Card deals...

Instead of writing further on some of my views regarding US involvement in GWOT, I was pointed to an article written by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender’s Game and numerous other books of outstanding merit) by a Marine Major who distributed it to us, his fellow classmates undergoing a professional military education (PME) experience. My views are startlingly close to Card’s, who deals with a whole range of topics in his weekly column. You can check out Card’s views on Iraq and find links to his point of view on other issues at http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-01-15-1.html.

Every day the trumpet practices get more and more fun. I’m still a long way from trying out for the 5^th grade band (something I did once, so I know what I’m talking about), but every day the note-on-the-page-to-mind-to-finger-to-push-the-right-valve communication gets a little better. I’ve been queried as to what good it does to play the trumpet when I’m going to switch to tuba soon, and this is the best answer I can give (seeing as the valve combinations per note for the tuba is the same as for the trumpet, of course several octaves removed and on a different scale). Speaking of the tuba, a Navy Lieutenant currently practicing French horn with us introduced me to a steel machinist in his Construction Battalion who is going to make me a mouthpiece from brass, so hopefully I’ll be able to transition to the tuba sooner rather than later. We’ll see. Additionally, his efforts provide adequate excuse to scrap my sorry efforts to carve one out of the heart-wood of a section of a local sapling (which attempt I might keep for a conversation piece—how I arguably might have turned a tuba into a woodwind).

Semper Fi, Jon G.