Friends of Padre Steve’s World
It has been a busy week. We had a wonderful niece of Judy visit us and work has been busy. Last night I was able to have dinner with two of my very few real friends in the Navy Chaplain Corps at a local restaurant after getting the results of the Neuron-psychological testing that I endured a couple of months ago.
The good news regarding the testing is that I don’t seem to have any issues dealing with a physical brain injury, but at the same time I have some increased deficits dealing with certain types of memory, recall, and processing speed. The doctor things this may be mostly due to dealing with PTSD, depression and sleep deprivation related to PTSD. I’ll probably go through one more battery of these tests before I retire in 2017 just to make sure that I don’t have what Denny Crane (William Shatner- Boston Legal) and I now refer to as “the Mad Cow” or Alzheimer’s or some other kind of dementia.
Since I am getting ready to lead another group of students to Gettysburg next Friday I will be publishing another of my biographic vignettes about the men who fought the battle. This time dealing with Confederate General John Bell Hood, a man who was outstanding as a brigade and division commander but who was complete failure at higher levels of command. I have some more Gettysburg material in the works but I don’t thing that I will post it until next week.
I will also be putting out an article about the French Foreign Legion at the battle of Cameron on April 30th. This is a fascinating story about a small unit of 65 men engaged in a hopeless battle on April 30th 1863 in Mexico just as the epic Battle of Chancellorsville was about to begin.
During the coming week I will be putting out some more Gettysburg articles as I get ready to take another group of students there next weekend, as well an article about another hopeless and sadly forgotten battle, that of Dien Bien Phu which came to its disastrous conclusion on May 7th and 8th 1954. Of course I am always ready to write about current events and issues as needed.
On another note I just finished the amazing book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I think that this is a book that anyone interested in politics, people and our current political crisis need to read.
Have a great night and weekend.
Peace
Padre Steve+