On Independence Day 2006 I had been home from Iraq for only a couple of weeks. Things have changed a lot. This year, I spent the 4th being appreciative of so much, surrounded by family, and watching dueling fireworks displays.  

As the holiday weekend comes to an end, life is filled with joy, gratitude, fulfilling work, 105 degree desert summer days (I actually like it when I can wear flip-flops instead of combat boots), and lots of swimming.

The kids have been home with me for the three day weekend, and they have officially worn me out! I'll be back to work in the morning. At home. At the computer. Seeking more jobs. Writing my heart out.

I'm happy to report that the writing jobs are rolling in and referals are already starting to happen. If I can keep this pace up, I'll be matching my old salary in no time!

My buddy David Stanford over at Doonesbury.com has re-posted one of my pieces on The Sandbox military blog.

Please click here to check that out.

Also, I was asked to respond to some questions about blogging for an article that ran in Stars and Stripes magazine.

Sitting there in the grass watching the fireworks, fully content and relaxed, I could't help but think of the men and women serving in the Middle East, and specifically in the Sunni Triangle, where I spent the majority of my time.

The kids fell asleep in the truck on the way home after the fireworks, and I was left to shine my own thoughts over this glistening city and the lights on the interstate. After I carried them in, one at a time, and put them in their beds, I spent some time on Google Earth.

I zoomed in on my old base, my old office, my old room. I smiled at my monitor because there I was looking at satellite imagery of the place, while I remembered exactly what it felt like to be there, in the darkness, looking up at the satellites.  Back then, I'd go back into my room, climb into my bunk, and lie there thinking about my family.

I'm okay now. I came home. My kids are asleep mere feet from me as I write this. Safe and sound. What more could I ask?

"Every man's memory is his private literature." Aldous Huxley

Shameless plug: Please check out my freelancing website at Desert Sun Writing. Maybe I can help you or someone you know? 

The title of my blog can be deceiving, because I've been home from Iraq for two years. I am no longer the 1st Lieutenant that friends called "wordsmith" and I am no longer at war. Actually, I'm now a Captain who has gone inactive.

 My focus (in life and blogging) has changed completely. I'm not wearing the uniform any longer, but I am very proud that I did. I'm not training with the Army anymore, but lots of my good friends are.

Why, you might ask .. do you still have this blog?

Good question.

First of all, I love this blog and the access it gives me to such supportive, incredible people from all over the world. I don't want to let it go silent because I might lose some of those relationships, and a little part of myself.

Secondly, I enjoy blogging, but not enough to maintain two. 

So I'm a vet now, moving on to new experiences and adventures... Why can't this blog be about everything else in my life?

I still identify with this blog and apparently people still want to read what I'm writing here, so I'm keeping it up ... in fact, I'm takin it to a whole ... nutha ... level!

If you keep visiting (and I hope you do) you'll find a whole spectrum of writing - essays, articles, poetry, opinion and fact, mindless rambling and focused prose on some of these topics:

• Building my business DesertSunWriting.com
• The incredible transition from soldier to civilian to freelance writer
• The transition from happily married man to single Dad
• Being the best parent that I possibly can
• Any progress and updates about my non-fiction books
• Any progress and updates about my novel/screenplay projects
• Book Reviews
• Music Reviews
• Any other topic that I think is worth sharing (not necessarily about the military) 
• Finding inspiration and synchronicity in all that I do
• Being the "eternal optimist" (read my post from Iraq here)

So ... please bear with me as my blog evolves to be more aligned with the course my life is taking. 

To my long-time readers who have been with me from the start: thank you, as always, for your continued support. And for new visitors ... welcome!

"IT'S EVOLUTION, BABY!"  Eddie Vedder, lead singer of Pearl Jam

Two years ago today I stepped off of that airplane in Salt Lake City. No cliches about "time flying by" seem fitting at the moment. Life is too colorful, too much of a grand adventure to taint its description with an overused play on words.

I remember everything as if it were yesterday, and yet I've learned and grown so much in the last two years that it's like watching someone else in my mind - some other soldier, some other father, some other soul.

I still maintain this blog, even though I am inactive with the Army right now. I am still "Captain K" for at least a while longer, until I  make some more decisions about my career. Right now I'm enjoying my days more than ever before, writing full-time, and working hard to build my company Desert Sun Writing and Editing.

