Klarinet Archive - Posting 000924.txt from 1997/02

From: Karl Krelove <kkrelove@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: Other side
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 20:34:33 -0500

At 01:45 AM 2/26/97 -0600, you wrote:
>No one can stop anyone from assuming anything but we can stop ourselves
>from asking questions. There are, I suspect, all sorts of cliches,
>misconceptions, and stereotypes that obscure clear
>thought. I'd love to hear some. Military music is a niche within a
>niche. I've, perhaps, made some assumptions, myself about you. But, I'm
>one of you also. I lick the reed, I stick the reed, and I get paid to do
>it. This is not a commercial. It's a question. For those of you
>thatthink it is much too long a question...what can I say. Some people
>drink only Bud Light. Thank you. I promise not to do this ever again, or
>at least too soon. It's late, can't spell. I'm outa here.
>
>daevid@-----.net
>
Each of the ones you mentioned may be true for somebody out there, but the
one you don't mention is that, as a member of the military, a fully
qualified soldier or sailor or whatever your service branch calls its
troops, you can be reassigned at any time, not necessarily to a musical
unit. Maybe it's my Viet Nam era mentality coming through, but my three
years in the Army Field Band, while in many ways wonderful years for me,
were three years during which I could have found myself in a combat unit
overseas (read, at the time, S.E. Asia). It didn't happen to anyone I knew,
but the threat or reassignment was there and in these days of U.S./U.N.
actions all over the world in some very bloody situations, it's a sobering
thought that you can be ordered into one of them and have no recourse but
to go or be prosecuted by a military court. Anyone who joins the military
needs to do so with the full understanding that the job he or she enlists
for, despite the promises made by the recruiter on the way in, is the
defense of the nation, not the entertainment of stateside civilians.
However remote the possibility is of reassignment to a combat unit, it
exists, and someone who is not prepared for that possibility probably ought
to think twice about enlisting. I know this must sound paranoid to many,
but you asked for discussion. There's my 2 cents.

Karl