Nothing Gets My Attention Quite Like a List of Banned Books
So I wondered: Why has the biography of a Civil War veteran been banned from reading lists in school for military families?
I don't know about you, but when I see a list of banned books, I immediately want to read ALL of them, one right after another, asap.
So when I read that the U.S. military had banned a biography of Albert Cashier, a civil war veteran, from reading lists in elementary schools for military families, I immediately had to find out who the bloke was. Albert Cashier? Never heard of him.
From Wikipedia: “Albert D.J. Cashier, born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an American soldier who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, and maintained it until death. Cashier became famous as one of at least 250 soldiers who were assigned female at birth and enlisted as men to fight in the Civil War.”
Okay, now I get it.
The recent banning of books by the military was brought to my attention by Military.com, which I began following after Vermont senators voted to confirm Doug Collins as the head of Veterans Affairs. Their votes pissed me off. By the time of Collins’s confirmation, the Trump/Musk agenda was out in the open and crystal clear. Also clear was that congressional Democrats had no plan to stop it.
Even Bernie, my senator, who serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee, voted for Collins. So I wondered, who is this Doug Collins, and what is his plan for our vets?
I can tell you that The Plan, aka Project 2025, calls for further “privatization” of healthcare currently offered by VA hospitals, with that privatized care paid for with Medicaid dollars (ha-ha). It calls for VA doctors to see more patients in less time, in the name of "efficiency." Collins vowed that the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts outlined by Project 2025 wouldn’t fall “on the backs of vets.” Yet when asked about Project 2025 during confirmation hearings, Collins said he hadn’t read it. Bullshit. Either he lied, or he hadn’t done his homework.
In one of my current writing workshops, we are working on "paying attention." It’s interesting what you find out when you pay attention.
You can read about Albert Cashier aka Jennie Hodgers on the websites of the American Battlefield Trust (battlefields.org) and the National Museum of the United States Army (thenmusa.org).
Photo: Cashier in 1864.
As a boy, I was a civil war buff. When a friend at school got the entire American Heritage Civil War book set, he and I spent Saturday mornings going through every page of every volume.
In my later readings, I remember reading that some women enlisted - as males - to fight in the Civil War. It took a special kind of courage to do such a thing, at that time.
Thanks for posting.