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Which is a little misleading in that I stopped in Chicago and spent the night at my brother’s place, then stopped the next night in Spearfish, So. Dak. and stayed at my other brother’s place. I also stopped at some gas stations, some fast food restaurants, and bought a new tail light off of Amazon. [...]

I read this book. This was the “follow up” to With the Old Breed, which is the greatest first-person account of war I’m aware of. It was written by the same guy, Eugene Sledge. Unfortunately, it turns out that 100 pages of musings about sitting around in China after the war isn’t quite as gripping [...]

I was gonna do some big write up about the CSA, but I guess I don’t care that much. Going to the south is like going to a foreign country where they speak English. They have their own history and aristocracy and culture and symbols and clearly none of these are mine/yours (unless you’re from [...]

Main reasons for going to Richmond: (1) I’d meant to spend a day there on my road trip last year, but it got squeezed out; (2) $36 a night at a newly renovated Holiday Inn. Also it was within a six-and-a-half-hour driving radius from Pgh (barely). Plus there’s nothing to do there that requires you [...]

Went back to the Marine Corps museum when I was in NoVa a couple weeks ago. They added a couple new areas to it since I went there last year, one on “the early days” (pre WWI) and one on World War I. Now that those areas are open, it’s hard to imagine the museum [...]

I’ve been watching the PBS series Carrier, which follows the USS Nimitz through a Persian Gulf deployment in 2005 (note: this post was written a while back). One of the things that’s most striking is how the crew splits up in terms of their views on the war. Also striking is how neither side’s opinion [...]

Best Feature: Really nice job of in medias res and of avoiding exposition, plus Lee Marvin was fun to watch. Biggest Question: How did they manage to hang out together for a month (longer?) without either of them ever learning a word of the other’s language? Too Long By: 20 minutes. Haiku Synopsis: On island [...]

I got to work this morning, saw that the flag was at half-mast, realized why it was at half-mast, then had to check myself to avoid vomiting. The people that died in those attacks was one of the lesser tragedies of that day (and the number of deaths, as I’ve detailed sort of inadvertently in [...]

One of the most compelling, uh, *things* (good word, bk!) I found to help understand the war experience was this PBS-compiled collection of WWII artwork (paintings, some sketches) completed by people who were actually there: They Drew Fire You couple this collection with some first-hand accounts and I think you’d probably be 80% of the [...]

They’re not actually insouciant. They’re kind of the opposite of that. Inspired by the rockin’ Russian paratroopers (is it just me, or does that look like the world’s least cool obstacle course those guys are running through? ‘cuz that’s the most laughable thing in there…), I’ve now found a whole new category of crap to [...]