Many of you know that my hometown is New Orleans, but I've been living in Salt Lake City, Utah (on and off) for the last 12 years. Well, after 1/3 of my life there, I have now moved my little family to an absolutely gorgeous town in southern Utah where I'll be closer to family. It's actually a desert climate not so different from the deserts of Iraq. Do I smell irony?

I still receive almost 30,000 hits a month here at Wordsmith at War, which is both humbling and exciting at the same time. Thank you all for your continued support.

BOOK UPDATE: I have wasted some valuable time dealing with an agent who simply wasn't the right one for me. Then I've become preoccupied with life and work (and moving!), so I put the book project on the proverbial back burner.  Recently I've been thinking about it again, and even considered a print-on-demand service so that I can get the book out to my readers (and hopefully get some new ones) once and for all. Just as I started researching print-on-demand, I received a letter from a university press I queried a while back. So.. I'm playing the waiting game again with my non-fiction book about Iraq. Here's what I know for sure: I've decided to publish 44 of my most popular essays from the last three years in a collection. The book is complete and ready to go. I'm simply need to decide how exactly I'm going to publish. As always, I really appreciate you visiting my blog, and ask you to keep an eye out for my forthcoming collection. If you have any thoughts or questions about the book, please don't hesitate to leave a comment or e-mail me.

Finally, in the name of my anniversary and the inspirational, exciting changes in my life, I'm going to re-post something I wrote two years ago, when I was flying back and forth across the Atlantic on emergency leave because my mom was very sick and Hurricane Katrina had recently struck. I saw soldiers walking around my hometown with loaded weapons, but I had to go back to Iraq. Each time I flew back, I felt frustrated and wondered if I should be serving in New Orleans or the Sunni Triangle. I questioned my own path and sometimes grew cynical and philosophical about the way Americans were supporting their troops. We are still a country at war, and I still have soldiers in Iraq who I sent there personally as their company commander. And yet very few people that I meet in my little microcosm of America seem too concerned. This is a bit of generalization, but I don't know... is it just me?

A Letter to the Republic for Which We Stand

I got an e-mail from David Stanford recently. He's the duty officer over at Doonesbury.com, and also a great guy who is editor of The Sandbox anthology.

He asked if I wanted to be on a local call-in radio show here in Salt Lake City called K-Talk. The host is a really nice lady named Sethina. She had actually been reading the book at the library and found David's contact information in the introduction. She wanted to interview him on the show and wondered if he had any of the authors available. Well, as luck would have it I'm in Salt Lake City too.

I said yes. I was on the air with Sethina and David for the full hour. There were several callers, and she even asked me to read one of my pieces on air. I really appreciate being recognized for my service and being able to speak my piece. Among other things, I said that browsing military blogs is the best way to get your news from Iraq. I really believe that.

You can download the entire broadcast here, but it will only be available for 5 more days. 

Sethina mentioned that she had read some of my essays from The Sandbox, and found me to be a very "nostalgic guy."

When it comes to the writing in the book, I think she's right. In Iraq I was always nostalgic, sending my thoughts back home to the life that was changing in so many surreal and overwhelming ways, and it came through in everything I wrote.

Dusty sentences. Mortared mornings. Superheated life. Pallette bridges. Plastic bathrooms.

Today it's all back. I'm thinking about veterans, which leads me to hi def memories of everything that happened to make me a veteran. I smile at the proud fact that I survived to return home and take care of my kids, and at the work we did over there.

I remember writing for the New York Times and blogging from Iraq. The reader support was inspiring.

Yes, the vastness and nostalgia are back upon me. I sense the weight of a long fight across the Atlantic. I feel the long miles between Salt Lake City and the Sunni Triangle. I remember the taste of Iraq's dust in my mouth, and that cranium-baking sun.

Memorial Day. Memory Day. Soldiers. Military. Veterans. Combat. The United States of America. Five years of war in the new millenium. Soldiers fighting right this very minute in the desert. Some soldier in my old room. Midnight here. Morning there. My old office.

Hundreds of thousands of us home now, re-building lour lives at every level of society.

Whatever happens, I'm proud of us.

THE SHAMELESS PLUG:

DESERT SUN Writing and Editing is officially open for business!

LONDON

Emergency leave

never ends well

when a mother

is lost

to breast cancer

I, an Army Lieutenant

flying back to

the Sunni Triangle-

a face in the window at

thirty thousand feet-

for the final

six months

of the tour

A layover in London.

The moist weather,

and a soft couch 

in the dim hotel lobby

Queen's Gate Garden

Hyde Park

I, a lone American.

