Last weekend, I traveled to Virginia for my brother’s wedding. With a 2 year old. By myself.

Living to ride another day isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

I still remember the first time I saw his eyes — dark, deep, but full of pride, staring straight at my husband in his Stryker vehicle as if he were a soldier himself, lifting his pointer finger in the middle of the Mosul streets and proudly displaying the black ink on the pad of that finger.

Domestic violence is like toxic mold — it thrives in hidden, dark corners, but dies when exposed to open air.

“Trick or treat.”

For the last two weeks, my husband has been in the field.

When we think about Soldiers deploying, the first thing that comes to our minds is tactical operations, IEDs and the usual stuff you see on the news back home.

I have a fear of planes. Not so much commercial planes, just military planes — the kind that dump my husband out their doors and hurl him to an insanely hard surface 1,200 feet below with a parachute that, they tell me, will work.

There is a lot to like about Fort Lewis — but we should all be working to make it even better.

I wasn’t commissioned, and I didn’t enlist, but on May 22, 2004, I joined the Army. My uniform was my white wedding dress, my oath of office, my wedding vows. It’s just that when I said, “I do,” I had no idea how much I would really be doing.

Suicide. It happens far too often. Usually you see a brief note on an inside page of a local newspaper. Perhaps there is a brief mention on television, if it is a slow news day.

I hope that all of you vote this fall. Those who choose not to are running out of excuses.

I sometimes think the Army should have an eighth core value: “be physically fit.”

It takes a good mind to be a Soldier these days, and it’s a good thing Soldier education is keeping pace.

The Olympic Games in Beijing, China began last week. I hope we all take some time to celebrate what the Olympics represent.

It is a challenge to put out a good newspaper in a digital world.

Accidents don’t just happen.

It’s hard to believe that figuring out how to fill a summer could ever be a problem.

Fort Lewis has been undergoing a population boom. The most amazing result of the growth is how little most people are affected.

The national political conventions are just around the corner. After that comes the general election. For years the Army has campaigned to get Soldiers to register and to vote. But there are limits to how far leaders can go in encouraging voting — and there lie some lessons for us all.

As we take a well deserved holiday from our duties to celebrate the nation’s 232nd birthday, I want to take a moment to mention a subject that should be on our minds at all times — the safety and well-being of our Soldiers.

We live in hiking heaven. But you’ll never know that unless you get out and look for it.

I remember reading an article decades ago that speculated about how expensive gasoline would have to get to induce Americans to significantly alter the way they drive. I don’t remember the figure the author gave, but I think we might have reached the real tipping point.

Leaders bear no more important responsibility than the welfare of their subordinates. That responsibility doesn’t end when those subordinates go home and take the uniform off.

The Guardian has received many inquiries about last week’s article, “Lessons of Baqubah now on DVD,” most asking how to get copies of the DVD, like this one:

Saturday is an important day — the Army’s 233rd birthday. I hope Soldiers care.

The 6th of June used to be one of those days everyone could identify. Now, it seems to be fading into the historically obscure. That’s a shame.

A few months ago I was in the middle of an interview with a therapist when she popped out with a notion I could not believe.

Sometimes I open my e-mail and I am overcome by it. While I’d be delighted to write a thank-you note to any military family, I read this and wondered how a note from a stranger could possibly equal the feeling that a 9-year-old put into a recent letter?