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Archives for 2004

World on Fire

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 16, 2004

Hearts are worn in these dark ages

You’re not alone in this story’s pages

The light has fallen amongst the living and the dying

And I’ll try to hold it in, yeah I’ll try to hold it in

The world’s on fire and

It’s more than I can handle

I’ll tap into the water

(Try and bring my share)

I try to bring more

More than I can handle

(Bring it to the table)

Bring what I am able

I watch the heavens but I find no calling

Something I can do to change what’s coming

Stay close to me while the sky is falling

Don’t wanna be left alone, don’t wanna be alone

Hearts break, hearts mend

Love still hurts

Visions clash, planes crash

Still there’s talk of

Saving souls, still the cold

Is closing in on us

We part the veil on our killer sun

Stray from the straight line on this short run

The more we take, the less we become

A fortune of one that means less for some

– Sarah McLachlan – World on Fire

Filed Under: Music

Strike the Tent…

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 14, 2004

One of my daily reads for a very long time now has been Sgt. Hook.

Until recently, a company first sergeant of an aviation company, Sgt. Hook has brought to life the honorable men and women that serve us today throughout the world. Earlier this year, his unit deployed to Afghanistan where they have served with distinction.

It was clear to me that Hook was a fantastic leader – because he cared deeply about his men and women – and it showed in what he wrote. Some of his tales of courage in leadership and of the sacrifices made by his men remind me of my own humble lessons that I try to teach to my team.

For his leadership, Hook was recently selected for promotion to Sergeant Major.

I’m saddened tonight by his decision to close down his weblog.

Hook, however, ends his time here among the bloggers with one final post. A class act to the end.

Farewell, you’ll be missed…

Filed Under: Blogging

Silent America

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 14, 2004

My copy of Silent America, the new book by Bill Whittle, arrived today via UPS.

I wasn’t expecting it and so when I unwrapped it I had a huge grin on my face – and nearly became teary-eyed.

Silent America is a collection of Bill’s essays from his weblog EjectEjectEject about life in the post 9/11 America. Bill is one of the most gifted writers i’ve found on the internet. His essays bring out and highlight what I think is best about America. Not to mention that I believe Bill has captured best the essence of our country today – and how we’ve changed.. but yet not changed.. from our past.

You owe it to yourself to read this book. Or – just visit his weblog and read for yourself.

An excerpt from HONOR:

On October 7th, 2002 I returned to Los Angeles from Arlington National Cemetery where we interred my father, 2nd Lt. William Joseph Whittle, who died from what may have been sheer joy during a fishing trip in Canada.

My dad served in the US Army in Germany, from 1944 through 1946. He was an intelligence officer, and was responsible for recording the time of death of the convicted War Criminals at Nuremburg after the war. He saw them hanged — he stood there with a stopwatch. He was 21 years old.

My father spent two years in the U.S. Military. He spent a lifetime in the corporate world. After twenty years as a world-class hotel manager, turning entire properties from liabilities into assets, he was let go without so much as a thank-you dinner or a handshake. Twenty years of service. He was a four-star general in the corporate world for two decades, and that was his reward.

Monday afternoon, at 1 pm, I stood underneath the McClellan arch at ANC. There were 13 family members there. There were also 40 men in uniform. I was stunned.

They took my dad’s ashes, in what looked like a really nice cigar box (what a little box for such a big man, I thought at that moment), and placed it in what looked like a metallic coffin on the back of a horse-drawn caisson. His ashes were handled by other twenty-one year old men, men as young as he had been, men whose fathers were children when my dad was in uniform. Everything was inspected, checked, and handled with awesome, palpable, radiating reverence and respect.

As we walked behind the caisson, the band played not a dirge, but a march…a tune that left me searching for the right adjective, which I didn’t find until the flight home. It was triumphal. It was the sound of Caesar entering Rome; the sound of a hero coming home. It was the only time during the service that I really began to cry.

My father received a military funeral: the folded flag, the 21 gun salute, the honor guard, and a Chaplain named Crisp who declared a grateful nation was welcoming their brother William home to rest among heroes.

