Sunday, August 10, 2008

Promotion Ceremony

After we got our sergeant stripes, the two of us who got promoted read the NCO Creed passing a framed copy back and forth. I had never read it out loud before. Last drill I read the Declaration of Independence before morning formation. It's not very long and it makes clear how strange the whole idea of starting this country was. It also make clear how much compromise there was. America should have been the first country to free the slaves, not be the last western country to free the slaves, then add to the shame with a century of Jim Crow laws. Despite all the problems--like the British Army--America became a country that never had a monarch and always had peaceful transitions from one government to the next. No country bigger than Switzerland can say that.

A Review of An Immense World by Ed Yong

In the fall of 2024 I read An Immense World   with the Evolution Round Table at Franklin and Marshall College, a group I have been part of f...