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The Impact of Mr. Jones' class

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Reflecting on my high school education, I recognize certain classes have had a significant impact on me from a personal and professional standpoint.  One of the classes I didn't enjoy much while taking it has made a considerable impact on me as a leader.  Nope.  It wasn't biology, physics, English, geography, or any other standard high school.  It was a course called History of Oklahoma. Yup!  In the early 1990s, the state of Oklahoma required students to take and pass a class about Oklahoma history to earn their high school diplomas.  I spent my ninth and tenth grades in Oklahoma and then completed my eleventh and twelfth grades in Kansas.   In the Spring of 1991, I took History of Oklahoma, which was taught by Mr. Jones.  Mr. Jones was a US Air Force pilot who flew sorties during the Vietnam War.  A couple of times, he had slide shows with pics of him and his buddies in the military.  Mr. Jones' classroom was also quite memorable since he didn't hang any posters, fram

Who are your top ten POTUS' on Presidents Day

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After reading the article, Presidential experts rank Biden 14th among presidents in survey, Trump comes in las t  by Siock (2024), I was curious about the details of the survey.  According to the Official Results of the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey (Rottinghaus & Vaughn, 2024), the top ten US Presidents are: Abraham Lincoln  Franklin Delano Roosevelt George Washington  Theodore Roosevelt Thomas Jefferson Harry Truman Barack Obama Dwight David Eisenhower Lyndon Baines Johnson John Fitzgerald Kennedy Donald Trump is listed as the worst president. Overall, I disagree with the list because I don't envision Theodore Roosevelt, Obama, or Kennedy being the top ten presidents. Lincoln, FDR, Washington, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Monroe , and Jackson scored higher in my book because they led the US during war times.  What did Obama do? The jury is still out there for his achievements. I'm not sure why Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize during the start of his pr

Kashmiri memories

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In the mid-80s,  my parents, my brother and I visited Srinagar in Kashmir, India. We stayed in a bed-and-breakfast houseboat on the Dal Lake.  I remember beauty, meeting merchants who sold saffron and wild honey .  The other remarkable thing is that the local police had beards, which were not seen in the rest of India.  I also saw locals carry their Kangers.  Kangers are woven baskets that have hot embers that are carried by folks under a Kashmiri robe called a Pheran . My trip to Kashmir was a unique experience because it was my first trip to a Muslim-dominant India where the customs were different from the majority of secure India.  It reminded me of Old Delhi, which is predominantly of Muslim Indians. While I was in Srinagar, there was a sense of uneasiness due to the political turmoil.  I am not sure if my family and I had a bias that Kashmir is trouble and we need to be extra cautious.  The local Kashmiri folks were great.  As a cricket fan, I was surprised to see a lot of cricke