Monday, December 12, 2011

On Radio Smart Talk WITF FM with Col. Perry

This morning Col. Scott Perry and I were guests on Radio Smart Talk on WITF FM 89.5 in Harrisburg PA.  The topic was the end of the war in Iraq.  This show airs Monday-Friday from 9 - 10 am and re-airs at 7pm.  So you can listen to the radio (if you live in central PA) or on line tonight at WITF.

The producer of the show, Franklin and Marshall grad Megan Lello, sent me a link so you can also listen at some later time.  The first 20 minutes of the show is about the world almanac, then Scott Perry and I talk to show host Scott Lamar.

It was a lot of fun to be on the show.  Radio Smart Talk is a live call-in show.  All but one of the callers wanted to talk about war policy and whether we should have been in Iraq.  Col. Perry took the policy calls.  I answered the call from the Mom of a Marine who just finished basic training.


Saturday, November 26, 2011

Family Pictures from Thanksgiving

(reposted from my other blog http://adoptivedadusa.blogspot.com)

With three daughters in Virginia, holidays are the only time to take family pictures.  At noon on Thanksgiving we were able to take a family photo before Lauren and Lisa sped off to Thanksgiving in New Hope.

The entire family:

From left:  Iolanthe, Kiersten, Annalisa, Jacari, me, Lisa, Nigel, Peter and Lauren.
Iolanthe is my step daughter, Kiersten lives at our house and tutors the boys.  Her Mom was one of Annalisa's hospice patients a dozen years ago.  Kiersten has gone on some of our family vacations since and is now a student at a local college.  Peter is Lauren's boyfriend.

The kids:

The boys:

Timmy is our neighbor and is also adopted.  He and our boys play together a lot.

Friday, November 25, 2011

State of (Inter)dependence

For those who follow my wife's blog Miser-Mom, you have already seen today's post on the State of (Inter)dependence.

The military lives by interdependence.  Independence gets people hurt.  


Enjoy!!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Speaking At the Lititz VFW

On Sunday, Nov. 6, I spoke to more than 80 members and guests of the VFW Post in Lititz PA.  The Lititz Record newspaper put the story on its front page--slow news week in Lititz!


Most members of the post were clearly Viet Nam Veterans, plus a few from the Gulf War.  It was a lot of fun talking to this group.  The talk title was "Who Fights This War?"  And many of the stories are in this blog during the time I was in Iraq.  The audience laughed when I told them I flew on a Blackhawk piloted by a guy whose day job was flying Gov. Rod Blagoyevich.  They laughed again when I said the pilot was not allowed to repeat what he heard on his headset over those eight years.  

There were many nods of recognition when I told them about the door gunner on that crew.  He rode convoy security on highway one in 2004 long before Humvees were armored and was on his 2nd tour as a door gunner.  He had just turned 24.  

I talked longer than my allotted 20 minutes and then took maybe 30 questions.  The humbling thing for me about the Q&A is that most of the audience was actually asking questions.  I know from many public events that a really interesting talk gets short, rapid-fire questions.  When an audience is less engaged in the subject they tend to ask question in the form of a five-minute sermonette on what they think about the subject.  

Some of the questions were about 100 miles above my pay grade--on war policy and political matters.  But many were about Iraq and the young men I had the opportunity to serve with.  It was a lot of fun.


Saturday, November 19, 2011

Whiplash from Work--Saved by Spandex

Last month I wrote about meeting a guy on the train who grew up near me and had his first marriage end because of a "Honey-Do" list.  He was a king on the road and a chump at home.  He finally decided he liked the road life better and left home.

The Army works in reverse, at least as far as opulence.  My most popular post ever was "Home Sweet Trailer Home" with more than 2000 page views followed by "Flying to Camp Garry Owen" with more than 500 hits.  Living in a small metal trailer in the relatively luxurious CHUs of Camp Adder was way better than the tents at Garry Owen, but both were far worse than home.  So there was no doubt I was ready to return to my home and family in Lancaster and leave Iraq.

