A couple of opinion columns recently focused on how leaders of the U.S. military present themselves these days – relentlessly wearing, for too many occasions, dress uniforms bedecked with the “fruit salad” of ribbons and award…
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The clocks were striking thirteen
When I’m browsing for a book to read, I always check out the first couple of lines. If they grab me, I’m more than half way there. I want to know what happens next.
“My Life Saved My Life”
When the acclaimed memoirist Frank McCourt died this week, he was lionized for the simple and sad storytelling in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Angela’s Ashes,” which recounted his impoverished childhood in Ireland. But he spent much of his adult life as a high school teacher in New York, where he prodded his writing students to tell their stories, using himself as an example. One former student, who became a writer, said, “He used to sort of recite from memory the stories that became ‘Angela’s Ashes.’ Some of his fellow teachers admonished him for revealing so much of himself, noting he had a right to privacy with his students. According to the New York Times essay on McCourt at his death, his colleagues would say, “Your life, man. It’s all you have.”