The entries below contain thoughts on politics and the world, the creative process, musical travels, and personal/family history. All writings are copyright © David Bindman.

Robeson House Echoes (Story of a Song Title)
David Bindman
March 23, 2019

The heat in my grandmother’s Volkswagen Karmann Ghia had long since stopped working. To see the road, I would scrape a hole in the ice that had formed on the inside of the windshield. Sometimes when I stopped at an intersection the car would stall and I would have to jump out, open the rear hood, and flip a lever in the engine. Then it would start up again. This is the car I would take to rehearsals at Robeson House.

The Paul Robeson House was the name trumpeter, composer, and educator Bill Dixon had given to a former carriage barn at Bennington College. The barn is still there but no longer has that name. It is where most of the classes, workshops, and concerts for the Black Music Division took place. It is spacious, lined with wood. Outdoors one can see the ridges of the Green Mountains to the east and the peak of Mount Anthony to the south.

I played in the high school band for a while. It was a disheveled affair. We would march and play in the local Memorial Day parades. If that had been my only musical outlet, I would have quickly lost interest.

I had begun improvising on my own and with friends. Then I met and began studying with saxophonist Stephen Horenstein. He lived down the hill from the college in the village of North Bennington. While I knew Steve outside the environment of the college, where he was a faculty member, the sounds, approaches, and ideas that he introduced me to intimated at what was happening up the hill.

My drummer-friend Ben Wittman lived with his parents on the college campus, a stone’s throw from Robeson House. We had a quartet with fellow high school students pianist Jim Sugarman and bassist Dan Lobdell. We played jazz standards and our own tunes. Ben invited Bill Dixon to one of our rehearsals. Joe Wittman, Ben’s father, had a grand piano that took up most of the family’s living room. Bill, wearing thick sunglasses, sat next to the piano and watched us play. Afterwards he invited us to come play at the Tuesday night workshop. After we played at the workshop, Bill said to his students, “THIS is what YOU should be doing.” While it felt good to be praised, I also knew it wouldn’t feel so good to be on the other side of that.

Ben and I became part of trumpeter/composer Arthur Brooks’ ensemble, along with pianist Linda Dowdell, bassist Spin Dunbar, and trumpeters Stephen Haynes and Vance Provey. In his compositions Arthur used the timbres of the instruments and the resonance of the space. Many of the pieces were set in non-metric or asymmetrical rhythmic feels.

As a student at the local high school, I was eligible for and received a scholarship to take one class at Bennington College. I took Bill Dixon’s ensemble class. Bill would arrive in the hall and come down the stairs in his blue sweater. Always dapper, sometimes he would look at a student and say, “Take that man to a tailor!” Sometimes we would have our instruments out and ready but never play – Bill would lecture for the entire time. His talks, delivered in his Nantucket cadence, might be filled with admonitions or they might be filled with insights – about history, music and life. Sometimes he would pick up his trumpet and play solo. He would growl or play high whistle tones or lightening zigzags through the air – interspersed with pure melody. 
In the fall of 1981, I left to go to college at Wesleyan University filled with a desire to explore improvisation and creative music…

I had learned of Paul Robeson from my mother and grandparents. I learned that he had been a communist and endured persecution in his fight for social justice. Choosing to name the performance and teaching space after him, Bill Dixon made a statement about the connection between human ideals and music. I believe this connection continues – in the very essences of a note or cymbal stroke – connecting us with the past, to the lives we find ourselves in, and to each other. And like the river Paul Robeson sang about, the sounds and teachings that took place at Robeson House – and myriad other places throughout time – echo on.

On Teachers and Saxophones
May 25, 2018

My brother, sister and I came to live with my grandparents in Shaftsbury, Vermont in December 1977.

Grandma Joyce knew about a sax player who lived nearby. He was a classical saxophonist, a leader in his field, I learned. Grandma contacted Sigurd Rascher and I took several lessons with him. He had a sax that was completely smooth, without holes or keys, and a horn that reached from floor to ceiling. He had written a book on how to play high notes above the horn’s normal register. I told him I was interested in improvisation and admired the music of John Coltrane. Though not an improviser himself, he was encouraging. He arranged for me to buy a Buesher alto sax, his horn of choice. The alto, which had been selected by one of his colleagues, arrived in the mail. It was old and in perfect shape.

