{"id":57316,"date":"2024-07-16T15:07:44","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T15:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57316"},"modified":"2024-07-16T15:07:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T15:07:44","slug":"now-im-a-joiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57316","title":{"rendered":"Now I&#8217;m a joiner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>My life since its worst day came and went has taken a few odd turns and detours along the way. Today, it took another one of those turns I didn&#8217;t think it would take.<\/p>\n<p>I joined a veterans group in Princeton, where I have lived for the past five years.<\/p>\n<p>My life&#8217;s worst day occurred the day I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer. I more or less had pledged many years ago that I wouldn&#8217;t join a veterans group. Then she was gone and I found myself with lots of time alone on my hands. So &#8230; I joined the Bois d&#8217;Arc Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in my new hometown.<\/p>\n<p>I am told that the post has a fairly robust membership comprising a lot of younger vets who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The post commander told me he needs a &#8220;few more old farts&#8221; like me to liven the meetings up. Good deal. I&#8217;m all aboard.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re going to meet once a month., For the time being the post meets at a Princeton Fire Department station not far from my house. The commander said that during the COVID pandemic, &#8220;We went broke and had to sell our building.&#8221; So, the Princeton FD stepped up and offered the vets a meeting place for us to gather and swap lies about our time serving the country.<\/p>\n<p>This marks perhaps a new venture for me. My life has been restored to a semblance of normal. My grief has subsided sufficiently to where I am able to function properly.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t have many war stories to tell, given that my time in a war zone was so boring and uneventful. I&#8217;ll just enjoy taking in what others have experienced &#8230;. and I might be able to share a bit of wisdom I have learned on my life&#8217;s journey.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My life since its worst day came and went has taken a few odd turns and detours along the way. Today, it took another one of those turns I didn&#8217;t think it would take. I joined a veterans group in Princeton, where I have lived for the past five years. My life&#8217;s worst day occurred &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57316\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Now I&#8217;m a joiner<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10124,5093,7904],"class_list":["post-57316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-kathy-anne","tag-veterans","tag-vfw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57317,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57316\/revisions\/57317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}