Category Archives: Stuff

On the Closure of Valley Forge Military Academy

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In this post, my alma mater, Valley Forge Military Academy, announced its closure effective at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year.  While I believe that most of us saw this coming based upon the rumored goings-on at the school over recent weeks and months, I still find myself saddened by the announcement. 

I spent three of my five years in the academy, studying the usual courses.  Eventually, I was hired to teach computer programming to both academy and college cadets in Shannon Hall during my sophomore year in the junior college.  In fact, that was my very first paid IT job in a long series of IT jobs.  This is to say that my attachment to the academy goes a little further than just having been a student.

To be clear, I won’t be losing any sleep over the academy’s closure, but it’s on my mind as I make my way through this Monday, September 15. 

Yes, the college will continue, but for how long?  The demand for military schools is not going to explode any time soon, best as my crystal ball can tell.  Neither is the cost of education liable to be substantially reduced any time soon.  So, I find myself wondering how much longer the college will be able to continue to operate at the same campus with the same maintenance, funding, enrollment, and leadership headaches.

Full disclosure: I know nothing of keeping such a school running and I leave it to those with greater experience and interest to keep the college afloat. 

I wish the best for the college and its future.  I hope that the standards so easily abandoned over the last fifteen years or so can be restored with new leadership who are committed to the task.  With fewer cadets to supervise, I would hope this would become a much easier mission than in past years.

Time will tell. 

P.S.  Very belated thanks to COL Lee Temperton, BG Alfred Hess, and BG Alfred Sanelli for hiring me to teach computer science in 1975 and 76.  I’ve used the skills learned during that job to help train hundreds of computer users in both academic and industrial settings over the years.

Resist

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I’ve been reluctant for many years to write online about politics.  I used to say that I was too conservative for my liberal friends and too liberal for my conservative friends.  With all the polarization of politics in the last twenty years or so, I really didn’t – and still don’t – want to alienate myself from the few friends I have because of politics.  I have always believed there’s more to a person’s character than politics and judging someone over who they voted for was ridiculous.  Despite the degree of polarization today, I stand by this. 

I’ve told this story many times and if you’ve heard it, I apologize for the repetition.  Probably twenty years or so, I was sitting at the bar at the Fort Belvoir Golf club with a colleague.  We got to talking about politics and had a lively – but friendly discussion whilst consuming an adult beverage of some sort.  Probably beer. 

When we got around to talking about universal health care, of course, as a card-carrying Republican at the time, I repeated the talking point, “Why should I have to pay for someone else’s health care when I worked to make sure that I had enough for me and my family?”  I was declaring myself a member of the “I got mine and the hell with anyone else!” club. 

He said “Look, if I can give up a few bucks so some people can have health care, why wouldn’t I do that?” 

Why, indeed?

Perhaps I inferred something that wasn’t intended, but I suddenly realized that the position I was advocating was a very selfish position.  The realization that I was selfish hit me like a ton of bricks, and I didn’t like how that felt. 

When I was a little kid, my mom scolded me for being selfish and I was embarrassed and felt as though I let her and the family down.  I developed an unhealthy need to be not selfish, which followed me into adulthood.  Somehow, though, that didn’t follow me into political discussions.  My colleague’s words and the inference that I was being selfish embarrassed me just as it had when I was little.  That’s when everything started to change for me. 

I didn’t want to be that selfish person.

I started really listening to the talk radio hosts that I listened to – all conservatives, I might add – and learned that a lot of what I was hearing was hyperbole, selfish, and heartless.  And then I stopped listening.

Over the ensuing years, and the changes in the Republican party starting with the Tea Party, I changed my attitude about politics.  I still believed in small government, a strong military, fiscal responsibility, and personal responsibility as I do today.  These are traditionally Republican values, but so much has changed with the Republican party that they seem to have fallen by the wayside in favor of selfish, heartless values. 

