Weekly Web Roundup (12/10/16)

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

Here are some interesting items that I saw across the web over this past week:

Reimagining Racial Bridge Building in the Age of Social Media by Judy Wu Dominick

"I had indeed allowed my social media feed to become an interloper and provocateur in our marriage.  It makes me wonder about the extent to which the health and stability of all our face-to-face interactions, especially with people who are different from us, are being threatened by the endless electronic stream of quips, memes, rants, demands, news (both real and fake, trivial and earth-shattering), entertainment, propaganda, and sensationalism.  If the best-selling book EAT THIS, NOT THAT! helps people make healthier food choices that benefit their bodies, we need a similar guide for healthier internet consumption that benefits our souls, psyches, and bridge-building work.  A good start would be to choose the meaty over the bitty, the considered over the cutting, and reason over emotionalism."

Dakota Access Pipeline to be Rerouted by Caroline Kenny, Gregory Krieg, Sara Sidner and Max Blau (CNN)

"Celebrations, tears of joy, chanting and drumming rang out among thousands of protesters at the Standing Rock site after the Army Corp of Engineers announced it will look for an alternate route for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota. For months, members of the Sioux tribe and their supporters have camped out, fighting the pipeline they say could be hazardous and damage the water supply of their reservation nearby. "People have said that this is a make it or a break it, and I guess we made it," Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, announced to a cheering crowd of protesters."

Looking back at what really happened between Alabama and Rich Rodriguez 10 years ago by Paul Talty (AL.com)

"Ten years ago today, possibly the most important moment in Alabama football history took place in West Virginia. No, it wasn't the day Nick Saban, a West Virginia native, said yes to replacing Mike Shula. It was the day West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez said no."

5 Powerful Ways Becoming A Morning Person Unlocks Your Leadership by Carey Nieuwhof

"Work patterns are a lot like traffic patterns: at 5 a.m. you have the road to yourself. At 8 a.m., it could take you three times as long to travel the same distance. These days I do everything I can to beat traffic, not just on the road, but in life. I do most of my shopping at off hours.  My wife and I have even begun to do off-season travel. Why? Because we end up having more time to do what matters most. Ditto with work."

6 Reasons to Get Better at Leading Meetings by Paul Axtell (Harvard Business Review)

"The ability to manage conversations so that they are productive, inclusive, and focused on getting work done is an organizational skill that transcends expertise. Being really good at a core discipline (say, marketing, business development, or social media) is important, but being an expert only gets you so far. If you can add to your repertoire of skills the ability to facilitate conversations, you’ll add more value to your organization, and be recognized for doing so."

Jimmy and Dwayne Johnson Surprise 'Tonight Show' Staffer with Military Homecoming

Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson recently surprised one of Jimmy's staffers. Watch the video. You won't regret it.

Weekly Web Roundup (9/3/16)

Photo Credit: bmward_2000

Here are some interesting stories from around the web that I've seen during this past week:

Colin Kaepernick's Protest is Part of Long Sports Tradition by Adam Howard (NBC News)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has received a substantial amount of flack for his recent refusal to stand while the pledge of allegiance is played before games. Personally, I appreciate Kaepernick's desire to bring attention to injustice but am concerned about what his approach communicates to our military. Be that as it may, it might surprise some that he's not the first to do this.

Hello Goodbye: The author of a best-selling abstinence manifesto is reconsidering the lessons he taught to millions by Ruth Graham (Slate)

Joshua Harris's book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" was a best-seller among evangelicals during the late '90s and early '00s. Now, nearly twenty years after it was published, Harris has regrets about how the book has impacted some people.

Even in a Multiethnic Church, Race Can Be a Minefield (Christianity Today)

"But here’s the beauty of a multiethnic church—the beauty and the mess: I’ve got these multi-ethnic faces there, which is wonderful, but the problem is, they all have different perspectives. Literally, after that message, I had an African American man come up to me and say, “I wish you would’ve pushed a little harder.” I had a white woman come up to me all offended because I’d pushed too hard. That’s the beauty and the mess."

Sin Of Talking Too Much by Paul Tautges (via Tim Challies)

"Years ago, my men’s small group discussed the discipline of the tongue. After reading a chapter in Disciplines of a Godly Man by Kent Hughes, and verses from Proverbs that address the issue, some of us were tempted to stop talking all together! However, we quickly realized this was not the answer. That would be too easy. The right response is the hard road of self-discipline. The hard road is the application of wisdom in the restraint of the most powerful muscle in our body. That got me thinking about the dangers of talking too much."

The Mania of Michigan Football by Robin Wright (The New Yorker)

"When Michigan makes a big play, and a hundred thousand people stand up spontaneously, without being told, and ‘Hail to the Victors’ kicks in, it’s the biggest choir in America. It’s not a business, it’s a religion—and one where everyone is welcome,” John U. Bacon, the author of “Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football,” told me. “The Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa have both noted that the great disease of Western civilization is loneliness. Yes, it’s possible to be lonely in a crowd—but not this one."

Last Remaining Navajo Code Talker Passes Away

From Joseph Kolb of Reuters:

"The last of 29 Navajos who developed an unbreakable code that helped Allied forces win World War II died in New Mexico on Wednesday of kidney failure at age 93. Chester Nez was the last survivor of the group of Native Americans recruited by the Marine Corps to create a code based on their language that the Japanese could not crack. His son, Michael Nez, said his father died peacefully in his sleep at their home in Albuquerque. 

“He had been battling kidney disease, and it seems like the disease won,” Michael Nez told Reuters. “He’s the last of a great era, a great part of history.” About 400 Code Talkers would go on to use their unique battlefield cipher to encrypt messages sent from field telephones and radios throughout the Pacific theater during the war. 

It was regarded as secure from Japanese military code breakers because the language was spoken only in the American Southwest, was known by fewer than 30 non-Navajo people and had no written form. The Navajos’ skill, speed and accuracy under fire in ferocious battles from the Marshall Islands to Iwo Jima is credited with saving the lives of thousands of U.S. servicemen and helping shorten the war. Their work was celebrated in the 2002 movie “Windtalkers.” 

In his memoirs, Nez said he knew he made the right decision to join the fight. “I reminded myself that my Navajo people had always been warriors, protectors,” he said. “In that there was honor. I would concentrate on being a warrior, on protecting my homeland. Within hours, whether in harmony or not, I knew I would join my fellow Marines in the fight.” 

In 2001, when the surviving Navajo Code Talkers were invited to Washington to receive the Congressional Gold Medal for their service, Nez told Tribune Newspapers that their operations did not always run smoothly. were mistaken for Japanese,” he said. The death in 2011 of Lloyd Oliver made Nez the last surviving member of the unit. The president of the Navajo Nation, Ben Shelly, said he had ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of Nez. 

“It saddens me to hear the last of the original Code Talkers has died,” Shelly said. “We are proud of these young men in defending the country they loved using their Navajo language.” Last November, the American Veterans Center honored Nez for bravery and valor above and beyond the call of duty, awarding him the Audie Murphy Award for distinguished service. 

“I was very proud to say that the Japanese did everything in their power to break that code, but they never did,” Nez said in an interview with the Stars and Stripes newspaper the day before receiving the award. Nez and his fellow recruits were called communications specialists by the Marines and were taught Morse code, semaphore and “blinker,” a system using lights to send messages between ships. 

The code they developed substituted Navajo words for military terms. CHAYDA-GAHI, which translates to “turtle,” came to mean a tank while a GINI, “chicken hawk” in English, became a dive bomber. America was NE-HEMAH, “our mother.” The Code Talkers served in all six Marine divisions, and 13 were killed in World War II. Nez also volunteered to serve two more years during the Korean War. He retired in 1974 after a 25-year career as a painter at the Veterans Administration hospital in Albuquerque. 

Shelly said the Navajo Nation was drafting a proclamation in honor of Nez that it plans to present, along with the Navajo Nation flag, to the Code Talker’s relatives. Nez is expected to be buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery next week."

Remembering The Fallen On Memorial Day

Photo Credit: Nick Harris1

In honor of all American service women and men that have given their lives for the freedom of others:

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Written by Lt. Col. John McCrae (taken from www.vfw.org)

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." ~ John 15:13

Say Thanks to a Soldier

Thousands of American servicemen and women are currently overseas and are unable to spend the holidays with their families. Xerox is helping you to send a little piece of encouragement from home. Let's Say Thanks is a program where you can visit a website, choose a greeting card and Xerox will print and send it to a solider currently deployed overseas.

