Bryan Strawser

You are here: Home / Archives for Blogging

Blogging

A Look Back…

by ·

Year’s end has always been a time of deep reflection and introspective thought for me. Much has happened – professionally and personally – in the last year. Some of which was well received, some of which was handled with grace, and some of which just passed me by….

Some thoughts and retrospection on the year closing tonight….

In March, I passed the latest milestone in my life by turning 30 on March 5th.

During April and May, we disappeared for ten days into the lovely sands and waters of St. Croix, and nearly didn’t come back. An island oasis so much like heaven I thought perhaps I had died. As I look out the window today at 12 inches of snow I wonder why we didn’t stay.

Roomviewjpg-Tm

In late May, in the midst of some spring rain and in the flash of a moment’s inattention, I crashed my five year old Toyota Camry. After the insurance company totaled out the car, I bought a snappy new Honda Civic Hybrid. Since that time, I’ve saved nearly $517 in gasoline costs. And I’m still quite happy with the car.

Dsc03403-Tm-2

June brought us the dedication of the National World War II Memorial. At that time, I wrote of my upbringing in Covington, Indiana:

The war – even though it occurred nearly thirty years before my birth – has always been a part of the fabric of my life. Its impact on my hometown – and on the people who lives there – was huge.

My father, a Vietnam Veteran, was active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion. He twice serves as Commander of American Legion Post 291 – housed in an old historic log cabin in Covington’s city park. As a Boy Scout in Troop 291 – sponsored by the same American Legion post, I would stop and read the plaques and study the pictures mounted on the wall.

Post 291 was named the Fulton – Banta American Legion Post. I remember an old black and white photograph of Ensign John William Banta – for whom the post was co-named. Ensign Banta was Covington’s first casualty in World War II. Fulton, whose background escapes me at the time of this writing, was Covington’s first casualty in World War I.

Something about the way that I was brought up – the combination of small town Indiana and the military service history of my family and neighbors – has always instilled in me a deep respect for the sacrifice of those of served – and those who gave their all. It may come from a deep understanding of freedom – an underlying theme that I heard growing up. From the 4th of July Fireworks, to planting flags as a young Boy Scout on the graves of hundreds of veterans in Fountain County, Indiana, that message was reinforced in my head over and over… and I also learned from the veterans and others who had lived through the Second World War that freedom came with a price. I knew that from the honored pictures of Fulton and Ensign Banta in the American Legion Post.

This weekend, we finally gave them their due with the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.

The summer brought on a huge crush of work as I headed up efforts to prepare for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It was a huge learning experience for me and has opened up all sorts of new career possibilities for me in the future. Hopefully, as things work out, you’ll hear more about those in 2005.

September, I believe, will always be a difficult month for many in the United States. I have memories and feelings that are deeply held about the events of that day and their aftermath – but it was a simple gesture by a peer of mine that has helped me remember how I felt that day.. and why.. I wrote back on September 11th:

In the end, I think we all have the responsibility to remember what happened that day – to us – to our fellow man – here in our own country.

A few weeks ago, while having coffee with a peer in Minneapolis, our conversation steered towards the impact of September 11th on our lives – both personally and professionally.

She pulled out her PDA – tapped on it a few times – and spun it around so that I could read it.

It was her calendar – turned to September 11th, 2004 – and it showed just one word:

Remember

September also brought a new hobby – exercise. For the first time in nearly a decade, I picked up an athletic hobby and started what I hope will be a life altering experience for me. And I solidified that statement with a simple wristband signifying that change in my approach to living:

Livestrong-Tm

With October each year brings the World Series. In my six years in Boston, I’ve watched other teams play in the great dance and watched one of them go home happy. This year, after eighty-six years, it was our turn:

1098940260 8329-Tm-1

November brought, after nearly two years of campaigning, the re-election of President George W. Bush. I danced the happy dance when John Kerry gave a wonderful concession speech:

With that gift also comes obligation. We are required now to work together for the good of our country. In the days ahead, we must find common cause. We must join in common effort without remorse or recrimination, without anger or rancor. America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion.

I hope President Bush will advance those values in the coming years. I pledge to do my part to try to bridge the partisan divide. I know this is a difficult time for my supporters, but I ask them, all of you, to join me in doing that.

Now, more than ever, with our soldiers in harm’s way, we must stand together and succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror.