At the time I had been exploring improvising on my own, and through playing duets with Jim Sugarman, a pianist/friend I had met at the high school. Then Grandma told me about a sax player who lived in the village of North Bennington. When he practiced in his apartment, people could hear him throughout the village. I called up Stephen Horenstein and began taking lessons with him. We worked on modes, patterns, sub-tones, and harmonics, and we improvised together. Steve showed me his transcription of Coltrane’s “Expression,” and I showed him my transcription of Sonny Stitt’s “Goin’ Down Slow.” He encouraged me to explore. When I wrote my own exercises he said I was on the right path.

Steve heard about a Conn tenor sax and drove me to Rensselaer to buy it. On the way home, we skidded in an icy covered bridge. Steve was shaken, but I thought it was all part of the course.

That summer I was off to be a camp counselor and travel out west. Steve thought that would interfere with my musical progress. He left for his new life in Israel soon after. Sharing his love and knowledge of music, and through his caring, Stephen had helped me find a way forward following my mother’s death four years earlier.

A few years later, when I was in college at Wesleyan University, professor Bill Barron heard about a Selmer Mark VI tenor for sale. He brought me down to Hamden, CT and I bought the horn. It is my tenor to this day. I wish I could have known Bill more. He was a profound player and composer, and a kind, gentle man.

Once when baritone saxophonist Fred Ho was “downsizing,” he offered me his Borgani soprano for $250. I didn’t have the cash available. A few weeks later he said to me, “Dave, are you going to buy the horn or not?” I did.

Sometimes, when I return from travelling and playing, I have nightmares about having left the horns in a hotel room or cab. Awhile back, when I was questioning the outsized role that music has had in my life, I stopped having the nightmares. But I also wondered what would happen if I let this “voice” go.

I have not let it go. I will continue to play, in a way that nourishes and hopefully connects me with a family of creative people, and with the beauty and possibilities of the music itself.

This spring I will have the opportunity and honor to play with Stephen Horenstein on a large ensemble piece of his in Jerusalem. I look forward to being immersed in his musical world. I will then play some of my pieces with five of Steve’s Israeli musician-colleagues. And Stephen and I will play duo. Something we have not done since those lessons in his apartment 40 years ago.

An Invitation and musings... (on the release of Ten Billion Versions of Reality, Dec. 2017)

Walking through Grand Army Plaza farmers' market the other day, I was thinking about tomatoes. When a farmer grows some organic tomatoes, when she cares for the soil, and if there is enough rain and sun, the tomatoes blossom and are eventually ready to harvest. We eat some raw, and cook others slowly with other ingredients.

Art is the product of such nurturing—an alchemy of elements, intentions, visions, interacting with traditions, inspiring us to think, feel, move, and imagine in ways that can enlarge our perspectives and lives.

I liken the music on this recording to “slow food.” Not because the music is slow. It is a product of long evolutions – musical, personal and collective. It is composed of simple elements, brought together and interacting in complex ways.

I invite you to spend time with this music, to peel back the layers, to be immersed in it – slow, fast, and everything in between.

“Included in this ‘ten billion’ are the dolphins, orangutans, and others who experience love, grief, and consciousness in their own ways.”
(from CD liner notes)

My Grandfather’s Radical Love for America
December 24, 2017

It is the first day of winter in New York City, the city my grandfather helped build.

People are shopping at a fevered pitch. The Republicans are celebrating looting the national treasury, ending the healthcare mandate, and opening up the north shore of Alaska for oil drilling.

My brother and I joked about the tax law yesterday. We talked about how if Grandpa Max hadn’t died already, what’s going on today would have killed him. And more seriously, that Grandpa would be so sad to see this. But by this morning’s light I see it differently.

Max Sparer, circa 1947

The old letters I have from Grandpa mostly contain political messages. While I wish the letters were more personal, that was his style. In addition to being a warm, loving man, he was an activist and educator to the core. But Grandpa also loved a joke – at the bottom of every letter was a riddle.

During the time he wrote those letters, the 1970s through 1990s, he and Grandma Rose, his second wife, lived in San Diego, where he organized seniors, canvassed for rent control, and worked on many other issues. As a senior legislator, he was a thorn in the side of Pete Wilson, San Diego’s Republican mayor at the time.

Grandma Joyce, Max’s first wife, once told me that before he was a communist, he had been a Zionist. This surprised me because Grandpa was ardently anti-religious. In fact his last words were “No church.” Grandma told me this to emphasize how unyieldingly committed her ex-husband was to a cause.

