[Mb-hair] HAIR - The Continuing Adventures of Tioga Joe

[Michael Butler]

So good to hear from you
Peace and Love,
Michael

> Yo.  Yeah, 'tis me, Tioga Joe, back from a Walkabout.  Sorry if you've been
> looking for me, as I haven't chimed in for quite a while now.  Basically, I'VE
> BEEN BUSY!  Job, life, you know, ... stuff.  Not to mention my home computer
> gave up the ghost, and at work, yeah, I've just been too busy to devote time
> to checking online my tiogajoe at juno.com mailbox.  So, I let that MB-HAIR List
> membership similarly give up its ghost, and I've signed back on, now using my
> work e-address sjsmith at njvvmf.org (use that address if you'd like a quicker
> reply to a message, query, or insult : )
> 
> Talked to some high school teachers recently whose students I was leading on a
> field-trip guided-tour of the museum exhibition at the Vietnam Era Educational
> Center, and these teachers said they used the movie HAIR in their teaching
> about the Vietnam Era in school.  I showed them a detail in the text of the
> time-line exhibit, for which I can claim credit to its inclusion.  It had to
> do with the specific number of the first U.S. combat troops to arrive in
> Vietnam, March 8, 1965.  You guessed it -- "3,500" (or as we like to sing it,
> "Three-Five-Zero-Zero").
> 
> Natch, I told them of the original source for this line (Rado and Ragni
> getting it from Ginsberg (and his poem, "Wichita Vortex Sutra") who got it
> from General Maxwell Taylor via a Wichita, Kansas newspaper, wherein he was
> referring to the then total number of Viet Cong captured ("Killed, 256; Viet
> Cong captured, Three-Five-Zero-Zero").
> 
> So, yeah, I still try to weave HAIR into my job whenever I can.
> 
> Also, after researching and discussing with Vietnam War Conscientious
> Objectors, I've decided I like to imagine that, while he might not have done
> so immediately, once inducted into the Army, yet perhaps not until his arrival
> in Vietnam, Claude Hooper Bukowski successfully applied for and obtained C.O.
> status.  But true to his conviction to serve with his "brothers" caught in
> that quagmire, he fulfilled the alternative military service of being a
> medic--in service of which he asserted his non-combatant role and refused to
> carry an M-16.  But, as many a medic and corpsman would do on the battlefield,
> he readily placed his own body in between the wounded GI and the enemy
> gunfire, thus protecting his charge while he tended to him.  That's how I like
> to imagine Claude was killed -- killed while trying to save a life, rather
> than while trying to take one.
> 
> At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  But as a qualification -- so
> as not to risk any copyright infringement, I'm just stating I like to imagine
> this.  Your idea is as good as mine.  Eh?
> 
> So, there ya go, HAIR food for thought.  Gotta go now.  Ta Ta,
> 
> Tioga
> 
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