But last week, I had the biggest hit of travel opulence I have had in quite a while.  In one three-day trip to New York City I went to:

Lunch and a seminare at the Gotham Club (Once J.P. Morgan's private club)

Then a black tie banquet at Gotham Hall:
Lunch the next day at the Yale Club:
And in the evening, the Union League of NYC:

So what kept me from being swept away by my surroundings?  The best part of my trip to NYC was not inside these buildings but the three rides I took from my hotel at 39th and 9th Avenue to and across the George Washington Bridge and back.
Every morning I was up early and wearing spandex bike clothes to make this 22-mile ride by different routes:  on the west side bike path, through Central park and up broadway, along the river drive (not the highway!) and mixes of these.  So at each event I was pretty sure to be the only guy in the room wearing spandex from collar to heel.

The last event, at the Union League, was called Socrates in the City.  The organizer, Eric Metaxas, said that all who attend these meetings are part of a UFO cult that wears spandex unitards.  

Little did he know, I own two spandex unitards--for time trial races.  

I bet he doesn't even own one.

And so it is very hard for me to be completely serious about the occasional luxury my jobs affords me.  I used to live in CHU and wear spandex pretty much every day.  



Friday, November 11, 2011

So Many 1 Percenters

In the news today I was reminded I am part of the 1% in America. 

Not the 1% looking for toilets in lower Manhattan.  This morning a commentator on the news said America's military is 1% of our population.  That is literally true only if you round up.  The two million men and women on active duty and in Guard and Reserve unit are less the 2/3 of 1% and decreasing as budget cuts slice through every branch of the military.  

I am one of the few soldiers who knows as many people with PhDs as with Aviators Wings.  PhDs are another less-than-one-percent group of Americans.

Of course, working at a non-profit and serving as a sergeant, I am not part of the 1% idolized by Fox News and reviled by the Occupy Wall Street protestors.  But compared with 7 billion people in the world right now, I am pretty close to the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world.  

But the real problem right now is not the 1% who are currently serving.  As the military shrinks, more and more veterans will join the ranks of the unemployed.  Veterans are already have higher unemployment than the population in general.  It will soon get worse.

I heard Mitch McConnell this morning say that he is against any sort of Veteran's preference in hiring.  Really?  Veterans are always behind their peers in education and opportunity.  Is there a loss to society when it gives veterans, especially young veterans preference in hiring?

   

Mission to Canada

Last month several of the new F Model Chinooks flew to central Canada near Edmonton for a joint training exercise.  At the speed Chinooks fly the trip was 15 hours in the air each way.

A photographer with the Canadian Combat Camera unit took pictures and sent them back with our crews.

Here are two of them:

Monday, November 7, 2011

"You Better Puke Down Your Shirt"

This morning I flew on the firat of three flights set up for recent graduates of Basic Training. The young men and women and their recruiters get a thrill ride in a Blackhawk, and a pitch from us about why they would want to choose Aviation as an Army career path.

Before the flight, the crew chief does a safety briefing.

None of the 26 new soldiers had ever flown on a helicopter at all, let alone a Blackhawk.  The crew chief told the trainees how to enter and exit the helicopter, how to buckle the four-point harness in their seats, and what to do in an emergency.

Then he told them what to do if they feel sick.  "If you get sick do not puke in my aircraft.  You Better Puke Down Your Shirt, because if you get sick in my aircraft you are going to clean my aircraft."

I rode with the first group.  Everything was fine with the second.  But in the third group was a young man who probably ate way too much Army food for breakfast before a helicopter ride.  

On these rides we would climb and quickly dive.  On two of the flights, the crew chief did the pen in the air trick.  He lays the pen on his palm and in the moment of zero gravity pulls his hand away.  The pen floats in the air for the two seconds of zero gravity then falls in the crew chief's hand.  

Right after that roller coaster moment, the soldier looked ill then, as instructed, puked down his shirt.  The temperature was slightly below freezing at dawn and was no higher than 40 when the last flight touched down--so the soldier had to be more than a little uncomfortable until he could leave a field on the west end of the base and get a shower.  

But he can follow instructions!

2nd Group of Trainees Boards Blackhawk

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Back to Arguing Politics

After formation this morning one of pilots who is also a big TEA Party supporter came at me smiling with winner's glee talking about the Occupy movement.  

"The TEA Party cleaned up after themselves and supported local businesses, your guys in the Occupy Oakland movement looted local business," he said.

And it went on from there.  I mentioned that this week I gave the Conservative Commentariat its monthly listen.  I chose Rush Limbaugh.  On Thursday as I was driving back from New York, I heard Rush say that Herman Cain's current troubles are "a Democrat program at the highest level (the White House) to discredit Republican candidates."  Michael Savage says George Soros funded the attack.

