War Poetry Potpourri and a Corn Belt Cornucopia

"You've been writing a lot about poetry lately," says Archer.

I know.

I guess you could say I'm writing what I know. Or what doing what I know. Which, this summer, is poetry. Also, comic books. And constructing foam-armor costumes with the Sherpa kids. It's summertime, after all, and we have a couple of weeks of "Camp Dad" on the calendar.

So, I've slowed down the blog a bit, shifted the frequency of posts to once a week.

Behind the blog-scene, I'm shopping to publishers and contests a manuscript of my own military-themed poetry, while also wrestling with the harder parts of that never-ending "Red Bull in Afghanistan" non-fiction project. I'm also ramping up to help out some of my veterans-lit buddies at Military Experience & the Arts with a larger, on-going editorial project. More on that in a future post.

Summer is here! That's Annual Training season!

Through press releases and social media, I've been watching members of the Minnesota National Guard's 1st Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (1-34th BCT) engage in a large-scale training event at Camp Ripley, Minn. They're getting ready for a 2016 rotation "in the box" at the National Training Center (N.T.C.), Fort Irwin, Calif. Meanwhile, members of the Iowa National Guard's 2-34th BCT are prepping for a rotation later this summer at Joint Readiness Training Center (J.R.T.C.), Fort Polk, La. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."

Good times, good times ...

That reminds me: I should write a humorous essay titled "Ways that Camp Dad is like Annual Training." Something akin to that time I compared/contrasted working in a Tactical Operations Center and working in a daycare. It seems to me that I haven't been bringing the funny much lately. 

Unless you're talking poetry, of course. Which I am. No big surprise here, but the stuff I write usually tends toward the humorous. Even with all the summer household chaos and logistics, I've had some recent good fortune in getting my work out there and published.

One recent arrival is The Corn Belt Almanac, a cornucopia full of essays, fiction, poetry, recipes, fun facts, and other good stuff about agriculture—about how and what we eat.

The almanac is the third such project from The Head & The Hand Press, a small press located in Philadelphia, Penn. Previous years brought about 2013's The Rust Belt Almanac (on themes of urban renewal) and 2014's The Asteroid Belt Alamanac (on themes regarding science and space). Writers, take note: There's also soon to be an open call for The Bible Belt Almanac, to be published in 2016. Editors will be looking for work regarding religion and philosophy.

You can buy The Corn Belt Almanac here. The 116-page journal not only includes "10 haiku about a state fair," written by the writer of the Red Bull Rising blog, but also a recipe for "Kick-@$$ Corn" from Household-6! It's also chock-full of literary goodness!

But what's the connection to military writing, Sherpa?

Well, an early draft of "10 haiku …" did include one about military recruiters working at a state fair. That, however, grew into its own, non-haiku work. It hasn't yet been published.

There's also probably something grand and theoretical to be said about the natural evolution of artist- and writer-veterans. At some point, we each have to be open to considering topics other than war. At some point, we each might drop the hyphenated "-veteran." (Heck, some might even call that "reintegration" into civilian life.)

More directly, however, I first came across The Head & The Hand Press when reviewing Adrian Bonenberger's 2014 memoir "Afghan Post." They're a hardworking and creative "craft publisher"—check out their "community-supported" business model, for example—and bring a lot to our collective literary table.

Friendly reminder: You can buy Bonenberger's book through Amazon, your local bookseller, or direct from the publisher.

In other war poetry news, fellow Military Writers Guild member Mikhail Grinberg recently wrote a two-part review and interview with self-published war poet Stanton S. Coerr's 2013 collection "Rubicon". Coerr is a former Marine attack-helicopter driver, and he has some good things to say in person and in print.

I commend both the review and the interview to you, although I think that modern military-themed poetry has a larger footprint than either writer suggests. Does it enjoy the same reach and financial success as the latest summer blockbuster? Probably not. But it's doing important stuff, and there's a market for it. Grinberg's review personally influenced me, for example, to seek out and purchase Coerr's work.

I've also taken the liberty of adding Coerr's work to my "Mother of All 21st Century War Poetry Lists," which was first posted last April, and now appears as a static page on the Red Bull Rising blog.

"Attack! Attack! Attack!"

Vietnam to Today, 'Doonesbury' Tells Soldiers' Stories

During Operation Desert Storm—when I was a young lad going to school for my country—I carried in my cargo pocket a laminated Doonesbury comic strip, clipped out of a newspaper. (I've mentioned this in a blog-post before.) Doonesbury is written and drawn by Garry Trudeau. In my Desert Storm favorite, a Vietnam veteran was telling war stories to new soldiers. One of the soldiers asks, "Really, you shot your own officers?"