Grandpa’s lifetime coincided with that of the Soviet Union, and his belief in Soviet socialism would not waver. I asked him what he thought about the lack of personal and press freedoms in the U.S.S.R. He wouldn’t deny these facts, but would instead point to free health care, free college education, and full employment.

Driving around New York City on his visits east, Grandpa would point to an overpass and say, “I built that.” Grandpa worked in the shipyards during World War Two and, following the war, became a shop teacher in New York City schools. He left teaching during the McCarthy period to avoid being fired and blacklisted. He then worked as a carpenter building structures around the city. He organized workers on all these jobs.

I learned recently how difficult his time as a carpenter was for him, both the physical work and the fact that he could not work as a teacher anymore. On these jobs he felt that he could not admit to having a college education because he would not have been accepted by his co-workers and would have been ineffectual as an organizer. Years later, when I was a little boy, Grandpa retired from Brentwood High School, where he had eventually been hired to teach Latin and German.

Riding around San Diego with Grandpa, I said to him one time, “Look at those guys hanging around on the street corner.” He answered by saying that they wouldn’t be hanging out if they had opportunities to do something worthwhile.

Looking to see if a picture or mention of Grandpa existed online, I came across his name in the book Red Scare in the Heartland. The author tells the story of how a group of people, some who were Jewish, were rounded up and thrown in prison in Oklahoma and subjected to anti-Semitic slurs. Among them were Max and my great uncle Allan. I had heard some of the story but not the details, nor the depth of grassroots organizing to help poor people, farmers, and oil-field workers in Oklahoma (Red Scare in the Heartland, Shirley A. Wiegand, Wayne A. Wiegand).

In my visits to San Diego, I would meet my grandparents’ friends. One couple was from North Dakota. I learned then that progressive activism is not an east or west coast thing, a Jewish thing, or an African American thing. It is also a thing of the American heartland. It is an American thing.

Grandpa, who lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, and deep personal losses, would have known that what we face today is not entirely new. Grandpa told me that he loved America. His mission was to make it better. What would he be doing today at 108? He’d be out organizing with a warm smile and a riddle at the end.

Blood Drum Spirit Ghana tour (posted September 16, 2017)

Having a chance to reflect on our recent trip to Ghana with Blood Drum Spirit (with Wes Brown, royal hartigan, Art Hirahara, and filmmaker Sara Pettinella), here are a few thoughts:

With this summer’s trip, this long-term project continues. The quartet’s 2015 collaborations with master artists in Ghana, as well as interviews and performances shot in the USA, were made into the documentary film We Are One, Blood Drum Spirit, by director Sara Pettinella. It will be released some day soon. The film catches a decade’s long journey of musical exploration and friendship. Our experiences with master drummer/teacher Abraham Kobena Adzenyah, master dancer/teacher Kwabena Boateng and master drummer/dancer Freeman Kwadzo Donkor go back to the early 1980s, when we played together in Talking Drums. Last year Abraham retired from Wesleyan University after 45 years. (Wes, royal, and I, along with trombonist/teacher Bill Lowe, were also known as JUBA back then).

Blood Drum Spirit with Tijan Dorwana and Isaac Dorwana, photo by Martin Adi-Dako

On this trip, playing and spending time with both Abraham and Kwabena, we had the chance to reminisce a little about some of our experiences. But the music is alive and well, growing and changing. In the final performance of the tour, at club +233, there was a seamless connection between the jazz quartet and Ghanaian musicians and dancers. On this trip we were able to collaborate again with Sulley Imoro, Tijan Dorwana and his son Isaac Dorwana, Eric Owusu, and many others. Isaac said that when he plays the gyl xylophone, he starts with the song, but that the rest is improvised. While the traditions are different (from jazz), the threads that connect the musics are strong, whether playing together on songs and rhythms from Ewe, Ga, Lobi, Dagara, Asante, or Dagbamba peoples, on our originals, or in free improvisations. During this trip I continually learned about Ghana from Kwabena Boateng, Rev. Martin Adi-Dako, (who led the filming in 2015, with cameramen Asamoah Simon and Benjamin Cohn), and many others. We also had the chance to work again with poet/multi-media artist Kwame Aidoo (AKA Kwame Write), and with other poets. The last night, when Abraham played the atumpan master drums on Adowa, if there had been a roof over the stage, it would have lifted off and flown away.

