[November 17, 2023] “What’s the Boy Scouts?” I asked after my Dad said he’d signed me up as a brand-new Boy Scout. And the first meeting was that very night. Oh, great!! I started with the lowly rank of Tenderfoot. My brother was too young, so he had to stay home and help our Mom. He cried because… Read More »
[November 16, 2023] Sometime in early 2002, two Soldiers from my Engineer unit said something that shocked me. They said that they wished they had been on one of those planes that Muslim terrorists used to kill nearly 3,000 innocents on 9/11. Several officers and I were sitting around talking about preparing to go to war in Iraq.… Read More »
[November 12, 2023] The rain was coming down hard. The night was hot. For that reason, I was allowed to sleep in Bigmama’s twin bed on the first floor, next to an open window; only the screen kept out the night air. An old, oscillating fan blew a breeze over me; occasionally, a spit of rain would come… Read More »
[November 11, 2023] I grew up in the city of Philadelphia. We lived on a long narrow street lined with small row homes attached by a party wall. There were 23 homes on each side of the street. We knew everyone on our block and all the surrounding homes on the streets that made up our neighborhood. Our… Read More »
[November 10, 2023] I didn’t know it then, but I grew up privileged. Not with money, or status, or owning a big house or car or lots of clothes, but by being in the company of ordinary men, combat veterans from World War II and the Korean War, as well as those who served to protect us at… Read More »
[November 8, 2023] We’ve all seen supervisors who give excuses for employees who are failures in their jobs. Like the alcoholic whose family enables the alcoholic’s drinking behavior, leaders are also enabling failure in other leaders. Whatever the reason or excuse, there is an emerging trend in U.S. institutions where leaders fail to take quick, effective action to… Read More »
[November 7, 2023] It was a big big room, dark and eerily quiet. I entered the first-grade classroom on the first day in the autumn of 1959 in a little town with no traffic lights, Mer Rouge, LA., deep in the antebellum south. The teacher showed an 8mm color home video of her class from the previous school… Read More »
[November 5, 2023] “Not a Shred of Decency” blares the headlines from the New York Post on their front page. The paper’s article calls these people “anti-Israel activists,” “Israel haters,” and “loathsome anti-Israeli vandals.” Of course, the paper is going easy on them with words, but it was the publication of their faces while removing or defacing Israeli… Read More »
[November 4, 2023] Why is Veterans Day so unsatisfying? I have often thought about this question since I retired from the Army. No, I will not dismiss Veterans Day as a self-congratulatory holiday. However, to answer that question is not for the faint of heart because the answer forces us to expose the underbelly of American traditions, the… Read More »
[October 31, 2023] “It’s a bonanza!” yelled my brother Philip as he stared into his haul of goodies. He and I looked forward to Halloween because of the chocolate candy, dressing up in a costume, discovering which of our neighbors were generous and which were cheap, and seeing good friends, yet trying to figure out who was underneath… Read More »