We lost many friends as a nation in 2004 as well. Two that I’ll always remember were Ronald Reagan and Pat Tillman.

Web 040607-N-6811L-108-Tm



Former President Reagan had one of the most stunningly beautiful funerals I have ever seen. The image of the sunset to the west as he was carried to his final resting place was the perfect epitaph on this man’s life.

Tillman

Much was written this year about Pat Tillman – but I thought this simple tribute from blogger Sgt. Hook said it best:

We landed at one of the Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) yesterday to drop off supplies and pick up some equipment, a somewhat routine mission for us. The crew suddenly became very solemn when we noticed a ceremony being conducted about 30-meters away. A KIA ceremony.

The flag draped coffin was placed in the position of honor in front of a formation of Soldiers while a chaplain said a few words. We were all humbled and reminded of our own immortality and that everyday out here, we are in harm’s way.

As taps played we rendered our salute to the fallen Soldier, hero, who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. News of the firefight resulting in one dead and two wounded a couple of days ago had reached us. We had no idea it was Pat Tillman. Tillman turned down a big fat NFL contract with the Arizona Cardinals to become an Army Ranger shortly after 9/11.

Sgt Tillman is a hero not because he walked away from the Cardinals, but because of where he walked to. He like all the rest of the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coastguardsmen volunteered to put himself between the bad guys and our way of life and fight for its preservation. Rest In Peace Sgt Tillman, your service to our nation is an inspiration and you will not be forgotten.

And we couldn’t recognize these two without acknowledging the sacrifice of hundreds of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coastguardsmen in Iraq and Afghanistan who died for the liberty of total strangers – and who have helped forge a country where I can sit in peace on my couch and write this recap of the past year. We will never forget you.

And so we close the books on 2004. There’s much more I could write but can’t because this is a public forum. There’s more news coming early in 2005 along with my New Year’s Resolutions – but you’ll have to wait until the next year has begun before you can read those.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We’ll tak a cup of kindness yet,

For auld lang syne!

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,

And surely I’ll be mine,

And we’ll tak a cup o kindness yet,

For auld lang syne!

We twa hae run about the braes,

And pou’d the gowans fine,

But we’ve wander’d monie a weary fit,

Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn

Frae morning sun till dine,

But seas between us braid hae roar’d

Sin auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand my trusty fiere,

And gie’s a hand o thine,

And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught,

For auld lang syne

Happy New Year, my friends…. Happy New Year…

Change is Good

by ·

As you can tell by the new look and feel – and the new layout – I’ve decided to make a few changes over here.

I’ve been blogging for well over two years now – this blogs 3rd anniverary will come in January I believe. As has always been the case for me, the end of each year and the changing of the calendar is a time of deep introspection and renewal for me. In the blogosphere at least, this will result in some changes here.

I’m not sure that I’m going to keep the current look and feel – but it will at least serve as a bridge for the time being. There will be more changes to come as I tweak the layout, re-add the blogroll, music selections, and some other goodies.

For certain, some things are gone and won’t be seen again – the moblog is gone as my current cell phone doesn’t have a camera. The sidekick has been encouraging me to post a picture of the day and I may give into that pressure as well. You know women, there’s always pressure 😉

One of my resolutions for next year is to write less often – yet more meaningfully. I’m inspired by what I’ve read at the indomitable EjectEjectEject and his first book Silent America. While I will never be the writer that Bill Whittle is.. I do have much that I feel I can contribute.

But first, this design has to be locked down.

More to come!

Strike the Tent…

by ·

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…

Silent America

by ·

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.

Creating the Home Office for Writing

by ·

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.

Silence

by ·

Good God – last night I noticed that I hadn’t posted a thing since November 21st. Time to play catch up.

As my loyal readers know, I work in retail – and this time of year we’re just a bit busy! Life has been good at work and that’s about all I need to say on that. You can read the public information about how things are going on some other website.

Sidekick’s family came out for Thanksgiving, so that kept us busy as well. Work work, cook cook, clean clean, but hey, that’s what you do.

My parents and brother are coming out on December 22nd, so I’m really looking forward to that.

On the technology front, I’m evaluating a Motion Computing M1400 Tablet PC. So far, I have to say that this thing rocks my world. Expect more to be posted on this once I dig out of the domestic hole I’m in….

More leaf raking today – holiday party tonight up the road a bit.

More later…