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Home Fires

An excerpt from today's column by Jeffrey D. Barnett.

...If you listen to some people in the media you might believe we’re mostly uneducated felons. That certainly wasn’t true during my experience. I worked with numerous enlisted marines that had both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The most prominent example was a sergeant (E-5) in my battalion that had a master’s degree. He was over 30 years old, and had obviously signed up to serve in the face of numerous opportunities, not due to the lack of them...

I love he how just slaps you in the face with his writing...all of them do. Like a big wet fish, slap! It's about time...there's much more fine writing in that column by five Iraq War Vets.

Write on, Home Fires columnists.

Quality Time

I was interviewing some co-ed softball players for a possible summer story and I saw this mom and daughter walking along sharing some quality, quiet time.

I miss taking those small steps with my kids. Small feet, small legs taking small steps. A tiny hand in mine. Some days you wish they would hurry up and grow. Now, of course, you wish you could squish them in a little box to keep them small.

Happily, I had a lot of these types of moments as a stay-at-home mom. Lots of picnics in parks, day-trips to the quiet lake. Nothing to do but enjoy the day and play. The best kind of quality time.

Home Fires: Veterans Write on their Lives Post-War

Some good writing and tough stories in the Times latest guest Op-Ed columns on the war. Five Iraq War Vets write on their return to life back home. Not sure I agree with the TimesSelect wall being up on these. These stories need to be heard, not just by folks who'll shell out the dough to read them...even though, yes, I know, there's a free trial. But it's the principle of the thing.

The latest entry is a column by Lee Kelley, who mil-blogged for the Times last year from Iraq. A fine writer who, as he reported in his column, now has a literary agent! Go Lee! His blog also highlights some of his writing. I recommend May 2006, "Just Drop Me Off When This Thing Is Over."

He is also featured in Time's Person of the Year Dec. 2006 Issue, Citizens of the New Digital Democracy piece. (Time's Person of the Year was YOU, in case you missed it. You and you and you. All of us, apparently. I knew I'd have my 15 minutes eventually!)

Best of luck, Lee and enjoy the fishing with the kids.