It only takes a minute and can be a small way to let a solider know that they are not forgotten and that their bravery is valued. Here's one thank you for a solider that benefited from the program:

"I wanted to contact you to say thanks for this outstanding effort to make our Military personnel feel a touch of home wherever they are. I have been deployed several times to various parts of the world. No matter what is going on around us, when we get encouraging words from home it seems to make a difference that is beyond description. Something as simple as words. Something as common as a crayon drawing. Something as appreciative as Let's Say Thanks. These things can mean the world when you are a world away."

- A Soldier

Please take a moment to visit http://www.letssaythanks.com/ today.

More Immigrants Becoming U.S. Citizens After Military Service

An ongoing discussion in recent years has revolved around the role that the U.S. government should play in handling immigrants to the United States. In order to bolster thinning military ranks in the midst of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia, the government is offering to fast-track immigrants who serve in the military so that they can become U.S. citizens.

The Orlando Sentinel states the following:

"National immigration statistics show that the number of military immigrants becoming citizens is not only the highest since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars started in 2002 and 2003, but is at a level not reached since 1970. About 9,000 have become citizens this year.

As the country relies on more immigrants to help win its wars — more than 100,000 are currently enlisted, making up about 8 percent of armed forces — it is making an effort to grant them citizenship.

"It's us trying to reach them," said Sharon Scheidhauer, spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Orlando. "We set up a separate system: Their applications go to a separate place so they are handled very quickly, and they can get that honor."

The armed forces are targeting immigrants as early as boot camp and are offering assistance in filling out citizenship paperwork. Congress also passed a law waiving the $675 application fees, and former President George W. Bush had already invoked a wartime law waiving waiting periods before applying for those enlisted."

There are many hard-working immigrants from other countries that have defended the U.S. by serving in our military. The offer to speed up the process for these individuals who desire to become U.S. citizens seems like a reasonable and fair way of recognizing their service.

A Simple Way to Honor a Veteran

It has been said that "freedom is never free" and this is certainly the case. For those of us that have the privilege to be citizens of the United States, we often take for granted the many rights that we possess and fail to recognize those that have put their lives on the line so that we can enjoy these freedoms.

My friend, Adam, recently wrote about an experience that he and his family had in which they showed a tremendous amount of respect towards a U.S. war veteran. Here's the story...

"Last week after classes were over, Anne and the kids picked me up at Case and we went out to dinner. As we entered the restaurant, we were guided past a table where a lone old man was sitting eating his dinner. The hostess seated us in the booth next to him.

As we passed, I noticed his hat sitting on the table, which declared that he was a World War II veteran. I have talked with the kids before about war and soldiers and the nobility of those that protect us by putting themselves in danger. So, when the man was done eating and stood up to leave, I asked him about his service.

You should have seen his face come alive. He must have been well into his eighties, but as he recounted his time in the South Pacific, his eyes were vibrant and young again. He told the kids about a mission to rescue captive missionaries and school teachers on an island near the Philippines, where intelligence gave his unit the exact time when the prison camp guards met for calisthenics every morning. Figuring the guards would have put their rifles down to exercise, his unit parachuted in and took the whole camp in a matter of minutes without a single casualty on either side.

He told us too about how he still gets together regularly with the eight other men from his unit still living. We talked about the absolutely unique camaraderie of those who have seen combat together. He said that their wives were always amazed how the men could pick right up with each other even after years and years of separation. I said that maybe that was God's gift to those that put themselves at risk and made it through.

I made sure to point out to the kids that we could sit there eating pancakes and eggs because men like him put themselves in danger. I also told the kids that while I would be scared if they ever went to war, I would be so proud of their choice to do so. It saddens Anne and I that our kids will grow up in a generation that does not revere soldiers, so we do what we can to teach them that that type of sacrifice deserves our respect.

As he left, the soldier turned back around and thanked me deeply for asking him about his experiences. It is not something that I usually do, but I am glad that I did."

This was just a small, tangible way to honor a veteran, but I'm sure anyone who has served our country and may feel forgotten would appreciate a similar gesture.

Memorial Day

It is on this day, Memorial Day, that we honor those that have given their lives in service to our country and for the freedom of others. Much more than a three day weekend, this day is set aside to remember that freedom is never free. There have been thousands of our countrymen and women that have paid the ultimate price.

While it is appropriate to honor all veterans and active military on this day, it is most fitting to honor those that gave all. To learn more about Memorial Day, click here.

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends." ~ John 15:13




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