Another ardent Republican here who is pissed off about the attacks on Herman Cain did concede that running for President is the ultimate colonoscopy and if Cain was not prepared for every fact and opinion to come out, he was crazy.  

It is fun to have these discussions with people of vastly different opinions who are not shy about expressing them.  

Friday, November 4, 2011

On Video Blog in NYC

Taped in NYC on Wednesday:



Or on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PijjlmU1KDg

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Home Boy on the Train

The last leg of my long trip home from Houston on Thursday began with a 3:45 am wake up call and ended with taking the 10:59 pm Keystone train from Philadelphia to Lancaster.  

There is no quiet car on the last train so I sat across from a guy about my age wearing a suit and dozing off listening to music.  Since he was my age, he would not be listening to Metal, Rap or Lady Gaga so loud I had to listen to 2nd-hand noise.  It turned out he was on the way home from a delayed flight also.

As we talked I learned he works from home advising small companies how to get bigger.  He was a father of eight--two groups of four kids from two marriages.  Group One are in their late 20s and early thirties.  Group two are four kids between eight and twelve.  I also learned he grew up in the next town south of Stoneham MA where I grew up.  Mike grew up in Medford.  

He graduated in 1973, the year the draft ended and was very happy not to go in the Army.  As we talked, it was clear that this 56-year-old guy lived for success, moving up from his blue collar background and being rich.  He made it.  He lives in Lancaster County's best suburb (Lititz) in one of its best neighborhoods.  For him risk has to do with money.  Mike is pro-military, but was never interested in serving.  

Mike was also very candid about his life.  He said his first marriage ended because he could not deal with the transition between being a King on the Road and a chump at home.  The way he said Chump really made me sure he was a Home Boy.  He was a rising star in the business consulting and got handed a "Honey-Do" list at home.  "Hero to Zero when I stepped off the plane," he said.  So he left.

He travels frequently to Europe and was making his first trip to Asia soon.  Another guy across the aisle, Jim, had made several recent trips to Beijing.  Mike was happy to hear Jim had no health problems from the trips.  

Usually, I read or work on the train, but the shared misery of the midnight train home gave me a chance to talk with another guy from Massachusetts whose live took him to Lancaster County.





Saturday, October 29, 2011

Traveling in Class A Uniform

This week I was in Texas from Monday to Thursday.  Rather than travel in our digital camo uniform, I decided to travel in Class A uniform.  Actually, it is better for travel than I would have suspected.  This heavy weight (compared to a good civilian suit) uniform resists wrinkles very well.  The shoes are good to walk in and much lighter than combat boots.  The jacket can be folded into an overhead compartment and looks good when unfolded.

On the trip back I was on a delayed flight with a group of women in the Arizona VFW on the way to a ceremony at the Statue of Liberty.  One of the ladies gave me the official coin of their VFW post.  Like most of the other coins I have received, it was mostly for being in the right place at the right time.  As I write this I hope their group had as good a trip as they could.  Today's storm set NYC's all-time snow record for October.  It was an easy record to set since an inch was the previous record.

The uniform got me free meals on the planes, a quick trip through security, a coin, several people saying a heart-felt thank you for my service and many smiles.  But it doesn't make trains and planes run on time.  I slept late today trying to help my 58-year-old body recover from that very long day.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Oldest Company Commander Replaced by Youngest

Today Headquarters Company of the 2-104th Aviation had a change of command ceremony.  1LT Matthew Moyer who will turn 26 on Sunday took command from CPT Paul Ward, age 54.  Ward is moving on to a staff job at higher headquarters.  Like me, Ward has a break in service.  He was a company commander when Moyer was in the 1st grade.


1LT Moyer

















CPT Ward



Both men were deployed with 2-104th in Iraq in 2009-10 and were on battalion staff.  Ward was a battle captain in operations.  Moyer was Unit Movement Officer, the officer in charge of moving the battalion to Iraq and back to America.  He organized the movement of almost 50 aircraft and hundreds of containers from Pennsylvania to Fort Sill to Iraq and back to America.




Saturday, October 15, 2011

Boys Like Guns

Today I drove to Mifflintown to pick up Emarion for his first visit to our home.  He asked if we could see Army stuff on the way home.

