Surviving Operation Crazy Horse ⎥Vietnam 1966

From the Valley News 12.7.08

Michael Heaney dug below the weeds on a remote Vietnamese hillside and slipped a small military lapel pin into the earth. Then the former Army officer prayed.

“This is for Terry … and for the other nine guys who stayed here that day and who never came home,” he said.

Then considering the Vietnamese men who had led him to the secluded spot, halfway around the world from his Hartland home, Heaney added: “And also for the young Vietnamese boys who died that day, I pray to God, the father of all of us. We are all your children. We are together now, in love and in peace. None of us will ever fight again.”

Heaney, a former platoon leader who 46 years ago saw all 10 of the men under his command gunned down in an ambush by North Vietnamese soldiers, had returned to the land he calls “my valley of death” to reclaim a piece of his soul.

As he traveled to the ambush site with a translator, a Communist party minder and several North Vietnamese veterans, Heaney wrote in his trip journal, “I was in God’s movie, and wondered what the script would have in mind for me.”

The Hartland man, a father of five and a retired lawyer and college history professor, had traveled to Vietnam’s Central Highlands to exorcise a lifetime of sadness and guilt, embarking on a journey he had planned almost since arriving stateside as a badly wounded 23-year-old Army first lieutenant.

Despite the successful professional career and rich family life he built after his tour in Vietnam, Heaney spent countless hours trying to come to terms with the fact that he – unlike many of his Army buddies – had survived Operation Crazy Horse, a firefight so fierce it has been chronicled in military history books.

Heaney’s journey to the hills near the village of Vinh Thanh was his reason for returning to Southeast Asia. But the expedition also taught him more about the battle that ended his Vietnam tour, about war and about the enemy soldiers who killed his men in May 1966.

In addition, the trip bolstered his conviction that there are very few wars worth fighting. “The long-term effect on soldiers and their families is never a factor that’s sufficiently weighed when we’re deciding whether to go to war. It’s ‘Are we going to win? How long will it take? How many casualties?’ ” he reflected upon returning to his Vermont home.

“That’s almost the easy part. The hard part is what about the long-term consequences? Every time you fight a war, you’re consigning a large number of people and their loved ones … to pretty dire consequences – forever.”

I’ll be recording Mike in June 2012.

Pictured:

Michael Heaney outside his home in Hartland, Vermont.   Heaney, a former Army officer who was the only member of his unit to survive an ambush by North Vietnamese soldiers in May 1966, returned to Vietnam to visit the site.

Wolf Kahn ⎥Lumberjack

Most know that Wolf Kahn is one of the most important colorists working in America today.  But what few know is that, among other things, he left painting for a time to become a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest.  Click on the links below to hear Wolf talk about his childhood in Germany and England, his emigration to America, his years studying under Hans Hoffman, and the evolution of his art.

From PBS.org:

Born in Stuttgart in 1927, Wolf Kahn fled Germany at age 12 and moved to the United States in 1940. After attending the High School of Music and Art in New York City, he continued his studies at the Hans Hofmann School, becoming Hofmann’s studio assistant. His native tongue was often an advantage in Hofmann’s classroom, as he frequently translated the teachers’ signature mix of German and English for his fellow students. After over two years of training under Hofmann, Kahn later relocated to Chicago where he received a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Chicago.

Influenced by Hofmann’s practice of using nature as the starting point for a painting, Kahn’s work encompasses both pictorial landscape and painterly abstraction. Converging color and light to create atmospheric and sensual pictorial fields, his paintings evoke the ethereal world of nature even when they are non-representational. 

Although they are a departure in temperament from Hofmann’s “explosive” compositions, Kahn’s paintings incorporate many of Hofmann’s principles of chromatic tension and movement. Often juxtaposing saturated magentas, pinks and oranges with cool, muted pastels, Kahn achieves a balance that transports the viewer into his tranquil world.

Kahn has received honors such as the Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His works are in the permanent collections of major museums, including the National Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He recently returned to Germany for the first time since his childhood for an exhibition of his pastels at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

Intro to the recording: Wolf Kahn MP3 Track 01    / Run time :19

Wolf Kahn, Refugee: Wolf Kahn MP3 Track 02     /   Run time 13:57

Wolf Kahn, Lumberjack: Wolf Kahn MP3 Track 03    / Run time 10:46

Wolf Kahn, Artist: Wolf Kahn MP3 Track 04    / Run time 5:38

One of Oppie’s Boys

I will be recording a man who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer as an analyst of high explosives for the Manhattan Project.  We’ll be recording his story in mid-May.  It will be podcast in its entirety on our website when available.

History on the Manhattan Project follows:

A letter dated August 2, 1939 from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Sir:

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in a manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations.

In the course of the last four months it has been made probable – through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America – that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable – though much less certain – that extremely powerful bombs of a new type, may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

The United States has only very poor areas of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is the Belgian Congo.

In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an unofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following:

a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States.

b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment.

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines, which she has taken over. That she should have taken such hasty action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weiznacker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated. 

Yours very truly,

Albert Einstein

In later years, those close to Einstein would report that he was very troubled by his participation. In a tragic paradox of fate, he, a vowed pacifist, gave the starting signal for the most horrible of weapons of destruction. Alexander Sachs, a friend and unofficial advisor to Roosevelt, was tapped to carry Einsteins’ letter. However, for a variety of reasons, Sachs was not able to meet with F.D.R. and deliver the letter until October 11, 1939

Roosevelt wrote Einstein back on October 19th and informed him that he had set up a committee consisting of Sachs and representatives from the Army and Navy to study uranium. Events ultimately proved that the President was a man of considerable action once a course of action was chosen. In fact, Roosevelt’s approval of the Uranium Committee in October of 1939, based on his belief that the United States could not take the risk of allowing Hitler to achieve unilateral possession of ”extremely powerful bombs,” was merely the first decision among many that ultimately led to the establishment of the only atomic bomb effort that succeeded in World War II – the Manhattan Project.

