The Best Illustrated Children's Book This Year

is Escape From the Crooked Tree! OK, maybe not, but we like to think we have a shot. There is a lot going on at Tales From the Tacklebox.  So, lets get to a reader question and then an update.

Question: Is tackle box one word or two words?

Answer: Excellent observation. Tackle box, most often, is two words.  However, in Tales From the Tacklebox, I have put them together. I wanted a word that sounded like children say it, breathelessly and aggressively.  So we have the Tacklebox.  In the Hydrilla Clump (our second book), you may also learn that the Tacklebox has a first name... 

A couple key dates:

June 7, 2012 - Escape From the Crooked Tree should be on Amazon and ready for delivery.  You can pre-order today at http://www.tackleboxtales.com to ensure you are on of the first to receive a copy. 

June 14, 2012 - Our campaign to fund the Hydrilla Clump and the Bigmouth Popper will end.  We have lots of cool prizes (you can have your name in the front of the book), so visit us at Kickstarter and have a look.

The Newsletter.  Click here  to see our latest newsletter and update. You can subscribe in the upper left-hand corner, so please join up. 

Thats all for now, but check back soon to learn more. 

Fighting for Anonymity

Soldiers take pride in their commitment to service, even long after that service is complete.  Usually, veterans relish the opportunities to come together and tell their stories of youth and glory.  So, why do these same veterans forego opportunities to share their stories with a larger audience?  At a recent reception in Washington DC found myself surrounded by a cluster of military officers from Central Europe. Some of them were still active, and some were not, but all of them had a chest full of ribbons, medals and accolades attesting to their days of service since past.  It occurred to me that I had seen more deployments than some of them and more combat than all of them. So why was I the only one not wearing any military decorations?

It may seem strange that a soldier, who spent his years in service overachieving for as many medals possible, will bury those same medals deep in his closet as soon as he is discharged. The relationship between the American soldier and the public is a complicated one.  There is no federal law which describes the method of wearing military medals and decorations with civilian clothes for veterans, although regulations state that veterans may wear medals on civilian clothing on Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day, as well as at "formal occasions of ceremony and social functions of a military nature."  Yet, even if validly authorized, there are essentially three reasons that a veteran would rather not display his medals in public.

There Are No Songs About Tea

The Army marches to the cadence of coffee, literally. You know the one. "They say that in the Army, the coffee’s mighty fine." From the first day of basic training soldiers learn that breaking for coffee provides warmth, camaraderie, and, sometimes, a brief respite from the insanity. Ours is a coffee army. So, why have recent articles suggested that the military leadership in Afghanistan was overly influenced by tea, specifically, Three Cups of Tea, the beleaguered book by Greg Mortensen? Because it this is a good story, and if the Army runs on coffee the American media runs on scandal. Nonetheless, the criticism of the military leadership is not entirely unfounded. There are several reasons that the Army has recently migrated towards a lighter caffeine source.

War by any other name is War

In Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein wrote that, “War is controlled violence, for a purpose.” After the recent military intervention in Libya there has been a rush in some circles to distinguish the purpose of this most recent episode of ‘controlled violence’ from those military offensives launched by the United States against Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2001, respectively. Analyst aplenty, have published observations on the normative use of military force and even provided frameworks for analyzing the latter half of Heinlein’s quotation. However, to better inform ourselves on the context of the question of whether or not to initiate ‘controlled violence’, we, as citizens, must also be certain that we have a common understanding of what is meant by war.

Read more at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/04/war-by-any-other-name-is-war/