The Vietnam Conflict:

I just finished speaking to Major Catazaro. I made sure to be really careful in how I addressed the issue with her. She first of all agreed that I was repeating the question correctly because I wanted to make sure not to misquote her. She said that other countries use a modified version of the salute by either using their left hand or tilting the right fully upwards in a manner much different than ourselves (both of which she demonstrated). I then carefully brought up the issue of the Vietnam War, telling her that I was fairly well-versed on the subject, am in your class, and generally understand that we lost the war and how that would conform to her theory as to why we salute. She said that the trouble with that lied in a misunderstanding. First of all, the proper terminology for it is the Vietnam Conflict. This special categorization negates it from being a war and therefore would not apply to the saluting rule under that specific terminology. Secondly, we did not loose the war. We pulled out. I understood this to be much like a retreat, but I believe her point was this was another means of validating her statement. Lastly, she informed me that Austin is an extremely liberal town and as such I will not always receive the truth, even from my professors. She said that only military officials (such as herself I assume) would be fully capable of understanding what occured in Vietnam and that most civilians could not know the "truth" even if they tried. I thanked her for her clarification and ended it at that.

One thing I could not help but noticing was a bit of confusion on her part. It really did feel like she had been trained to believe these things. I had to gently pull to get further information from her and even then it seemed like she had a bit of a struggle within herself to come up with answers.

Now, I would like to tell you some end-of-semester project ideas that have popped into my head. I liked your idea of an album. However, I think I would rather sing a really long one rather than six individuals, something similar to that one we began to hear in class. The only trouble is that I have no prior experience recording (could I do it for you on a tape recorder alone?), and also, if it need be done on a computer I have neither the background nor technology for doing so. Maybe that overrides that option then. My other idea was to put together some sort of Vietnam scrapbook. Not necessarily from the perspective of one having gone throught the war or containing memorabilia from my time there. I was thinking more all inclusive. Perhaps it could feature songs, letters home, photgraphs, movie posters, any number of things. Just let me know which of these two endeavors you believe I should focus my efforts on. Maybe I could even do a combination of the two.

Peace out, Mr. P.