Observations from the Great Self-Isolation

By | March 18, 2020

[March 18, 2020]  For those not living off the grid (by definition you are not reading this), you’ve been following the up-and-coming great isolation.  The infectious and deadly Coronavirus – origins in China – has been spreading like wildfire on dry canyon grass, causing us to isolate ourselves from one another.  At least that is what medical experts… Read More »

12 Biggest Mistakes Junior Officers Make

By | March 16, 2020

[March 16, 2020]  I was a junior military officer and saw many self-inflicted mistakes made by my peers.  These errors formed a pattern, and, at the time in the 1980s, I wrote them down in my notebook (that I found recently tucked away in an old footlocker).  Here are the 12 biggest mistakes junior officers can make: Thinking… Read More »

Duty, there Ain’t Enough of It

By | March 15, 2020

By guest blogger Sadako Red [see disclaimer] [March 15, 2020]  Duty is the essence of humanness.  No words written are more pointed to the reason modern men and women are so unhappy … unhappy because they fail to realize that not doing one’s “duty” is the denial of our obligation to act righteously.  For the past several weeks,… Read More »

Avoiding the Coronavirus

By | March 14, 2020

[March 14, 2020]   I’m a little late to the party with this post.  Several of my readers have pointed out that I have not written a comment on avoiding the Coronavirus.  I would not want to disappoint.  Besides, government public health officials have been full of advice about how we can minimize the risk of catching the virus. … Read More »

Know Your Operational Environment

By | March 13, 2020

[March 13, 2020]  One thing the U.S. Army Infantry School taught me back in 1983 was that you had better be aware of your operational environment.  This requirement meant that each of us Second Lieutenants had to understand and deliberately plan for the conditions, circumstances, and influences that will affect our military unit’s mission. In this article, I… Read More »

U.S. Presidential Fireside Chats

By | March 12, 2020

[March 12, 2020]  Rudyard Kipling once said that words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.  He was talking about how communication is the peak human achievement, and our use of it is unimaginably powerful.  Many decades ago, beginning in the Great Depression, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the new radio medium to connect to millions… Read More »

Who is Robert Owen?

By | March 10, 2020

[March 10, 2020]  It has said that leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.  But some ideas work and some don’t work.  There is a long-standing controversy about whether the views of Robert Owen, one of the founders of Socialism, actually work. Robert Owen, a Welsh textile manufacturer and social reformer,… Read More »

Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

By | March 9, 2020

[March 9, 2020]  Lessons from the past are frequently overlooked or consciously discarded for a variety of valid-sounding reasons.  The Spanish Flu of 1918, however, can give us some clues on how to survive the Coronavirus (COVID-19). While I am about to layout those very lessons, one of them stands out above all the others.  The first lesson… Read More »