We wanted to let you know about our trip East to meet with our new fiscal sponsors, The Marion Institute.  We met with about fifteen members of the staff and Board, and showed the work in progress video clip to the group.  There were some technical problems with the showing (a film maker's continual nightmare) and then we talked about the movie, the Welcome Home Project and where it is headed.  Most of these people are young, incredibly idealistic, pragmatic and focused.  Desa, the Director, is a powerhouse and they are doing or supporting incredible work all over the world.

One member of the audience was Desa's father, Hank, who is a Vietnam Vet.  The film and our efforts brought him to tears and his emotion spread to all of us.  It was amazing to see a group of people, most of whom don't identify much connection to the issues of veterans, suddenly drop into the emotional connection that is possible at the heart of this project.  Our goal is to connect people using this film, and this meeting was a great example of what is going to be happening around the country, in large and small groups, as they begin to come together over the shared pain, and beauty, of our returning veterans.  It was incredibly inspiring to us and we were really shown how fortunate we have been to be taken on as one of the Serendipity Projects of the Institute.

In addition to joining us in watching and being moved by the film, these guys are activists, and they had a  lot of ideas about how the film could be used, as well as how to use the fundraising for the film to be a part of fund raising for other programs that directly benefit veterans as well as the larger community.  For example, we will be discussing how to bring the issues of veterans together with Green Jobs and inner city development, domestic violence, homelessness, etc. 

We have also recently embarked on an effort to expand our viewership exponentially.  We are making a direct effort to invite new members to the Welcome Home Project Community Network on the website, as well as doing the same thing with our two Facebook pages (The Welcome Home Project, and Welcome Home Project), and we invite you to join in this effort and to invite others to join as well.  Part of our intention with this is to begin creating the audience that will then be anticipating the film when finished, which helps with distribution and grant support.  The second goal is to begin to use the sites as platforms for raising the funds necessary to finish and distribute the film.  All donations, large or small, will help and all donors will receive credit on the film for helping to make it happen.  So, thats where we are now, and we invite any and all comments, suggestions and feedback.  Thank you all for being a part of this.

Bill McMillan

Overthe past  week I have been touched by three events - all based in the ongoing tragedies of the wars.  The first was described in an article that several supporters of the Welcome Home Project sent to us about a small town in Central Oregon that described the community response to the injury in Iraq of one of the National Guardsmen that recently deployed. (http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2009/10/community_rallies_to_help_when.html)  Upon hearing of the injury to SPC Jeremy Jones the story describes how many many members of the community rallied in support of his mom, bringing her food, letters, offering help in many ways, etc.  It is very positive, given the circumstances, and shows how communities can become an important part of the lives of veterans and their families.  Hopefully this support will carry on when this young man comes home, perhaps disabled for life, his life and his family’s life certainly transformed for life. 

The second event was a conversation I had with a  woman named Danna, who founded Vietnamveteranwives.org (a great organization, by the way) who told me about how her community was responding to  the recent murder/suicide of a young couple by the husband, an Iraq vet suffering from severe PTSD.  This is, sadly, becoming a common enough story, but what usually goes un reported is how the local community around these tragedies is affected.  In this case Danna told me that the town had split - those on one side angrily of the opinion that Veterans are damaged and dangerous and what else should we expect.  The other side is apparently trying to see the event as a tragic outcome of the wars where PTSD needs education, treatment and awareness.  Community in conflict and she didn’t see how it was going to improve.

The third was an article by Brian Turner, Iraq Vet and amazing poet, in the NYTimes (http://homefires.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/to-bedlam-and-back/?scp=2&sq=home%20fires&st=cse).  In it he asks, “how do our veterans rejoin the life waiting for them back home? How do they rejoin the tribe once they’ve been to Bedlam? How do we help them so that they don’t feel as if they’re encased in glass, pinned to the walls as specimens in some museum-house of culture? It’s a difficult question to answer. I have trouble answering it myself. I think there’s a kind of medicine needed, not only for the veteran, but for all — even if we’re not aware of this need. Even if we’re not aware of the wound. I think we need to walk out beyond the lights of the village. We need to walk far beyond the trajectories of cannons, to take part in a ceremony capable of expressing what it is that war does to us all.”

In a way I find this hopeful because he puts his finger on the core question of how our country responds to war - how can we bring the wider community to understand that we are all being wounded by these wars, not just those who serve or who live with the men and women who return broken and confused.   All of us need the healing rituals and ceremonies that could bring us together in the pain and grief that is the aftermath of war.

As we embark upon the effort to pull together the incredible footage from the Welcome Home Project retreat I thought it would be interesting to send out a request for poetry from veterans and family members.  After all, the beauty created by the vets from this event will reverberate in the bones of anyone who hears it read for decades, and we would like to see and hear more of it.  So, please, if you have poems, if your husband or wife or child or parent, or even close friend, has a poem that you would like to share we will publish it here and hopefully spread it around the world.  You have something to say and we would like to hear it.  Consider it a gift to all of us as we are all a part of this and we will all benefit by your words.  Thanks.  We'll let you know how this goes.

Best to you all,

Bill