The next time I look at that flag, it could be a tangled mess – or it could be flowing freely in the breeze. It’s different every time I look at it. That’s the beauty of my flag.

It’s been a great, long, hot summer — causing me to take some time away from blogging to spend with my family and friends. Although I haven’t been writing much, I have been doing a lot of reading and observing. And, it’s my observation that the need for effective story telling in the fire service has […]

It’s like “Run-to-the-Curb Radio” — but better! “Firefighter Storytellers” is a natural outgrowth from my popular “Run to the Curb” series — as it offers a radio show designed simply to facilitate kitchen table type discussions between firefighters. “Storytellers” is an open-format radio show in which listeners are encouraged to call in with their own stories of what brought them […]

Despite the fact that I wrote this piece for Fire-Rescue Magazine last year, I’m pretty sure its content is still relevant as we ponder recent and not so recent events during Fire/EMS Safety, Health and Survival Week http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/usfa-reminds-you-that…. As I stated in comments to another blog by John Mitchell (www.firedaily.com) titled: “The Charleston 43” (http://www.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/the-charleston-43) […]

It’s after Memorial Day-2010 and I’ve been working on this blog for about a week, in hopes of having it finished prior to the start of the holiday weekend but life got in the way and that didn’t happen. In retrospect, I’m glad I procrastinated. I’m glad I waited, because now, I think this blog […]

It’s been more than a month since my presentation at FDIC and my live Internet radio talk show on FirefighterNetcast from the show floor, but a lot of exciting things have happened since then.  Feedback from my show about the importance of storytelling in the fire service with special guest Chief Tom Merrill was tremendous […]

It should be no secret by now that I have a passion for story telling, and especially telling of the importance of sharing stories in the fire service as a means of passing down our history, traditions and values. It’s almost an obsession. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve started drawing my Blackberry from its […]

For the next four long hours I felt like I was in a scene from “The Terminal” — the movie about an eastern immigrant stuck living in the airport with nowhere to go and unable to leave because he had no country to return to, and therefore no official citzenship anywhere.

Join Snyder NY Chief Tom Merrill and I for a live broadcast from the show floor of FDIC on Saturday-April 24 from 9:30-10:30am CST. We’ll be special guests of FireCritic Rhett Fleitz and FireDaily John Mitchell — hosts of the new hit Internet talk show series: FirefighterNetcast. We’ll be discussing my FDIC presentation, my www.runtothecurb.com project and the importance […]

I hope to see all of my loyal followers (both of them) at FDIC in a few short weeks. I’ll be presenting “From the X-Box to the Box Alarm” on Thursday-April 22, 2010 at 10:30am in Room 127-128. There’s room for 308 of my closest, most personal friends so there’s really no excuse for not joining […]