You're Killing Me Smalls!

Friday, November 29, 2019

This Year I am Thankful for an Empty Nest...and Zombieland

For the first time in my fifty-odd years, I celebrated Thanksgiving without my kids, without the comfort of my parents, or my siblings and their extended families. Here, at last, the dreaded empty nest...

I won't be alone per se, but I also won't have what I have come to see as a "normal" Rockwell-esque Thanksgiving. But I did have some time to prepare for this eventuality...

My original plan, let's call it Plan A, for dealing with no one being home this year called for taking an extended Thanksgiving break from work, flying to the East Coast, and spending the holiday with my parents, sisters, and their families, and my son and his girlfriend. I'd have still missed my two girls who were off doing other things (one with her fiancé and the other with her mother), but still, I had hoped it would be one of those old-fashioned family get-togethers filled with great food, fun games, and the occasional family angst (that always comes when everyone is brought together in such close proximity).

You know, all the elements that make for cherished memories...

As is often the case, real life got in the way of my best-laid plans. The first SNAFU was financial. With my youngest a sophomore at a wonderful(ly expensive) private liberal arts college and my oldest getting married in the Spring, rubbing enough nickels together to pay for a transcontinental Thanksgiving flight would mean adding to my credit card debt. If I am being completely honest, I would have done it, but it wasn't the right thing. However, the second Horseman of the Apocalypse, work, reared its ugly head. Unexpectedly, my boss went on a lengthy medical leave. This meant cutting what I had planned to be a ten-day trip down to just four (and traveling on two of the busiest and most expensive days of the year). Before the last two horsemen appeared, as much as I longed for that Rockwell-esque holiday, I decided to reassess Plan A - it just wasn't in the cards this year.

I started to think of ways to spend my time differently this year; let's call this Plan B... Four days off work, no real responsibilities, and a very strong desire to avoid Black Friday at all costs. Meaning I could spend four days hiking around Southern California, footloose and fancy-free. Maybe my long-delayed hike of the La Jolla Canyon Loop in Ventura County or the Backbone Trail near Malibu. However, a quick peek showed that Southern California's last couple of fires and the follow-on rainy seasons had resulted in many trail closures in the Santa Monica Mountains. Thinking less grandiose, living in the foothills means plenty of hikes much closer to home. My decision was made; I planned to strike out and hike the 'Glendale trifecta' (the Verdugo Mountain Peaks, Cherry Canyon-Cerro Negro Loop, and Mt. Lukens Loop). About twenty-five to thirty miles of mostly quiet hiking in my backyard. Ace the Wonder Dog and I were set for our very own Thanksgiving #optoutside adventure...

Alas, Plan B was dashed by Mother Nature. A series of Pacific storms decided to race down the California Coast, making this year's holiday one of the coldest and wettest Thanksgiving weekends in Los Angeles in the past 15 years. While the cold would have been manageable, washed-out and muddy trails (and a twenty-pound Scottish Terrier/Schnauzer), don't mix...

On to Plan C... a scaled-down, traditional Thanksgiving dinner, maybe a movie, and some much-needed rest. A wonderful lazy, long weekend...As those of you who have ever prepared a "traditional" family Thanksgiving know, just the food prep and cooking is an all-day affair (I even started the night before), not to mention the dreaded dishes! So much for relaxing!

But slave away in the kitchen, I did (but I got to watch Zombieland while cooking). The menu was mostly my Mom's traditional recipes, with a couple of my own additions. Everything was delicious, if I do say so myself. But even with my efforts to cut all the recipes in half, there were still tons of leftovers - but I'll return to food later... I can hear you, gentle reader asking a question... "Zombieland, why on earth watch Zombieland as a Thanksgiving movie?!" My answer was, "Why not?"

But really, I generally avoid horror movies, almost like I would a zombie-inducing plague. That said, a few days before, I stumbled upon a really well-written (and positive) review of the Zombieland sequel Zombieland: Double Tap. The author raved about how funny the sequel was (and how much they enjoyed the parody-esque original). The review was so gushing I decided to see the new movie over my newly freed-up long weekend. But before going to see Double Tap, I naturally decided I needed to watch the original movie first...hence my cooking companion for the day.

Review

Zombieland

directed by Ruben Fleischer

My rating: 3¾ of 5 stars

Let me say what a treat this 2009 movie was to watch. Clearly, my disdain for horror movies has been misplaced, at least for comedy/horror/romance movies. Like most really good movies, everything starts with the script. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick's story is wry, witty, and has snappy dialog (the kind I narrate in my head during "real" conversations!). The story here is coupled with quick pacing and interesting visual overlays, including the '31 Rules' and Zombie Kill of the Week cuts by director Ruben Fleischer (in his feature directorial debut). His direction seamlessly ties excellent performances by the cast (Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, and Abigail Breslin) into one funny (not-so-scary) little (81-minute) horror/comedy film that one professional reviewer called a "balls-out entertaining movie." The blood and gore are there, but not so overwhelming, and certainly not just for blood and gore's sake (which is probably why I like this movie - did I mention it was entertaining?).