In rewatching “The Newsroom” on Max, I encountered a scene in which Will McAvoy, the lead character and anchor of a fictional cable news broadcast said this:

“No, I call myself a Republican ’cause I am one. I believe in market solutions, and I believe in common sense realities and the necessity to defend ourselves against a dangerous world and that’s about it. Problem is now I have to be homophobic. I have to count the number of times people go to church. I have to deny facts and think scientific research is a long con. I have to think poor people are getting a sweet ride. And I have to have such a stunning inferiority complex that I fear education and intellect in the 21st century. But most of all, the biggest new requirement, really the only requirement, is that I have to hate Democrats.”

I found truth in those words.

To be clear, I don’t hate Democrats, and I don’t hate Republicans.  Let’s get that straight right now.  I don’t hate anyone who treats me with the dignity and respect that we all deserve.  I don’t choose my friends based on who they voted for in the last election.  Your politics don’t matter to me as long as you’re not being a dick to me or anyone else.

Unfortunately, I see nothing but dick moves coming from the current administration.  When did Americans start hating so much.  We used to be a compassionate nation.  When did we become so selfish and heartless? 

I am all for legal immigration, but I am not so selfish and as to upend and ruin the lives of millions of people willy nilly and deport them to countries that are genuinely dangerous and with which they have no relationship.  Yes, I would have preferred that they all enter the U.S. legally, but they are here now, and most are paying taxes and contributing to society.  Why are we being so selfish and heartless? 

Free trade is now dead and the only people who will be hurt by this are the poor and middle classes.  They will pay more for goods because of new tariffs that were applied willy nilly.  When did we become so selfish and heartless as to make living more difficult for the poorest of us?

And what of the cleansing of history that is coming from the elimination of DEI provisions that encouraged Americans to embrace diversity instead of abhorring it.  When did we become so selfish and heartless and afraid of our history as a nation to erase American history in favor of one man’s vision of an exclusively white America?

According to CNN on July 5, 2025, the latest budget legislation signed into law on July 4, 2025, creates new spending and declines in tax revenue.

“…the measure cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid, along with cuts to food assistance. But it will still, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, add $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit, which does not include the cost of servicing the debt.”

This will disproportionally affect those who can’t afford health insurance because of poverty and the disabled who rely on Medicaid to survive.  A compassionate nation would not allow its most vulnerable population to have life-saving benefits to be terminated.

And since this was first written, the “big beautiful bill” is now law.    

And now Iran has been provoked.  I can’t imagine Iran taking their lumps and moving on. I believe it’s more likely that Iran will bide their time, wait for the U.S. to become complacent again, and then retaliate.  I could well be wrong about this. However, the risk of retaliation is real.  Had we not destroyed their nuclear capability, the risk of retaliation would be much lower.  And we will never have real knowledge of the extent of the damage until neutral inspectors are allowed to do their jobs.  It is possible that the strikes did not obliterate Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  But I know they sure pissed them off.

And what of the separation of powers?  Why isn’t the entirety of Congress screaming about the Executive Branch usurping the Constitutionally assigned powers of the Legislative branch of government? Why are they permitting the Executive Branch to rule by executive order?  Congress is collectively too afraid of what Trump can do to their chances for reelection to protect Congress’s powers.  They are collectively ignoring the checks and balances defined in our Constitution in favor of their reelection.  And I see their power slipping away more and more every day.  One day, once the Executive Branch consolidates all the power that they can, Congress will serve no real purpose.

I oppose Mr. Trump and those in his administration who appear to be doing intentional damage to both the reputation of the United States of America as a haven for the oppressed, and to the system of government that has made our nation and our economy the envy of the rest of the world.  They have transformed nearly overnight the U.S. into a heartless and selfish nation. This is not the kind of nation we have been and not what I believe we ought to be.  Just like that moment that I decided that I didn’t want to be that selfish and heartless person, I don’t want the U.S. to be a selfish and heartless nation.

I encourage all Americans to resist the reshaping of America from the land of the free and home of the brave, into a nation solely concerned with fiscally running itself right into the ground. Our nation has always used our abundant resources to be globally compassionate and selfless to those less fortunate.  We are among the wealthiest nations in the world.  We should act like it through domestic and foreign aid programs.  

I encourage all Americans to continue to recognize that diversity is a strength not a liability and to resist those who want to change history.  