Emotions ornate

as the gates

I peer through

at Buckingham Palace

in the rain,

seeing nothing.

I had a rare break from the madness of single parenthood last weekend. I went snowboarding all day Saturday with my brother while his awesome wife watched all of our kids. Another cousin came with us too. They live a couple of hours south of Salt Lake City, so we drove down Friday afternoon through snow and rain. The kids had a big slumber party and the adults stayed up late talking and enjoying the company.

We hit the road early in the morning for another two hour drive to Brian Head, Utah. Driving through virtually any area of Utah is a lesson in geology, an inspirational and mysterious geography. This drive was no exception. And the Brian Head resort is gorgeous.

On some of the highest lifts, we were close to 11,000 feet above sea level, looking down at the world through clouds that hovered far below us. Riding slowly on the lift chairs up the side of the mountain was a scenic drift over a white world where fresh white powdery snow covered the ground, and each trip up the lift exposed more tracks. It was easy to tell which tracks were made by people on snowboards and which by skiers.

As I'm still a beginner, I fell pretty hard a couple of times, but my progress from the first run to the last was encouraging and more fun than almost anything. I've been snowboarding before,  but never quite like this. The guys I went with were advanced, and helped me out tremendously. Now I believe I've been bitten by the bug.

I can't wait to get back on the mountain and surf the earth some more. 

"The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show."   -author unknown

I’m not sure how I’ll view this place from my side of the Atlantic, but I do think we did an important job here. Some soldier must put on his body armor and secure this area, someone must leave his community and stand in a guard tower for 12 hours a day, having RPGs and mortars shot at him, and someone must drive around the streets of this city trying to convince the locals that we actually want to help them, not hurt them. America has chosen to fight here. America’s leadership has sent us. There is only one thing to do: complete your small piece of the mission.    

I was contacted last year about having an actor "play" the part of me, by actually reciting some of my work on stage in a dramatic performance. I was excited about it back then, but to be honest I've been so preoccupied that I let it drop off  of my radar.

Thanks to this post by fellow vet Brian Catherman, I learned that the performance, entitled "Aftermath of War: In Their Own Words" took place a couple of days ago in Berkeley, California.  

I've also had the honor of being included in three anthologies to date, with another due out later this year as well (more info to follow).

If you haven't already, please follow the links below and pick up a copy:

2006 Writer's Blog Anthology

Blog of War

Doonesbury.com's The Sandbox

Thank you, as always, for your continued support.

When I first received my orders for Operation Iraqi Freedom, I sat down and read them silently. They declared, among other things, that I was "ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 544 days."

My deployment lasted exactly that many days, and they changed the course of my life. I'm still glad I went.

Today's my anniversary. I've been home for just as long as I was gone.

Life continues to amaze me with this inspiring milestone, and so much more.

May you find what you need to live the life you love this holiday season.

2007 has been a great year, and I feel blissfully content as I approach 2008, which I plan to make even more exciting. In retrospect, I realized the other day that on December 20th, I will have been home from Iraq for 18 months. I will have been home for the same amount of time that I was gone, and that is a wonderful feeling indeed.

As of a couple of days ago, I am officially on an inactive status with the Army. For all intents and purposes, this means I am done with military service unless I decide otherwise. And that is an even better feeling.  

I'd like to thank all of you who still visit my blog, even though I am doing much more writing in my post-war life and much less blogging. Also, thanks for reading my work over at the New York Times last month. For those of you who didn't get a chance, here are links to those:

Single Dad Soliloquy

Mortality Strikes

Vast Human Enterprise

A Significant Emotional Event

   Last weekend I took the kids to an art gallery in downtown Salt Lake City. A friend of mine was one of the featured photographers in the exhibit. We spent a couple of hours strolling through all the galleries in the building, as I drank coffee and let the kids lead the way. It was a relaxing end to a crazy week at work.

   His name is Brian Schiele and his innovative and compelling photography can be found here. He took a portrait of the kids and I two months after I came home from Iraq. A few weeks later he asked me to write a few words in my own handwriting on the bottom of the print. Looking at the photo, the words came easy and fast. When it was taken, I had only been divorced for a couple of weeks and the overwhelming transition to single parent was upon me. Here's a link to the portrait and text. And here's a picture of us standing in front of the picture, a year after it was taken. 

Brian is affiliated with a photography group called The Salt Lake Seven, and they have a great new book out that showcases all of the work from the exhibit last weekend.