The comedic timing of the actors and human relationship story elements make up for some questionable decisions the characters make (seriously, in a world infested with fast-moving, light and noise-sensitive, flesh-eating zombies, why would you turn on all the lights and music at an amusement park?!). But this is a horror/comedy, after all... I thoroughly enjoyed the production, the "surprise" cameo in the middle of the movie, and the slow-mo gory scenes, which were really fun.

Completely not what I had expected..with a name like Zombieland!! It changed my mind completely about this sub-genre of horror films, and I'd rank it up there with some of my other favorite screwball comedies like Kelly's Heroes, Big Trouble in Little China, The Great Race, and Dr. Strangelove. So, bring on Shaun of the Dead and Warm Bodies!

I know, I know, this probably sounds like a terrible Thanksgiving to the more extroverted personality types in my family, the ones who thrive on social activity (you know who you are!), but an excellent dinner, a funny movie, and time to myself, really worked for me..but next year I will finish those hikes, or at least head back East for a Plan A vacation!

To that end, this year, I am grateful not only for my family and the blessings of years of special holiday memories but also for some serious time to decompress and hang out alone (with some canine companionship). No real expectations, no responsibilities, and no worries (well, at least not many). I'm also thankful for Zombieland and the broadening of my movie genre palate.

Friday, June 7, 2019

The Sweet Tradition: Five Years of Donuts and the Unexpected Power of Showing Up

Sometimes the smallest gestures create the most lasting traditions.

It started with a box of donuts and a team that needed to remember they weren't alone.

A "standard" Friday box.

June 6th, 2014, was National Donut Day, and our CRM conversion team was drowning. These were the "back of the shop" folks, the ones who kept our systems running while the rest of us went about our daily work, blissfully unaware of the digital architecture holding everything together. They'd been pulling long hours on what felt like an impossible project, dealing with frustrated internal clients, and facing technical challenges that seemed to multiply faster than they could solve them.

The mood in those basement offices was heavy. You could feel it when you walked by the weight of stress, the quiet frustration, the sense that they were fighting a losing battle. I'd worked with some of these people for years. I knew how good they were, how much they cared about getting things right. But here they were, toiling away on critical infrastructure that everyone depended on, yet somehow invisible to the broader organization. The irony wasn't lost on me: the people keeping our entire operation running were the ones feeling most forgotten.

That morning, I made a decision that would unknowingly become part of our office DNA for the next five years. I stopped by Foster's Family Donuts in La Crescenta, a small neighborhood shop that had become a regular stop along my commute to work. These weren't mass-produced donuts from a chain; they were the kind of fresh, made-that-morning pastries that only a true family bakery can produce. I brought in a few dozen for the team.

It wasn't a grand gesture or a calculated management strategy; it was simply a recognition that these people deserved to know their work mattered, that someone saw the long hours and appreciated the sacrifice. And if I were going to make that gesture, it should be with donuts that were as thoughtful as the intention behind them.

The History Behind the Gesture

National Donut Day has roots that run deeper than most realize. Created in 1938 by the Chicago Salvation Army, the holiday honored the "Donut Lassies," brave women who served donuts and coffee to soldiers during World War I. These volunteers worked close to the front lines, often in dangerous conditions, bringing comfort food to troops who were far from home and facing unimaginable challenges.

The parallel wasn't lost on me. Here was our own team, working in their own kind of trenches, dealing with the pressure of a massive system overhaul while everyone else depended on them to keep things running. Those Salvation Army volunteers understood something fundamental about leadership that transcends military conflict: sometimes the most powerful support comes not in grand gestures, but in simple acts of recognition. A warm donut. A moment of connection. The acknowledgment that someone sees your struggle and values your contribution enough to show up for you.

This wasn't about the food itself; it was about visibility. About making the invisible work visible, even if just for a moment.

What Happened Next

The response surprised me. What I'd intended as a simple morale boost became something more, a moment of genuine recognition in the middle of chaos. People lingered in the break room longer than usual. Conversations started flowing between team members who'd been heads-down at their keyboards for weeks. Someone cracked a joke. Someone else shared a breakthrough they'd had the night before.

For the first time in months, the team felt seen. And feeling seen, they began to feel like a team again.

The database conversion was still challenging. The technical hurdles remained formidable. The internal clients were still impatient. But something fundamental had shifted. There was a sense of camaraderie that hadn't been there before and, more importantly, a recognition that their work mattered not just to the project, but to the people around them. They weren't just fixing systems; they were the guardians of our institutional memory, the architects of our future efficiency.

When One Day Became Every Friday

Foster's on Foothill Boulevard
in La Crescenta, CA

The following Friday, I found myself back at Foster's. Not because it was a holiday this time, but because I'd seen what a small gesture could do. The team's response was immediate and enthusiastic, and they specifically commented on how good these donuts were compared to the usual office fare. Word began to spread beyond our database group to other departments. People started asking if I'd be going to Foster's again for "donut Friday," it had become "a thing."

