James LaRue - myliblog

Yesterday, I flew up to (via Blackhawk helicopter) and back from (via Chinook helicopter) the Colorado Army National Guard's High Altitude Aviation Training Site. The undeserved experience was the result of the generosity of one of our staff, who was in the Guard and recently returned from a stint in Iraq. (His story is here .) I'm the director of the organization that treated him well, although the credit really belongs to many others. Nonetheless, I got some cool photos. We flew from Buckley Air Force base to the HAATS site in Eagle. The Blackhawk: Inside (seated right behind the pilots, looking forward): Looking out the window (not only unpressurized, but with open windows!): And this is a photo, out that same window, as we just nudged over the very high point of the divide. Our air speed was about 100 mph. This is the helicopter I rode on the way back: The chinook is a troop transport copter. This is what it looked like, toward the pilots. And this is what it looked like ou...

Thanks to the good work of my Assistant, Aspen Walker, we're gradually putting up the "Authors at Douglas County Libraries" programs shot by the Network Douglas County over the past couple of years. You can find the link here . In particular, I'm pleased to see the interview with Sarah Brannen (author of "Uncle Bobby's Wedding") go up. I don't think it ever made it to the county website.

This post is based on two articles. The first is by Peggy Noonan, entitled, America Is at Risk of Boiling Over . Her essential point is this: many Americans today are thinking that things are NOT getting better for their children. She gives some examples that you may or may not agree with. Myself, I really don't think out-of-control immigration is the issue. But I do agree, as would many of the people who regard the nation's literacy and commitment to education as a leading indicator, that we seem to be setting up our children to inherit a little less than what we inherited. The second is Cash-Strapped States Cut The Lights by Paul Krugman. Krugman's point is much the same: as a nation, we're pulling things apart, by which I mean our most basic infrastructure. And I think he puts his finger on precisely the issue: we're thinking too short term. We think what benefits our pocket books in the short term is what's good for the nation, for our whole species, in the...

The late, great, brilliant comic George Carlin tells it like it is. In ancient Greece, people looked to philosophers for the truth. Some societies have looked to poets, or journalists, or even political leaders. Today, we look to comedians.

I gave a talk on July 6, 2010 to a leadership reunion in Nebraska. The workshop was held at the Saint Benedictine monastery in Schuyler, Nebraska. The monastery was a beguiling prairie-style building, incorporating aggregate concrete, red brick, and warm cherry wood (I think). It was ensconced in a cell-phone-free dip in the rolling landscape. At night, there were fireflies. I spent awhile in the chapel that morning, listening to the silence and watching a candle, the om-sound louder than locusts. And I spent a good long time admiring this exquisite wooden statue, maybe 5 feet tall. Madonna and child carved in Tanzania and shipped to Nebraska

tkoutline "is a single pane, cross-platform outline editor written in Tcl/Tk." This free program was written by Brian Theado. I used to use it a lot. It was very close to what I wanted - but lacked movement by word, and word count. Finally, I emailed Theado, and he promptly sent me back a few lines to add to the preferences and startup files. I could now move the cursor by word and get a word count. I eventually drifted away from it, mainly because the combination of the tclkit and the program file I was using gave me a dotty-font look, sort of like Windows. It was ugly, and the rest of my Linux desktop was so pretty. Call it an aesthetic issue. Well, it turns out that I should have broken down and asked Theado how to fix that, too. I did, today, and it's not hard. For Linux machines, follow these instructions to get a surprisingly handy, quick, stable (and now good looking!) program that works for a lot of things. 1. Grab these files: * wget http://tkoutlin...

Click here to get to a page from the latest Gay and Lesbian fund annual report. Then click on the embedded video there. The Gay and Lesbian Fund Fund has underwritten many library programs over the years, and recently interviewed both me and one of our most prominent local library philanthropists about the principles of free speech, using our response to a challenge to "Uncle Bobby's Wedding" as a case in point.