Sunday, November 20, 2011

Been a While

So it's been a while since I last posted. I apologize. Life has a way of getting busy fast. Unfortunately, that's not much of an excuse; not writing has been as much a product of my laziness as lack of time, if not more so. I guess I'll cover some of the time I've missed below.
Since my last entry, a lot has happened, most notably, Veteran's Day. As I'm sure 99% of you are aware, Veteran's Day (also known as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day outside the US) marks the day WWI ended for all intents and purposes. Being a recently separated vet, I'm not really sure how to take Veteran's Day. While many people will go off thanking me for my service, I don't really my service as a sacrifice, not like others have had to pay.
For instance, my war was fought from afar. The other day I was at the VA hospital in Ann Arbor, and as I was waiting for my ride to show up, an elderly black gentleman sat down on the couch next to me. He had a hat with the words WWII Veteran across the brim, the whole thing ringed in miniature medals, including what I'm pretty sure was the POW medal. He was speaking to one of the employees about how his traipse across Europe, from the beach at Normandy to occupying Berlin. He talked about having rancid food for Christmas dinner in the Ardennes, but it's what he didn't talk about that made me think. Being black, he probably served in a segregated unit, and was often assigned the most dangerous missions, because white soldiers were considered more valuable. When he came home, he probably wasn't treated as the returning hero he was. It's men like that that make me uncomfortable to be thanked on Veteran's Day, because I'll never have it that hard.
On the other side of things, I've been closely following the Occupy movement, writing about it for my classes, and debating about the issues all over campus for all who want to. I'll let you keep your own opinion and I'll keep mine, at least for another post later on. I'm sure either way it will turn out, Ares will smile with glee at the strife of it all.
Oh, and for those of you in Hellenion, I do hope you enjoyed Ares' Libation this month. I've been debating joining Hellenion for a little while, but as I only know folks there through the internet, I don't really know if joining yet another organization would be beneficial for either party. I mean, seeing as I haven't been keeping to my commitments here well, I can't imagine I'd do much better there. I am already a (bad) member of Neokoroi, and haven't done much there, except one entry to He Epistole, due out in the Winter issue.
Oh, as a final note, I'm sorry I never got those survey results out. With only 21 responses, I didn't feel I could make any accurate judgments about the data. I wish I could have had more data, or that the data were more easily used. Unfortunately, I think I was too lenient with how I allowed people to answer the questions, and that led to a lot of answers which I would have had to throw out. I would just publish the answers sans identification data, but I'd consider that highly irregular, as I'm sure the respondents would as well. Maybe if Ares worship picks up, I can eventually get enough responses to do something. Til then, we'll just have to wait.
Anyway, I hope you all aren't too disappointed that you've had to wait this long to see anything from me. Gods willing, I can find some time to get off my ass and continue writing. Until then, Hail Ares!

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