Writers

Featured Blog: Our American Family

I just said goodbye to Matt and Lisa and their children.  Their lives are featured on Our American Family, a blog about their family and life in the Foreign Service.  They most recently served in Manila, Philippines, and they are now headed to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic for two years.  They lived here in Virginia while Matt learned Spanish.  We lived in the same proximity until Matt finished his coursework.  They departed for the DR last week.  
 
Matt is a good guy with a great sense of humor and sharp wit.  Lisa is an amazing mom with boundless energy.  Matt and Lisa do a great job chronicling their lives and depicting life whereever they are at the time.  They have an extensive collection of photos of their family, and they do a masterful job managing four children, which they accomplished in Virginia in a two-bedroom apartment with a couple of pets to boot.  The story of the birth of their youngest child, Atticus, is legendary (don’t try it at home).  Matt told me that people who don’t even know him recognize him from that story.  It’s fortunate that Matt is trained to respond to crisis and stepped in to deliver their child single-handedly when things went awry.
 
In this life, people frequently cross paths.  I may not see them again for a few years, most likely back here in Virginia before we move on to their next assignments.  In the meantime, I will keep up with their lives on their web site.  And who knows, maybe a trip to the DR or Paraguay is in the works!

Featured Blog: Global Incident Map

This month’s featured blog isn’t really a blog at all, but it functions like a blog in that it is a news aggregator.  Someone sent me a link to a web site called Global Incident Map (http://www.globalincidentmap.com/), a "global display of terrorism and other suspicious events" as described by the web site.  The site graphically and interactively depicts incidents occurring around the globe as reported by news outlets worldwide.  If nothing else, it is visually stimulating and could leave you feeling a bit uneasy about the state of the world today.
 
Three thoughts came to mind when I checked out this site.  One, most of the incidents reported on the site occurred between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, the world’s climactic hot zone.  This may be because tempers flare in the heat, but with a noticeable dearth of incidents in places such as Russia, China, South America, and Africa, it’s also likely that the site isn’t aggregating incident reports in those regions of the world.  Two, the site still reminds me that the world is a dangerous place even when crime that doesn’t rise to the level of a "suspicious event" occurs. 
 
Finally, the number of incidents occurring in the United States reminds me that America is also a dangerous place.  9/11 and other tragedies aside, the average American often feels safest at home.  That isn’t always the case.  We will be heading to Paraguay soon.  We have heard that crime is high in Paraguay and on the rise, especially petty theft and the occasional carjacking and larceny.  We’ve been advised on some precautions we should take to avoid being victims of crime or terrorism, including running red lights at night, avoiding taxis, and driving indescript vehicles.  While these may be necessary when we’re in Paraguay, we have to remember that we are potential victims wherever we are, even in the United States.  I feel fortunate that the worst incident to have happened to us was finding our car stereo stolen one morning about 10 years ago.  I can only hope and pray that that’s the worst that will happen to us.
 
Check out the site and read some of the related articles.  It’s quite sobering.

Featured Blog: The Nunchuks and Baby Sam

This month’s featured blogs selection features an outstanding double header. 
First up, the Nunchuks.  The Nunchuks (http://web.mac.com/tupelocat/iWeb/The%20Nunchuks/Main.html) is an awesome new hip hop honky-tonk death metal music group featuring three of my favorite colleagues, Wayne, David, and Crackleflame! (name changed to protect the innocent, exclamation point included in name).  These guys are absolutely HOT, I mean completely en fuego (figuratively speaking).  I must say nice things about them, because they will play at our going-away party next Saturday.  (Wait, should people really be having a party because we’re leaving?)  I will play percussion (the egg shaker) and will sing one song the Nunchuks said they would practice for me (thanks guys).  It will be the nicest gig anyone has done for us since we conned a good friend of ours into having her band, Folk Voice Band, play beautiful folk music in our backyard (twice).  The Nunchuks’ music is a bit more honky tonk than hip hop or death metal, but it is fabulous.  Their web site is even more impressive.  Their death metal mystique belies a group of fine gentlemen with a quirky sense of humor who just like to have fun and act silly in front of an audience.  I’m privileged to be counted as one of those dudes who get credit as a guest percussionist and as backup singer on an album jacket.  If you like the Nunchuks, be sure to ask them about buying some schwag.
Also featured this month is Crackleflame’s son, Baby Sam, who is a maestro in his own right.  Baby Sam (http://babysamwebstermain.blogspot.com/) rocks.  I keep encouraging his dad, Crackleflame, to sign him up as the Nunchuks’ band manager, but he seems to think that Baby Sam may be a bit young to manage such a HOT, edgy band.  I’m not sure why.  Based on Baby Sam’s sensible reaction to a diverse selection of musical tastes, I think he is fully ready to immerse himself in the world of music brought to life by the Nunchuks.  As long as his mom and dad makes sure he’s fed and diapered, why not?  It could be that the Nunchuks can’t afford to pay Baby Sam the salary he deserves and would have to seel an awful lot of schwag to meet his contract demands.  Baby Sam could walk at any time.
So there you have it.  This may be the first time that the Crackleflame connection between Baby Sam and the Nunchuks has been uncovered and surreptiously posted on the Web.  You read it here first!