I wrote about some of visit in my other blog, Adoptive Dad.

Of the three boys, Emarion clearly knows the most about weapons.  He has gone hunting, loves fishing and says Cabella's is his favorite store.

He is clearly going to like the family days at Fort Indiantown Gap.  We watched M16 qualification for several minutes.  Emarion liked watching the shooters knock the targets down.  He was fascinated walking through the hangar at FT IG and liked just looking at the trucks and tracks in the motor pools around post.

I could also show him the M60A1 tank in front of the headquarters building and tell him I was a tank commander of one of those 35 years ago.  Since I don't watch football and baseball, it's good that I am in the Army.  Helicopters, camouflaged vehicles and weapons are a great ice breaker with boys.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Sunset Here and There

Today I got a call from one of my riding buddies in NYC.  I got the call at 630pm and said I had to go, I still had ten minutes to ride.  He said "No way, it's dark."  I said "See ya" and rode for 10 minutes.  I could have ridden longer because it was a brilliant full moon low in the eastern sky.  And to be exact, I had nine more minutes to ride than my buddy in NYC, not ten.

I guessed at ten minutes as I left to ride, but I knew it was close.  New York is about 120 miles east of Lancaster PA.  At 40 degrees of latitude, each degree of longitude equals about 60 miles on the ground.  The two degrees of difference translates into four minutes on the clock--15 degrees is 1/24th of the one-rotation-per-day spin of the earth.  So the sun sets in NYC just over eight minutes earlier than in Lancaster. And, of course, the sun rises earlier in NYC.

I know.  What good is knowing that?  Maybe nothing, but when GPS and every other gadget runs out of juice, I can still do some rudimentary time keeping and navigation.

Or just write about weird stuff I know.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

My First and LAST Army Ten Miler

The Army Ten Miler was my third long-distance event in the last three weeks: my seven in the last year.  And this event has the distinction of being far and away the worst run.

Let me begin with the schedule.  Race number pick up was at the DC Armory near the capital--nowhere near the event itself.  But it did allow the organizers to fill the armory with more than 100 vendors selling shoes, shorts, shorts and other shit.  I drove to number pick up with my sons.  There was a line out the door because having the number pick up in a government building meant metal detectors.  We got to go in a different entrance with my military ID.  But there were only two lines for those who were not military.

This bottleneck told me what the whole event would be like.

Inside, I got my number and went to another table for the t-shirt.  I paid $10 extra for a long-sleeve t-shirt.  But when I got to the table, with two hours left in registration--no more long sleeve t-shirts.  They had a woman's small which fit Nigel, so he got the race shirt.  I got my other a son an under armour Army shirt in the Expo.

We got up at 0540 in Silver Spring MD at Grandpa's house (he cooked spaghetti for us the night before) and were on the way to the Pentagon by 0600.  The race program said to take the Metro so we parked in Arlington and took the Metro two stops to the Pentagon.  So did thousands of others.  It took 11 minutes to get from the tracks to the exit.  We were against a wall.  Most of the riders did know the Metro and that there were other stairs.  So we all funneled up one inoperative escalator.

No one from the event was at the Pentagon Metro station helping with traffic.  There were HUNDREDS of volunteers along the route with nothing to do.  They would have been helpful in the Metro tunnel.

Or moving people from the Metro stop to the start line.  Everyone who drove or took the Metro had to move through one unmarked gate to get to the start.  No volunteers there either.  No announcers.  But along the route there were official volunteers with very good bull horns encouraging us.  These same bull horns would have been great getting people through the funnel.

In the half dozen other half marathons I have run, by mile five I would be in a group of people running about my speed.  In this event I ran a very steady 10 minute pace for the first five miles then ran about 9:20 pace for the second half.  But for the entire event the crowd around me was changing.  I was passing and being passed by others all the way from start to finish.   And in the last half mile I got passed by young guys who were sprinting for 11,000th place.

They shouldn't have bothered.  From a half-mile to the the finish until the boys and I got in the Metro station, we could hear the finish announcer saying, "Don't walk, keep running after the finish.  Keep moving."  The boys could mimic his pleading/commanding tone very well.  When I got the finish line I couldn't cross the timing line because runners jammed up and stopped.  It was about 20 seconds from the time I was in the crowd till I actually crossed the line.

