Your United States military is a many-splendored institution built on centuries of bright honor and revered tradition. If it’s also got its skeletons and missteps, you may want to kindly squint past that. Serving under arms is a harder path than most Americans want to walk and if you’re not one of them, then sit … [more]
Memorex
26-May-2025 by Leave a Comment
I’m not the vet whisperer. I’m not here to tell you how to live, and I’m definitely not here to tell you how to weekend. Occasionally, well-meaning Americans ask me what’s an appropriate way to observe Memorial Day. We don’t have a lot of somber holidays on our calendar. In a culturally “Easter and Christmas” … [more]
Cheers, kid!
9-October-2022 by 4 Comments
Dear Cougster: I don’t know what to tell young adults about their 21st birthdays, other than “don’t expect too much.” Like New Year’s Eve or bachelor parties, it’s often an occasion more gleefully anticipated than fondly remembered. Basically, if you get through it without hurting yourself too badly, scrawl it loopily into the “win” column … [more]
Borrowed Valor
30-June-2022 by 11 Comments
It’s a joke and a cliché and the truest thing you’ll ever hear from us: “You weren’t there, man.”
Paleolithic
22-March-2022 by 21 Comments
For Yogi, and my many other brothers, in and out of arms, in and out of harm’s way: We started sharp and young, so strongThat brittle hardly matteredWe knew ideas were right or wrongThat only weak stones shattered Just off our banks, history flowedChanged us without our knowingWe thought we’d make a mighty splashThe river … [more]
Bones & Blood (a listicle)
16-February-2020 by 12 Comments
Diary entry from near my birthday in January, 2017: As a toddler, I was startled to learn from my larger, older cousin that a kid (say, for example, a larger, older cousin) could deploy a toy truck made from six pounds of rock maple as an effective, two-armed cudgel. That was the first time I … [more]
Darkly Dawns the Solstice
1-December-2019 by 10 Comments
A couple of years later, I left the careful silence of our never-home apartment to spend my birthday alone, sleeping rough under a ’58 Willys in the company of my good dog Junior and a dented bourbon flask.
"Jack Lewis takes the overall literary crown with his new book...there’s a lot more to Lewis’s work than what it feels like to ride motorcycles.” — Ultimate Motorcycling
"Insightful and from the heart ... a driven and much recommended look into the mind and conflict of the next generation of war veterans. " — Midwest Book Review (Reviewer's Choice)