1. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
2. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
3. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
4. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
5. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
6. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
7. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
8. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
9. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
10. Watch “Nicktoons” with the kids.
Former Army Public Affairs colleague and outstanding public affairs practitioner Bruce Zielsdorf has penned “Green Card Soldier.” It’s a novel that… Well, duh! It’s his book. I’ll let him tell you about it:
“Green Card Soldier is an historic adventure novel that follows the exploits of Andro Babich – a naïve, but inquisitive teenage soccer star frustrated by his mundane life on the family farm in Bosnia. In the early 1990s, Andro’s sporting hopes are drowned as the former Yugoslavia is battered by thunderous storms of religious and nationalistic disgust that rip apart families, villages and the vast Balkan countryside. Once-civil debate decays into hate mongering, land grabbing and ethnic cleansing on all sides.
‘This tragic tale is told by Heath Winslow – a cynical, yet self-deprecating, war correspondent who, for decades, has seen much the same in other locales around the globe. Both characters challenge readers with the question: Can life become richer – and people stronger – when we look beyond labels to appreciate one another for the unique individuals we are?
“In the years that follow, Andro escapes to Greece, sails to America and joins the Army. As a Green Card Soldier, he soon earns his U.S. citizenship. Andro then returns to Bosnia as a USAID worker. During these vexing escapades, he meets a multitude of dynamic people and faces a mountain of barriers to reaching his life’s goal. This swarm of forces tests his drive and attempts to skew his moral compass. Andro eventually has an epiphany about achieving his quest… his life’s goal. In the end, our Green Card Soldier identifies several simple, but universal truisms that he intends to plant as part of his former homeland’s rebirth.”
You can see more about Bruce and his book by clicking through to the book’s website here. From there, you can download a preview and preorder the book.
Go ahead. I’ll wait. Come back when you’re done.
Good job and welcome back!
It’s being released in paperback on January 14th by Hellgate Press. I’ll be there to get my copy.
You should be too.
Congratulations on the book, Bruce! All of us from Army Public Affairs are proud of you!
Bruce Zielsdorf, author of “Green Card Soldier”
I’m REALLY, no kidding, no doubt about it, employed. How do I know this?
I got my business cards today. 🙂
So 2014 is here.
Big whoop.
So far, it doesn’t feel any different than 2014. Perhaps I have unreasonable expectations or fantasies that the world will suddenly be a better place when the New Year begins. But really, the New Year is nothing more than an arbitrary moment. It could have been a day before, a day earlier or anytime really. Yeah, there are big celebrations, but the world so far has continued to spin at a relatively constant rate and the orbit of our planet around our star is undisturbed – all really, really good things.
So why should I expect something different?
Tradition. Convention. The manufactured expectation that the media places upon the changing of the calendar. Like most people, I DO expect something different, but as every year past, I don’t get anything different. I know why, too.
It’s all my fault.
I recognize that the passing of a year, another birthday or another seemingly significant day doesn’t affect change. I have to do that. I have to make decisions and choices. I have to be willing to affect that change instead of waiting for some random sidereal moment to make it all better. It’s up to me to make those changes.
People often quote or misquote the last few lines of the poem by William Ernest Henley. (It’s pretty clear why people only quote or misquote the last few lines; those are the uplifting lines. The rest is kind of depressing.) Here’s the whole thing titled “Invictus:”
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
I am, dammit. It’s all on me. All.
Though being an Army guy, I prefer to think of myself as the colonel of my soul.