‘Tis time for a change

Story Preservation has outgrown its blog!

We need more space and structure to adequately house our growing oral history collection.  So, over the course of the next few months we’ll be working on a website to offer full length podcasts and a lot of fun, interesting articles, thoughts, and suggestions.   In the meantime, I’ll keep posting – and I’m asking you to KEEP POSTED!!   Good stuff coming.

Eric Aho ⎥Carrying the Idea Around in his Head

Eric Aho studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London, England and received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. In 1989 he participated in the first exchange of scholars in over thirty years between the U.S. and Cuba. He completed his graduate work at the Lahti Art Institute in Finland supported by a Fulbright Fellowship in 1991-92 and an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant in 1993.

He has quickly become one of the nation’s top artists working today. Always fresh and vibrant, his paintings evoke familiarity with a heightened sense of atmosphere. His work is represented in collections throughout the country including the Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY; the Fleming Museum; the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Boston Public Library; the New York Public Library; the Ogunquit Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Aho was elected National Academician of the National Academy Museum in 2009. He lives and works in Saxtons River, Vermont.

Links of interest: http://currier.org/upcomingexhibitions.aspx, http://toryfolliardgallery.blogspot.com/2012/02/direct-response-outdoor-painting.html, http://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/eric-aho

Information excerpted from Art in America, 12.03.09 and DC Moore Gallery website.

Click to listen:  

Eric Aho_ Intro to recording_Track 01

Eric Aho_Landscape_Track 02

Eric Aho_The importance of narrative_Track 03

Eric Aho_Ice Cut Paintings_Track 04

Eric Aho_Fire Series_Track 05

Eric Aho_The Extremes of Nature_Track 06

A Look and a Listen Behind the Scenes

I’ve attached a brief excerpt of the recording that I made with the artist Wolf Kahn.  This is raw audio, exactly as it happened.

You’ll hear my voice as I ask Wolf a question.  In the final version, I’ll be edited out and this short take will be combined with other parts of the conversation and retracked.   The session lasted over an hour, during which time the telephone rang and all sorts of things went on in the studio.  It’s a busy place!  In the final version all this extraneous noise will be filtered out or cut.

I’ve attached a photograph of Gerry at the controls.  He’a a master, with more than 30 years of recording and editing experience.

This is a listen behind the scenes and you’ll hear the informality of the recording session.

To hear a 2:00+ minute snippet of the raw audio recording with Wolf, click here:

Wolf Kahn raw audio_Take 13

Wolf Kahn’s recording will be available Spring 2012.

Maine Poet Laureate ⎥Wesley McNair

From The Poetry Foundation:   Often referred to as “a poet of place,” Wesley McNair captures the ordinary lives of northern New Englanders while writing about family conflict and other autobiographical subjects. His poems often explore American dreams interwoven with family drama and public culture. A New Hampshire native who has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine, McNair has authored more than half a dozen collections of poetry, including The Faces of Americans of 1853 (1983), The Town of No (1989), and Lovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems (2010).

I had the good fortune to read Wes McNair’s memoir, The Words I Chose, pre-publication.  It is due out this spring.

Kirkus Review of February 1, 2012 follows:

THE WORDS I CHOSE, by Wesley McNair, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012

A New England poet and teacher affectingly recalls finding his voice amid a rural New Hampshire childhood deeply scarred by divorce and discipline.

McNair (Lovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems, 2010, etc.) was born in 1941 to a young Missouri couple who migrated to find work in New Hampshire; soon after his father abandoned the young family, now with three young sons. In 1952, his mother remarried a French Canadian with horticulture aspirations. The children worked on a small West Claremont farm, observing their parents’ sense of strict discipline and scrimping and saving. After the novelty wore off, the three boys came to view their farm life as “an endless grind,” and the author especially was perceived as spacey and ill-focused, called a “hammerhead” and frequently whipped for infractions. McNair’s stepfather aimed to inculcate in the boys a sense of the meaning of work, yet the excessive punishments—e.g., being grounded for the summer for being late one evening walking a girl home—made the author only want to plot continually to run away from home. He did so after high-school graduation, making his way from one menial job to the next, all the while planning ways to progress in school. Steeped in the work of Cummings, Eliot and Dos Passos, he wanted to be a writer. Yet his big chance to attend graduate school at Vanderbilt learning poetry at the feet of John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate in the early 1960s was derailed when he fell for a divorcée with two children. For readers, who will root for the author’s young persona, his decision to hunker down and pay the bills marks a denouement that is stunning and bitter; after about 80 pages, the details of parental grief predominate. McNair went on to various degrees and teaching accomplishments, yet his memoir from then on tellingly dwells more on his family than on his own work.

Sensibly wrought, without lyrical affectation.

To learn more about and read the poetry of Wesley McNair, go to: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/152/3#20601649

To hear Wesley McNair’s full recording, click on the links below: 

Wesley McNair_Intro to Recording_Track 01

Wesley McNair_First Poem_Track 02  

Wesley McNair_Claremont NH_Track 03

Wesley McNair_The Connecticut River Valley_Track 04

Wesley McNair_Young Adulthood_Track 05

Wesley McNair_Early Helpers_Track 06

Wesley McNair_Library in a Box_Track 07

Wesley McNair_Meeting Donald Hall_Track 08

Wesley McNair_Creative Process_Track 09

Wesley McNair_Ozark Women_Track 10