The film We Are One will be released in the not too distant future. Please keep an eye out. In the meantime here are links to the film’s website and trailer. Also the Talking Drums recording Some Day Catch Some Day Down, released twice on LP in the late 1980s, is available again, re-mastered. It stands the test of time and is as infectiously danceable and adventurous as ever.

Links:
We Are One movie website
Trailer on Vimeo
Talking Drums on Facebook
Talking Drums CD on Innova

Imagining the Whole: Evolution of Through the Clouds
David Bindman, March 20, 2016

The first sketch sat in a folder for around 17 years. It had been written carefully in pencil, the notes lined up with a ruler. Several times over the years I came across the piece, took it out, played the melody lines on the sax, or tried to play it on the piano. There was something there, something preventing me from dropping it in the recycle box. One time, when I was learning to use Finale (music notation software), I transcribed it on the computer, and then forgot about it again.

What was the something? I had begun the piece with a germ of an idea, a repeated rhythmic figure, which had led to melodic themes, harmonies, and a vague sense of sections. But it was incomplete, so remained in the pile of unrealized ideas.

In the summer of 2015, with dedicated time, space, and a tuned piano, with birds and mountains the only “distractions,” I returned to some ideas old and new, this one among them…

Now is the moment of attention to minute detail, trusting that each realized detail will be part of a compelling whole. Details emerge on paper. Harmonies are settled on, one cluster of notes at a time.

The notation is entered in the computer, and a new speed of creativity happens: raw materials become malleable, different tonal spaces juxtaposed. Imagination fires further: where can this go, possibly? What kind of textures and trajectory will come out of the written material that organically leads into improvisation? How will we find our way back? What rhythms give the right motion to the piece? Are the superimposed meters playable? It can be done.

The realpolitik of doing music comes to the fore: there is little time to rehearse, few opportunities to perform. Should we fall back on pieces we know, without stresses of the new learning curve. Why take the risk?

The piece is intact, and a new phase of imagining begins: who will be interacting when, who will be laying out when, what combinations of players at any given time, how will a certain person respond to the material, whose “voice” to speak around any given material. I picture how each player will weave and create, bringing our voices together. But however I imagine it, it will never be that. Something different and beautiful will emerge each time.

The melody lines contain wide intervallic leaps. Doubt: does it sound too intellectual, without any kind of cultural reference? Does it have the compelling heart to get at the essence of why we play, what this music means to us individually and collectively?

I play the melodic phrases on the horn. But instead of playing the pitches wide apart, as they are written, I transpose their octaves so all the notes are closer in pitch, and realize that the underlying melodies are simple and beautiful. And I see what I was doing 17 years ago: “Oh, so that’s where this comes from.”

The piece emerges as a whole. It becomes visual. The leaps and layers become colors, light, movement in space, unbound but with directions to spin off, new, because it is a piece that has unfolded in its own time, and only can happen this way.

Now it is time to let it go, pass it over for others. It becomes all of ours.
The title reveals itself. Through the Clouds. The piece was born surrounded by birds and mountains. It will be part of the larger Dream Space Continuum. It will relate to personal struggles and connection to greater human struggles, to enduring love, to the arc of what makes us who we are.

The project takes on new dimensions. I play the piece for visual artist Malin Abrahamsson. It is part of a long discussion between us, a desire to work together, to bring shared ideas from different vantage points.

An unexpected conversation ensues. Abstract animation adds a new medium, a fixed form in the end, one that we musicians will have to respond to, in turn. The visuals will be set, at least for the moment. How can predetermined visuals relate to a composition that has improvisation threaded throughout, shaping every moment in a new way?

In our discussions I ask how the animation connects to the themes that have emerged – song titles and text – and then realize that the process of creating the visuals must ultimately have the same freedom, risk, as the music has all along the way. And that each viewer/listener will imagine this in her own way, and it is the unbounded vision that will be the essence of this piece.

We Shall Meet Again (Reflections from Blood Drum Spirit's 2015 tour of Ghana)
David Bindman, March, 2015

After a non-stop 11-hour flight to Accra, at the last checkpoint before exiting into the waiting area of Kotoka International Airport, I am stopped by an officer who asks what I have in my cases, and for a “small contribution for the officers.” He does not get the contribution, but lets me through with the horns.

