Triangle racquetball players, Steven Harper has a challenge: Try it
without the ceiling and the back wall – and in the great outdoors.
On March 20, the Clayton resident and retired Navy lieutenant commander
will provide the state’s first public demonstration of an outdoor
racquetball court provided through his organization, the Military Racquetball Federation.
The free clinic will take place 11 a.m.-4 p.m. at The Church @ Clayton Crossings, 11690 U.S. 70 in Clayton.
Their answer to the U.S. F-22 Raptor, Russia's stealth fighter takes it maiden flight. The aircraft could be lower cost alternative to other nations. You can geta glimpse of it in the video.
USA Today has a great story on retired generals and admirals being paid big bucks to mentor current generals and admirals. One wag called this triple dipping: the retirees are being paid for mentoring while collecting retirement and working for defense firms that work with or for the mentees.
I was particularly intrigued by this assertion: ""I lose money when I do it," McKissock says of serving as a mentor. He
was paid $166,500 plus expenses as a mentor in 2009, Marine records
show."
Military might was on display in Roxboro this morning.
Force Protection, which makes vehicles tough enough to withstand a roadside bomb, was showing the vehicles off at the official dedication of its recently opened training facility.
The facility, which has been in the works since 2007, opened about three months ago and now has 20 employees. Each week, they've been teaching about 60 U.S. and Canadian military personnel how to drive and maintain their $500,000 Cougar trucks and the $1 million Buffalo.
See some of the day's best photos from around the world.
See photos from the Memorial Day services held at the State Capitol in Raleigh. Photos by staff photojournalist John Rottet.
There's a lot of silence in "Taking Chance," a film that is both elegant and elegiac.
That's because it's a simple but powerful story, one that doesn't need fussiness to be effective.
It's on HBO at 9 Saturday night.
It's the true story of the journey of Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon), a Quantico-based Marine, as he accompanies the body of 19-year-old Lance Corporal Chance Phelps, a Marine who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Strobl volunteers for the duty after seeing that Phelps is from his home town, but Strobl also has a bit of guilt about the fact that he works as a numbers cruncher, when others are fighting in Iraq.
That's really it, plotwise. But what happens on that journey is a revelation to Strobl and maybe to you too. The film shows the encounters Strobl has with everyday Americans, some who come to know he is escorting a fallen soldier, and some who discover it later. There has been debate about whether one can be against war and still support the troops. This film seems to answer that it's possible.
One lovely scene shows how, when Strobl is in his car following the hearse carrying Phelps remains, other drivers turn on their lights and form a funereal caravan, their small show of respect.
It also reveals what happens to the body every step of the way, without being gruesome. The people who care for the body -- those who clean the blood from personal effects, those who train the escorts on how to talk to the families -- all are shown doing their jobs with tenderness and dignity. Whatever you may feel about the military, the film proves how moving its traditons can be.
Bacon gives another wonderful performance. He's portraying a military man, a disciplined man not prone to big emotion. Yet he manages to convey all you need to know and feel.
If you don't have HBO, invite yourself over to someone's house who does. You can bring the tissue.
A Holly Springs reader offers the lessons he learned from Pearl Harbor and the hopes he has for a world without war.
