I visited a VA hospital. And came away with some lessons in collaboration and creativity that should be kept in mind as America seeks to improve care for its vets.

After writing “Home of the Brave,” I concluded I would have to have the audacity of a veteran who has seen war to imagine a world at peace.

Dalton Trumbo’s genius was helping us to visualize what wars really mean, and to understand it will take courage and imagination to end them.

By setting “Oklahoma” in an African-American town for his Denver Center for the Performing Arts production, artistic director Chris Coleman makes the show even more deeply American.

Miles Lagoze, a former combat cameraman in Afghanistan, says he initially tried to make a conventional documentary, with interviews and a narrator to explain things.

Then he realized there was much that he had seen and recorded that he couldn’t explain.

So, he made the unruly, raw and compelling “Combat Obscura,” a glimpse through a lens darkly of the boredom, bravado and blood of war. It was screened at Denver’s DocuWest Film and Music Festival on September 22, 2018. After watching his movie, I joined Miles for a Q-and-A about war and storytelling.

Veterans like Terri Wilcox understand the potential of another man or woman making the transition from military to civilian life.

Civilians employers who have hired her “needed someone who can  focus on getting the mission done, AND smile and say good morning. My military background has led me to this. The training. The level of trust.  All of the military bearing. All of that has prepared me to be a productive member of society. From military to civilian, it definitely is a transition.

"I would offer to those that are getting out: 'Take a deep breath. You can do it.'”

Perhaps it’s the plainspoken tone and humor. Perhaps it’s the mentions of the mighty Mississippi. Or that the main character Cedar, who hovers on the border of adulthood, is a fugitive traveling on a kind of underground railroad for much of the book. She literally burrows beneath St. Paul in some passages. Whatever the reason, Erdrich brought Twain to mind. Future Home of the Living God could be read as a multicultural, feminist Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Some of “Refuge-e” reads like an over-earnest high school valedictory. But if the young autobiographer’s farewell to childhood falls short, it’s because he reaches so high.