For this post, I graciously copied and pasted the words of the book's editor, David Stanford. I cannot say it better than he has:

"We are pleased to mark the first anniversary of this site by announcing the imminent publication of Doonesbury.com's THE SANDBOX: Dispatches From Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan  (Andrews McMeel, $16.95, 6x9, 336pp, trade paperback original). Featuring over 90 posts by almost 40 writers (ten of whom are shown on the cover and flaps), the book is a fundraiser for Fisher House, a "home away from home" for the families of patients receiving medical care at major military and VA medical centers. You can order a copy here.

By way of introduction, I'll quote the flap copy:

Launched as a military blog (or "milblog") by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau in October 2006, The Sandbox offers serice members deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq a way to tell their stories to readers here at home. In hundreds of fascinating and compelling posts, soldiers write passionately, eloquently, and movingly of their day-to-day lives, of their mission, and of the drama that unfolds daily around them.

Some posts are eminently practical for the troops themselves -- like Troy Steward's "List of Gear for Sandbox Deployment," and Stefan Ralph's "Two Very Different Conflicts," an annotated list of books he read before his deployment. Others are reflective, like Lee Kelley's piece on Christmas in a war zone, and Gordon "Teflon Don" Alanko's contemplation of ancient dust. Roy Batty's evocative posts from various assignments in Iraq have sometimes come in with the immediacy of a news flash, and are eagerly anticipated on the site; the same for Doug Traversa's series of thoughtful conversations with his translator Hamid. (Traversa got all three of his roommates to contribute to The Sandbox, making them the first fully posted hut in the AO). The gripping accounts of Adam Tiffen form another throughline, as do the posts of Anthony McCloskey (a.k.a. "Tadpole"), a sailor serving with the Army in Afghanistan.

This rich outpouring of stories, from the hilarious to the thrilling to the heartbreaking, helps us understand what so many of our countrymen are going through and the sacrifices they are making on our behalf.

      The piano is for you; its keys cut from your bones and teeth. The bass and drums are in rhythm with your pulse. And the guitar sings only your melodies, the memories your eyes have recorded and cherished over the years. The tones the musicians chose just happen to reach into the same astral well that your thoughts did on a day that, while you cannot place it chronologically, nonetheless has harbored a quiet place in your soul, waiting to be struck and ring out like an ancient crystal bell. 

      Music's magnetism stops clocks. Your sensibility of time elapsing is replaced with a flowing of soft sound, like sand through fingers, water against wood. If you watch very closely the second hand on the clock as you listen to your music, you will notice that if it is not exactly on time with the tempo of your tuneage, it is at least so a good portion of the time - it is trying. Time wants to join in the backbeat of the chorus, as much as your foot wants to tap.

    Likewise, as certain people can't hold a tune, or do not have natural rhythm, so the second hand lacks the dexterity to veer from its monotronomic pacing. Clocks love low batteries; it gives them the chance to dance.

   Some people, like myself, are just list people. I reflexively keep my mind organized with lists. I have multiple lists, which sometimes overlap, but for the most part are autonomous. Some are digital and some are written by hand.
  A list is a sort of challenge, a comedy of an attempt, a race against fate, and a cause and effect fiesta to watch how much your list drifts from the actual happenings that make up your day. It would be interesting if we all went back at the end of the day (for our daily lists, as opposed to monthly, short-term, long-term, and master) and revised them to show what ended up happening at a given time, as compared to what was planned.
  I imagine a future full of more lists. True, everything will be so automated that the list is replaced with personal reminders we earn by simply speaking our appointments and plans into the air, but there will still be a list of some sort in the circuitry of the computer -  a line of code, perhaps, but a direct heir of that scrap of paper torn from a notebook sitting near someone's hand when they decided to write fruit, soap powder, toothpaste, ground beef, and beer on it.
  A thousand years from now, our lists will be archived in museums as ancient relics, historical research tools. Picture it: A worn piece of ruled yellow paper with a genuine 21^st century coffee ring stain near the top right corner.