What began as a one-time act of support for a struggling team evolved into a weekly tradition that started defining our Development and Institute Relations (DIR) office culture. Foster's Family Donuts became our unofficial bakery partner, though they never knew it. Fridays became something people looked forward to. New employees learned about "donut Friday" during their first week and quickly developed preferences for Foster's glazed old-fashioned or their surprisingly perfect raised chocolate donuts. The tradition grew beyond the original database team; now staff from multiple floors and different departments within DIR make their way to our break room for their Friday morning "fix."

I kept bringing the donuts, week after week, because I could see what it meant. Not just the sugar and caffeine, though those helped, but the ritual of gathering, the informal conversations that happened over glazed and chocolate-frosted, the way it created space for connection in the middle of busy workdays. And yes, the quality mattered. Foster's donuts had that fresh, made-with-care taste that reminded everyone this wasn't just about convenience, it was about doing something thoughtfully.

The Ripple Effect

Over the years, I've watched this simple tradition create ripples far beyond what I ever expected. Team members from different departments began mixing during Friday morning donut breaks, leading to cross-functional collaborations that might never have happened otherwise. New hires found their footing faster, welcomed into conversations and inside jokes over coffee and pastries.

The tradition has morphed in wonderful ways. We've expanded beyond just donuts to include bagels some weeks, accommodating different tastes and dietary preferences. People have gotten comfortable making special requests; someone might mention they're craving an apple fritter, or ask if I could pick up those cinnamon sugar ones that Foster's makes so well. These little requests have become my informal barometer for reading the team's mood and stress levels. When someone specifically asks for comfort food, I know they're dealing with something challenging. When the requests get more adventurous, "Could you get some of those maple bacon ones Foster's had last week?" I can sense the team is feeling confident and playful.

Foster's became such a fixture in our office culture that when well-meaning colleagues would occasionally bring donuts from Winchell's or Krispy Kreme, people would politely partake but inevitably comment on how much they missed "the Foster's quality." It became a running joke and a testament to how even small details matter when you're trying to show people they're valued.

The tradition has become so embedded in our DIR culture that when I'm out of the office vacation, travel, whatever, someone else automatically steps up to make the donut run. It's not assigned or mandated; it just happens. People understand instinctively that Friday morning isn't quite right without that gathering, that moment of sweetness and connection to start the weekend. The tradition has become bigger than any one person because the principle behind it, recognizing and valuing each other's contributions, has become part of who we are.

The CRM conversion project? We completed it successfully, though not without its struggles. Those team members who had been drowning found their rhythm, supported not just by technical expertise but by a sense of belonging and appreciation. Many of those team members are still with Caltech today, and they often reference those difficult months not just as a professional challenge overcome, but as the time when our department culture really took shape around the idea that everyone's work matters, especially the work that often goes unnoticed.

More Than Sugar and Caffeine

Looking back, National Donut Day 2014 taught me something important about leadership and recognition. Sometimes the most powerful gestures are the simplest ones, not because they're easy, but because they cut straight to what people need most: to know that their contributions are seen and valued.

In any organization, there are people doing essential work that rarely gets acknowledged. The folks who keep the lights on, who maintain the systems, who solve the problems that others don't even know exist. They're often the most competent and least recognized members of any team. The lesson of that struggling CRM conversion team wasn't about donuts or morale boosting; it was about learning to see the invisible work and finding ways to make those contributions visible.

The Salvation Army's Donut Lassies understood this during World War I. They knew that acknowledgment and comfort could provide hope in the darkest times. In our own small way, our Friday tradition carried forward that same spirit using food as a vehicle for recognition, connection, and community.

I think about those World War I volunteers often when I'm standing in line at Foster's on Friday mornings. Their work was obviously more dangerous, more consequential than mine. But the impulse was the same: the recognition that people doing hard work need to know they're not alone, that their efforts are seen and valued, and that someone is willing to show up for them, consistently, with the best you can offer, not just the most convenient.

A Sweet Legacy

As I write this on National Donut Day 2019, the tradition continues. Five years and hundreds of Fridays later, those weekly donut runs have become part of who we are as a department. New team members quickly learn that around here, we believe in marking small victories, supporting each other through challenges, and never underestimating the power of showing up with something sweet to share.

What strikes me most is how the tradition has become self-sustaining. It's no longer dependent on my initiative alone; it's become part of our collective identity. When I return from time away, people eagerly fill me in on who covered the donut run, what varieties they chose, and which new person got initiated into our Friday morning ritual.

The database conversion team that started it all has long since moved on to new projects and new challenges. But the culture they helped create, one donut at a time, remains. It serves as a reminder that building strong teams isn't always about formal programs or grand initiatives. Sometimes it's as simple as showing up with a box of donuts and saying, "I see the hard work you're doing, and I appreciate it."

Every National Donut Day, I'm reminded of how a single moment of thoughtfulness can grow into something lasting. And every Friday, as I watch colleagues from across DIR gather in our break room, sharing stories and sugar in equal measure, I'm grateful for that struggling database team from 2014 who taught me that sometimes the smallest gestures create the biggest impact.