"Just the dumb ones," replies the character B.D. "Lieutenants mostly."

For me, who was then himself studying to be a young Army leader, the Doonesbury comic was the equivalent to that quote from "Patton" (1970). In that movie, the famous general tells of the ancient Roman practice of reminding its heroes that "all glory is fleeting."

Earlier this year, the 65-year-old Trudeau announced the daily strip would be going on extended hiatus, so that he could focus on other projects—including the successful Internet-TV series "Alpha House."

Parallel to that announcement came news that "The Sandbox," a Doonesbury-sponsored digest of first-person military writing about Iraq and Afghanistan, would soon cease publication of new content. The digest started in October 2006, when the practice of mil-blogging was just gaining recognition and popularity.

Even though new content will soon cease, plans call for The Sandbox to remain on-line indefinitely as an archive of veterans' perspectives of Iraq and Afghanistan. (A 2007 print collection, "Doonesbury.com's The Sandbox: Dispatches from Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," continues to be available via booksellers.)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Trudeau has long used comics to communicate stories to provoke and educate non-military audiences about the realities of war, service, and deployment. His character B.D. started out in the Vietnam War, served in the Gulf War, and lost a leg in the Iraq War. The more-recent character Leo "Toggle" DeLuca was injured in an ambush in Iraq, where he lost an eye and now has difficulty speaking. B.D.'s close friend Ray Hightower was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.). Melissa "Mel" Wheeler is an Army sergeant and a survivor of Military Sexual Trauma (M.S.T.). Her best friend is Roz, a soldier who happens to be gay.

Vietnam War-era Doonesbury comics are being re-run on weekdays 

during Garry Trudeau's extended hiatus. Many resonate with readers

given present-day situations.

In a time- and mind-bending twist, during the extended hiatus, the daily Doonesbury strip now features classic runs from the 1970s. Last week, the strip told the story of B.D.'s arrival in Vietnam. "I arrived in Vietnam yesterday and I must say, I love it," B.D. writes home. "I'm stationed at Firebase Bundy in the Delta and I've got my own bunker and machine gun!!" Suddenly, a heck of a firefight opens up overhead. "Well, have to run now. Much love, B.D."

That reminded me of mil-blogging.

It doesn't take much to see other parallels there, of writing letters from downrange, of communicating truths through humor, of finding yourself and your country stuck in a foreign place, uncomfortable and under fire.

I hope Trudeau keeps telling his stories as long as he can. Our democracy and soldiers are well-served by truth-tellers, even those armed with a sense of snark. I can also hope, however, that my daughter and son will one day read Doonesbury—whether those from Vietnam or the Gulf War or Iraq—and maybe not understand as many of the jokes as I did.

Before and after Afghanistan, my buddy Archer and I used to continually quote the 2004 Battlestar Galactica TV series, which was itself a nod to the concept of eternal return: "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." What does it say that we recognize ourselves and our wars in some funny pages first published more than four decades ago?

While I no longer wear a uniform, I now keep that favorite Doonesbury strip in my journalist go-bag. It reminds me of the good old days, and keeps me humble. Even though history may not repeat itself, after all, it sure does rhyme upon occasion.

All this has happened before.

And all glory is fleeting.

Happy Fanoo Year!

Archer took a different duty assignment in the Iowa Army National Guard after he got home from Afghanistan, and I finally got a chance to visit him in his new digs last month. On his desk was one Jim Dandy of a display, a frilly Conquistador of Love. Apparently, it's a major award!

"It's the Fanoogie," he explained, all proud and sheepish at the same time. "I thought I was going to pass it off to a sergeant major at the last meeting, but he didn't show."

That's probably a good thing, because the Fanoogie Award notably lacks a Reflective Safety Belt. No doubt the good sergeant major can correct the discrepancy, once the statue changes hands. Every person to whom it is presented adds an individual piece of flair. Each recipient  adds his or her name to the F.N.G. log book.

"Fanoogie"? That's how the unit pronounces the acronym for "F'ing New Guy."

Or, if you prefer the family-friendly version: "Foolish New Grunt."

Happy Fanoo Year!

Mil-blogging Tips and Tactics, Part I

As mentioned in a previous Red Bull Rising blog-post, a couple of readers asked for Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (T.T.P.) on "How to Write a Mil-blog."