1. Pick up dog food
2. Clean weapon
3. Balance checkbook (these are the generic examples)
4. Finish battle update briefing slides
5. Burn paperwork from last week
(imagine the fun they'll have, trying to understand what we were doing)
6. Deconflict network settings: IAVA patches for new server
7. Read Chapters 4-6 from Brit Lit 4501, rough draft of essay
8. Call Mercedes dealership
9. Cancel pedicure
10.Call collection agency back
 

   In these futuristic museums, our lists will appear the same way hieroglyphics do to us now - symbols etched on paper or reproduced from Microfiche. Lists are not only important organizational tools, flag posts at which we can shoot the azimuth of our days, but they are timeless relics, documents of period study for future enthusiasts of the past.
Possible stats could even be interesting:

1985: Number of list entries containing the words Michael Jackson - 965,338

2002: Number of list entries pertaining to computer hardware/software/games/files  -  80,532,477

2007: Number of list entries containing the work Iraq/Al Qaeda/ Terrorism - 700,023,854
 

   A simple list is a bit of free verse, a look into the age and mindset and priorities of an individual in a given time; but it is also a cross-section of that society, that age, that era, that social class.
  Yes, the list is a powerful document that is taken for granted, when it should be cherished - an instantaneous historical reference point.
  Like now, I can turn off this computer and line through "Blog" on a list that has four entries scratched out, two circled with stars next to them, and one highlighted, then scratched out.
  I say go on, you people, try to keep it together. Keep scribbling away in your leather planners, in your parchment journals, on your dirty napkins - challenge the inertia of possibility -

go ahead and write your Lists. 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES ON JUNE 27TH, 2007 

I will always remember that day in 2004 when I sat on the business side of a Lieutenant Colonel's desk as he "invited" me to go to Iraq with his battalion. Now, as a company commander in the Utah National Guard, one of my duties has been to send others to fight the war in Iraq.

Nor will I forget the day I sat on the other side of the desk and told my soldiers they were being deployed. It was a recent drill weekend, and a sister battalion from Utah had received their deployment alert. My commander issued me a written order to provide soldiers to complement that battalion. Suggestions were made to hold a formation, and simply make the announcement, calling out the names of those who would be deploying.

I chose instead to notify each soldier individually. It took most of the day. Some were young and eager: "Roger that, sir. No problem." They simply acknowledged that their chance to serve was at hand, and they did so with a smile and a certain eager look in their eyes. These kids joined the Army after this war started. They were ready and willing participants. Others were family men, working on their master's degrees or running their own businesses, and dealing with a multitude of personal issues. Some were close to retirement. I wanted to notify them all of this massive adventure they would be undertaking, this guaranteed change of perspective, one on one, giving each a chance to ask questions, get angry, cry, or express whatever they wished in private.

As each soldier left my office I stood up and shook their hands, wished them luck, and told them not to hesitate to call me day or night if they needed anything. I also dismissed them for the rest of the day. It was a small gesture, but a clear statement that I understood the nature of the sacrifices they were about to make. "Take this time to get home and let your family know, O.K.? And I appreciate all your work here in headquarters," I'd say. I think they could tell by my look that I understood exactly how they felt.

They left last week. The send-off was at the exact airbase here in Salt Lake City where I landed one year ago. There was a battalion of about 450 soldiers leaving that morning for a one-year deployment, and some of them were from my unit. Over 1000 family members turned out. As you might expect, there were speeches, banners, and lots of hugs and tears. I spent the morning shaking hands, giving words of encouragement, and saying to my buddies who have already been to Iraq once before, "You know what to do. So just do it and bring them all back, O.K.?"

As I stood there on the tarmac watching these soldiers pick up their bags and wave before climbing the stairs into the plane, I looked at the huge crowd of spouses, parents, brothers, and sisters crying. I could see sadness mixed with pride. And I saw little children sitting on shoulders, crying intensely as their Daddy grew smaller in the distance, or teenagers bending their heads into a loved one's chest. Their tears were not easy for me to endure, and I was glad to be wearing sunglasses. As the planes taxied away, the Commanding General stood on the flight line and saluted them.

I am still in the Army today, but like many others I have made a personal decision to enter "inactive status." I'll be out in the next couple of months. My superior officers are aware of my decision. The choice took me most of a year to make, but after careful deliberation it is an easy one. I'm proud to join the ranks of American combat veterans. And yet I know that I would never leave my kids again. This fact is at the heart of my decision and I must say that I am very excited. All I need now is a job.

These stories of mine have been deliberately personal. I wanted to portray an honest glimpse into what one American experienced in his travels back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean six times in one year as a soldier in the Iraq war, gracefully lifting from these high Utah deserts, and then flying in low and fast across Ramadi in a blacked out attack helicopter. But these stories hardly illuminate the complexity my life has yielded. They are personal, yes, but only in the way a Polaroid picture of my family at a park one particular afternoon - when the last of the light broke through the trees in shafts, creating dusty colliding ecosystems with the pollen in the air - conveys a moment in time, a wonderful unmatchable moment.