The tradition started with a team that needed to know they weren't forgotten. It continues because we've learned that recognition, real recognition, isn't something you save for annual reviews or formal ceremonies. It's something you practice weekly, with intention and consistency, especially for the people whose work makes everyone else's possible.

What started as support for an overlooked team became a cornerstone of our company culture. Sometimes the best leadership lessons come not from business books, but from the simple recognition that everyone deserves to feel valued—especially those whose contributions often go unnoticed.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Wanting to Be Snoopy, Feeling Like Charlie Brown

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Peanuts. Not just the Sunday comics or the TV specials we all grew up with, but the deeper psychology behind Charles Schulz's simple genius. It's amazing how much truth he packed into those four-panel strips, truth about human nature, loneliness, imagination, and the quiet struggle to keep showing up.

If I'm honest, most days I feel like Charlie Brown.

There's something so painfully relatable about Charlie Brown, the kid who tries and fails, who organizes the baseball game no one wants to play in, who never kicks the football but always runs toward it anyway. He's the eternal optimist living under a rain cloud, and I think that's why so many of us see ourselves in him. But the genius of Peanuts lies in its cast of characters who don't just support Charlie Brown, but actively challenge him. Lucy, for instance, is more of an antagonist than a friend. She's confident and outspoken with a streak of bully in her personality, and she delights in pulling the football away just as Charlie Brown is about to kick it. Her actions aren't meant to help or encourage; they're meant to knock him down, test his limits, and sometimes mock his persistence. Yet, what makes Charlie Brown so endearing is that he keeps running toward that football anyway. His perseverance isn't because of Lucy's encouragement; it's despite her attempts to trip him up. Lucy embodies those voices in our lives that push back, that doubt us, or that challenge our optimism. Charlie Brown's struggle against her reminds me that resilience often means standing strong, not with the help of others, but in defiance of those trying to hold us back.

But then... there's Snoopy.

Snoopy is everything we want to be. Confident. Cool. Imaginative. Unbothered. He reinvents himself daily: Joe Cool, World War I Flying Ace, bestselling novelist. While Charlie Brown is down in the mud, Snoopy is dancing on the doghouse. He doesn't worry about fitting in or getting it right; he just is. And isn't that the dream? We all want to be Snoopy. But most of us walk around feeling like Charlie Brown.

I've noticed this theme popping up in my own writing more than I realized. In The Unfinished Work, I stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg, grappling with Lincoln's call to continue the work of democracy, wrestling with whether we're living up to the sacrifices made there, whether our civic understanding is strong enough to sustain what so many died to preserve. That kind of deep reckoning, questioning whether I'm doing enough as a citizen, whether we're all worthy of what we've inherited, feels very Charlie Brown to me. It's earnest. A little anxious. Overwhelmed by the weight of history and responsibility. But it's also rooted in hope, in the belief that showing up matters even when the task feels impossibly large.

Still, there's a part of me that longs for Snoopy's spirit. His creative energy. His ability to turn a boring afternoon into a full-blown saga. As I look back at older posts from travel reflections to musings on leadership or family, I see flashes of that spirit. Those are the moments when I'm trying to channel Snoopy. When I let my imagination run, when I let humor or curiosity lead, when I step out of the box long enough to ask bigger questions.

But inevitably, I come back to Charlie Brown. I come back to doubt, to duty, to the desire to do better even when the odds aren't great. And maybe that's okay. Maybe the goal isn't to be Snoopy, but to let his spirit visit us when we need it most to balance the worry with a little wonder, the failure with some flair.

This tension... surfaced deeply in my Christmas reflections from 2010. I admitted to dreading a certain kind of Christmas, the one filled with "lasts." Last Christmas with all the kids at home. My last Christmas with a true believer before the Elf era began. That felt very much like a Charlie Brown moment: the melancholy, the ache of change, the worry that the magic might fade.

But then came the Snoopy side of that Christmas, the passing of the torch. Inviting my youngest into the quiet fraternity of Christmas elves, just as my mom once did for me. That difficult but hopeful conversation wasn't a moment of loss, but of legacy. We talked about belief not just in Santa, but in something deeper: the enduring magic of generosity, wonder, and love passed down through generations. That's pure Snoopy, the imaginative spark that turns endings into new beginnings, that celebrates mystery and keeps the magic alive.

And it's the same dynamic in Trains, Presidents, and Baseball, my account of a cross-country road trip with my daughter. What started as a practical move to Philadelphia for medical school became a journey of reconnection. We shared national parks, presidential history, and ballgames, but it was the quiet, in-between moments, the misfires, the museum closures, the unexpected laughs that brought us back to each other. That felt like Charlie Brown's honest longing for connection paired with Snoopy's joyful improvisation. It reminded me that relationships, like life, don't come wrapped up perfectly; they unfold in fits and starts, with hope and humor intertwined.

All of these reflections, ranging from solemn civic duty to family celebrations and travel adventures, trace the emotional arc between Charlie Brown and Snoopy that runs through my life and writing. They remind me that we don't live fully at either extreme, but somewhere in between. We ache, we aspire, we stumble, we imagine. That's what makes the journey real.

