There are so many media outlets offering reports from countless perspectives, and on top of that, there's the usual wartime propaganda. It's all so confusing; constantly having to try to distinguish truth from fiction can easily cause overload.

After carefully reviewing such options of diversion as being a pro-war demonstrator or events coordinator at the Baseball Hall of Fame, you decide to flee to your bookshelves. Maybe find some book covers capable of sheltering you from the afflicted world.

Joseph Freda, a graduate of the State University College at Oneonta, was returning to his alma mater to read from his new book, "The Patience of Rivers." You start reading a review copy of the book, which is set in the summer of 1969 along the banks of the Delaware River in Sullivan County.

Sounds innocent enough; the moon landing and Woodstock as backdrop for two fresh high school graduates coming of age while working around the family campground.

But wait. The book opens on their 18th birthday party and, taken aside, they get a stern warning from a father.

"I didn't want to sound a sour note at the party. But turning 18 means more than getting to drink and vote. It means you'll have to go register with the draft board," the father said.

Referring to the military deferments available to college students, he continued, "whatever you do, stay in school. ... The education is fine ... but that's all beside the point as long as this thing in Vietnam is on."

Not more war. You can't get away from it.

At least there's no conscription now. Young people aren't being plucked from their lives to fight in the Middle East. If there were a draft, probably more youths and their parents would be opposed to this war in Iraq.

Not much consolation. No draft means we have an all-volunteer military over there. Have all 250,000 troops bought into the government's justification for the invasion and occupation? Or are many just following the orders from their commander in chief, the president?

In order to fight, and kill if necessary, you have to believe in what you're doing. But how do you muster whatever it takes to kill Iraqi soldiers? They didn't do anything to us, so how do you hate them? They're just defending their country against our invasion.

That book did a lot of good; there you go thinking again.

So you try another book you recently had begun reading. "Boston," published by Upton Sinclair in 1928, is about a matriarch who flees her wealthy, bickering family after her husband's death. She's never been on her own and felt she had to try it, albeit at age 60.

It's 1916. She makes it to Plymouth, Mass., gets work at a cordage plant and, lo and behold, meets Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco.

Great. I know where this is leading. We're going to follow the two anarchists for a whole decade, all the way to the electric chair.

Perhaps. But first, Vanzetti's charm leads grandma to pacifism. Returning to Boston a year later, she takes an active role as one of the few "blue-bloods" opposing the World War.

Finally, after the armistice, she thought there was a "celebration in which even the pacifists could join." With the war over, "you could again expect people to listen to reason, and could work at stopping the next war without danger of arrest."

With the Kaiser having fled to Holland, she thought "there seemed a real prospect of that newly-promised world. Such wonderful promises — a world fit for heroes, a world made safe for democracy, a world in which the last war had been won by the forces of justice."

Or "so we had been told in a golden glowing speech at least once a week for a year and a half; and now we were to see it made real," she hoped.

And, just as if it were 85 years later, "the American people had been told to trust him; he was the president, and had sources of information not open to the rest of us ..." she reflected.

Almost sounds like it could have been written any day now, after Saddam is found dead or having fled to Syria. But today, what is our newly promised world?

We couldn't stop this war, so it is not likely we'll be able to stop the next one. Who will replace Iraq in the "axis of evil?" Probably Syria. Will we invade it next, or Iran? And what about North Korea? And don't forget all the other nations of the world that have no respect for human rights, though many are allies.

There you go again. Maybe you should stay away from certain books. OK, let's try one from her book shelves. Oh, there we are, "The Art of Happiness," by the Dalai Lama.

Now that would be a challenge.

———

Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 441-7217 or cary@thedailystar.com.