Last weekend marked the beginning of my annual ritual of spending a bunch of money on various plants, putting them into the ground and then watch them die due to a combination of the killer Pocono soil and my own poison thumb.
So I picked up this cool looking flower and of course immediately forgot its name. The color is really striking.
Well, it seemed to last much longer than it actually did, but my military training is finally finished and I can go back to ‘normal’ working hours. In the past 16 days we got over 630 soldiers to fire the 240B machine gun on three different ‘tables’. It was an exhausting experience.
A number of soldiers from the NJ National Guard are getting ready to deploy to Iraq later in the year and I’ve been able to observe how some of them are preparing for that deployment over the past 4 months. It’s been very interesting to compare the training and preparation these soldiers are getting with the training I received before mobilizing in 2003.
The training I received back then was substandard in virtually all areas. Basic soldier skills which were ignored up to that point (because, according to the leadership, we’d get lots of refresher training on them in the unlikely event we were ever called to war) were passed over because (ready for this?) everyone assumed we had been maintaining our proficiency in them for years.
Combat training was minimal because we weren’t a combat unit and our leadership couldn’t conceive a scenario where such training would be necessary (despite evidence in the early days of the Iraq war that support units were, in fact, finding themselves in combat). To be fair to the leadership it must be said that additional training would have cut into their drinking time and so would have placed an undue burden on them.
The training I’ve observed (especially that conducted at the armories) has been much better than what I encountered. The one exception that I can see is weapons training. Given how much soldiers are going to rely on their weapons, I think more time (much more time) needs to be spent getting soldiers proficient with the weapons they’ll be expected to use. When I entered the army I received one full week of training in the M-16. I learned how to take it apart, put it together and shoot it (again and again). After that, in the reserves, training is limited to firing the weapon for a couple of hours, once a year. When getting ready to spend a year in a war zone, the army gives (at best) a few hours of instruction and then throws you on the range to ‘qualify’ (which is a minimum number of targets you need to hit in a specific time period). The whole thing is more about checking off a box than actually conducting any meaningful training but that’s all they get. That’s a shame since soldiers more proficient in weapons use means less ‘collateral damage’ which is a definite boon to any hearts and minds campaign.
A little while ago, I wrote that I had been experimenting with the self publishing site Blurb.com. I wanted a way to capture some of my better photos and old school picture albums just weren’t cutting it. They just didn’t seem particularly satisfying or complementary to my pictures and in many cases, they don’t leave you any opportunity to put the photos into context with text. I guess I could hand write notes around the pictures but given my handwriting style, I think that would just give readers the impression that I was some sort of escaped mental patient. At a minimum, I’m sure it could be used against me at any sort of commitment hearing.
That leads to the second problem with photo albums. They’re difficult to reproduce. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking I’ll make the NY Times bestseller list (although with nonsense like this topping the non-fiction lists perhaps I do have a decent chance of making the list) it is nice to be able to have a way to make copies if friends, family or others would like them.
So, dear readers, because I’ve come to think of you as one big happy family (the kind that keeps meaning to visit but can’t seem to find the time because they have to lance that nasty looking boil on the cat), I’m posting my works so far on the right hand side of the screen (See? Those nifty little thumbnail images over there?).
The “War is Heck” book contains many of the stories you’ve seen here (with serious editing to correct the grammatical/spelling mistakes and to punch up the stories) as well as a few I haven’t posted. In addition, there are 100+ photos of my time there, most quite good, if I say so myself. I’ve had to blot out the faces of U.S. soldiers so they aren’t recognizable just to stay on the safe side of any potential legal issues.
The books are really of quite good quality in terms of binding, paper quality, etc. I’ve only ordered the hardcovers thus far and was very pleased.
So, help out a starving artist, and pick up one of these fine books today (Christmas ain’t that far away, after all).
I’ve been playing around with Blurb which is a self publishing website. I’ve taken tons of pictures but really struggled with how to best display them. I’m not really satisfied with them just sitting on my laptop or in an old school photo album and I’ve only got so much wall space to hang them up so I thought that a photo book might be the answer. The whole process is simple and pretty fun. You download the free and (really) easy to use software program and go to town building a book.
