WORLD CHAMPS!!!

It has finally happened and it ended the way it should...with Mr. Perfect on the mound.

I need time to soak it in and enjoy before recording some thoughts. But in the mean time...some pics that will live forever...

1980s sacrilege...

I am committing the highest of all blasphemies against the gods of the 80s by posting this video. What represents that hallowed decade more than the video for Ah-Ha's song Take on Me? Poofy hair, bad clothes, senseless plot, electric piano...

If you are laughing, it is because you know it's true.

If anthropologists thousands of years from now found this video on a decaying cassette and tried to piece together the song that inspired it, I imagine what you see below would come pretty close to what they would reproduce.

Enjoy...



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Godspeed, members of the 261st Signal Brigade

This is my good friend Mike holding my daughter earlier today. We were at the deployment ceremony for Mike and 114 other member's of Delaware's 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade in Dover. Tomorrow the men and women of the 261st will depart for Texas, leaving home and family, job and place of worship. From Texas it will be onto the Middle East.

I needed to take a moment here to express my deep felt gratitude, respect, and sense of awe for these amazing people. Up to this point, the war has largely been academic for me. I have watched the news, read the papers, debated this or that on-line, but it has always been in a detached sort of way, the way I study history from centuries past.

Today that all changed.

It changed in the resolute and determined looks of men and women voluntarily leaving home and family to travel halfway across the world and placing themselves in harms way. It changed in the tears that dripped from the eyes of family members, tears a mystifying combination of fierce pride and deep sadness. It changed with the farewell hug of a friend I will not see for many months.

It changed.

It touched me today in the way it has touched thousands upon thousands of families. It is no longer academic. It sits with me here in my kitchen as I type, in the form of a dark green cross and set of prayer beads that hang on my wall, a daily reminder to pray not only for the Mike and his fellow soldiers in the 261st, but all men and women, serving this country on foreign soil and here at home. A daily reminder to pray also for their families, who make deep sacrifices as well, missing the person who should be filling that empty kitchen chair on a daily basis.

Mike thanked me for coming today, as did many of the other soldiers I met.

But it is I who thank them. Not only for their brave actions, which no awkward words of mine could ever express the depth of gratitude I feel. But also for their example. Their selfless, courageous, amazing example.

If you are someone who is inclined to pray, I ask you to stop right now and pray for our soldiers. Thank God for them, pray for their safety, and pray comfort for their families. And when you see a soldier, in the mall, on the street, in your neighborhood...stop and say thank you. Express your appreciation.

You will never meet someone who deserves it more.