AVA Blog

Our Hole-in-the-Wall

Wagon Mound is a hole-in-the-wall kind of a place. Around the Mound the lovely village bank has closed it’s doors after over 100 years of service to the community. After 50 years of offering basic necessities to villagers, the small grocery has also closed. Historic homes and commercial buildings have been reduced to mud or replaced by doublewides. Villagers seem to have accepted what appears to be a stagnant situation for they have neither the means nor wherewithal to open a business or change the status quo. Never-the-less this project for vets was discovered by Sandy Munro of Aspen, CO author of a very fine book, Finding Uri. Sandy’s well-written, emotional labor of love is worth the read. We sincerely thank Sandy for his donation of a dozen signed books which were gifted to veterans and families of veterans at the Memorial Day Art Fest. Then we were discovered by Veteran Voices Oral History Initiative of Pittsburgh.

Kevin Farkas, historian, honored us by recording a conversation about The Affair which has been included as a podcast on the Veteran Voices website. It is humbling to listen to the many recorded stories of those now elderly who experienced WWII, Korea, Nam, who lost their loved ones and their friends. It is more humbling to have our conversation included amongst the podcasts. This world has seen too much suffering, experienced too much loss in war, after war, after conflict, after dispute. When I am sad, when those wars and conflicts, which never go way, bring despair upon me and emotional concerns hit the doorway of our home, when I feel as if I’m losing momentum because how can a project in a hole-in-the-wall kind of a place make any difference, it is people like Sandy, an initiative like Veteran Voices that lift and inspire. From the wide open spaces of America’s West, many, many thanks and much appreciation for the recognition and the books… don’t forget to enjoy the colors of the sunrise, the sanity of breath, moments of innocence and the child’s heart within.     P1020963

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Rene Rosa

Rene is vice-president and co-founder of A Veteran Affair. Being a self-taught artist, she writes essays, poems and has a manuscript screaming for time and attention to be completed.

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2015 12:51 pm Published by

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