Anyway, my first result is here:
A collection of photos from two trips to Sweden in 2005 and 2007. The photos look wonderful in this format (if I say so myself) and I have to say I’ve drunk the kool-aid regarding Blurb.
I’m working on another one from my time in Afghanistan that will combine my best photos with my stories and observations from my time there (edited to remove those pesky spelling mistakes and garbled text you’ll find here!)
The one downside to Blurb (and all these other self publishing sites)? They end up being a bit pricey. But they do look damn good…
I’ve been going through my photos recently and was shocked to find out that I didn’t include this one (one of my favorites) in my Sweden set on my flickr account. Well here it is…my nephew (well, my wife’s nephew…does that make him my nephew in law?) on the left meeting a knight during Medieval Week in Visby. I really like everything about this picture and wish I could say I planned it this way but I really just lucked out.
Mad props to the dude playing the knight. He just walked up to us while I was taking some pictures of the little guy and offered to have his picture taken.
One of my favorite pictures of Shiloh. I was taking him to go play frisbee (his favorite pastime) and he was so anxious he offered to drive. Of course I didn’t let him…he’d been drinking all day.
Reaching back in the archives for this one…Arizona in February, 2001. Somewhere in the Coronado National Forest.
As we were carving pumpkins last night I began thinking about the trick-or-treating traditions I had as a child. At the risk of sounding like some sort of old codger, I think it was a whole lot more fun back in the day.
Today, many towns have rules about what times trick or treating can occur. Some even move the day to the preceding weekend to make it more convenient! That’s totally unacceptable and ruins the whole idea. Once we move Christmas we can talk about moving Halloween. Otherwise, hands off!
I’ve seen a lot of parents who drive their kids around, from house to house to trick-or-treat. Again, it misses the whole point of the event (on top of demonstrating why childhood obesity is such a problem in this country). Don’t worry, you’re kid can walk a few blocks once in awhile. It won’t kill them. Besides, the best part of the night was stumbling back home, exhausted and footsore with a bag bursting with candy. It left you with a sense of accomplishment, like running a marathon only with candy at the end.
A lot of malls offer trick-or-treating which is a simply ridiculous and pathetic attempt to get people to shop. No self-respecting trick-or-treater would sell out by going to the mall for candy. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the fun? Mall trick-or-treating is for losers.
Right after school I’d get home and get my costume on. My mom would then have to physically restrain me from leaving, telling me: “Let people get in their homes for a second!” She was probably right, I don’t think there were many people around to hand out candy at 3:30 in the afternoon. Once it was deemed late enough, I’d meet up with friends and we’d canvass as much of our town as we could. I can’t remember my parents giving me a deadline to be home by but there must have been one. Fortunately, they weren’t uber-paranoid types, worried that every piece of candy had a razor blade in it or that legions of psychos and sickos were just waiting to snatch me off the street so we (a bunch of pre-teens) were free to wander the town by ourselves.
We had a funeral home in town which converted a garage into a rest stop of ghoul and ghost wanna-bes. They set up chairs and gave away free donuts and cider and kids could go there to rest and plot their next moves.
One of the most fun things I remember was running into other groups of kids around town and sharing information about which were the good and bad houses to go to. Who gave out the good candy and who gave out a couple of pennies?
Ahhh…..good times…
A while ago I got an email through my Flikr account from a representative for a gaming company. They were designing a game and wanted to use one of my photographs. I have to admit I didn’t think the picture was particularly good but they were looking for something from the Swedish town of Birka and liked this particular one. I find it interesting that some of the pictures I love don’t resonate much with people who view them and ones I’m ready to toss out are popular. I can’t even have the luxary of saying they have bad taste because the picture they do like is one of mine.
Anyway, here’s the picture that made me an official ‘paid photographer’ (I still haven’t cashed the $30 check)
Anyway, check out the game, Solitaire Pop by Playfirst.com.
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