One of my readers commented that I should mention some appropriate veteran’s organizations. While I invented the West Georgia Veterans Coalition in the first story, there really is an IAVA, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. There are also the Wounded Warrior Project, Team Rubicon, and many others. Many of these groups have dedicated programs to help with PTSD and suicide prevention. If you or a friend or a relative need assistance, there are groups out there to help. You just have to ask.
I gave a lot of thought to Chapter 12. I started writing this story with some parts going back to 2019. I wrote the section where the spring of 2020 occurred before anybody knew about coronavirus. At that point I went back and added a quickie paragraph, and that was what ended up being published. It wasn’t long after that before it became obvious this was something truly disastrous. I seriously considered taking a break for a month before publishing this chapter in order to see what was happening with this mess. Instead, I compromised. I added quite a bit more but left some of the details vague.
One thing that has struck me about the crisis was the plethora of heartwarming ads from various companies telling us all to stay apart so we can all be together later. It reminded me of a section in A Fresh Start during Hurricane Katrina, where Carl Buckman was talking to the head of ExxonMobil about freeing up some helicopter capacity. “I knew that three things were going to happen. After the storm, some of their helicopter capacity would be offered to the government, that some wonderfully heartwarming commercials would be generated about how they were helping, and that before I was out of office Lee Raymond would be knocking on my door for something worth billions of dollars and I would give in.” Art imitating life, or life imitating art? Or maybe I’m just a cynic?
Another instance of life imitating art occurred during the pandemic, while watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with one very eerie scene. “Bring out yer dead.” “I'm not dead.” “Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.” That was a very weird experience and nowhere near as funny as it once was.
For those curious, I took the details on the UGA history doctoral program from the Guide to the Graduate Program in History at the University of Georgia. It took a while to work through the UGA website to find it, but it gave me a lot of information on what Grim would need to do to get his doctorate. It’s nineteen pages long; six pages are for the master’s program, and thirteen pages are for the doctoral program.
For the moment, we are taking a break from Grim and returning to Carl Buckman for a bit. We’ll be coming back soon.