The finishing chute was no wider than the one at the Hamptons Half Marathon which had about a tenth of the runners.   Fifty feet passe the finish I climbed over the spectator fence and went to Nigel and Jacari.  We first tried to walk back to the finish but the mess was getting worse, so we left.

Again, this event is 25 years old.  They knew the number of runners.  Why all these bottlenecks?

The entry fees totaled about $150,000.  The organizers should take some of that money and make a road trip to Philadelphia to see how they can run these events with either side of 20,000 runners and no bottlenecks at all.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Army Weekend without Drill!

My sons are going to have yet another weekend of long car rides, early wake up and greasy food.  This Sunday I am running the Army Ten Miler.  The race is in Washington DC for most of its distance, but it begins and ends near the Pentagon.  Start time is 0800, so we wil be waking at 0600 to get to the start through a very big crowd.

We will leave after lunch tomorrow and drive to DC for packet pickup.  We have free accommodations with Grandpa in Silver Spring MD.  So hamburgers for dinner tomorrow and for lunch Sunday!!!

I will start with Wave 2 of three waves.  It looks like I will be running with 25,000 of my closest friends.

Should be fun!!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Benefits of National Guard Service

This morning I was making hotel reservations for New York and Philadelphia and thinking about how many things are cheaper, easier or more fun because I am a Guardsman.  
  • If you book with Holiday Inn (same with other hotels I assume), they offer a Government Rate.  I have a military ID and that's all they require to give you a better rate and a free breakfast.  Part of the Government rate is breakfast.  
  • When I travel to NYC, Washington and Boston on Amtrak, I get a 10% discount with my ID.
  • If I fly in uniform I don't get a different price, but I do get WAY better treatment in the security line.
  • Two days ago we met Emarion who may be our next son if all goes well.  He is 12 and shy and somewhat nervous about meeting what may be his new family.  I could take out pictures of helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers and talk about flying in the former and firing the latter. Not surprisingly, this ends up being a great ice breaker with a 12-year-old boy.
  • When my daughter organized a day at Richmond International Speedway as part of her internship with the local VA Hospital, she could give me an unused ticket because I am a veteran with a combat tour in Iraq.
  • And it's fun to occasionally overhear one of my kids saying, My Dad is in the Army."


Thursday, September 29, 2011

Great Book by Brit Chinook Pilot



I wrote a review for Books and Culture of Sweating the Metal by Alex Duncan, Chinook Pilot in Afghanistan:



