Category Archives: Honor

We Help Those In Our Path

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Joel D. Hirst

As I continue reflecting on 25 years in the trenches, as I start to dredge up the past, old memories start floating to the top like decaying chunks of wood from an ancient wreckage I disturbed. I think, often in … Continue reading →

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RIP GVDL

Posted on August 11, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

I learned today of the death, a few months back, of somebody I’d never met but who I’d corresponded with off and on for several years. He was an odd fellow, an old man by the time I met him, … Continue reading →

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Our Summer of ’20

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Joel D. Hirst

Summer is winding down. The weather is beginning to cool off, at least in some places, and “Back To School” season is upon us. Book-bags and binders and lunch-bags. And face-masks – for though summer is over, the strangeness of … Continue reading →

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Narnia

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

“It’s an allegory—” “But what’s an allegory?” my little boy interrupted me. I searched my mind. He always asks such good questions, for the definitions and nature of things that we ourselves learned once and internalized before moving on, never … Continue reading →

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A Reason, A Season, or a Lifetime

Posted on November 24, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

I got accused of good writing yesterday. Naturally, it did not come in the form of a compliment – but nonetheless that is what my unfriend was saying. Unfriend, one of the clutter of people from our past who long … Continue reading →

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Dr. Denis Mukwege

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

Eastern Congo; it’s Africa’s own Africa and the Kivu capitals of Goma and Bukavu its dual-beating heart. Those who know, well they know; alas for those who don’t, it’s hard to explain. Two messy, shaken and tragic cities beautiful as … Continue reading →

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Powerlessness In America

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

Just as the rest of America, I too was swept away by the Kavanaugh hearings. A popular but unconventional president; the highest court in the land. An eleventh hour spoil appears from out of the shadows of California – where … Continue reading →

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To Lift The Fog

Posted on September 8, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

There’s a formlessness upon the battlefield. The early morning fogs have not yet lifted; our dead, not yet collected. The battle raged late, waning only upon the exhaustion of the soldiers and the depletion of the stocks of battle counted … Continue reading →

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A Story About Friendship

Posted on June 16, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

Last night I finished “Charlotte’s Web” with my little boy. “I feel sort of sad for that spider,” he told me as we got to the end and the little grey spider announced she was going to die. “I know,” … Continue reading →

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Our Society of Dead Poets

Posted on May 28, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

We pass on how to live in our genes. Our bodies telling us when we are hungry in order to eat, when we are tired to sleep. The myriad urges of animal life – when to purge our accumulated waste, … Continue reading →

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