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

[Sibley Smith]

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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