With the usual "lessons-learned"-style caveats about my being both an Army of One and a Sample of One, what follows is a quick run toward some helpful hints. More caveats: Your results may vary. Void where prohibited. Take what you need, leave the rest.

Here goes, in no particular order:

Choose your own adventurous identity."On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." As a journalist, I've been trained to avoid citing anonymous sources and to view the use of pseudonyms suspiciously. That said, I realize that loved ones—especially kids—don't always like to appear in print. There's also the question of your co-workers and fellow soldiers: Regardless of whether you live in on a FOB or in a foxhole, you also have to train, fight, win, sleep, and eat with the guys and gals next to you.

Because of all that, for purposes of safety and sanity, you may wish to mask people's identities. You may also wish to mask your own, because Uncle Sam is occasionally a little bi-polar when it comes to blogging. The same guy who made you a lean, mean killing machine is also the one who issued you a Reflective Safety Belt.

Personally, I started writing under a pseudonym because, while preparing to deploy in 2009, I was confused and confounded by Army rules and regulations regarding use of social media. Keep in mind, IT WAS PART OF MY ARMY JOB to advise my command and fellow staffers regarding uses/risks of social media. I was an internal communicator (and blogger) by day, and a mil-blogger by night. Although that sounds a little like a mission brief that starts off with "Assault Team Fox will secure Objective Henhouse,"creating the "Sherpa" allowed me to established a bright line between on-duty and after-duty.

With all my various identities and log-ins, by the way, my buddy Archer started calling me a "4th Level Sock Puppet."

So, I'm a fan of pseudonyms. Years after the fact, the "Sherpa" persona continues to be useful. Sherpa is neither a commissioned nor warrant nor enlisted soldier. Who he is depends on where he is and who you are. Sherpa is neither trigger-puller, Fobbit, nor stay-at-home Jody. Sherpa can play stupid when necessary, and be a smart@$$ when he wants to. The real guy wearing the mask can't always do that.

Besides, Sherpa and I know different people. We tend to lead separate lives.

State the mission. Before you even write your first blog-post, write an approximately 25-word statement describing the purpose and scope of your blog. Complete this sentence: "The purpose of this blog is to ..." Don't worry: Nothing is written in stone on the Internet, and you can always change it later. Don't know where to start? Read on ...

Triangulate your position. Name three of your life's passions. Write them on piece of paper. You can even draw circles around them, like a Venn diagram. Look where they intersect. That's your target. Start your writing there. (Example: When I started Red Bull Rising, I knew I was passionate about my family, citizen-soldiers, and the 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division.)

As long as any given post connects to some or all of your three passions, you'll keep a tight topical shot-group.

Never write anything you wouldn't say to someone face-to-face. I learned a variation of this in journalism school: "Never write anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of The New York Times." Either way, it distills to this: Never write anything you wouldn't want to explain or defend. That goes for e-mail messages, news articles, love letters, Facebook hacks, and blog posts.

Pick your fights wisely. The old summer-camp-and-dorm-room rule applies: Never talk religion or politics, they just stand in the way of a good time or mutual understanding. You have your opinions. Let other people have theirs. Let's talk about what matters, mil-bloggers. Let's talk about the troops.

Be open to all. Blogging is a journey, not a destination. You meet a lot of people along the way. Take wisdom and advice, wherever you find it. That grandmother in Kentucky knows more than you do about bloggers and blogging, as well as what's happening overseas. So does that Army doctor's wife, who turns out to be a freelance writer who shares an interest in educating youth about writing. So does that mischievous Medieval Sheila who sends pink musk-sticks in care packages to our troops downrange.

Personal note: I would not be the blogger I am today without a lot of help from Kentucky Woman, Kanani Fong, Mari Paxford, Jeff Courter, Ben Tupper, David Stanford at Doonesbury's "The Sandbox," Tom Ricks, Carl Prine, and Doctrine Man!!

Remember Sherpatude No. 24.

*****

One of my next pointers is to keep blog-posts short. And, when you can't do that, to cut them into parts. That leads me to this statement:

To be continued in the next Red Bull Rising blog-post ...

A Day in the Red Bull Life

"I read the news today, oh boy ..."

Yesterday, the Des Moines Register posted an early report that two Iowa National Guard soldiers had been injured in an Improvised Explosive Device (I.E.D.) attack in Afghanistan--Laghman Province, most likely, given that they're from the 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regment (1-133rd Inf.)--and had been evacuated to Germany. The count of 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division soldiers (2-34th BCT) seriously injured on its current deployment now totals six.