I encourage all Americans to support the notion that the rule of law is paramount to the American experience and Americans must resist the migration away from the rule of law to the rule of one man.  America is a representative republic and not a dictatorship.

At least it wasn’t.  But now, I am not so sure.

Resist.

Nursing in 1958

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Mom went to nursing school at Maumee Valley Hospital School of Nursing while raising two small humans, meaning me and my older sister, Bobbi Jo. I understand that nursing school looks a little bit different nowadays. Not sure which newspaper in which these were printed, but it was either the Fostoria Review Times or the Toledo Blade. That’s just a guess, though.

Dan

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE PLEDGE in Maumee Valley student nurses’ home is viewed, from left, by Mrs. Wolfe; her sister-in-law, Mrs. James E. [Eileen] Howell, and Mrs. Oscar G. Barillas, assistant nursing instructor at Maumee Valley.
GRANDMOTHER Mrs. Ellsworth [Pauline] Howell, Fostoria, O., drove to Toledo so Mrs. Robert [Mary Jo] Wolfe, also of Fostoria, could see her children, Bobbi Jo, 5, and Danny Jim, 2, during a break in training.

We’re On Our Way!

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Back in this post, we celebrated the landing of NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover launch and landing. NASA created a program by which the names of individuals here on Earth could be etched on a chip and sent to Mars as part of Perseverance. We submitted the names of the folks in the household and now our four names are among 1.2 million of our closest friends’ names on Mars.

NASA is at it again with their Europa Clipper mission scheduled for launch in October, 2024. Since I egregiously failed to include my sons, Jonathon and Andrew Wolfe in the previous mission, I made sure to not just add these fine gentlemen to the list of names destined for Europa, but gave them top billing in the gallery below.

From NASA’s website, “[The Europa Clipper’s] three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

“NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will perform dozens of close flybys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to investigate the moon. The spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter, will make nearly 50 flybys of Europa at closest-approach altitudes as low as 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the surface, soaring over a different location during each flyby to scan nearly the entire moon.

“Europa shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. Beyond Earth, Europa is considered one of the most promising places where we might find currently habitable environments in our solar system. Europa Clipper will determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.“

It will be an honor to accompany the Europa Clipper to the outer reaches of our Solar System. It will be an even greater honor to be with the family for all time one more time.

The Value of Just Paying Attention

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Not too long ago, I was asked to speak at the regular meeting of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association here on the Stark State Campus.  My former professor, Glenn Goe, said that he thought that talking about my career in the IT business had some value to the student members of the association, of which I was one.  

Let’s be clear – I love talking about me.  I am my favorite subject.  But the truth is, I didn’t have a clue about what to say.  It’s not as though I have any great pearls of wisdom to offer.  I’m not a deep thinker, so I figured I’d just try to be funny and, like the actor I am, wing it.

I walked into the meeting empty-handed.  No speech.  No script.  Not even some notes from which to cobble together a coherent theme.  I sat and scribbled notes in a small notebook reminiscent of the green notebook that successful Army leaders often carried around with them to take notes.  (And if you must know, no I didn’t carry one around, which really does say a lot about my Army career. I probably should have.)

I wanted to talk about leadership in the IT business, but having never been a leader in the IT business, I was coming up a little short on anecdotes.  With this dearth of information hanging over my head, I switched gears and talked about informal leadership in the technical world and the “Go-To Guy.”

The Go-To Guy is not in a leadership or management position, yet when people need help, they seek out the person who knows stuff, and that’s the Go-To Guy.  (I’ll refer to this as the GTG from now on.  Also, the GTG is a gender-neutral term, so please don’t think I’m excluding half the human population of the world.)  Being the GTG knows no gender, age, race, or pizza sauce preference.  It involves three things:  being curious, sharing what you know, and just paying attention.  I’m concentrating on the last one for the moment, but know that all three have the same priority. 

The first time I recall becoming aware of how important just paying attention is was when I was stationed with the Armed Forces Network station in Bosnia in 1997. 

Let me set this up.

In my freshman year in college in 1974, I decided to take Russian as my foreign language.  I registered for the class and along with a half dozen of my fellow cadets, started class that fall in Hart Hall at Valley Forge Military Junior College. 