What Schulz understood and what I'm starting to accept is that we contain both the melancholy and the magic. We are Charlie Brown with a little bit of Snoopy inside, trying to break free.

So I'll keep chasing the football. I'll keep pitching no matter the score. I'll keep showing up. And maybe, just maybe, I'll dance on top of the doghouse every once in a while, too.

Monday, November 19, 2018

The Unfinished Work: Civic Understanding and the Fragile State of American Democracy

Abraham Lincoln has been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember, second only to my parents. My earliest memory of a family vacation is a cross-country road trip that included a stop at Gettysburg, not long after the Civil War Centennial. I was four years old, standing on those hallowed grounds. At that age, I couldn’t grasp the full weight of history in a place where so many had given their lives for the idea of a more perfect union. But that visit sparked a lifelong fascination with Lincoln, the statesman, the writer, the moral compass of a divided nation. I’ve been a Lincoln buff, a fan, maybe even a nerd ever since.

His Gettysburg Address, just 272 words long, remains to me one of the most powerful expressions of American ideals ever written. More than a dedication of a cemetery, it was a recommitment to democracy, equality, and national purpose. Today, as we navigate a political landscape marked by division, disinformation, and declining civic understanding, Lincoln’s words are more than a historical artifact; they are a call to action. The erosion of civic education threatens our ability to live up to them, and the “unfinished work” of democracy must remain at the center of our national consciousness.

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth..

Civic Illiteracy

In just 272 words, Lincoln distilled the moral foundation and political aspiration of the American experiment: that a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” must continually prove its capacity to endure. Delivered in the blood-soaked shadow of the Civil War, his address transcended its moment to articulate a timeless challenge, one that feels especially urgent in today’s divided political climate.

While we are not engaged in civil war, we are experiencing a profound erosion of trust in democratic institutions, rising polarization, and a drift away from shared civic understanding. One of the less discussed but deeply consequential causes of this crisis is the long-term decline of civics education in American schools. Without a firm grasp of how our government functions or why democratic participation matters, citizens are ill-equipped to take up the "unfinished work" Lincoln called us to continue.

Lincoln’s speech reminds us that democracy is not self-sustaining it must be nurtured, practiced, and defended. He avoided partisan rhetoric, choosing instead to elevate principles of unity, sacrifice, and shared responsibility.

Yet in recent decades, we have allowed our civic muscles to atrophy. Civics, once a core part of American education, has been marginalized or dropped entirely in many school systems. As a result, generations have come of age without a meaningful understanding of the Constitution, the rule of law, or their responsibilities as citizens.

This civic illiteracy has real and dangerous consequences. Without an understanding of the electoral process, misinformation spreads more easily and undermines confidence in election outcomes. Without knowledge of the First Amendment, Americans are less equipped to identify and defend against threats to press freedom and free speech. Without an appreciation of checks and balances, they may support authoritarian measures, misinterpreting them as strength rather than erosion.

In Lincoln’s time, the existential threat to democracy was open warfare. Today, it is disconnection, apathy, and extremism born of ignorance. Reinvigorating civic education in schools, communities, and media is not a luxury; it is essential to national stability. A democracy cannot thrive on instinct or symbolism alone. It demands active, informed participation.

Lincoln concluded his address with a hope: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Whether that government endures depends not only on elections and laws, but on education, on equipping every new generation with the knowledge, habits, and values necessary for self-government.

Postscript

The kids at Gettysburg, Nov. 2003

Today, the 155th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, I found myself reflecting on a moment from years earlier when I stood with my children at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. We paused in front of the simple granite marker believed to mark the spot where Lincoln delivered his immortal words. I’ve had the Address memorized since I was a boy, and I recited it for them while imagining what it must have felt like to hear those words for the first time.

I took this photo that day, my children, much younger then, standing where Lincoln once stood, surrounded by the headstones of the soldiers whose sacrifice gave his words such meaning. That photo sits framed in my office today. I often find myself looking at it, especially when today’s civic challenges feel overwhelming.

It gives me hope not just that I’ve passed along some of these civic lessons to my own children, but that their generation may be ready to carry forward the legacy of Lincoln’s 272 words. The unfinished work, as Lincoln reminded us, belongs to each new generation. And in that image, I am reminded that there is still reason to believe they will be up to the task.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

A Fierce Glory: Antietam (REVIEW)

A Fierce Glory: Antietam--The Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery
by Justin Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There’s something uniquely American about standing on a Civil War battlefield and trying to make sense of what happened there. The ground itself holds secrets: subtle rises and depressions that meant life or death to the men who fought over them, stone walls and creek beds that became the hinge points of history. I’ve walked many of these fields over the years, from Gettysburg to Manassas to Lookout Mountain, but Antietam feels different. Maybe it’s because September 17, 1862, remains our nation’s bloodiest single day. Maybe it’s because the battle’s outcome was so consequential yet so uncertain. Or maybe it’s because Antietam represents something uniquely American: a moment when individual choices, political courage, military hesitation, and desperate gambles combined to reshape the nation's entire trajectory.

