srj641

While attending the FBI National Academy, I chose an elective entitled stress management. It was taught by a couple of FBI psychologists who were supremely capable of delivering the sobering news. Policing is a high stress occupation and one where we often mask our true feelings. This mask was deemed “image armor” and recently my old agency experienced the true meaning of thi...

I have seen them all. Barbed wire, woven wire, mud, rock, chain link, vinyl and wood. Fences are everywhere, to no one’s surprise. Springfield is home to miles of wooden privacy fence, more than a little of which is ready for the burn pile. Nothing says caring like a properly maintained wood fence, often forming the first and lasting impression of the property laying behind.<...

“If the reader wisely considers all that is laid down, he will find here the end of the premium mobile; a hedge lives for three years, add dogs, horses and men, stags and ravens, eagles, enormous wales, the world: each one following triples the year of the one before.” (The inscription made in the floor of Westminster Abbey in 1268 by the artisans, probably a prediction of ju...

I know just enough about house shopping and buying houses. My itinerate lifestyle has landed me in a number of homes, a bunker or two and a shelter half on occasion in Vietnam. After retiring, I hired out to an old school, German builder in the Jefferson City area with the understanding he was to teach me to build from the footings to the finish. He applied German craftsmansh...