Hey All,

As someone posted, I made a movie about Families, and there is a
short clip of it in the documentary on LWWToday. I also want to
share my movie with Rust, since I think all of you have a similar
appreciation for the meaning and feeling Neil puts into his music so
well.

The link is down at the bottom if you want to skip the background.
For those that want it, here it is:

When the lyrics for Living With War started getting out on the
internet, my attention was drawn immediately to Families. When the
songs started streaming, I had to take a deep breath when I heard
that song in particular. Extremely personal song for me, because my
father was killed in Viet Nam. I was talking about the song with
someone one day, and decided to try to capture how the song made me
feel by making a video, set to the song Families. Of course since
you are all rusties, you know as I do that Neil can really get down
to the heart of the matter on a song, and boy, did he get down to
the heart of the matter with Families, for me anyway.

So I got busy and worked on the movie a few weeks. Painful and sad
process, but when it was over I was glad I had done it, it brought
back some good memories too.

It was a difficult decision to go "public" with it. Partly because
it's personal and painful, partly because I didn't know how my dad
would have felt with me showing his story this way. You see he was
a career Army officer, a product of post-WWII, and a West Point
graduate who believed deeply in "Duty, Honor, and Country". I just
don't know how he would have felt about me doing this, considering
his background, in a time of protest like we are in. I'm not saying
that it's wrong to speak out, or protest; on the contrary, I think
it's very important, and am proud as anything that Neil has stood up
to say what he believes in. But I'm also proud of my father's
dedication and sacrifice, and I just didn't know how he would have
felt about it, and that gave me a lot of doubt about showing it.

With the encouragement of some rustie friends (especially Karen, and
also Mike C., Charlie, Ian), I finally decided I would show it,
mainly to the Neil/rust base, because that is who I think can truly
appreciate it. I sent it to the guy (Mike Cerre) who did the
LWWToday documentary you can see on Neil's LWW page. They used a
short clip from my movie in theirs.

But that isn't my whole movie, and there is more to see. I
understand they have a bigger, more contemporary story (Iraq) to
tell than just mine, and have their own editing constraints. I
think they did a good job with their whole story, but I thought you
might like to see the whole video I made about my family.

So I posted the whole version, as I originally made it, where you
rusties can see it. There is a small and medium sized version, one
is a .WMV and one is a .MPG to help people with different bandwidths
or players. If they play jerky over the internet, right click and
download first, then play, it might play smoother.

You can find them at:

www.farfromhome.rusties.net

Thanks to Johnny Yuma for hosting it and helping me get it onto the
site.

I'll finish with a quote from a famous general, whom my father was
named for, and who fought hard for his country, so he knew what he
is talking about:

"What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and
friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in
this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our
neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world."
-- Robert E. Lee

Bo