Reading Photos/Flashback/To Die In Vain

(P1) Poetical

First SoCoCo Reading and First Reading Together With My Son John Coletti

May 3d was truly memorable for the two headlined reasons. Sonoma Coffee Company worked out as a wonderfully intimate venue. Readers pictured below were all "on." Bliss prevailed. Pictured John Coletti, Ed Coletti, Kathleen Winter David Beckman, Richard Denner, Jodi Hottel. Next SoCoCo Reading will be July 5th at 7:30 and with a whole new slate to be announced soon.

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(P2) Philosophical

Who shall speak for the dead in our private ceremonies of remembrance?

by Ed Hagan

It is we.

We that step forward today.

Some of us that can still stand.

Others among us can’t stand today but still muster our bodies from our chairs and others stir from our beds.

We who are alive remember and salute you.

Forty years ago there were more of us that shared the moments of death and dying in the flicker of seconds passing like our hearts pounding among those noisy moments of shock.

Numbing moments of anguish that crushed our bodies as the blasts from bombs exploding reverberated in every tightened muscle that changed pitch like violin strings wound to their breaking point as they played a symphony from hell .

Steel bending, melting, dripping to the deck below. Blood bleeding from bodies mixed together with sweat, Co2, PKP, JP5, Avgas all into a swift flow washed away in the sea water and tears that flowed..

And after the fire was out we heard the word from the PA. For us thankfully it was not God.

Those that almost died but didn’t possessed wounded spirits. Minds marked suffering the memories of the dead on that day July 29, 1967, forty years ago. Over those forty years one by one each survivor suffered the sorrow of comrades lost. Fewer of us to remember that gathering "the only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain are more soldiers dying in vain." spirits, souls, cells and salt of the sea.

Passage from the forthcoming book “Forrestal BeDevilers of VF-74 Ord”, by my friend Edward J. Hagan III copyright 2007

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(P3) Political

"the only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain are more soldiers dying in vain."

- Alaska Senator Mike Gravel

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