Tag: culture

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Education Reading

Dave Duerson Triumph, Trauma and Tragedy in the NFL

Dave Duerson committed suicide on February 17, 2011.  He will always be remembered as a member of the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl team.  He was a four time NFL Pro Bowl player and won a second Super Bowl with the New York Giants. He finished his career with the Phoenix Cardinals. Dave Duerson was the 1987 NFL Man of The Year award winner.

dave duerson

I remember watching Dave Duerson play at Notre Dame. He was a two time All American.  Dave also graduated with honors in Economics.

Early in his retirement Dave started his own food processing company. He turned into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

However Dave Duerson succumbed to the impact of chronic brain trauma. All for the glory of Sunday football. It was only after his family donated his brain to research did the tragic effects of his brain trauma reveal the type of punishment professional athletes in many sports accept as part of the game. The suicide of San Diego linebacker Junior Seau proved Dave Duerson’s death was not unique.

How much longer will we see former NFL players suffer long term brain injuries after their glory days are over.  More importantly will the NFL or fans realize the game has reached such a high level of contact that its literally killing their Sunday heros?

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Education Milwaukee Reading

Malcolm Gladwell evening in Milwaukee

Friday was a wonderful evening with Malcolm Gladwell. I was able to get a personalized copy of his book David and Goliath. As usual he was sharing a remarkable series of intertwined events. Tonight it was about the IRA collapse in Belfast, Alva Vanderbilt and the women’s suffrage movement in America. Malcolm is truly a great storyteller.
Malcolm Gladwell in Milwaukee

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Photo history: Vietnam the real war

Vietnam The Real WarAfter reading the Pentagon Papers and a number of critically acclaimed books about the war I am somewhat haunted at this new book.

For the first time, The Associated Press reviewed its 25,000+ photos of the war and reprinted a select 250 in “Vietnam: The Real War”

This photograph takes me back to a college history class on the Vietnam war taught by Dr. Charles DeBenedetti. His style and passion for teaching is something that I have never forgotten.  To this day I can still see him at the front of class on the fifth floor of University Hall lecturing us on this tragic war.

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Education Vietnam War

MadMen’s Vietnam

Madmen finished a rather interesting season. I only found interest in the season premier when Don sat at a bar in Hawaii and had a drink with a US Soldier on leave from the war.  Many have written about Chevrolet was their “Vietnam” for the season.
madmen vietnam
Other segments throughout this season seemed tied into the cultural change the war took on American society. For example, the necklace of ears segment was rather interesting as the horror of war not only hit home but required the firm to change their advertising strategies.

Did you think their pot smoking scene or the death of a firm’s sibling (killed in Vietnam) reach the audience?  Many didn’t seem to think so — maybe they were not looking deep enough?

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: A Vietnam War Reader

While spending almost two years reading the Pentagon Papers I found a number of credible resources that pointed to this college textbook as an excellent overview of our long war, A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives.

A Vietnam War Reader

This book is written by Michael H. Hunt, emeritus professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hunt has also written “Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968” and “Arc of Empire: America’s Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam.”

Hunt’s book presented in chronological order our long conflict throughout Indo-China. The perspectives from are from leaders in the US, South Vietnam and communist North Vietnam. Wars have been traditionally told from the perspective of the winner, its a somewhat awkward view to read the perspectives of noted NVA military and communist party leaders.  Lessons certainly sting.  And they should indeed sting our national conscious.

Hunt provides a full perspective to the war. The most noted was the last chapter “Outcomes and Verdicts” that include the famous confrontation between Robert McNamara and Vo Nguyen Giap and Nguyen Co Thach in 1995.

The focus of French colonialism opens the book stretching back to 1861 and the coming rise of independence and revolution against French colonial rule throughout Indo-China. Hunt appears to have leveraged the resources also presented in the Pentagon Papers to tell an accurate story of our 30 year war in Vietnam.