The night before a trial is a particularly poignant moment. I find I cannot organize what I am thinking for this post without some reference to antiquity, and recall those who also find it hard to sleep before such a battle. The soliloquy Upon the King from Henry V comes to mind. As William Shakespeare … More A Soliloquy Upon the Eve of Trial
There is nothing more delightful than Christmas in England. It is a peaceful time of joy and hope, and as I have come to believe, it is the experience of the British as a people that makes it so. This thesis has been long incubating in the back of my mind. Christmas dinner two years … More Christmas in England
Among the great surprises of history was the speed of which France fell to the German invasion in 1940. We armchair historians tend to gloss over the event, and focus solely on the heroic last stand Britian made that following summer. In doing so we miss a remarkable drama that unfolded in the few weeks … More Churchill Recalls: The Fall of France- May 10 1940 to Dunkirk
In the Second World War, young Russian women, often just girls, would volunteer to fight at the front against the Germans. If assigned to a tank medical corps, their position was to ride on the back of a tank into battle while the male soldiers rode inside driving the tank and firing the weapons. Russian … More Baby Boomers: Born at the Right Time and Place.
Occasionally one encounters an individuals whose history is so different from one’s own, the telling of his life story renders our own to appear quite fortunate by comparison. Into our lives walks Henry, native son of the Sudan and now South Sudan, that country having gained independence in 2011. There was of course, prior to … More Out of Africa
For democracy, times appear dark. All over the world this means of governance, conceived in liberty as Lincoln said, is in retreat. In Myanmar and India, in Hungry and Hong Kong and many other places direct and blatant steps to reverse the advance of self governance has been either legislatively adopted or a stronger power … More We Here Highly Resolve
In the extremes of human existence, few compare with the experience of flight, and in particular, flight of an armed aircraft over long distances over enemy held territory during times of war. WWII has provided us hundreds of these stories; men lost in the Sahara desert due to navigational error, men lost in the Pacific … More Remembrance Day: Flight of the Stirling
My guitar mentor Ford Giesbrecht has created an adaptation of another work of Edgar Allen Poe, composed the music, the video, and encouraged me to record this chilling yarn. All editing is of course his. To reacquaint the listener to the horror of this tale, recall that revenge is a dish best served cold. Hence … More The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe
David Rothkoff, host of my favorite podcast, Deep State Radio, but in real life an accomplished professor of international relations, coined the phrase recently, we are “Present at the Destruction”. This comment was a riff after the 1969 Dean Acheson’s book about his years at the State Department was published, detailing the prewar and post … More Present at the Destruction
I lead a lot of men and women in a desperate battle. I did not ask for the post, it is just the way it is in times of what appears to be civil war; talents emerge that otherwise would have never been known. We set our defense as many hastily collected elements of like … More At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming
Lawyers Road Review 