In 2023, various stories from my blog were opened more than 20,000 times. The two most popular with more than 1,500 reads each were the story about Larry Murphy's amazing rear-wheel-only landing of a Chinook Helicopter on the roof of a shack on the side of mountain in Iraq. A local artist turned the photo into the painting above. The story is here.
The other most-popular post is titled "Task, Conditions, Standards" the basis of all Army training. That story is here.
Next are several stories about meeting friends, new and old.
The Summer Social at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College this summer.
In Paris, following a Facebook post, I went to a gallery opening featuring my high school classmate and artist Paul Campbell and his wife Susan.
Several years ago, I was a guest on the Cold War Conversations History Podcast. I visited Ian Sanders and got a tour of Cold War and World War II Manchester, UK. He also treated me to lunch with fish and chips and mushy peas!
On the same trip I caught up with Katharine Sanderson, a writer for Nature magazine I have know for almost 20 years.
I write often about books but they are not usually popular posts. But this post about the book and HBO video series Band of Brothers has been read every year since I wrote in 2017.
In 2016 I wrote a post based on an essay by C.S. Lewis. He says during most of history in most places, men looked at military service with dread. The American all-volunteer Army is a big exception. The essay got a few hundred readers in 2016. Not much since, then all of a sudden in December 2023, more than 120 new readers. Who knows why now?
The most popular post I ever wrote was about Myles B. Caggins getting promoted to Colonel. He retired early this year, but I still get people reading his story.
Happy New Year to all.
