A fallen Marine comes home

A local U.S. Marine was killed in Iraq last week: Lance Cpl. Daniel Todd Morris was the victim of an improvised explosive device that detonated while he was on patrol in Anbar Province, on February 14 -- Valentine's Day, of all days. A Marine honor guard carried his flag-draped casket to his home town of Raphine, south of Staunton. See the News Leader. That makes the third heroic member of the armed services from our area who has died serving his country and the cause of freedom. The other two were Jason Redifer and Daniel Bubb. All three were U.S. Marines.

By coincidence, PBS had a compelling documentary on the Marines this evening. It took a detailed look at their intensive training and indoctrination at Parris Island, SC and other facilities. It was very inspiring and shows why, in spite of all the setbacks, there is good reason to hope for success in the campaign to pacify Iraq.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 22 Feb 2007, 12: 33 AM .

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My blog practices

My general practice is to make no more than one blog post per day on any one category. For this reason, some blog posts may address more than one specific issue, as indicated by separate headings. If something important happens during the day after I make a blog post, I may add an updated paragraph or section to it, using the word "UPDATE" and sometimes a horizontal rule to distinguish the new material from the original material. For each successive day, blog posts are listed on the central blog page (which brings together all topics) from top to bottom in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the order in which the posts were originally made:

Wild birds (LAST)
War
Science & Technology *
Politics
Latin America
Culture & Travel *
Canaries ("Home birds")
Baseball (FIRST)

* part of "Macintosh & Miscellanous" until Feb. 2007

The date of each blog post refers to when the bulk of it was written, in the Eastern Time Zone. For each blog post, the time and date of the original posting (or the last update or comment thereupon) is displayed on the individual archival blog post page that appears (just before the comments section) when you click the [LINK / comments] link next to the date. Non-trivial corrections and clarifications to original blog entries are indicated by the use of [brackets] and/or ~~strikethroughs~~, as appropriate so as to accurately convey both the factual truth and my original representation of it. Nobody's perfect, but I strive for continual improvement. That is also why some of the nature photos that appear on the archive pages may differ from the (inferior) ones that were originally posted.

The current "home made" blog organization system that I created, featuring real permalinks, was instituted on November 1, 2004. Prior to that date, blog posts were handled inconsistently, and for that reason the pre-2005 archives pages are something of a mess. Furthermore, my blogging prior to June 1, 2004 was often sporadic in terms of frequency.

Blog errata
(preliminary)

April 4, 2008: "Andy Ashby" should be "Andy Jones"

April 3, 2010: "Mike Morgan" should be "Nyjer Morgan"

: "" should be ""

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