After intense negotiations between royal and a group of cab drivers, Art, Wes, royal and I pile into two cabs and ride to Danny’s house. Danny is a diplomat who works at the US Embassy. He has a huge house with all the amenities, including AC and a large-screen TV. Danny explains that whenever the power goes out, which is almost every night, all the generators in the surrounding wealthy neighborhood switch on. His generator uses 50 gallons of diesel a night.

That night we take a cab to go eat. There are many people out walking around, and lots of cars and motorcycles. The streets have open ditches that you can fall into if you are not careful. We eat fried fish, rice and shito (very spicy pepper sauce) at a fast-food-style chain restaurant.

The next morning, at the W.E.B. Du Bois center, we meet our old friend and teacher Abraham Adzenyah, who is in Ghana for a few more days. We set up, and begin playing “Hi Fly,” by Randy Weston, set to Kpanlogo drumming of the Ga people. It is 2 am, New York time.

So begins Blood Drum Spirit’s three-week Ghana journey of musical collaboration, malaria worries, and an expanding sense of the world.
Blood Drum Spirit is in Ghana to collaborate and learn. We will travel to different parts of Ghana, working with people from different ethnic groups. Our journey will take us to villages, universities, the palace of the Asante king, a jazz club, and an arts festival. And we will meet J.H. Kwabena Nketia, the father of African music scholarship.

We leave Accra the next morning. royal has arranged for an air-conditioned van, knowing we will be jet lagged, not used to the heat, and need to adjust. As we pull out of the gate, Simon, one of the videographers who will accompany us, is taking video from down the drive – the beginning of being on camera for much of the day for three weeks straight.

Along the highway, on the outskirts of Accra, we pass many small shacks, trucks, service stations, stores for building supplies, sprawl, until it is the countryside.

At every population center, the road is lined with shops and stalls, and people selling along the road – crackers, water in little plastic bags, all sorts of things to eat.

At a checkpoint along the road, a well-armed soldier asks for the driver’s registration, and looks over the van for any infraction that may be easily forgotten with a cash payment.

There are many people walking along the road, women wearing beautiful print dresses carrying large loads on their heads – plates full of eggs, wood, bananas, large containers full of water, babies strapped to backs, in the hot sun.

royal tells us that people can see “straight into your soul” and suggests not looking away, as westerners are accustomed to doing. Greeting and handshaking are very important. Protocol: always shake hands with people in a group from the right to the left.

As we cross the Volta River, the scenery changes. It is now lush and green. It’s still dusty from the Harmattan (dust blown from the Sahara Desert). People are working in rice paddies, with the ocean nearby.
In Kopeyia Village, we are greeted by drummers playing, the same people we will be playing with the next day. We are welcomed, and told the ropes.

The musicians, dancers, and singers who are participating in the project, are being paid for their participation, as are we members of Blood Drum Spirit. But this has been arranged in advance; the feeling is never of a “gig.” When people in the host villages hear what we bring – adapting rhythms and songs taught to royal over years by people from their own traditions, and now being joined with our compositions and improvisations, shaped by our own cultural/life experiences, a joyful sharing occurs.

Musicians come from musical families, we learn. A young boy playing the bell looks over at me every time I get slightly off on the rattle.
In Medie village, as we join the drummers in a traditional piece, dancers come out in incredible costumes. At one point they suddenly stop. We are not playing fast enough!

I try to play what the flute player Mouhmud is playing on the soprano sax, and weave improvisations around it. After we’re done, I smile and thank the musicians. One of the musicians does not say anything. Then he gives me his hand and says “You are my father.” When I realize what he means I say “No, no.” But afterwards realize it is ok -- for the appreciation to go both ways.

We visit villages where people survive by subsistence farming. Little children cook over fires. A young teenager, the daughter of one of the master drummers, a dancer and player of calabash, tells me that sometimes her parents cannot pay her school fees.

I travel often in the car with Reverend Martin, who is in charge of the filming. In our conversations I learn much. We come, symbols of wealth. Rev tells royal that the reason people are so open to him is that he represents hope for them, but that they are not necessarily as open to each other. They know that they share the same fears.

“Can a gay man visit Ghana and feel comfortable?” I ask Rev. I wonder whether a young fashion designer I know, who I imagine would love to see the beauty of the clothes, would be comfortable here.  He replies that one cannot be openly gay in Ghana. And tells me the story of Sodom and Gomorra. But Rev is an open-minded guy, and we debate.

Simon is an agricultural scientist. But he has no work in his field.

