May Your Soul Never Forget What We Lost That Day…

Over Labor Day weekend I visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum (https://www.911memorial.org/museum). I have visited the Memorial before, but not the Museum. I had heard from friends and colleagues that the Museum was a powerful experience, but I could not mentally frame what that experience would be like prior to actually experiencing it. I still [...]

“God Watch Over Us, Each and Every One of Us.”

I am not exactly sure when I started offering up my simple go-to prayer internally to God, but I know I have been doing it for years now. Indeed, every time I am concerned for someone I care about's well-being, see something that I think has inherent risk, or fly in a plane, I offer up [...]

Think about the life you are willing to exchange for it…

Some of my students dreamed up the term "CAROL-ING" to denote when a person is worrying about risk.  It is a backhanded homage to me, but I'll accept it graciously if it means that they are using my name to herald the behavior.  I do lecture them endlessly about risk - it is part of [...]

Fallen

On June 30, 2013,  19 firefighters were lost while battling the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona.  The fallen represent about 20% of Prescott's Fire Department.  It is an unbearable loss that is difficult to absorb even in a field where danger is a part of the day-to-day job. Every time a firefighter is lost, the [...]

Solidarity…

I have been touched by the gestures of solidarity toward Newtown, Connecticut that have been evident from around the world.  TIME magazine posted photos of some of the vigils and tributes. The television show The Voice started its show earlier this week with a somber, dignified, respectful, and understated performance of Hallelujah by the coaches and show contestants as [...]

They are all “our” children…

I was grateful to see President Obama on television this evening speaking at the Memorial Service in Newtown, Connecticut.  I felt that the members of that community and the country needed to hear the President acknowledge that the horror of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary is a shared sorrow.  In the President's comments he referred to the [...]

We shall find peace…

  We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels; we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds. ~Anton Chekhov Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/2006 Daniel Barden, 9/25/2005 Olivia Engel, 7/18/2006 Josephine Gay, 12/11/2005 Ana Marquez-Greene, 4/4/2006 Dylan Hockley, 3/8/2006 Madeleine Hsu, 7/10/2006 Catherine Hubbard, 6/8/2006 Chase Kowalski, 10/31/2005 Jesse Lewis, 6/30/2006 James Mattioli, 3/22/2006 Grace McDonnell, 11/4/2005 [...]