Two authors using better words than I could

Two papers, 3,000 miles apart. Two people I am privileged to know personally. For the most part, one sore subject: one attacking it with dignity, the other with humor.

First, an essay published in this morning's Rochester paper about that much-used but little-understood catch-phrase, "Support the Troops." And who would know better than one of them? The author, a much-decorated veteran of most of our recent tussles and still a staff chaplain to our local Army Reservists, is a former pastor of Williamsville United Methodist Church. His wife is the District Superintendent of the entire Buffalo region of Methodist congregations, and she just met with our confirmation kids the other night.   Here are his words, originally spoken at a Society of Friends meeting in Rochester over the summer:

( What that magnet on your SUV really means )

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Then, this morning, my old co-worker from Syracuse emailed me this piece, which was in this morning's LA Times. Hart's the "author," if you will, of
Pieces of Intelligence, a poetry book comprised entirely of actual quotes from Donald Rumsfeld press conferences. You might think that he's in mourning today, feeling much like famed JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader was the morning after losing his muse in 1963. Nope: Hart has risen to the occassion with this retrospective, written and placed in a great metropolitan newspaper barely 24 hours after Bush announced the man's resignation:

( Rummy we hardly knew ye )