One Flew East, One Flew West...
Nov. 11th, 2005 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lurkittySo it goes. The Tralfamadorians have taken over my brain. It's the 30th anniversary of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Whenever I think of that, I think of a time when I worked for the Oregon State Hospital. I was an alcohol and drug counselor working for highly successful (and, therefore, now closed) program called Cornerstone. We took felons in the final 2 years of their prison sentances and and treated their addictions before sending them back into the community. They were going back into society anyway. We just thought it would be a good idea to send them back clean and sober and intending to stay that way. But working in a mental hospital is not what makes me think of Cuckoo's Nest, or of Ken Kesey.
The movie version of Cuckoo's Nest was filmed on the campus of OSH. Right there on the ward where I worked, but some 15 years previously. The ward was run down at the time they made the movie. It was positively dilapidated by the time we were there. Each year, we held a showing of Cuckoo's Nest and everyone gleefully pointed out the landmarks. "See! That's that corner!" "They had to replace that sink, didn't they?" One of the biggest changes was that we played volleyball on the basketball court. We had a "No Spike" rule. The guys could get a bit too far into the game.
Somehow I have associated Cuckoo's Nest with Slaughterhouse Five, a novel by Kurt Vonegut. Slaughterhouse is a gentle way of telling a ghastly wartime tale. During WWII, Vonegut himself witnessed an entire city being firebombed. Non-combatants: women, children, and prisoners of war died fiery deaths as the once-beautiful cosmopolitan city was blown off the map. The hard part was that the Germans didn't do it. We did. The city was Dresden, and Allied forces burned it to the ground in retaliation for the bombing of London.
That was a popular war in a different time, and people had a difficult time accepting the story, even though Vonegut told it with velvet gloves from his own first-hand experience.
This morning I awakened from a night in Tralfamador to find our soldiers now returning from an increasingly unpopular war with similar stories. It's very hard to listen to them. But listen we must, The burning is happening again. We are responsible. We are using white phosporous to burn Iraqi civilians in their own beds. Allies. Non-combatants. Children. So it goes.
*note: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_lily who pointed out that I had originally credited Kesey with writing Slaughterhouse Five. Oops! My mind is like a stainless steel sieve....
The movie version of Cuckoo's Nest was filmed on the campus of OSH. Right there on the ward where I worked, but some 15 years previously. The ward was run down at the time they made the movie. It was positively dilapidated by the time we were there. Each year, we held a showing of Cuckoo's Nest and everyone gleefully pointed out the landmarks. "See! That's that corner!" "They had to replace that sink, didn't they?" One of the biggest changes was that we played volleyball on the basketball court. We had a "No Spike" rule. The guys could get a bit too far into the game.
Somehow I have associated Cuckoo's Nest with Slaughterhouse Five, a novel by Kurt Vonegut. Slaughterhouse is a gentle way of telling a ghastly wartime tale. During WWII, Vonegut himself witnessed an entire city being firebombed. Non-combatants: women, children, and prisoners of war died fiery deaths as the once-beautiful cosmopolitan city was blown off the map. The hard part was that the Germans didn't do it. We did. The city was Dresden, and Allied forces burned it to the ground in retaliation for the bombing of London.
That was a popular war in a different time, and people had a difficult time accepting the story, even though Vonegut told it with velvet gloves from his own first-hand experience.
This morning I awakened from a night in Tralfamador to find our soldiers now returning from an increasingly unpopular war with similar stories. It's very hard to listen to them. But listen we must, The burning is happening again. We are responsible. We are using white phosporous to burn Iraqi civilians in their own beds. Allies. Non-combatants. Children. So it goes.
*note: Thanks to
lady_lily who pointed out that I had originally credited Kesey with writing Slaughterhouse Five. Oops! My mind is like a stainless steel sieve....
