When I stepped outside yesterday, I knew why a large empty peanut butter jar was there on the front lawn. I had seen one there before.

The plastic jar had no lid. It was being prepped for recycling. The recycling people want clean containers and if you ever tried to clean a peanut butter jar you know how labor intensive it is. Besides, washing it squanders a lot of hot water.

As darkness settled in last evening, Tim switched on the porch light and called me over for a look. There, with his head fully enclosed inside the jar, was our resident skunk, working furiously to prepare the jar for its next life, perhaps to be spun into a sweater.

That is about as rebellious as the two of us can get at our age. But the upcoming Veterans Day reminds me of the upheaval and anguish this nation endured nearly 60 years ago.

A friend of ours was a Vietnam War veteran whether he liked it or not. A couple of years ago he was volunteering at a veteran’s information booth during an event down-Island, when an elderly gentleman, wearing his distinctive side cap denoting his wartime status, stopped by for a chat. When the older man learned that our friend had served in Vietnam, he began to rudely attack the younger man for his military history.

“I didn’t get to choose my war,” our friend icily responded. “Aren’t you lucky that your war was a good war,” he added, still steaming about it the next day.

Fifty and more years later, those active-duty vets are bouncing great-grandchildren on their hobbled knees, yet for some the double traumas remain — the war damage itself, as well as the abuse they encountered when they arrived home. These are men who knew their fathers had been admired as heroes when they came home from war, yet the soldiers of this generation were met with such hostility that they were officially advised to not wear their military uniforms in public.

Earlier this year Michael Colanari, himself a Vietnam veteran, worked with Mark Mazer to publish a collection of letters that Dr. Milton Mazer, Mark’s father, had written in those war years, and sent to the President, to White House advisors and to military leaders, pleading with them to stop the war. The book is called David’s Slingshot. The letters point out in Dr. Mazer’s heart-wrenching detail why the iniquitous actions were so clearly wrong.

Publishing the book was aided by the veterans group still being counseled by Tom Bennett at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. The decision to publish the book exemplifies the double tragedy suffered by this entire generation of men, veterans or not. You may find the book at the library, or buy it from Amazon.

Happy birthday to the unsinkable Binnie Ravich on Sunday, Nov 10, and to yoga teacher Scarlet Johnson on Monday, Nov. 11.