Month: June 2019 (Page 2 of 2)

This was part contemplation on mindfulness, part reflection on Florence. It also is another reason I love SOFLETE.com. I asked for donations. Done. I asked them to hurry up and get this up for people to read. Done.

https://soflete.com/blogs/knowledge/the-importance-of-being-present-even-when-you-are-displaced

I wrote this while my wife was driving us down the road and emailed it to DieLiving.com, thereby declaring myself a roving reporter.

http://dieliving.com/failing-to-prepare-is-preparing-to-fail-life-advice-from-a-guy-who-knows/

I wrote this for Marineultrarunners.com and SOFLETE.com re-published it as “Failing Forward” which cemented my relationship with them and gave me an audience that inspires me to actually write regularly. I owe them both a debt.

https://marineultrarunners.com/2018/01/22/failure-is-always-an-option-by-worth-parker/

This was about the hardest essay I’ve written. It stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend about figuring out who you really are and then being comfortable being that person. That friend named this one. I like his better than my own more prosaic title.

http://dieliving.com/on-identity-loving-the-part-of-you-that-isnt-dutch-from-predator/

Inspired by a friend, I wrote this one day when I was angry and sent it to the webmaster of MarineUltrarunners.com, a particularly specific site for Marines who run ultra-marathons. It got shared on Soflete.com. