By Terri Barnes
Published: September 10, 2012
Words are a writer’s tools, and it’s important to me to use the appropriate ones. Names are among the most important of all words, so it’s especially crucial to get those right. I don’t always, as a soldier stationed in Kuwait recently pointed out.
She wrote a gracious letter to Stars and Stripes to point out a glaring error in Spouse Calls. The letter was forwarded to me, and the soldier allowed me to print excerpts of our correspondence:
As a deployed soldier I rely on Stars and Stripes to keep me in the loop with the outside world, just as many other soldiers do. My daily routine consists of stuffing crappy eggs and muddy coffee down my throat as fast as possible and grabbing today’s edition of Stars and Stripes as I rush out the chow hall door to work in the morning. …
By Terri Barnes
Published: September 3, 2012
For best-selling author Lee Woodruff, the hard part of writing another book is finding the time. We talked about her latest, a novel, by phone while she was on the road home from a family trip. Early the next day, she was on “CBS This Morning” with a feature report about a retreat center for women veterans.
Besides being a writer and CBS contributor, Lee is the mother of four and co-founder with her husband of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which raises funds to assist wounded military members and their families. Lee also travels and speaks around the country on behalf of veteran and caregiver issues.
By Terri Barnes
Published: August 23, 2012
Radio and television ads for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have cost more than half a billion dollars, according to NBC News, and they ought to know. This amount is more than the advertising costs for the entire 2008 campaign — and we have months to go on this one.
Military members and their families living overseas will be spared the questionable results of this pricey promotional binge, because they don’t get many American commercials. They’re the lucky ones, and they won’t be missing much.
By Terri Barnes
Published: August 21, 2012
When I first started writing Spouse Calls in 2007, I heard from spouses of troops with post-traumatic stress disorder that they were routinely left out of the loop of a loved one’s mental health treatment.
As more becomes known about the impact of combat stress on military families, as well as military members, research is showing that families should be part of the treatment equation.
By Terri Barnes
Published: August 14, 2012
It’s hard to explain how deployment separations feel to military families. There is loneliness balanced with the kinship that grows between those who serve together on the front and the homefront. There is fear balanced with the courage and confidence earned through endurance. Then, of course, there is the pride both troops and their families take in their sacrifice and service.
Words can describe an event without necessarily conveying the emotion. Sometimes, though, words can be arranged and presented in a way that does offer a better understanding of how the experience feels from the inside.
By Terri Barnes
Published: August 14, 2012
A letter from a father to a Stripes editor:
I have spent almost four years in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2007. First as a soldier and then as a civilian. I have left home many times. My daughter Madison had to write a poem for a school assignment... She let me see it and as you can imagine it brought a tear. I remember reading Stars and Stripes while in theater so I thought I would pass it along to you.
Regards,
Dale Jarvie
Great this happened again!
By Terri Barnes
Published: August 6, 2012
Claustrophobia was closing in. All I could hear was my own labored breathing. I wanted to escape but was too afraid to move. I pushed down the rising panic and looked at the people around me. If they could survive this, so could I.
It was not a hostage situation, just a class in recreational diving.
By Terri Barnes
Published: July 31, 2012
“No one is talking about this,” said my daughter the day after a gunman killed 12 people at a Colorado movie theater. Over summer vacation, like many college students, she depends on social media to stay connected to classmates scattered across the country.
Many of her friends had texted, Tweeted and posted Facebook remarks liberally sprinkled with exclamation points in anticipation of “The Dark Knight Rises” premiere. She was disappointed that so few of them followed up with comments acknowledging the tragedy that took place during a midnight showing of the Batman sequel in Aurora, Colo.
My children and I talked about going to see the premiere while visiting family in Oklahoma. We even watched the first two entries in the series on DVD in preparation. After the incident, we lost our enthusiasm for seeing the third as an evening’s entertainment.
The shooting was all over the news for at least the first 48 hours. We heard the repetition of meager facts and wild suppositions like everyone else. To my daughter’s chagrin, though, it was not a topic of concern for her peers that the lives of a dozen people ended just because they went to see a movie.
Maybe we all become numb to the numbers of deaths reported on the news.
“Do you know how many troops died overseas last week?” I asked my daughter. Silently, she shook her head, her eyes wide and somber.
“Eleven,” I said. I had heard the count and read their names on a Sunday morning news show. The next week, there were twelve.
Military lives lost in combat are viewed differently than civilian lives lost in public places.
Troops in combat zones face varying degrees of danger knowingly and voluntarily. Suburban moviegoers and their children have a reasonable expectation of safety. But circumstances cannot assuage the pain of loss for the families left behind.
We are shocked by violent and unexpected death, no matter where it occurs. If we are not directly affected, how do we respond? We want to know why this happened. We want to know how it could have happened.
We want answers, but sometimes there are no answers, so we settle for someone or something to blame. In this latest tragedy, some atheists are blaming religion. Some Christians are blaming evolutionary teachings. Others place the blame on a culture of violence-as-entertainment on television, movies and video games.
We could fault the mental health care system, lax gun laws or around-the-clock media coverage that gives fleeting fame to infamous acts.
Perhaps what we really want is distance from the tragedy. If we can just figure out whose fault it is and why it happened, we can explain to ourselves why it won’t happen to us or to our children.
By Terri Barnes
Published: July 25, 2012
It’s 10 a.m. on a weekday morning: My mom and I walk into our favorite coffee shop in my rural Oklahoma hometown. Doris, one of the co-proprietors, looks up and waves. She’s used to me showing up every few months when I’m in town. She usually greets me with a hug, but this morning she’s otherwise engaged, learning a new coffee-making technique via smartphone.
My hometown is a military town, so even though the setting is rural, the atmosphere is not insular. It’s a crossroads of small-town sameness and military mobility. The combination is especially evident at my favorite coffee shop, where the espresso is strong, the fudge is homemade and the walls are lined with military unit patches from around the world.
By Terri Barnes
Published: July 10, 2012
I’m taking the quintessential military spouse vacation this summer. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Husband has a TDY at a desirable location – in this case desirable for proximity to loved ones, including our oldest son. Mom and remaining offspring load up and drive cross-country with stops to see more family and friends across nine states. Meet up with husband, who takes a few days of leave after TDY. Dad flies back to return to work. Mom and kids spend another week or two with extended family, then hit the road to for the journey home.
Because our trip will involve several days of highway travel, the kids and I have been considering how we’ll pass the time.
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