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Veterans’ Day 2012
Today is Veterans’ Day, the first since I began writing the blog. This time of year is always a colorful one at our VA: we get more than our usual share of visits from bagpipers (I’d never quite heard...
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Brother, Can You Spare a Career?
Recently I received the following thoughtful reply to the post, Thanksgiving and the Grammar of Hope: Dr. Deaton, Have you ever heard of something called a quarter-life crisis? It’s probably always...
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On Massacre and the Innocents, Newtown, Old Pain
As a psychiatrist who works at a VA during a time of armed conflict, I have become used to having to decide each day how much I am willing to accept detente with the unspeakable, for how long today,...
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Making Peace With Warriors (Abigail Deaton)
This morning my eldest, Abby, a rising junior at Goshen College, a Mennonite college in northern Indiana, requested that the following Gospel excerpt be read at our church, First Mennonite of...
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Grand Opening
I still recall Dr. Hook’s The Cover of the “Rolling Stone,” my generation’s lament over what it takes to get noticed around these parts. What lyrics might have been spawned had BuzzFeed, The Daily Kos,...
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Independence Day
Life takes interesting turns. Just a year ago, I had no idea at all that I’d be working full-time at the VA or that I would be writing a blog about my experiences. I had not met many of the very fine...
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Saint Crispin’s Kindergarteners
In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist David Brooks wrote a fascinating piece entitled Honor Code, and even at the writing of this post, almost twenty-four hours later, it remains the most e-mailed...
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Conical Combat Linkages
Sometimes it takes some days for an encounter with a combat veteran to sink in. Sometimes it takes some days just to decide how much I dare let it sink in. I’ve talked of this man before, in Buddy, Got...
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A Mennonite at the VA?
As some readers know, just this past week I enjoyed my one Warholian fifteen-minutes-of-fame: one of my posts made it to WordPress’s home page, sort of my version of being “on the cover of the Rolling...
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The Onion Takes Manhattan, or A Tale of Two Essays
It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. While I apologize to Mr. Dickens, I have to say, as a psychiatrist who works for the VA, that no truer words have e’er been spoken. I have lived to...
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