Remembering Sallie

May 1861. West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The men of the 11th Pennsylvania adopt a Staffordshire Terrier as their mascot and name her Sallie, after a pretty girl who'd appear every Sunday to watch them drill.

After 11 months of training, the regiment is shipped to Virginia, where it sees its first fight at Cedar Mountain. Sallie accompanies the men into battle, dodging the fierce Southern fire and grabbing at spent bullets as they strike the earth around her.

She repeats that performance at Second Manassas, South Mountain and Antietam, where she receives a scorch mark through her hair from a Confederate bullet.

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, Sallie gets a chance to march in review with the regiment past President Lincoln, who doffs his stovepipe hat when he spots her.

At Gettysburg, she loses her regiment on the first day, and is trapped behind enemy lines. She returns to the spot where she'd become separated from the 11th, and lies there three days, keeping vigil over dead Pennsylvanians until a member of the regiment finds her, nearly starved to death. Friends nurse her back to health.

Sallie is again struck by a bullet in May 1864 at Spotsylvania, and left with a bright scar on her neck. But the dog is undaunted. She travels with the 11th to the trenches before Petersburg.

On February 7, 1865, Sallie's luck runs out. She is shot through the brain during a skirmish at Dabney’s Mill. Gravediggers bury her on the spot.

In 1890, when the survivors of the Pennsylvania 11th reunite at Gettysburg for the dedication of their battlefield monument, they find a surprise.

“The 11th Pennsylvania has a grand monument to mark their line of battle,” one veteran writes. “A bronze soldier on top, looking over the field, while the dog, Sallie, is lying at the base keeping guard.”

Please honor veterans this weekend.

Nerves

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he
can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.

— Steven Pressfield 

Henry Fonda vomited before every performance he ever delivered.

Nerves never leave some of us.

Nerves are normal.

Nerves can make us better players.

It's Morning in America

Educators and communicators are the lackeys of the American Way. They enslave the minds of the young and the young are willing slaves (but not for long) because who is to doubt the American Way is not the way?

— Gregory Corso, "The American Way" 

It's morning in America.

I can tell from Yahoo News.

Its lead stories signal a flight from stultifying politics, and a return to breathtaking normalcy:

• A popular model's bustier threatens to fail at a Hollywood awards party.
  


• The Mannequin Challenge is sweeping social media.
  


• A bride's wedding photo reveals she has undetected skin cancer (bustier news again).
  
  
• The entire plot of the new season of Game of Thrones has been leaked.

Build Social Strength

How often do you post on social media? Are you over- or under-posting?

If you want to build more followers, here's the right frequency, according to social media platform provider Buffer:

• LinkedIn: 1 time a day
• Twitter: 3 times a day
• Facebook: 2 times a day
• Instagram: 1 time a day
• Pinterest: 5 times a day

BONUS TIP: According to Buffer, copy's cool, but visuals boost engagement 40 times.

I've Been Ayn Randed

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged   

Three years ago, a state senator introduced a bill making Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged required high-school reading in Idaho (he called the facetious bill a "statement" aimed at Idaho's board of education).

I've met more than a few otherwise intelligent people brainwashed by Rand's callous twaddle.

The hour is long past due to shelve Atlas Shrugged with dusty gems like Malleus Maleficarum, Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race, and Mein Kampf.

Revered by aristocrats, Rand's 1957 book isn't merely some silver-fork novel. It's a monomaniacal screed pushing an elitist view.

My insuperable wealth means I'm superior.

And there's insuperable wealth behind the drive to foist Atlas Shrugged on American teenagers.

Since 2002, the California-based Ayn Rand Institute—underwritten by oil barons, bank presidents, hedge-fund managers, and Silicon Valley CEOs—has shipped over 3.2 million free copies of Atlas Shrugged to the nation's high schools and colleges.

Aiming to "spearhead a cultural renaissance that will reverse the anti-reason, anti-individualism, anti-freedom, anti-capitalist trends in today’s culture," these friends of laissez faire have, in addition, shipped teaching lessons to 30,000 teachers.

Teachers, please don't fall for it.

Don't be Ayn Randed.