Teaching the class was Lieutenant Colonel Richard M. Christenson.  Lt. Col. Christenson was a very unassuming man with a quiet voice and a wicked sense of humor that he shared more freely with the half-dozen Russian students than the well over fifty students in his Western Civilization class that he also taught. 

We all came to find out that Lt. Col. Christenson had been a former CIA agent who had the distinction of having his name printed in Pravda as an enemy of the Soviet state.  Or something like that.  His wife was also a Russian linguist, I believe. When I saw in their home the intricately hand-crocheted, throw pillow with the CIA logo on it, I knew that these people were the real deal.

Anyway, this is to say that my second-semester D in Russian was in no part due to Lt. Col. Christenson.  It was all me.  100%.  And I told him so when I informed him that I wasn’t going to be taking the second two semesters of Russian in my Sophomore year since the D wouldn’t transfer.  He said it was “refreshing” that I owned up to my lousy academic discipline and, with a smile, declared me a “defector”. 

I liked the classes and speaking the language, but writing it was a real bitch.  I didn’t do the homework as I should have and that led to my handwriting in Russian looking like that of a Russian kindergartener that’s had too much caffeine.  The harder it got, the more I hated doing the homework, conjugating verbs, declining nouns and the like, and mastering the cursive version of the Russian letter pronounced “shcha,” (щ).  I pretty much stopped doing homework. 

But I paid attention when I was in class.

Fast forward to 1997.  I am in a Humvee in full battle gear, a 9-millimeter round in the chamber of my pistol in the holster on my shoulder.  We were convoying from Eagle Base near Tuzla to one of the bases in the town of Doboj, I believe.  At the time, all of the shops and buildings that had signs on them were all in the Cyrillic alphabet – the one that I was supposed to have learned in my unsuccessful two semesters of Russian more than twenty years before. 

I looked at the signs, and while I couldn’t read them directly, I recognized the letters and was able to sound out three or four signs as we passed through the heart of the town on our way to the SFOR base.  I remember exclaiming “That sign says ‘Library!’” after sounding out the Cyrillic letters that sounded much like “biblioteka,” библиотека.  I sounded out a few more words, one of which I think was апотека, which when transliterated sounds a little like “apothecary,” an archaic word that means a person who prepared and sold medicines and drugs. It was a pharmacy! The Bosnian version of CVS, I suppose.

That was the moment.  The world changed for me and while those two words and a few others were all I could muster out of my cobweb-infested memory of Russian vocabulary, it was enough.  That was when I realized that I had paid enough attention in Russian class to have some practical application half a world away twenty two years later.  I had actually learned something in a class in which I did horribly.

All because I just paid attention.  I didn’t do the homework.  I didn’t study like a maniac.  I just paid attention. 

Another story from Bosnia I’ll quote here from a previous blog post:

Sidebar: Back then, the Russians weren’t enemies.  They were allies in the NATO Stabilization Force and hence, our friends.  We even socialized from time to time. 

“The Russian PAO major, whose name I regrettably have forgotten, came to the radio station with his interpreter to conduct business of some sort. Summoning up all the courage I had, I said hello to him in Russian based on what I remembered from college over twenty years before. The Russian major’s eyes lit up. He smiled broadly, excitedly shook my hand and said through his interpreter, “You greeted me in our language!” It was a magnificent moment for me and proved to me that you don’t necessarily have to have perfect grades to get something valuable out of academics. You just need to pay attention.”

Countless times since then, I’ve had the need for some trivial information, and lo and behold, it is right there in my cobweb-infested memory of whatever subject in school –- or life — applied.  I’ve used ratio and proportion to reduce the size of a recipe, trigonometry to find a misplaced satellite 23,340 miles away, and contributed positively to two lives all because I paid attention in the Army’s suicide prevention classes.

So pay attention.  Yeah, you think you’ll never need to know something and you’re probably right.  Then again, I never thought I’d be in a town in which all the signs used an alphabet that was completely different from my own.  Yet, there I was, delighting in the joy of understanding something I thought had long been forgotten, and filled with gratitude for Lt. Col. Christenson.  Defector or not, you had a positive influence on my life all because I just paid attention.