Phil Klay looked up at the night sky while he was deployed to the Anbar province in Iraq as a marine Corps public affairs officer. He had received a letter from his great aunts saying there would be a lunar eclipse that evening and that the Middle East would be a great place to view it. “Now, if you’ve seen a lunar eclipse, you know the moon darkens,” he says. “Mine turned the color of blood.”
In his Got Your 6 Storytellers talk, Klay explains how he lied when he called his aunties later that evening and agreed with them that the eclipse was beautiful. He locked his reaction about the eclipse away, along with the bloody scenes he saw after suicide truck bombings.
As his deployment continued, Klay kept busy — partly as a way to cope.
“I was no hero,” he says, referencing the military doctors who inspired him. “But at the very bare minimum I could be admirably stoic, joining the long lines of Marines and soldiers unwilling to share the burden of the terrible things that they’ve seen.”
When Klay returned from Iraq in 2008, he realized the American people did not seem to be paying all that much attention to the war. His anger compelled him to confront all that he had covered up. And he did so through the power of the story.
“I wanted civilians to feel about the war the way that I did. But I didn’t want to have the responsibility of telling them why they should,” he says. “And it occurred to me that perhaps the stories that I was afraid to tell were exactly the ones that I should be telling.”
Watch the video for more on why Klay, who won the National Book Award last month for his collection of short stories, “Redeployment,” became a writer.
Tag: national service
The Military Gave This Veteran the Permission Slip She Needed to Lead
From leading the 100,000 Homes Campaign to being recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change to founding the Billions Institute, an organization committed to supporting new solutions to global problems, Becky Kanis has committed her life to making bad things better.
Her motivation stems from one moment, which she shares in her Got Your 6 Storytellers talk. When she was a lieutenant in the 25th Infantry Division, a U.S. Army division in Hawaii, every single link in the communications system went from green to red. At three in the morning, Kanis stood at the colonel’s door — and with a knock, knock, knock — woke her up and explained the situation.
“She literally poked me in the chest and she said ‘un-f*** this lieutenant,’” Kanis says. The colonel could have kicked a trashcan; she could have micromanaged. But instead, she gave Kanis permission to fix the problem.
Kanis says that in order to do our part to make the world a better place, we should ask ourselves three big questions: What do you really want? What are you willing to let go of? And what lights up your heart? Kanis’s talk centers on how she has applied those questions and pursued answers to them in her own life. And it explores how we can all give ourselves permission slips to un-f*** things.
While her seven minutes onstage includes a lot of laughs, there is also a moment leaves the audience in awe. Kanis displays two images of a formerly homeless man named Ed Givens. First, he appears drunk, with his back against a brick wall, and later he appears in a suit at a party the White House threw to celebrate the success of the work that Kanis and others did to address homelessness.
“This is the kind of change that I know in my bones is possible in the world,” Kanis says. Watch the video, then join Kanis in her call to action to un-f*** big things together.
How The Army Aims to Feed Its Soldiers with 3-D Printers
The year is 2025. A soldier is low on potassium. Sensors trigger. A machine zaps into existence a banana.
Lauren Oleksyk (leader of the Army’s Natick research lab) is working towards a future where soldiers are fed by 3-D printers. Her team hopes to gather personalized information through head-to-toe sensors that will measure levels of potassium and cholesterol, and then use that information to create efficient, nutrient-heavy meals for the battlefront.
“We envisioned to have a 3-D printer that is interfaced with the soldier. And that sensor can deliver info to the computer software,” Oleksky says to NPR.
These 3-D printers would blast liquids and powders into complex shapes, though there is speculation over whether or not these printers would be able to create a solid food without altering its nutritional value. Other companies have already taken to using 3-D printing technology to create food, such as The Sugar Lab, a startup acquired by 3-D Systems that transforms sugar into sweet candy sculptures for wedding cakes and cocktails. And Biozoon’s Smoothfood concept utilizes the technology to create easily digestible food for the elderly. Natick’s problem, however, has to do with the shelf-life of the printed product, since these foods wouldn’t be viable as MREs (Meals, Ready-to-Eat, as the Army has dubbed them).
So that’s where ultrasonic agglomeration comes in.
This technology projects high frequency sound waves at targeted particles to clump them together, and with meticulous modulation, researchers are able to control the ways these constituents bind together (yielding compact, nonperishable, small snack-type items). Researchers hope to utilize both this process and the advent of 3-D printing to create a nutrient-dense, shelf-stable product.
“Another potential application may be 3-D printing a pizza, baking it, packaging it and putting it in a ration,” Oleksyk tells Army Technology Magazine.
The Army only made pizza workable in as an MRE last year, so the idea that soldiers may have access to meals that are customized not only to their biological needs but also to their tastes is a pleasant step forward in the way we feed our nation’s protectors.
Veteran Storytellers Take the Mic and Change the Conversation
Got Your 6, a campaign working to change the conversation about veterans and military families, is hosting its Storytellers event in New York City today.
