Ummagumma

The smaller of the two clocks I received from my grandmother. This one keeps time almost every weekend.  Its subtle mechanical sounds, how it works, its mannerisms for keeping time, and the dong-dong-dong sound it makes when it rings the hour and half hour take me back to my childhood. Today it sits at the entry to my study area, from this angle overlooking our living room below. Before she went into the nursing home several years ago, my grandmother (dad's side), gave me a couple of old clocks that were in her house.  They were part of my life growing up and I always expressed interest in them. One is a wall-mounted clock but it does not work very well and sounds rather "dinky" when its bell rings the hour.  The other clock sat on the mantel of an unused fireplace in her kitchen throughout my youth and, indeed, until the day I brought it to my house.  It works fine and features a nice, confident ringing bell - dong.  I enjoy hearing it tick and listening to its int

Last year General Daniel P. Bolger published an interesting, wide-ranging analysis of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq entitled Why We Lost .  The history deals with military events from before September 11, 2001 up through 2013.  It is part strategic overview but most of its pages are devoted to what I would term an "episodic" approach to the wars.  That is, much of the writing is about specific tactical events which serve to represent many such engagements that comprised the operational and strategic planning with respect to our enemies in these two countries.  You get a little bit of the grand perspective mixed in with Tom Clancy-style reporting on how the grunts actually carried out policy set by politicians and generals. The bottom line is that General Bolger believes the two wars represent a failure of leadership, partly due to politicians, but primarily he places fault on the military strategy employed to fight the wars, sometimes forced by the constraints