Blog
Rewriting History or Acknowledging It?
Posted by Michael Putzel • July 31, 2015
Hauling down the Confederate battle flag from its staff on the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol in July marked a tectonic shift in white rulers’ manipulation of the tragic racial history of the American South. It may have been just the beginning.
Triggered by a single act of hate and madness, the cold-blooded murder by a white supremacist of nine African-American parishioners at bible study, the focus on the flag as a symbol of racist strife changed South Carolina politics in a moment. Flying defiantly at the top of its solitary staff as the American and South Carolina flags were lowered to half-staff in mourning, the battle flag of an army defeated 150 years ago drew the angry eyes of millions watching television or tapping into the Internet.
Republican Governor Nikki […] READ MORE
The Stages of Authorship
Posted by • June 30, 2015
Writing a book is not like journalism. For one thing, it takes longer. Sometimes a lot longer.
In a four-decade career in news, I wrote on tight deadlines, often under pressure, and with no excuses for a story that didn’t get done on time. Then I decided to write a book, a work of nonfiction that involved reporting techniques I had practiced for years. It turned out to be a complex process that required a number of course changes along the way. I discovered there are several stages for some authors, including me.
The first is, “Oh, he’s writing a book.” Emphasis on book. Cheerful and full of expectation.
Then, after a while, it becomes, “He’s working on a book.”
When polite people stop asking how the book’s going, you’ve moved into, “He says he’s working […] READ MORE
Memorial Day
Posted by • May 25, 2015
“One of the things that Vietnam taught me, and the reporting I did subsequently after the war, was that wars don`t end. They come home, and it`s the women and the children who fight them.
There is a war to find beauty and meaning in life again. There is sometimes a war to learn how to pick up a fork, how to tie a shoe, how to reconnect with a world that sent you to do something you never really thought you were going to do. And the aftermath of war is something that is profound.
And I think — while, we didn’t recognize the soldiers enough after Vietnam, I think one of the outrages was we blamed the war on the people who fought and we in time learned to separate […] READ MORE
A Sad Man Left Behind
Posted by • May 18, 2015
It was bitter cold at Arlington National Cemetery on February 18, 2009, as mourners gathered in the warmth of a waiting room in the administration building before walking out into wet snow to join the funeral procession.
A middle-aged man whose features looked vaguely familiar approached me and spoke.
“You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are,” he said, “and I want to tell you that not everyone here is pleased with the way this service is being conducted.”
I was there, at the request of the family I knew, to eulogize a military officer I had written about as a remarkable and storied leader of an air cavalry troop in Vietnam thirty-eight years earlier. Twice nominated for the Medal of Honor, Army Major James T. Newman wore the […] READ MORE
But When Did It Start?
Posted by • April 30, 2015
Today marks the indisputable 40th anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam and, for all to see, the end of the decades-long struggle known in the West as the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, it is called the American War.
The event is being flamboyantly celebrated by the Communist government’s supporters in Hanoi, the nation’s capital, as well as in Ho Chi Minh City, known before and during the war as Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam from 1954 until April 30, 1975.
Quite a few of my long-ago colleagues who covered the war with me in the South are gathering in Ho Chi Minh City this week for a rare reunion, perhaps one of the last, to remember the exciting, sometimes terrifying, days when they were covering the biggest running news story […] READ MORE
