Screenshot from ‘Oleg’s Choice,’ Java Films
Oleg’s Choice: A Personal Look at the Conflict in Ukraine (Java Films, 2016) is an insightful profile of two young Russian men, Oleg and Max, who volunteered to fight without pay in the Donbas after conflict erupted there in 2014. It…
Soldiers from the Minnesota Army National Guard on an exercise with British, Polish, and Lithuanian forces, in the Suwalki Gap in southern Lithuania, 2017. The Gap has been called the new Fulda Gap. (Photo courtesy of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota Army National Guard Public……
An eyewitness account of the end of the engrossing first act of the Standing Rock movement.
So many people got involved, for so many different reasons, that protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline was (nearly) a blank template. This gave many opportunities for conflict and few firm measures of success, except oil never flowing in the pipeline.
Screenshot from video said to be shot by Snake Island guards, on social media
The bravery and devotion to duty of the small State Border Guard Service garrison on Snake [Zmiinyi] Island, an outpost of Ukrainian territorial boundaries in the Black Sea, has been much on social media.…
Courtesy Corey Coyle, CC 3.0 Unported
For a time, back in the Reagan-Bush era, I was a teen employee in a Hardee’s in coal country. By incompetence I had failed upward, away from the fry station and off the backline, to work the front counter, and then that…
Courtesy Piqsels, CC0 1.0
When you speak with someone on the street, you usually know relatively quickly when they are self-interested, when they do not have answers, when they are delusional, stalling, or wandering off topic. That is, when they are full of it.
Similarly, corporate communication is…
Photo of similar setup courtesy Acabashi, CC 4.0
A visitor last week to a major Hollywood film production was treated to a view of the food that gets an army of extras through 12 to 16-hour work days.
One hears self-referential stories and jokes in movies and on TV…
‘Ekaterina II’ in Sevastopol, 1902, public domain
Travel—and here I do not mean tourism or flight from danger—is often no escape. If anything–if it is being done well–it makes obvious how we are individual bodies at the mercy of time and the world. Your library card is a…
When I got out of the army I spoke with a heavy southern accent I had picked up from my roommate and another friend, who were both from north Florida. A cold caller once said to me in surprise [say this in the heaviest accent you can…
Courtesy Fortepan, CC 3.0
Driving through the piney woods of the Georgia Piedmont this week, I was sure I knew where I was going so I turned off Maps. I was wrong, and by the time I discovered my mistake I was nearly out of gas. There was…
Tiger Lilies, by George Cummings, Wikimedia Commons
When we say “dull,” it is often the result of over-familiarity or insufficient study. Those Tiger Lilies were charming yesterday, you said. What changed?
Boredom is the collapse of the concrete into idealism. If my city is bustling but tiresome, then…