By bringing together service members who continue to pursue careers as change makers and problem solvers, Storytellers represents one way Got Your 6 is bridging the military-civilian divide by uniting the government, the entertainment industry and nonprofits.
The Storytellers that will deliver short presentations include Greg Behrman, founder and CEO of NationSwell; Becky Kanis, who led the 100,000 Homes campaign and is now working on a new project called the Billions Institute; and Don Faul, head of operations at Pinterest. Each of their talks will be filmed, released and promoted widely with the help of partners including MTV and The Huffington Post.
NationSwell will feature these videos in the weeks and months ahead so that this celebration of veterans can continue well past Veterans Day. You can take action in support of the Got Your 6 mission by joining the conversation on social media using the hashtag #wagegood then sharing the videos with six of your friends.
In the meantime, here is a glimpse at highlights from the 2013 Storytellers event.
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The Workout That’s Getting Vets Through the Home Stretch
Last month was Suicide Prevention Month, and we can’t ignore the fact that every day, 22 American veterans commit suicide. There are numerous ways — beyond traditional medication and psychotherapy — to reduce those numbers. And while yoga doesn’t fit into the typical military model of physical training, that’s all changing.
Two programs, Yoga Warriors International and Yoga for Vets, are tag-teaming to help veterans’ healing efforts by using the proven millennia-old practice — both during and after their service.
Lucy Cimini started Yoga Warriors back in 2005, training certified yoga instructors how to focus their classes for veterans suffering from PTSD. Cimini is based in Boston, but travels around the country holding weekend-long seminars for instructors looking to get certified in the program, which is approved by the National Association of Social Workers.
“Yoga Warrior classes can help ‘unfreeze’ bad memories or gently unlock rigidly held memories in ways that normal talk therapy might not … classes allow participants to safely release and express stored emotions such as guilt, shame, anger, sadness and grief so they can better understand, make peace with, and manage those feelings. … the mind is allowed to safely associate the body with pleasant sensations, which is important for traumatized individuals who associate their bodies with unpleasant sensations due to war wounds, rape, etc.,” Cimini tells Task & Purpose.
For vets looking to try a class, Yoga for Vets is a website community of yoga “studios, teachers, and venues throughout the country that offer four or more free classes to war veterans.” Founder Paul Zipes, a former Navy deep sea diver, has been doing yoga since 1995 (he’s an instructor as well) and has seen firsthand the transformative ability it has on stressed and injured troops.
Interestingly, not all yoga forms are helpful just for healing — the Army Special Forces use it for strength and conditioning. But a study conducted at a forward operating base in Iraq found that “yoga is an effective, low-risk means of managing combat stress, and potentially preventing combat stress from developing into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).”
The truth is, our government and the VA can only do so much. And while adequate medical attention and treatment is essential for getting vets affected by depression and PTSD over the initial rigor of transitioning back to civilian life, yoga can also make a real and lasting difference.
Watch Our Q&A with City Year
The cofounders of City Year, a nonprofit that serves communities by bridging the divide between what schools and teachers can offer and what students actually need, have big plans for growth.
“We currently serve around 150,000 students,” says Michael Brown, City Year CEO, explaining that his goals include doubling the percentage of students on track to graduate, reaching a majority of students deemed as off track and expanding to new cities.
“We want to serve 850,000 students over the next 10 years, and we’ll need a corps of over 10,000 City Year AmeriCorps members to do it.”
As part of a series of live Google Hangouts On Air featuring service opportunities, NationSwell interviewed Brown and his cofounder, Alan Khazei, along with a current corps member and a City Year alumnus.
While City Year is creating thousands of opportunities to serve, this country lacks the expectation of service — something the organization hopes to address. Like the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, which is looking to mobilize a million young people to serve, City Year envisions a future in which “the most commonly-asked question of an 18-year-old will be, ‘Where will you do your service year?’”
“It’s so important for young people to serve because it really connects us to the greater world,” says Lan Truong, a City Year corps member based in Boston, explaining that service connects us to something bigger than ourselves. “We get to make our country better and make our people better.”
“A year of service changes you,” adds Marissa Rodriguez, who went from City Year to become the Training & Operations Manager at Boston Scholar Athletes (which works to improve academic performance through sports). “For us to be able to sort of find the way that we can continue to make an impact is so key and will continue to grow the opportunity that a year of service provides.”
Khazei says that recapturing the service ethic in America would change our country in profound ways, adding that the Greatest Generation was that way because they served together. “If we had a year of service as a common expectation, every generation would become the Greatest Generation,” he says.
Watch the video above, then click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities, and make sure to tweet your thoughts and questions using the #serviceyear hashtag.
This WWII Soldier’s Letter Home Is Hard to Read (But Definitely Worth It)
The Fourth of July has come and gone, but here’s another powerful reminder of why we should always celebrate our country and honor those who fight for it.
