gleans + 1xORA + 1xaddenda at 5:55 PM MT, 5/3
 | MUSIC; Fading Sounds of an Elegant Manhattan...Daryl Sherman, heard as you enter the Waldorf-Astoria hotel at Park Avenue and 49th...Cole Porter , a longtime resident of the Waldorf, still hovers. As of Sunday evening...the Hilton hotel chain, which owns the Waldorf-Astoria, was sold to the Blackstone... |
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today's Ordinary Reading Assignment
Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler
Product Description
Based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning story, Jim Sheeler’s unprecedented look at the way our country honors its dead; Final Salute Is a stunning tribute to the brave troops who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and to the families who continue to mourn them
They are the troops that nobody wants to see, carrying a message that no military family ever wants to hear. It begins with a knock at the door. “The curtains pull away. They come to the door. And they know. They always know,” said Major Steve Beck.
Since the start of the war in Iraq, marines like Major Beck found themselves thrown into a different kind of mission: casualty notification. It is a job Major Beck never asked for and one for which he received no training. They are given no set rules, only impersonal guidelines.
Marines are trained to kill, to break down doors, but casualty notification is a mission without weapons. For Beck, the mission meant learning each dead marine’s name and nickname, touching the toys they grew up with and reading the letters they wrote home. He held grieving mothers in long embraces, absorbing their muffled cries into the dark blue shoulder of his uniform. He stitched himself into the fabric of their lives, in the simple hope that his compassion might help alleviate at least the smallest piece of their pain. Sometimes he returned home to his own family unable to keep from crying in the dark.
In Final Salute, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jim Sheeler weaves together the stories of the fallen and of the broken homes they have left behind. It is also the story of Major Steve Beck and his unflagging efforts to help heal the wounds of those left grieving. Above all, it is a moving tribute to our troops, putting faces to the mostly anonymous names of our courageous heroes, and to the brave families who have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Final Salute is the achingly beautiful, devastatingly honest story of the true toll of war. After the knock on the door, the story has only begun.
About the Author
Jim Sheeler has specialized in covering the impact of the war at home for the Rocky Mountain News since the first Colorado casualty of the war in Iraq. He won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his story “Final Salute” and has won numerous other local and national writing awards. Born in Houston, Texas, Sheeler graduated with a degree in journalism from Colorado State University in 1990 and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado in 2007. His book of collected obituaries, Obit: Inspirational Stories of Everyday People Who Led Extraordinary Lives, was published in June 2007.
addenda <== thanks to Bubba-Bob
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/05/02/cockfighting_0502.html
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