Jennifer Norris was a devoted member of the Maine National Guard.

"I was ecstatic. I absolutely loved serving in the military," she says.

Norris still wanted a career in the Guard even after she was sexually assaulted by other members of the military. After she was raped, she says she got psychological counseling.

But then it came time to renew the security clearance she needed for her job as a satellite communications technician. One question on the form — Question 21 — asked whether she'd sought help from a mental health professional over the past seven years.

Chicago public school students are out of school for a second straight day because of a teachers' strike. But the main sticking point isn't pay. Teachers are fighting a series of reforms that are being implemented in school systems around the country. Host Michel Martin speaks with Chicago Public Radio's Education Reporter Linda Lutton.

Iraq War veteran Brian Castner opens his new memoir, The Long Walk, with a direct and disturbing warning:

"The first thing you should know about me is that I'm Crazy," he writes. "I haven't always been. Until that one day, the day I went Crazy, I was fine. Or I thought I was. Not anymore."

More than 10 years since a new generation of Americans went into combat, the soldiers themselves are starting to write the story of war. Three recent releases show how their experiences give them the authority to describe the war, fictionalize it and even satirize it.

Flu pandemics don't happen very often. So many people might feel the relative fizzle of a flu pandemic three years ago somehow immunizes the globe against another one for awhile.

But don't relax, say the authors of a report published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF BAGPIPES)

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Those are the sounds of Ground Zero in New York where a memorial service is underway this morning, marking the anniversary - the 11th anniversary - of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Moments of silence and commemorations have been held in New York, at the Pentagon and at a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania to honor the nearly 3,000 victims of the attack.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Striking teachers in Chicago manned the picket lines for a second day today as parents again scrambled to occupy their stay-at-home kids.

Some 350,000 of the district's students are locked out of their classrooms because city officials and thousands of teachers represented by the Chicago Teachers Union have yet to reach a contract. The strike is the first by public school teachers in the Chicago in 25 years.