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Stillness
Last evening, the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, I found myself at Arlington National Cemetery touring with 8th-graders from Ohio. It was 6pm sharp, we were at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and the...
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Fairfax: The Local’s Worst Case Scenario
There are plenty of signs pointing to a long term pattern of harassment and retaliation of women in the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department (FRD). Most devastating is the Hernandez decision by...
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Guiding: Mac and Cheese and Drain the Swamp.
It’s June already and we are in the throes of the D.C. guiding season. It’s that time when you can barely remember one group from the next nor what you said or to whom you said it. This is my ninth...
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Facebook Life Today, Facebook, and perhaps all social media, is consumed by the Caps winning the Stanley Cup and the death of Anthony Bourdain, apparently by suicide, in France. I posted on Facebook,...
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IAFF For Sale: “It’s Dirty”
The Not So Excellent “Center For Excellence” Anyone who has paid even the tiniest amount of attention to Harold Schaitberger’s IAFF will have long since concluded that everything is for sale. He sold...
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Fairfax: Joy Ride
Kuley’s Damned If I Do, Damned if I Don’t Moment Ron and Friends? As if the Fairfax County Professional Fire Fighters and Paramedics Association, IAFF Local 2068, didn’t have enough problems already,...
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Fairfax: The Willie Bailey Effect
So Much For Political Credibility IAFF Local 2068 President Ron Kuley’s Stanley Cup fire engine joy ride is mostly noted for who was with him and who wasn’t. But the real issue is where the engine was...
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White Supremacy: The Taking of Children
An American Tradition The separation of families is rightly being seen as an act of white supremacy where those in power summarily strip children from parents under the guise of protecting America. It...
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IAFF: Only Ourselves to Blame
The Supreme Court and Right to Work The Time’s reports it: “The Supreme Court dealt a major blow on Wednesday to organized labor. By a 5-to-4 vote, with the more conservative justices in the majority,...
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IAFF: You’ve Got Mail (Not)
Too Important to be Bothered Schaitberger The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Janus decision, a bit of a win for anti-union forces, is said to be another marker on the road to making unions irrelevant....
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IAFF: Stolen Valor?
Mathew Golsteyn, Chief of Operations During my time as an IAFF member, the position now known as “chief of operations” has been populated with low-key civilians or folks with a labor background. IAFF...
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Road Trip: Welcome to the ‘Stans
Central Asia Ten hours to Istanbul and another four put me in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, yesterday in the middle of a sultry night. The plan is to see some of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and go trekking for...
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Uzbekistan: On the (Rail)Road to Bukhara
Fast Train to Bukhara It’s early Saturday morning here in Uzbekistan, hot already, and we are on the high-speed train to Bukhara, one of the ancient and great cities of the Silk Road. “Silk Road”...
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Bukhara: People
First, the weather report. At two in the afternoon it’s 113 in the shade. I rolled out at 5AM this morning to see the city at the verge of dawn and to escape the heat. No surprise, it was still and...
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Uzbeks and the Bear
King Cotton Soviet Repression Memorial Uzbekistan labored under the yoke of either Czarist or Soviet repression from the mid 19th-century until the fall of the USSR in 1991. Some of that repression is...
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On to Kyrgyzstan
A Return to Tashkent We came back to Tashkent on the high-speed train and it is much cooler here. As hot as it gets during the day, you can sleep with the windows open at night as it drops into the...
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MAGA and McCain
Many people have a “defining moment” and John McCain’s was when he refused an early repatriation offer while confined as a prisoner during the Vietnam war. He was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese for...
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Nike and Kaepernick
The Ad You Will Love or Hate Nike is betting most will love it and there’s the story. Colin Kaepernick is nothing if not polarizing. He is the center of the controversial universe. In many ways he is...
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9/11 Eve: In Solemn Solidarity
The Terms of War “Never Forget” is a maxim which before 2001 was often associated with victims of the Nazi Holocaust; millions murdered initially recklessly, then with surgical-like precision. In the...
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IAFF: 163 Years and Counting
We Know Him (Much) Better Than You Do Four current and (very) longtime IAFF members who also come from IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger’s home local, number 2068, managed to be in the same...
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