When I was an undergraduate, I had this poster on a wall in my first apartment.

While I’m through and through from a military family, it reveals much about me.  My poster is long gone, but it still rings true for me, although Mary Mother of God, why can’t our country seem to find enough money to pay our service members a good wage and to fund every and all veterans’ program?

Gentle reader, please don’t think this contradictory.

In the words of the great writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, I aspire to his rubric:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Paradox is one element that makes life more interesting, I think.