An email from a college classmate just jogged my memory. I was in an inaugural parade! It was in January 1969, and Richard Nixon was about to take office, being elected by promising to end the Vietnam War. I was in my third year at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA), and mine was one
A thought for this inauguration day — Have you ever studied Abraham Lincoln’s pose at the Lincoln Memorial? Specifically, notice his hands. His left hand is a tightly clinched fist, while the right hand is resting relaxed on the chair arm. This suggests there are two equal components of American leadership — strength and compassion.
Cats are among our closest animal companions. There are about 100 million cats in the U.S., a number that continues to grow. Yet there is a distinct downside in this relationship. Some consider them an environmental disaster; our feline friends kill an estimated 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds each year, and they’ve been blamed for
Today, in honor of the inauguration, I’m reprinting a poem from my book Some Poems About Life. I Wish I Had Met… I wish I had met Washington To see just how he led to risk his fortune and his life, To hear what’s in his head. I wish I had met Jefferson To
In the last century or so we’ve focused a great deal on equal opportunity. Sometimes in the conversation we tend to forget women, hence the rise of feminism. Recently I ran across an article that reminded me yet again that equal means just that — equality in all phases of life, only in this instance
This Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Then the real work begins. So what’s it like to be a presidential staff member working in the White House? This week’s Time magazine (cover date Jan 23, 2017) has a twenty-page cover story entitled “Incoming:
From the “Something You Normally Don’t Think About” department — I was skimming through an informational email from the Smithsonian magazine and came across the following question — “Do people who were born without sight have visual elements in their dreams?” It’s an interesting question I’ve never thought about. This is how the Smithsonian experts
Speaking of fake news, how do you counter dangerous speech on social media? The best idea I’ve seen so far has come from Kenya. This country went through a very violent election cycle in 2007 with over 1000 people killed. It seems cellphones were just becoming very popular, and incendiary text messages helped fuel the
I am old enough to have been fooled many times by many things in my lifetime. But it’s not always my fault. Sometimes it’s the limits of our senses. This was demonstrated to me yet again by a clever video on the EarthSky website entitled “How Your Brain Plays Tricks On You”. Rather than try
What do you need for a successful democracy? One of the most important elements is a free and independent press. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying about power corrupting, so having a watchdog on the beat is essential. I’ve been thinking about this for two reasons. The first is all the discussion about “fake
