The Life of the Green Plant by Arthur W. Galston. Get the joke? Droll, right?
It’s a sight gag. We here have a rough sense of humor around that war.
The sensitive might just gag.
If you are not from here someone has to tell you we are choking on laughter because Arthur W. Galston invented Agent Orange the herbicide the United States of America spread on Cambodia, Laos, and the Republic of Viet Nam
to forestall ambushes, to no effect, because when we beat back green leafy cover beyond rifle range the ambushers would instead lay a mine then land mortars from afar, or just dig in within the range of an AK-47;
to expose to bombing the supply route from Ha Noi to their war with Saigon, to no effect, because they always had more trucks running day and night from the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics no matter how many we blew up;
to kill rice fields and starve the local Communists, to no effect because that whole country is nothing but rice fields and poisoning even a large fraction of them only grew Communists. All of Ranch Hand and the other herbicide operations were silly bullshit.
What Agent Orange did do, what it still does, is interfere with development of the fetus. Birth defects. Many, many birth defects. You might as well shoot the mother with X-rays. Less certainly by biology and chemistry, but as a matter of law in the USA, Agent Orange causes cancer.
If you served with our forces at certain spots, for instance our administrative center at Long Binh where we dumped the tanks of the dusters daily before landing into the watershed we cooked and drank from and showered in and you now present at a Veterans Administration hospital with certain cancers, we blame Agent Orange and take responsibility.
The Life of the Green Plant by Arthur W. Galston. Breaks you up in every sense. A laugh riot and an obscenity. Yucks, and yucky.
Except, except, except. This is rather an inspirational tale. Arthur W. Galston did not invent Agent Orange.
He was busy feeding the world. Arthur was one of the green revolutionaries who have grown enough food every year for the humanity who have bred ever more fruitful since my birth 1 year before he published this book the first time,
the second time when I was 4, third at 8, fourth at 20, then fifth the year I first visited Viet Nam at 34 and sixth at 37 when I left New Haven, where Arthur had written this book again and again. Long after his death in 2008 his research and his readers and his students have fed you.
During the war for the world, in 1943, when all of science stopped or devoted ourselves to engineering death and destruction, Arthur instead found ways to hasten plant growth. He noted in passing that 1 of them, over-done, kills the whole plant.
When he got back to the business of peace the Army developed his findings into herbicide. Arthur W. Galston did not invent Agent Orange. When he heard about its use in Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam he took responsibility for it.
He assumed agency for it. He took his bastard in as a ward and found that a contaminant in its manufacture, dioxin, was even worse. He did not rest until he had convinced our president Richard Nixon, of all people, to give up its use and ban any more such silly bullshit by the USA.
Arthur W. Galston, zichrono livracha, may his memory be a blessing, hashalom alav, peace be upon him, did not invent Agent Orange, much less dioxin. He took responsibility for it.
He was a man, rather a mensch, non-binary, who supported our kind by his work in the world, a yid of mitzvot, one of those god chose to obey the law. Never heard of him, right?
Just of that mamzer Orange his bastard child, the ganef who brought shame, shanda, upon all those goyim and yid alike who have chosen the USA as our nation. Yimakh shemo!
Arthur W. Galston, zechuto yagen aleinu, may his merit shield us, erased the name of the chemical and biological weapon Agent Orange from the order of battle of the USA.
Viet Nam letters has posted 4 times so far on the poet David A. Willson, clerk typist at Long Binh, who fell at last to multiple myeloma.
See his The frogs are gone composed in his Army days drinking and eating dioxin. That’s me in the photo just below, talking to the poet one Veterans’ Day.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.