Night Owl Cards

  Happy Veterans Day to all who have served our country, including my departed dad, who was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. I haven't written a Veterans Day post every November 11th, but there are a few, here and here and here .   For this Veterans Day, I thought I'd do something a little different, and take another cue from a reader. It's the second time this week I've acted on a reader's suggestion. I must be running out of my own ideas!   Anyway, after I posted the layout I created for the Dodgers' World Series victory, someone suggested that I should show off some of the layouts that I've saved over the years.   I didn't think anyone would be interested in that -- we're all about cards here you know -- and I still wonder if I'm boring people who consider newspapers a relic of their grandfather's era or whatever. But newspapers are very alive on a daily basis in my world, so let's take a look at a few of my favorites. (You're g...

I am not a military veteran. I've always been more of a thinker than a doer, and I knew that at an early age. The U.S. suspended the military draft in 1973, when I was 7 years old, so there was never a chance I might enter the military. But growing up in the '70s and early '80s, we were still so close to the Vietnam War, and I was nervous about a lot of things. President Carter reinstated mandatory registration with Selective Service for 18-year-olds when I was a teenager after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I felt a sense of foreboding as I approached my 18th birthday. The military wasn't for me. But still, this was nothing compared with when the draft was in effect. You all know the stories of baseball players who left behind their sport to serve in the military for multiple years. That seems like a foreign time to me and difficult to grasp. The time period that has always fascinated me is what happened during the late '60s and early '70s, durin...

When I was a kid, no one told us to "remember." We knew. It was right there on the back of our baseball cards. Thank you for your service.

I'm not an overtly patriotic person. That's a tough thing to admit, given where I live. Not only do I live in a very patriotic country, but I also live in a very patriotic portion of the country. I reside next to an army base where salutes to our military aren't reserved for this day alone, but pretty much every day of the year. I have no problem with this. I think I live in the best country in the world and our military deserves the credit for helping keep it that way. But I'm uncomfortable expressing more than that. I'm not sure why. I think part of it is I'm just not given to outward displays of emotion. The other part of it is I have little connection to the military. While I know several friends and acquaintances who have brothers, sisters, fathers who have served, I look around my family and see nothing but civilians. Although several relatives served our country in the past, they're all gone. The only connection left on this earth is my fathe...