My dad served for two years. He wrote on the back of his Army officer class graduation photo that he expected to die fighting for his country within a few months. Most everybody who signed his photo wrote the same thing.

The chaplain said, looking my stepmom in the eyes like this was the first time he’d ever said the words, that the men and women buried here had agreed to lay down their lives for their country and each other, and that THIS, not rank, or social status, or length in service, is what entitled them to be buried in America’s most sacred ground.

Before the ceremony, I was looking at the headstones, and it’s sad how each area of Arlington is like a forlorn vintage: here are buried the veterans who died around 1995, there is the 1982 pasture, the mid-fifties crop over on yonder hill. And standing between a Major and a Lt. Colonel, I saw a headstone for a PFC who was born in 1979, the year I entered college, and who had died in 1998. This young man, not even twenty, couldn’t have been in the service for more than a few months, and yet there he lay, with the same headstone as colonels and generals and the many, many sergeants that cover those fields.

That is American honor, and nowhere else in the world does it exist in such a naked, magnificent form. Each of these men and women, this band of brothers, receiving the same heartfelt respect. For my father, who died at age 77, it was the honoring of a contract he had signed more than half a century before, defending Europe and helping bring those criminal bastards to justice. It was a contract paid in full, one that has given my family and me an indescribable sense of comfort and pride.

Filed Under: Blogging, Books

Mmmmmm

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 12, 2004

Watching the Survivor Finale with the Sidekick and drinking some Hot Buttered Rum.

Mmmmm….

Filed Under: General

Counter-Strike Addiction

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 12, 2004

Well, I’m completely back to being addicted to Counter-Strike again.

I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing – it’s amazing to me though that a game as old as Counter-Strike keeps my attention for so long. It makes me long for the days of the the old 24×7 Assault Server I used to run.

Ahh, the good old days.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How do you write an obituary for this man?

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 9, 2004

Brud20041209David Brudnoy, long time host of the David Brudnoy Show on WBZ News Radio 1030 in Boston died a few hours ago at age 64.

When I moved to Boston in January 1999, I knew very little of the culture and politics of the city. It didn’t take me long though to discover WBZ News Radio 1030.. and then only a few days to discover the David Brudnoy Show.

David had almost a calming show sense about him – and it was that voice of his that first drew me to the show. But after listening, only for a few minutes, I realized that he was indeed something special – and it was his intellect that drew me in.

David Brudnoy could interview like no one I had ever heard before. Whether he was interviewing one of the three governors that have served during my time here in the Commonwealth – or an eleven year old child who had called into his show, David made the show interesting.

Much can be said about a person simply by watching, from afar, at how they lead their lives. More can be said about a man with how they face their own death. And David faced his with dignity and a deep understanding of the short time that he had before him…

Deep Peace, David…

Filed Under: Massachusetts

Creating the Home Office for Writing

by Bryan Strawser · Dec 4, 2004

Blogger David Hewson has a post up over at his blog about creating an office for writing at home.

With three computers on my desk now – and a new Tablet PC that I need to find a way to integrate – I’m running into the same problem that he was — how to create the right atmosphere in my home office for creative and professional work.

David writes:

What I wanted of my office redesign was more space and less hassle. I think it gave me both and finally I have room for some books on my desk, not on the shelves behind. That should have been a priority from the start, but somehow the computers got hold of me, demanding I fit in with them, not the other way round.

It was, on the face of it, though quite expensive. There are a couple of ways of looking at this. I now have one computer which works all the time, on the road and at home. Before, either the desktop or the notebook was out of action. Had I replaced both they would have cost more than the notebook alone, and got less utilisation.

My home office is in the basement of a split level ranch and features two desktop computes (a Mac G4 w/ 23″ LCD, a Dell P3-933 w/ 19″ LCD, an Apple Powerbook G4 15″, and a Motion M1400 Tablet PC). I got the tablet specifically for work though I see potential home uses for it as well. It’s truly a portable notebook – I’m looking forward to really putting it through its paces in the coming weeks.

Filed Under: Blogging, Technology

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