NEIL GUSSMAN


Sweating the Metal

Happy 50th Anniversary to the Chinook helicopter.
Happy 50th Anniversary to the Chinook helicopter! This month, the huge, twin-rotor aircraft capable of carrying 40 soldiers and tons of cargo marks 50 years of service in the US military and in the air forces of more than two dozen other nations.
In 2011, the Chinook was in the news around the world. On May 2, the Chinook helicopter on the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden extracted the Navy Seal team as well as the crew of the ill-fated Blackhawk that crashed on landing at the Bin Laden compound. Bin Laden's body left Pakistan on the Chinook. The Chinook's size made it possible to complete the mission when the primary Blackhawk was down.
In August, that same colossal size (a full 99 feet from the front of the forward rotor to the back of the aft rotor) made a Chinook a big enough target that a single Taliban gunner with a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) could bring the copter down. More than 30 Navy SEALs, Afghan commandos, and crewmembers were onboard for a night mission. All were killed.
But neither of these incidents is typical of the tough-under-fire utility of this hulking helicopter. For a rousing description of flying a Chinook in combat, look no further than Sweating the Metal by Chinook pilot Alex Duncan. Written at a breathless pace, the book shifts easily from technical descriptions of aircraft and procedures to clipped dialogue and action-packed combat narrative.
Although Duncan never goes three pages without using the f-word, he does spare his audience transcription of the speech of British soldiers. Both when I served in Germany in the 1970s and in Iraq in 2009, I trained with British troops. Their ability to cram properly pronounced foul language into every sentence surprised even the most foul-mouthed American soldiers.
A British sergeant leading an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) briefing in Iraq pronounced the "ing" clearly when using the f-word as a verbal adjective for each of the 30 IEDs he showed us. Duncan uses the f-word five times in one three-line paragraph to convey the alarm of one of his crewmembers who landed under fire in the wrong place, but for the most part he limits himself to a few per page. When I try to describe life in the army, particularly the 77-man tent I lived in for three weeks in Kuwait, I find it is a tricky balance to convey the profane speech without coming near transcription. Duncan does a good f-ing job.
Another balance Duncan tries to strike on every page describing combat is the use of acronyms. Soldiers in general and aircrew in particular have an opaque language of acronyms that is real speech to them. I currently serve in a Combat Aviation Brigade, and I find pilot jargon beyond incomprehensible when they speak to each other. Readers who have never flown in a military aircraft will be turning repeatedly to the seven-page glossary at the end of the book. Since some of Duncan's jargon is peculiar to the RAF, I found myself looking up LCJ (Load Carrying Jacket), CAS (Chief of Air Staff or Close Air Support depending on context), and a few others.
Duncan writes in the first person. So, when he is angry the reader can feel the warm temperature of the page. In Chapter 14 (of 40), he talks about waiting for a seat on a flight home. This is one of the chapters with high f-word density, including spelling out the acronym REMF. I will leave it to the reader to look on page 105 or Google it. The chapter is about the hassles of combat soldiers when they are marooned on a large base with non-combat soldiers.
The dispute dates back at least as far as the era of King David, who is recorded in Scripture as commanding that those who guard the baggage get a share of the spoils along with the frontline troops. Duncan clearly would cut the REMFs out of the distribution of any benefits. Yet he makes clear in this chapter that the soldiers he disparages live through daily mortar and rocket attacks, eat dust, and regularly deal with the contempt of people like him.
Many of the missions Duncan flies are what the US Army would call MEDEVAC. The Brits have their own acronyms. Several chapters describe rescuing wounded soldiers under direct fire. I read one of these chapters to my 12-year-old sons. They were caught up in the excitement, but it was a lot of work for me translating those acronyms into something the boys could understand, not to mention bowdlerizing the text and substituting exclamations.
When Duncan mentioned weapons, the boys' questions led me into a ten-minute digression on the M60 machine gun mounted on the Chinook's tail ramp and the miniguns mounted in the doors. They were so excited with what tracers are and how they look when they arc to the ground that we barely got back to the story. They especially liked the British nickname for the 3000-round-per-minute miniguns: Crowd Pleasers, the Brits call them. The next night we went back to Tom Sawyer.
Duncan is very good at technical explanations. Little by little, the reader learns technical details of the controls and instruments of the Chinook helicopter. Page 135, for example, features an excellent description of Night Vision Goggles (always called NVGs by the crews). We also learn chapter-by-chapter about life at home in Britain as well as on the big base at Kandahar and on the forward bases. One cumulative effect of Duncan's descriptions was to make me jealous of British deployment. Tours for US soldiers are one year long. British flight crews spend two months in country. Ground troops, six months.
In the course of the story, the reader gets a sense of how pervasive American popular culture is in the life of British soldiers—and really for all English-speaking soldiers. He says "Let's get out of Dodge" over the intercom, knowing the crew will understand his intent. Same with "Captain Obvious" and many other references to American movies, American songs, and so on, no doubt including some that I am too old to recognize.
And speaking of popular culture, Duncan mentions the DVDs that are everyone's favorite at their base on Camp Bastion: The HBO Series Band of Brothers. Soldiers can be as cynical about war films as doctors are about hospital dramas, but I have never heard a bad word about Band of Brothers. The men I served with in Iraq and Duncan's mates all at some level want to follow Major Dick Winters from Normandy to Berchtesgaden in World War II.
While these descriptions gave me a real feeling for Duncan's life, they helped to make the book too long. The climactic scene when Duncan's Chinook is hit by an RPG begins almost 220 pages into this 300-page book. If the book were shorter by a third, tightened by a ruthless editor, it would be even better.
That said, I would happily recommend Sweating the Metal to anyone who wants to get a good sense of the war in Afghanistan and what it's like to fly the biggest helicopter in the Army inventory.
Neil Gussman is communications manager at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. He blogs atarmynow.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

NASCAR at my Day Job

Sometimes I post on the blog where I work.  This time about NASCAR and Octane.

And while I was looking up something else, I saw this: radio interview just for those of us who are well past the age to join AARP.

Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on t...