At the university in Kumase we meet a physicist studying phase transitions at 10 degrees Kelvin.

Messages about God are everywhere. In Mampong Asante, a religious service is being broadcast on loud speakers at 4 am.

In Accra we play at an arts festival. There are poets and graffiti artists delivering messages about the environment.

A car goes by as we walk on the university campus in Kumase. We hear children laughing, apparently at us. Talata laughs and translates: “Look at those kwesi bruni!” Kwesi bruni is a Sunday born white man.

A cab driver named Eric tells Wes and me the story of how the British took power from the Asante when they captured the Golden Stool.

At Kwame Nkrumah memorial, I ask Simon what happened to Nkrumah, the first leader of independent Ghana. “He got drunk on power,” Simon replies.

Talata, royal’s cook and friend, explains about relationships between parents and children in her culture. What happens when a child disrespects a parent? They go to the village to make charcoal or work on the farm.

Rev’s wife picks us up after he gets a flat tire. She has a late-model air-conditioned car. “How did you like rural Ghana?” she asks. Rev says he has seen parts of Ghana, and Ghanaian culture, traveling around on this project that he has never seen before.

On the airplane from Accra to Kumase we join a class of people who can fly back and forth. Rev inquires about whether my horn will be allowed on the plane. As we are not sure, we send it overland. I worry that the car may be robbed, as we hear cars sometimes are on this trip. The horn arrives fine, but I take it with me on the plane, which we have learned has plenty of room, on the return trip.

At the hotel in Mampong Asante, the lightbulb is not connected. The lock brakes when I try to lock the door. The power, and therefore the fan, goes off half the time. We keep extra water in a bucket to wash or flush the toilet, in case the water stops flowing, which it does often.

We play for the king, chiefs, and other dignitaries. Inside the palace grounds there are shiny black SUVs, a Rolls Royce, and a huge banquet. Outside the walls, but still inside the palace compound, children practice their English with me.

As we pull away, a young boy waves and calls out “Goodbye, David. We shall meet again.”

Memories of War Matter
By David Bindman
November 11, 2013

Leaving the subway at Madison Square Park this morning, I made my way through a crowd of young men and women wearing crisp, handsome uniforms, and older men wearing caps showing their service in past wars. There were smiles, and clearly a sense of belonging together.

Coincidently, today I am reading Why Vietnam Still Matters, lent to me by my student Rudy. We met two months ago. He has told me some of his experiences in “Nam”, and I have told him a little of my childhood memories of the war.

The war was a backdrop for my childhood: images of mangled bodies, hellish jungle battles, and burned children, and body counts. I still have the occasional nightmare. And I spent my earliest years with the knowledge, as told to me by my antiwar activist mother, that when I turned 18 my choices would be to go to Vietnam, Canada, or jail. I remember marches on Washington, and holding an “out now” banner near the George Washington Bridge.

On National Public Radio this morning, in addition to stories about Veterans Day, there were reports about the massive destruction in the Philippines wrought by typhoon Haiyan. For a moment we turn our attention to people living in dire poverty and devastation on the other side of the world.

A storm is one thing; thinking about hundreds of years of colonization and their ongoing effects is another. One NPR guest talked about the long relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines, “especially our fighting side by side in WWII.” He didn’t mention the brutality visited on the Philippine people by the U.S. in the Philippine War of Independence, as detailed in Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

Zinn quotes Henry Kissinger as calling history “the memory of states.” Even remembering (or disremembering) from the point of view of the state, our collective memory is dim. As we march forward, we have collectively forgotten the lessons of all who have said “this is wrong.”  Young girls and boys go overseas, the oil keeps flowing, and the products keep coming, to enrich the few.

During the 2008 Democratic primary, I planned to cast my vote for Dennis Kucinich. But then I remembered Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war #2, and flipped the switch for Obama.

In the film The Sand Pebbles (1966), the character played by Steve McQueen lies dying in a lonely courtyard, after an American military adventure gone awry. “What happened?” he says. “I was almost home.” This could be any soldier in any war, a son, daughter, father or mother, sent to fight for reasons others decided were right.

I wish my mother could have met Rudy. We could have talked about the war and its meaning, and all become a little more whole. And we would have all agreed: Vietnam, the veterans, and the truth still matter. And on this Veterans Day, we would have honored both the veterans who were forced to fight, and the people who fought to keep them from being forced to fight.

Rudy told me he will be out marching today. And he will be proudly wearing his cap.