A few hours later, the Omaha World-Herald posted a gritty and grippy article about soldiers from 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment, engaged in a Parwan Province firefight.

"Woke up. Fell out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head."

Archer is home from Afghanistan for a few days. We met up at a local pie-shop yesterday, and didn't talk about too much that was too important. That morning, I'd seen The Postman's wife post on Facebook a glimpse of her camouflaged husband, snapped as he crossed the threshold between Jetway and Delta Airlines. Two weeks ago, we met at Bennigan's. Now, he's back to Bagram. The Great Freedom Bird is, without doubt, a fickle and migratory animal. It only rests in one place for a fortnight.

Meanwhile, there's the rushing sound of a threatened U.S. federal government shutdown. Soldiers may not got paid on time. Families at home are worried about paying the rent, and off-duty soldiers downrange have little to do but take it out on the Internet. If you think all the flinging of political venom and excrement isn't playing well back home in Panora, think how it's playing downrange in Parwan.

This morning, I chatted online with a buddy overseas. We'd planned to deploy together last summer, and had even begun to conspire to somehow improve our little part of the U.S. Army. He sounded good, but frustrated. He's had about three different career changes since 12 months ago, and none has been what we'd expected to be doing. Reading the scroll of our conversation back, parts now seem almost poetic. Here's a sanitized snippet:

but i'm an X
not a Y
it actually could be an easy job
but there is no room for error
and I have made them

There are approximately 3,000 soldiers on the 2-34th BCT deployment. Each day brings a soldier another story. Some of those stories are heart-pounding, some are chest-thumping. Some are filled with confusion, hurt, or injury. Some are contemplative and thought-provoking.

The passage of each is worthy of note.

Another "day in the life" ...

The Shapes of Things to Come

Archer and I have big plans, if only we could each figure out what we want to be when we grow up. Both of us are do-it-yourselfers, although he's probably got more tools and toys than I do. He's a mover and a maker, and just bought a bunch of high-tech fabrication tools that allegedly fell off someone's truck. Hopefully, they'll still be there in his garage, patiently waiting for him to get home from the deployment. Hopefully, his more-than-tolerant spouse will be, too.

When he's in uniform, Archer is a member of the 334th Brigade Support Battalion (BSB)--the unit that includes the transportation, maintenance, medical, and other functions the brigade requires to fight and keep fighting. It's not always the sexiest, most-glamorous mission, but it's good and challenging work. Archer often quotes some dead white general as saying, "Amateurs talk strategy, but professionals talk logistics."

If he doesn't already have one, Archer probably needs to get a Master of Business Administration (MBA), with a minor in Making Science-Fiction Fact. He reads a lot of organizational change-management books, and often talks about emerging trends like 3-D printing and automated agriculture. Archer, for one, welcomes our future farm-robot overlords, while I don't even know what a 3-D printer is. I can barely get mine to work in two dimensions.

I tend more toward the home-remodeling part of the brain trust, although here's where I probably should also own up to attending a few semesters at a local architectural college. While there, I was absolutely amazed by what younger, more-tech-savvy students could do. They thought nothing of virtually flying-through computer models of their designs. Or building structural models using laser-cutters. Or building objects using the school's 3-D printer.

Me? I could use a hammer. And a pencil.

I stopped by the BSB earlier this week, only to find a Transatlantic-cable's worth of Smurf-colored Ethernet cables spewing out of the unit's drop ceilings. This thing looks like a blue anaconda, stretching down out of the ceiling and onto the floor below. Archer and a couple of other soldiers were knocking down walls and pulling computer wiring into an old locker room. It looks like an episode of This Old House. Or a meth lab. "This is the new 'Battle Sustainment Laboratory,'" Archer says proudly, brandishing a 12-volt cordless drill. It's probably pearl-handled, like Patton's.

They're building a hardstand version of what I'm learning to do this week, except with tents and generators and stuff. It's very likely that some of our Red Bull units, particularly those like Archer's battalion and the brigade headquarters, may arrive in Afghanistan to occupy previously built structures. So the BSB commander has decided to learn by doing. "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us," goes one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes. Knock a few walls, knock a few heads, and thereby change the organization's culture, communications, and capabilities.

Interestingly, Archer and I each find ourselves working in experimental environments, exploring the applications of Churchill's remark in concrete terms.

Change is in the making.