Justin Martin frames the whole thing in his author’s note with a line that cuts right to it: “Had its outcome been different, there would have been no Gettysburg.” That single sentence, blunt and irrefutable, is the spine of the book. Everything else flows from it.

A Fierce Glory captures this quality better than any Antietam book I’ve read. Rather than delivering another tactical military history focused on troop movements and regimental positions, Martin weaves together the human stories of individuals touched by the battle: Abraham Lincoln in the White House, Clara Barton on the battlefield, Robert E. Lee’s audacious strategic gamble, and Alexander Gardner’s revolutionary war photography. It reads less like a military study and more like a meditation on how ordinary people, thrust into extraordinary circumstances, can alter the course of history.

More Than a Battle

Martin’s central thesis is embedded in his subtitle: Antietam was “The Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery.” This framing immediately lifts the book beyond conventional battlefield studies. Yes, Martin covers the fighting: the desperate struggle at Burnside’s Bridge, the horrific carnage at Bloody Lane, the missed opportunities that allowed Lee’s army to escape. But he’s more interested in how twelve hours of combat rippled through American politics and society.

He explains his approach directly in the author’s note: “I’ve chosen to tell this story in a different way, avoiding minutely detailed descriptions of troop movements (a standard feature of so many battle accounts) in favor of rendering a larger picture.” It works. The book shows how Antietam became a turning point not just militarily, but politically, medically, technologically, and morally.

Lincoln needed a Union victory to issue the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength rather than desperation. Secretary of State Seward had urged exactly that caution in July 1862, warning that without a battlefield win, Lincoln’s edict might be viewed as, in Seward’s own words, “our last shriek on the retreat.” So, Lincoln folded a two-page handwritten draft into a pigeonhole in his White House desk and waited. Army Medical Director Jonathan Letterman used Antietam to debut the three-tiered battlefield evacuation system (dressing station, field hospital, general hospital) that is still in use today. Alexander Gardner’s photographs of corpse-strewn Bloody Lane ended romantic notions about the glory of combat in a way no newspaper account could.

That last piece deserves its own moment. When Gardner’s images went on display at Mathew Brady’s gallery in Manhattan, visitors climbed the stairs in droves to peer into the stereoscopes. What greeted them, as Martin describes it, was “astonishing, like nothing they had ever seen on the pages of Harper’s. Here were dead soldiers in full 3-D, rendered with stunning clarity.” The New York Times observed that Brady had “brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards.” Martin sees the moment clearly: a cultural line crossed, with no going back. “So, this is what war looks like,” he writes. “So, this then is what is happening on those faraway fields.”

The approach puts Martin in the same territory as James Burke’s late-70s mini-series Connections, which is right up my alley. Burke’s thesis was that you cannot consider the development of any element of the modern world in isolation, that interconnected events drive history. Martin’s narrative works from the same premise. The battle becomes a case study in leadership under pressure, necessity as the mother of invention, and in how a single day’s fighting could determine whether America would emerge from its greatest crisis as one nation or two.

Lincoln at the Center

Lincoln at Antietam - October 1862

Martin’s most significant contribution may be how thoroughly he integrates Lincoln into the Antietam narrative. Too many battle histories treat Lincoln as a distant figure waiting for telegraphed reports. Martin shows how deeply the president was involved in every aspect of the Maryland Campaign, and how much was riding on it personally.

This was a man carrying enormous private grief alongside the weight of a nation at war. As Martin puts it, Lincoln’s daily commute from the Soldiers’ Home cottage to the White House was a refuge from “excruciating personal grief, the recent loss of their son, Willie.” He’d slipped the Emancipation Proclamation draft into a desk drawer and was waiting for his reluctant general to deliver the military win that would give the document credibility. Everything depended on what happened in a valley in Western Maryland on a September day.

Martin portrays Lincoln summoning the political acumen necessary to transform a tactical draw into a strategic victory. The Emancipation Proclamation emerges not as an inevitable moral pronouncement but as a calculated political gamble by a leader who understood that the war’s meaning would be determined as much by presidential proclamations as by battlefield victories. Martin calls it Lincoln’s “last card.”

This focus on Lincoln’s political genius helps explain why Antietam, rather than Gettysburg, deserves recognition as the war’s true turning point. As Martin argues: “Antietam was a more critical battle than Gettysburg. Yes, Gettysburg receives more glory…. However, the case for Antietam is simple and irrefutable. Had its outcome been different, there would have been no Gettysburg.” Confederate victory in Maryland might well have ended the war on Southern terms, inviting European recognition of the Confederacy and allowing a Democrat-controlled Congress to negotiate a settlement with slavery intact. The stakes in September 1862 were nothing less than the survival of the United States as a single nation.

The Human Cost

Martin never loses sight of what made all of it possible. His portraits of individual soldiers are where the book earns its keep.

The book opens with Lieutenant John Mead Gould of the 10th Maine, who fought at Antietam and spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of it. In a matter of minutes at the battle’s opening, a quarter of his regiment (seventy-one of two hundred seventy-seven men) went down. The field was shrouded in smoke. The air, in Martin’s description, “swam thick with projectiles.” General Mansfield stumbled past Gould “with his coat flapping open to reveal a crimson bloom spreading across his abdomen.” Gould helped him from the field. The general died soon after. As Gould would recall for the rest of his life: “how mighty easy it was to get killed or wounded that day.”

