As the professional hockey players turned hometown hero boys for a couple of weeks received their gold and silver medals followed by the singing of the Canadian national anthem, I was reminded of how important that it is to belong to something larger than oneself. I remarked to my cocktail hour partner (we start early on Sundays) that Americans yearn to be proud of their own country. This quest continues without much satisfaction: our new president seems either inexperienced or overwhelmed by the current process of governing; we’re spending a fortune on healthcare and not feeling too healthy in the process; another fortune, seemingly pointlessly, helping other countries to be ‘free’, even though neither they nor many of us seem to care much for the objectives of these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the list goes on for as long as you’d like for it to go on.

I’m going to start my ‘what does it mean’ list. What does it mean to be a member of my own family? What does it mean to be a citizen of Durham, North Carolina? What does it mean to be a graduate of the US Naval Academy? What does it mean to work in the Information Technology business?