The Kids are All Right

Just a quick anecdote today. Archer and I were talking over lunch one day, and I was sharing my concerns about potentially leaving 5-year-old Lena and nearly 3-year-old Rain for a year in Afghanistan. Archer and I are about the same age, but I started the family thing later in life than he. He's got a couple of teenage boys.

Archer tells me not to freak out too much, then hits me with some additional perspective. "The thing that gets me about teenagers," Archer says, "is that they've become their own people. I'll not only be leaving them as my kids, I'll be leaving them as my friends."

There's an oft-quoted war-chestnut that "soldiers don't go to war for their countries, they fight for their buddies." I don't envy Archer's dilemma, and I'm glad I don't yet have to walk in his boots.

This is the Way the World Ends

This is the way my civilian world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

There was no formal "Red Bull" alert message this time around, rippling through the herd by telephone. Instead, the message was relayed by Archer, who had just happened to be copied on an e-mail my new boss had attempted to send to me, forgetting or not knowing or not caring that my military e-mail account was broken. I hope that's not an omen.

"Hey, Sherpa, you might want to give Lt. Col. Xavier a call ... He's trying to get ahold of you."

So, today is the first day of another tour of active-duty. My orders, when they finally catch up with me, will be a patchwork of funding sources and time periods: a couple of weeks of Annual Training money, a couple more of school money, then finally a couple of months of "Active Duty for Operational Support (ADOS)." The acronym is pronounced "ay-dahs."

The unit is months away from Mobilization-Day--what we call "M-day," a parallel concept, I suppose, to what our grandfathers called "D-day." M-days can always change, shifting to the left or right on the calendar. And they have been known to suddenly disappear altogether. But I'm not betting on it, and I've asked my family to stop betting on it, too.

The Red Bull is a big herd, after all, and once roused, is as hard to stop as any bureaucracy. We have little doubt that we'll be put to use, sometime soon, and somewhere in the world. Right now, according to what's already been put out to the public, that place is Afghanistan.

Back in 1997, when I was assigned to a different unit than what I am now, there had been more-than-rumors about a possible deployment to Bosnia back. That was the same year that Household-6 and I were planning to get married. That wasn't a true Red Bull message, but it was our first deployment "scare"--although "scare" isn't exactly the right word for the mess of conflicted feelings you get in your gut when you get the call.

First, there's the immediate urge to drop everything, pick up your rifle, and run to the sound of the guns. The U.S. National Guard predates all other U.S. Armed Forces for a reason: We trace our lineage back through the Minutemen and Minutewomen (Yes, there were some) of the American Revolution, and the necessity of quick, effective local military response is bred into us. One of the things I love about the National Guard is that you get to help your neighbors. I have had the honor of being called to state duty many times in the past two decades, responding to blizzards, floods, and tornados. "The other guys and gals only have 'God and Country,'" I like to say. "We've got 'God, Country, and Community.'"

Then, there's the idea that doing our military jobs is what we signed up for, what we train for. This is why we spend time away from friends and family "one weekend a month, and two weeks a year." (Admittedly, this phrase is so out of date and reality that soldiers just roll their eyes at it. Recently, drill weekends have sometimes grown to 4-day-long affairs. There's even a much-photocopied-and-passed-around-the-armories cartoon from a few years back, in which one National Guard Joe says to another, 'One weekend a month, my a--!") I guess what I'm saying is: You don't train for years to be a tank driver, and aspire only to filling sandbags or running generators during 100-year floods. You train as a soldier, and some part of you looks forwarding to finally doing your job.

I should note here that the American taxpayer invests tens of thousands of dollars on the training of just one soldier, then spends even more thousands for his or her individual equipment. It will cost a million U.S. dollars per soldier to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, one media report says. We just want to give the taxpayer a good return on their investments, not only of dollars, but of faith. We are "your tax dollar at work."

My first "Red Bull" message (by the way, I've changed the traditional semi-secret code slightly here, for reasons that can wait for a future post) was in 2003. Another buddy of mine just happened to be working in the Iowa National Guard personnel office, and gave me a call. "Hey, Sherpa, there's only two of you left in state of Iowa, and they can't find the other one. You want to volunteer, or to be volunteered?" I got the official Red Bull message later that day:

"Sherpa, this is a 'Red Bull' message. You have been called to active duty for the purposes of ... You are to report at This Place and This Time ..." And so on.