The Burnside Bridge scene is equally vivid. On one side: twelve thousand five hundred Union soldiers under a general who, Martin suggests, was “simply paralyzed.” On the other: a small force of Georgia farm boys who had converted “the steep bluffs on their side into a formidable natural stronghold.” Among them were elite sharpshooters hiding in the branches of elms and sycamores or kneeling behind farmers’ bales of hay on the bluffs above. The math was brutal: a twelve-foot-wide bridge, enough to squeeze maybe five soldiers shoulder to shoulder, funneling an army into what Martin calls “a narrow chute” under withering fire.

The Bloody Lane section doesn’t dwell on gore, but it doesn’t look away either. Martin’s description is spare: “In the road, the Confederate dead were so thickly strewn that it was hard to discern any of the ground beneath them. Forever after, the sunken road would be known as the Bloody Lane.”

The medical scenes round out the picture. Letterman’s reforms weren’t theoretical work; they were responses to immediate human suffering, hammered out in the weeks before the battle and tested under fire. At previous engagements, the wounded had often been left to regimental musicians and civilian teamsters who, under battle duress, frequently “drank the medicinal spirits—or simply bolted.” After Shiloh, thousands of wounded lay untended for days, peach blossoms fluttering down to cover them. Letterman wasn’t going to let that happen at Antietam. Clara Barton wasn’t, either. She arrived at a farmhouse aid station in a canvas-covered wagon loaded with bandages, bread, wine, chloroform, and lanterns, and got to work removing a minie ball from a soldier’s cheek with her pocketknife. No credentials required. “In such a state of emergency, any help was welcome, no questions asked.”

Contemporary Resonance

A Fierce Glory arrives at an unusually charged moment. Martin published it in September 2018, with the midterm elections six weeks away and the country more divided than it had been in a generation. His portrait of a nation on the brink, torn by fundamental disagreements about identity, values, and the role of government, doesn’t require much imagination to place against the current backdrop.

The parallels aren’t perfect, and Martin is too good a historian to force artificial connections between 1862 and today. But his portrayal of Lincoln’s patient political maneuvering, his willingness to wait for the right moment to act decisively while looking like weakness to critics, carries obvious weight for anyone watching the current spectacle in Washington and wondering whether steady, principled leadership still has a place in it.

There’s also something specific about this particular autumn that makes the book resonate. The 2018 midterms are shaping up to be a referendum on the soul of the country, not so different in structure from what Lincoln was navigating in the fall of 1862. Martin reminds us that the Confederates timed their Maryland invasion deliberately, hoping a Union defeat would sweep anti-war Democrats into Congress and force a negotiated settlement. Politics and the battlefield were inseparable then. Martin’s book doesn’t offer easy comfort, but it does offer something more useful: evidence that the republic has survived this kind of fracture before, when the right people made the right choices at the right moment.

Minor Criticisms

A Fierce Glory isn’t perfect. Readers seeking detailed tactical analysis may find the approach occasionally frustrating. For that level of military detail, D. Scott Hartwig’s comprehensive two-volume treatment, To Antietam Creek and I Dread the Thought of the Place, remains unmatched. The maps in Martin’s book, while adequate, pale next to Hartwig’s detailed battlefield cartography.

Martin’s writing style, while generally engaging, occasionally drifts toward the novelistic. His technique of getting inside characters’ heads, imagining what Lincoln was thinking as he waited for battle reports, or what Lee felt as he realized his invasion had failed, is dramatically effective but historically speculative. In his own author’s note, Martin acknowledges this directly, flagging certain passages as “battle is informed speculation.” That honesty helps.

These are minor quibbles. Martin is a narrative nonfiction writer by background, and he has the storyteller’s instinct for finding the human drama in historical events without sacrificing rigor. Hartwig provides the tactical foundation that serious students of the battle require; Martin builds the interpretive superstructure that helps general readers understand why Antietam mattered beyond the immediate military consequences. The two approaches complement each other. Hartwig gives you the facts. Martin tells you what they mean.

A Different Kind of Civil War Book

A Fierce Glory stands apart in the crowded field of Civil War literature because Martin grasped that Antietam’s importance extends far beyond military history. This is a book about how democracies survive existential crises, how individual choices can have generational consequences, and how the meaning of historical events often becomes clear only in retrospect.

Martin has written the kind of Civil War book that might actually change minds. It’s accessible enough for general readers and sophisticated enough for serious students of the period. Sweeping in scope and intimate in detail, politically sharp and humanly compelling. It doesn’t just tell you what occurred on that terrible September day. It makes you feel why it still matters.

Standing on the Antietam battlefield, I can still feel the weight of what happened there. Martin’s book sharpens that feeling. In an era when American democracy again faces serious challenges, it’s a reminder that the work of preserving our ideals will never be finished. Each generation has to take it up anew.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in Civil War history, Lincoln scholarship, or the broader question of how democratic societies navigate existential crises.