A touching handwritten letter from a World War II soldier named Frank Keaton to his mother and father was recently unearthed. The letter was written on February 8, 1944, the day before he and his company, the U.S. Army’s 30th Infantry Division (aka Old Hickory), shipped off for duty.
In the letter, he fully acknowledges that his words may be the last ones he’ll ever write to his family. (Ultimately, he survives the war.) The whole letter is worth the read, but in the excerpt below, he explains why in his mere 31 years on Earth, he has already lived a full life and is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. Although it was written more than 70 years ago, Keaton’s message still rings true today.
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What better thing can a man ask for than a chance to fight for what he believes in, fight to give the new generation and the generations not yet born a chance to live a life like my own has been, a chance to play, to go to school and learn about the world, not just one race and one creed; a chance to love and be loved, a chance to see the greatness of the world that God has given us, and a chance to add a name to the long line of great men and women who have made names for themselves in every line of endeavor.
When I think of this my heart swells up and chokes me. Here, early in life, I’m given the opportunity to serve, to make the living of my life not in vain. Some men live a full lifetime and do not achieve this one distinction. This world conflict has given me an easy chance and a big opportunity.
According to Commentary Magazine, Keaton and his company helped secure Omaha Beach for medics before the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day. The publication writes that the brave serviceman was shot while crossing the Rhine river but refused to leave the frontlines. For his efforts, he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, Two Oak Leaf Clusters and the Purple Heart.
Keaton reportedly died at the age of 90 at his home in San Rafael, California.
DON’T MISS: A Bold Idea for Empowering Today’s Generation of Veterans
Big Bets: How to Bridge the Gap Between Practitioners and Policy Makers
In 1987, Alan Khazei co-founded City Year, an education-focused national service nonprofit that served as the model for AmeriCorps, the federal community service program that was created seven years later by President Bill Clinton. But in 2003 Khazei found himself fighting for the organization he helped inspire. AmeriCorps funding was cut by 80 percent that year, so Khazei and around 700 AmeriCorps members descended on Washington, D.C., and gave around-the-clock testimony to get the funding back. The campaign helped restore all financing, and it helped AmeriCorps get a $100 million increase the following year. The experience also spawned Khazei’s next big project: Be the Change, a coalition-building nonprofit that is dedicated to promoting national service, working on social problems and empowering veterans. “It’s very ambitious,” Khazei says, “but if you get people together that are working to solve problems, they have the answers. They’re not ideological, they just want to see what works and how to make it happen.”
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Big Bets: How Can We Serve Our Veterans? Ask Them to Serve Us
Spencer Kympton, president of the Mission Continues, a nonprofit group dedicated to empowering veterans, wants to change the way we perceive men and women coming home after military service. “The general population believes that this generation of veterans need our thanks, they need our gratitude, they need things from us,” Kympton says. “What they deserve is a new endeavor and a way to serve us.”
The Mission Continues was created with the belief that veterans want to continue to serve their country when they return home, and that helping others will help them in their transition back to civilian life. To accomplish this, the nonprofit places vets in six-month service fellowships across the country in organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Since it was founded in 2007 — by
Eric Greitens, a Rhodes Scholar and former Navy SEAL — the Mission Continues has had about 1,000 fellows. “We’re seeing it has professional impact, it has improved their relationships and it’s improving their health and well-being,” Kympton says.
Editors’ note: Since the original publication of this story, Spencer Kympton, President of the Mission Continues, has become a NationSwell Council member.
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NationSwell Asks: What Inspires You To Serve?
National leaders are currently gathering on one of the most sacred pieces of land in the United States in an effort to awaken a new citizenship in the country.
Retired General Stanley McChrystal kicked off The Gettysburg Summit in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania by framing his vision for the days ahead. Standing in front of the headquarters of General George Meade, who commanded the Union Army in the Civil War, McChrystal called Gettysburg National Military Park hallowed ground not because a battle was fought there, but “because people came here on both sides committed to something that was not for their personal profit, not for their personal glory, but for something that they felt warranted real sacrifice.”
“Our vision is bold and simple: A nation where a year of full-time national service is a cultural expectation, common opportunity, and a civic rite of passage for every young American,” he said, explaining that the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute is working to meet our national challenges by harnessing the energy and enthusiasm of the country’s citizens.
“This is the unfinished work of our time,” he continued, referencing the conference theme “our unfinished work” and the commitment of those gathered beneath the tent where he stood to fulfill “the promise of what it means to be an American” by creating one million service year positions annually within the next 10 years.
This “call to service” was a powerful start to a summit focused on what plan of action is needed to bring about this new citizenship — from building infrastructure and supporting new service opportunities, to turning national service into a cultural expectation and maintaining this commitment over the long term.
NationSwell spoke with General McChrystal and others working to make this vision a reality about what inspires them to serve. See what they had to say, then take action by learning how you can help to leave a legacy of active citizenship through national service.
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