On that first message, I packed my bags on Friday, and was told to wait until Monday for further instructions. The call never came. Over the drill weekend, the unit that had needed me reshuffled its organizational structure, and suddenly needed one less Sherpa.

After that, however, the writing was pretty much on the wall. The very next unit moving out to Anywhere Else that needed someone with a Sherpa's skills would be giving me a call. I was the very last buffalo.

So, shortly thereafter, I got my second Red Bull message. And that's how I found myself transferred with a couple days' notice and wearing the Red Bull shoulder patch for the very first time. I deployed on a short, less-than-12-month mission in 2003, to a desert country that you've probably heard about but wouldn't guess in a hundred years. I'll write about that some other time, too. I've got to maintain some suspense or mystery, you know ...

Since I got back, I've been trying to juggle the joys of self-employment with a few temporary full-time National Guard tours. All in all, I've logged about 21 months of active duty since 2004 working various jobs in the Iowa National Guard. Strangely, I've developed something of a unique skill in that time, something that blends my civilian expertise and my soldier skills. I'll be darned, however, if the Army hasn't recently come up with an official job title for what I do. There's even a field manual, albeit one that's considered half-baked "emerging doctrine."

For the past couple of years, I haven't really known what to do with the Army, and the Army really hasn't known what to do with me.

Until now.

See You at the Movies

Callsign Archer and I like to talk. In addition to the usual military history tomes and science-fiction paperbacks, Archer has shelves full of dead-tree books on emerging technology trends and business management concepts. While he can get pretty Gee Whiz, however, Archer also enjoys putting theory into practice.

In a conversation with Archer earlier this week, we got into an impromptu brainstorming topic of "how to lead our fellow troops to the waters of cultural and political awareness and make them drink." In other words: How can you train soldiers on the terrain--the people they're going to be working with, the places they're going to be working in, the challenges they're going to face--in a way that doesn't seem like it's just one more pencil-whipping exercise in pre-deployment futility, or that you're somehow assigning them homework for their off-duty hours?

Complicating the problem even further: Not everyone learns the same way. I remember back in Army radio school, when Uncle Sam gave us all this crazy Myers-Briggs test to identify what kind of personalities we were. Were we extroverts or introverts? (Here's a tip: The Army doesn't attract a lot of introverts, even in the technical branches.) Did we base our decisions in logic or emotion? And, most applicable to the subject of this post: Did we learn best by hands-on fiddling around, or by sitting back and watching and reading and listening?

The test ended up explaining for us why half the class was having the Best Time Ever, drinking coffee and watching PowerPoint slides and taking written tests, while the other half was About to Explode Out of Their Tiny Little Skulls because they hadn't turned Knob One on a radio during the weeks of initial electrical theory classes. In Myers-Briggs terms, the first half of the herd were "intuitive" learners, the second half were "sequential." There were a lot of Electrical Engineering types in the first half, by the way, and there were a lot of Physical Education types in the second.

I'm not judging here. I'm just saying.

Sherpa is an intuitive type of guy, just for the record.

So back to my conversation with Archer: He reads books. I read books. We cannot, however, assume that Joe Snuffy likes to read books. We can probably give Snuffy a magazine-article-length reading, or maybe digest some concepts down into a few PowerPoint slides, but that might not do the trick. Call it homework, or classwork, it all seems like work. And Snuffy has enough "work" to do, keeping up with all his (or her) other training requirements.

So, how can we reach out and teach the soldiers who don't like to read, or the ones who will go to sleep during briefings?

One idea suddenly roared at us like the MGM lion himself: Let's put on a show!

Soldiers love movies. And, strangely, soldiers--both deploying and deployed--love war movies. I think that Anthony Swofford (of Jarhead fame) even went as far as to call war movies "military porn."

Joe Snuffy isn't going to learn anything useful from Rambo 6, but might there be some other films of more potential training value?

Since late December, Tom Ricks has been searching out a Top Ten list of Terrorism movies. He even calls his project a "Terrorism Film Festival." Similarly, Archer and I wonder if there's a possible list of TV shows and movies, both non-fiction and fiction, that might help Snuffy understand what we're all up against. It doesn't have to explicitly depict Afghanistan or surrounding countries, although that would be helpful. (Metaphorically speaking, asking a soldier to internalize an allegorical narrative is like ... but, wait, I digress.)

So, call the proposal "Operation Edutainment." Or the "The Red Bull Film Festival." Pizza is cheap, popcorn is cheap, and we, to paraphrase the words of Bill Cosby, "if we're not careful, might learn something."