And so it begins. No sooner did use my thumbnail to scrape a dribble of turkey gravy off my sweater, than — WHOMP! — the Christmas hoopla hit me like a freight train. On Thanksgiving Day, it was perfectly acceptable, nay encouraged, to laze around all day in a tryptophan-induced haze, gorging myself on the…
Military Life
The Flipside of Fall
November always finds me waxing poetic about the flavor of just-harvested fruits, the earthy aroma of fallen leaves, the nip of imminent winter, and the brilliant hues of flora and sky. But like everything else in life, this lovely season has a flipside. Nowhere is this more evident than on my own body. Soon after…
Ending veteran homelessness takes more than spare change
In 2010, when President Obama pledged to end veteran homelessness in ten years, I cynically thought it was an empty political promise during a time when it was popular to support military issues. But don’t you know, he nearly did it. By the time Obama left office, veteran homelessness had dropped from 74,087 in 2010…
Sororities become casualties of frat misconduct
I was about to hit delete when the words “Greek life,” “hazing” and “criminal charges” caught my eye. It was another email blast from from an administrative muckety-muck at our daughter Anna’s university, but this one didn’t look like the usual update about tuition increases. Considering that we were about to travel to Syracuse to…
What I believe about Hell and hand baskets