Ash Wednesday

Got back from church -- the children from SPJ did the singing today and Peg and I played for them.  It was very nice.  Then we stayed and practiced some new hymns and Mass music.

So I'm home right now for a little bit.  The car is on top of the hill, ready to go to pick up Lauren and then that's it for the day.

Watch out tomorrow.  If you don't have to go anywhere, don't.  The wind chills are going to be terrible and the temperatures will likely set new records.  It will begin later tonight, I guess.  So I am not going to my other son's house tomorrow to relieve him so he can head to work.  He will probably cancel for the evening anyhow.  His clients won't want to try and come for a workout in this weather either.  It's never worth risking your life for that.

The ISIS situation is getting worse.  Probably because they got quite a rise out of the burning of the pilot, they went ahead and burned some Kurds yesterday.  And then the 21 beheadings from the day before.  The toll is now around 62, I think they said.

A woman who speaks for the State Department said that we need to work on getting jobs in other countries.  She said, "We can't kill our way out of this war."  Interesting she even used the word "war" isn't it?  Well, with that attitude, we sure won't be able to win much of anything.  And it signals weakness to those who hate us and would do harm to us.

Sun Tzu (writer and general) once said, "Know thine enemy," in his book, The Art of War.  There is much truth in that.  It is impossible to fight something that is undefined and misunderstood.  Suppose we were only speaking of ourselves and we said in simple language, "I need to improve myself."  Well, if you don't know yourself well enough to define the faults that need improvement, I'm betting about $100 that you don't improve.

This is really the same thing.  When we fought in Vietnam, we ran into problems not only because the military was hampered from fighting their own fight but also because we did not understand the culture of the Vietnamese well enough.  For one thing, we felt that if we befriended them and gave them gifts as we entered their village, they would still be our friend tomorrow.  Shockingly, during the night the Viet Cong would enter the same village and would stay there for the night.  Why?  Because the Vietnamese were too used to fighting, too used to having this one and that one show up and tell them what to do.  They gave up trying to pick winners and simply existed in the topsy-turvy world they lived in.

The Islamic Jihadists are not completely understood and need to be named as the combatants.  Then we need to understand every nuance of their mindset.  This is when academia could have a strong impact, by imparting the knowledge that would help decision makers understand this growing enemy force.

Well, it is Ash Wednesday, first day of Lent.  What are you giving up?  The children at Mass this morning focused most often on technological gadgets -- my tablet, my iPad, my notebook, TV, video games.  A couple picked sweets.  Last year I quit playing Solitaire on the computer.  I can do that again, I suppose, but it would seem to me that I could come up with something more profound.

I'll think about it the rest of today and have something going by tomorrow.  Best of luck to all of you with the weather pattern!!  Let's vow to hang in there and get through this together!!