my 20 months of living in Munich, Germany, as the wife of an army officer. Why is a book published in 1973 part of my mementoes for the time period from September 1970 to May 1972? It’s because of Jong


Show Support for Deployed Military Troops by Donating BOOKS!
2008-04-11 18:57:00
In an April post on the Los Angeles Times’ blog “Jacket Copy,” Tony Perry -- who covers the military for the LA Times -- reported on books he had seen being read by Marines on bases in Anbar province in Iraq. Perry said that one way to show public support for U.S. troops in Iraq is “by sending them books, lets of books.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information in the post, nor did I get a response from an email, as to how to go about donating books to deployed military personnel. Frustrated, I turned to “Andi H,” the wife of an active-duty soldier who in 2006 partnered with Military .com to create www.SpouseBuzz.com -- “a blog written by military spouses for military spouses.” Andi’s email reply was prompt: www.BooksForSoldiers.com. I clicked on
Read more: Support , Troops , Donating

A Surprise Launch for the Novel MRS. LIEUTENANT
2008-04-14 17:17:00
Imagine my surprise when I walked into a friend’s home for a dinner party on April 13th to be greeted by a large crowd of guests for my 60th birthday and launch of MRS. LIEUTENANT. And there on a table waiting to be signed were several stacks of my novel – and this when April, my publisher’s rep, had told me a few days before that there were no books printed yet! My older daughter Rachel – the producer – had produced this surprise birthday party and launch. And she and April had worked together to deceive me about the books. And the surprise got better. My 83-year-old mother, who doesn’t like to fly, had flown in from Chicago with my sister. My youngest brother, who lives in LA, was there with his wife, two daughters and mother-in-law. My dear friend had driven in
Read more: Surprise , Launch

Following My Passion – Introducing My Novel MRS. LIEUTENANT
2008-04-15 19:44:00
Whenever I write about preparing for college applications, I stress that the most important activity during the high school years is to follow your passion. And by passion I mean doing something or learning to do something or learning about something that you truly love. I coach high school students to follow their passion without worrying about the passion’s career potential. And I coach parents of high school students about facilitating the passion of their children. Today the result of following my passion for many years is on Amazon. Almost 20 years ago two women producers optioned my story about my first weeks as a new army officer’s wife in the spring of 1970. When they couldn’t “sell” the idea, they told me I had to write a book. By the time the first draft of the
Read more: Following , Passion , Introducing

Original 1970 Army Documents on www.mrslieutenant.com
2008-04-16 17:57:00
MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL has as its source my experiences as a new army officer's wife at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, in the spring of 1970. For reference material while writing, I had all the original army documents from that time. When I had the website for my novel designed by Bartsoft.com, I asked for a page to display some of these original army documents. And on my website www.mrslieutenant.com, if you click on “Original Army Documents ,” you will see a range of original documents – from my husband’s orders to report to active duty to the itinerary for the Armor School “ladies tour.” In addition, when my husband and I were later stationed in Munich, Germany, I learned from personal experience how important were such things as the Passover food items suppl


Celebrating Pesach as a “Mrs. Lieutenant” in Germany
2008-04-18 10:55:00
Yesterday I was actually nostalgic for a time when I was a “Mrs. Lieutenant .” That time was the first week of May in 1972 right before my husband got out of the army. Before leaving our three-bedroom quarters in the U.S. Army’s Perlacher Forst housing section of Munich, Germany , we had to pass inspection for our quarters. This meant that everything – and I mean everything – had to be spotless. Not just spotless on the outside, but spotless on the inside too. We did what most officers did – hired a special cleaning team to ensure that we would pass inspection. The team descended like a host of locusts – and our quarters easily passed inspection. Worth every penny, and I’ve never again seen anyone clean that thoroughly. I thought of the cleaning team yesterday
Read more: Pesach

Anniversary of President Nixon’s Death
2008-04-22 20:26:00
Today, April 22nd, is the anniversary of President Nixon ’s death. In the epilogue to my book MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL, Sharon visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. in April 1994 just when President Nixon died: Ahead of Sharon appears the spot where the two sides of the wall meet. At the bottom of the last west panel is the date 1975 – the last year of casualties – with the inscription: Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. This memorial was built with private contributions from the American people. November 11, 1982 At the top of the first east panel appears the date 1959 – the first year of casualties – with the inscription: In honor of the men and women of the ar
Read more: Anniversary

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