Category Archives: Respect

The Beginning: with Veterans

By | October 11, 2025

[October 11, 2025] In my first book, “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” I made an effort to show how I developed to a point where I would achieve something important in my life. The discovery was my connection to combat Veterans and how they played an outsized role in my upbringing. ‘The Beginning’ is trying to lay this… Read More »

Alligator, Mississippi: a Tour

By | October 6, 2025

[October 6, 2025]  Standing alone in the Mississippi Delta are several small towns steeped in poverty. One of them is Alligator, Mississippi. Joe & Nic’s Road Trip is a YouTube channel specializing in road trips, mainly visiting the downtowns and neighborhoods of rural America.  They capture the decline of these small towns, showing the visual decay and the… Read More »

The Mississippi Reading Miracle

By | October 2, 2025

[October 2, 2025]  As a product myself of the Louisiana educational system in the 1950s and 60s, I can attest to the abysmal rates of reading and arithmetic achievement. Mississippi and Louisiana were competitors in the race to the bottom in national education. However, things have turned around, and we have what is known as the Mississippi Reading… Read More »