November 11th is Veterans Day in the US, and is celebrated in other countries worldwide as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. It recognizes the moment when major hostilities ceased, marking the end of the Great War, or World War I.
Today, we honor the service and the life of everyone who served honorably in any branch of the military. For the curious, some handy facts are posted at Defense.gov.
All of us know a Veteran. Please be sure to let these persons know their service is acknowledged and appreciated today. The Veterans Administration has this list of nationwide deals exclusive to Veterans, including free or reduced prices at restaurants, retail outlets, museums, and services such as haircuts and flu shots: https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/67508/veterans-day-discounts-2019/
More are listed at this website: https://www.offers.com/blog/post/veterans-day-freebies/
In addition, many of your local indie and small-scale retail and service outfits are also offering Veterans deals. Check for deals in an internet search using your locality + the search terms “Veterans deals” and they’ll come up for you!
Today, we are announcing that
EVERY DAY IS VETERANS DAY at Propertius Press!
If you are a Veteran, contact us through the Military and Veteran link at the top of the page, and we will send you a discount code good for 25% off the retail price of any of our books, including ebooks and print, when purchased through the Shopping Cart in our Bookstore.
From our own catalogue, we love the story told in Acropolis, by Howard Winn (Veteran), 
about a small group of soldiers who enter university courtesy
of the GI Bill, as each attempts to settle in to a civilian life. The clash of cultures between privileged and working classes combined with personal struggles with PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and simple real-world adjustment battles amid the creative intellectual world of higher education makes for an engaging read. This book helped us to better understand the everyday challenges returning Veterans can face upon returning home.
Finally, in soon to be released…
Some may not be aware of the actor Marlon Brando’s own work with Veterans, which stems all the way back to his very first movie, The Men, in which he portrays a soldier who has to adapt to the loss of the use of his legs. In preparing for the role, Brando actually lived for several weeks at the Veteran’s Hospital near the filming location. He insisted on being put through the exact same rigors as the paraplegic men in the wards, having great sympathy for what these men experienced. As noted by several friends and biographers, Brando felt the best way he could help them was to make them laugh, maybe forget their troubles for awhile. Here’s an excerpt from the upcoming book, “The Impish Humor of Marlon Brando,” by Aubrey Malone:
…he was looking forward to his cinematic maiden voyage, being an admirer of Kramer’s social dramas. When he first met the director, he was dressed in his standard jeans and torn T-shirt. A number of paraplegics from Birmingham Veterans Hospital were also there. They expected an “actor’s actor,” so were pleasantly surprised at the offbeat man they encountered in his place. They were even more surprised when he expressed an interest in moving into their hospital with them full-time.
In fact, Brando stayed in the institution, which was located in the neighborhood of Van Nuys, in Los Angeles, for several weeks. In what would become typical Method, he wanted the experience of living as one of the injured and told his relations, “You can visit me there, but don’t be surprised if you find me in a wheelchair with a urine bottle.”
He even managed to convince a therapist that he was a paraplegic. As he was being fitted for leg braces, the man in question informed an attendant that he was “paralyzed from the tenth dorsal vertebra down.”
One day near the end of his sojourn, he was eating in a restaurant with the paraplegics when a wild-eyed woman entered. She started talking to them about Jesus, about how they might be able to walk again if they believed enough in him. They weren’t interested in her ramblings but Brando pretended to be. He gazed at her with rapt attention. He said, “I believe in the Lord.”
The woman said, “You should believe, soldier, because I know that with the Lord’s work you can recover.”
With that, Brando started to rise from his wheelchair. “I do believe!” he roared, “I do believe!” He gripped the sides of his wheelchair until his knuckles whitened. “I feel the Lord has come right into this room,” he said, “and into my body. The Lord is in my body. I feel it.” He walked to the bar and started dancing and leaping. The woman shrieked and fled the room to hoots of laughter from the veterans.
database of current fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art markets and other benefits. Propertius Press has been 
The writing of Arthenia Bates Millican opens a window to a world that is hidden from many, unless you were alive in the southern United States in the mid-twentieth century, and even then, you may not have experienced it. The lives of “Black folk” were the subjects of her creative, yet authentic pen, as she faithfully transcribed into fiction the unique stories that she observed and heard among some of her friends, relatives, and neighbors. Raised in a family that valued education and standing in the community, as she grew into adulthood, Dr. Millican found that listening to, and learning about, the values, work, and passions of the laboring classes revealed a stronger fabric of community and spirit than perhaps some had realized. For many first-time readers of her work, the voices of the people may initially appear quaint, perhaps even unintelligible, but the earnestness and fragility of their everyday circumstance is unmistakable. You are drawn in, you hear the click of knives chopping vegetables, you smell wood smoke, feel the sweat of a dusty walk to town in the heat of a summer day, hear the swish-swish softness of taffeta as your neighbor settles into the adjacent pew at church. And the most troubling of circumstances can be ringed with a wry observation amid laughter in spite of heartbreak.
Language evolves. If it did not, we would all still be conversant in Chaucerian English. These changes often begin as stylistic exceptions that come from an individual or cultural difference to accepted written speech. The 
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