duty & skill and will.

From last post – some thoughts inspired by Unforgiving Minute. Duty. Mullaley focuses on the notion of duty when discussing the Ramayana. I grew up with parents who are apart from the culture I grew up in. This created all kinds of problems and interesting/unique experiences. From them I learned and accepted the idea of a lifelong duty to […]

fighting the world’s fight.

In The Unforgiving Minute, Craig Mullaney talks about his Rhodes Scholar experience. In introducing it, he speaks of ‘a demonstrated passion for “fighting the world’s fight”‘ as one of the criteria for selection. The phrase stuck in my mind. What did it mean to fight the world’s fight? How do you dedicate yourself to this? Is it […]

reading: the unforgiving minute.

I read Joker One and The Unforgiving Minute back-to-back (thanks, Amazon recommendations!) I expected similar books since they are first-person tales from Iraq and Afghanistan. While true, I found them to be of very different quality. While readable, I found that Unforgiving Minute lacked the power and voice of Joker One. Fair or not, I can’t […]

reading joker one.

At one point in 2004-2005 I read a book or two a week. In retrospect, it was a phenomenal time. Some of my earliest memories are of reading soo much. At one point, I remember that my brother and I were so engrossed that our father took our books away from us when we had […]