I visited the Antietam battlefield with my son this past June, during a cross-country road trip that wound through Little Bighorn, Mount Rushmore, and a genuinely strange afternoon at a circus museum in Wisconsin. That visit is the subject of a companion post: “When History and Present Collide.”

Monday, September 17, 2018

When History and the Present Collide

The cross-country road trip with my son this past June was a lot of things: long stretches of highway, late-night hotel check-ins, and a mutual discovery of roadside diners. For both of us, it was also a pilgrimage through history, adding another chapter to our long list of battlefield and museum visits. We walked the grounds of Little Bighorn, stopped at Mount Rushmore, and spent a genuinely odd morning at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin. On June 12, we found ourselves on a quiet ridge in Maryland, standing over the ground where America nearly broke in two.

Ted was a year out of college, getting ready to move to New York and begin his new career. I was in full dad mode: proud, a little anxious, acutely aware that this kind of trip wouldn’t come around again easily. For me, there’s something about being at a Civil War battlefield with one or more of my kids that makes the distance between 1862 and right now feel very small.

Standing on Sacred Ground

Burnside's Bridge - 2018

September 17, 1862, remains the single bloodiest day in American military history. More than 23,000 men fell in twelve hours, more casualties than America suffered on D-Day. The numbers are hard to hold in your head when you’re standing on grass that looks like any other grass, under a sky that looks like any other sky.

We made two stops that demanded longer than the others.

The first was Burnside’s Bridge, known at the time as Rohrbach Bridge. It’s a low stone span, twelve feet wide, with three graceful arches, built in 1836. Twelve feet. Standing on it, you can touch both walls without fully extending your arms. For hours that September morning, a small force of Georgian sharpshooters held it against repeated Union assaults, picking men off as they funneled onto the bridge. When the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania finally charged across in the afternoon, they paid for every inch. The bridge is beautiful now, quiet, a little mossy, the creek running below it exactly as it did that day. It’s easy to forget what it cost.

Bloody Lane - 2018

The second stop was Bloody Lane. What had been a sunken farm road became a Confederate defensive position, and then a killing ground when flanking movements collapsed the line. The men who died there were close to Ted’s age, many of them far from home, fighting their first and last battle on the same day.

Gardner's photo of Union troops inspecting piles of
Confederate bodies at Antietam's “Bloody Lane.”

Walking that lane in the June heat, I kept thinking about Alexander Gardner’s photographs taken here in the battle’s aftermath. His images of the corpse-strewn road went on display in Manhattan weeks later and drew enormous crowds. For the first time, ordinary Americans could see what the war actually looked like: not paintings, not illustrations, but photographs of real men who had been alive that morning. It shattered any romantic notion of battle as something glorious. Ted and I walked the lane quietly, not saying much. Sometimes you don’t need to.

The Divided Present

It’s hard to stand on a Civil War battlefield in October 2018 without feeling the pull of certain parallels. We’re weeks from a midterm election that feels, to a lot of people, like something more than a normal election. The political conversation this fall has been defined by what feels like irreconcilable differences: fierce debates over immigration, a public discourse that leaves little room for nuance, and a sense that we’re not just arguing about policy anymore but about who gets to define the country.

The Confederate invasion of Maryland was timed deliberately to fracture Northern resolve before the 1862 midterms, a calculated attempt to swing Congress toward a negotiated peace. Reading Justin Martin’s account of that strategy over the past few months, the echo is hard to miss. Much of our current political rhetoric feels built the same way: designed to mobilize through fear rather than appeal to anything shared.

The polling this fall describes a nation more polarized than at any time since the Civil War era. We’re not just disagreeing about tax policy or healthcare. We no longer seem to agree on basic facts. Lincoln observed that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Standing on the ground where that division nearly became permanent, it’s hard not to wonder how much strain a house can take before the framing gives.

Gardner’s photographs shattered illusions about warfare in 1862. What shatters illusions now is social media and round-the-clock news, doing something similar to our politics: stripping away the comfortable distance between what we’d like to believe and what’s actually happening. Gardner’s photographs were meant to show the truth. I’m not always sure what our current media environment is meant to do.

The Continuing Work

Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg about “the unfinished work” that each generation must take up. The soldiers at Antietam didn’t choose the moment history handed them. They had no idea whether dying in a Maryland cornfield would change anything. They couldn’t see past the smoke and noise to whatever came next. They just kept going.

Whatever happens in November, I suspect we’ll end up in roughly the same place Antietam left the country in 1862: somebody will claim victory, and then the harder, slower work of actually governing together will resume, no matter who ends up with more seats in Congress. That work isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t have a monument. But it’s the work that keeps the house standing.

Ted has settled into his new life in New York now, and I find myself thinking about what his generation is inheriting. The summer road trip, the quiet walk down Bloody Lane, the bridge that cost so much to cross. Those things stay with you. I hope they stay with him.

The conversation between the past and the present keeps going. So does the unfinished work. Standing on that Maryland battlefield with my son, I had every reason to believe his generation will be up to it.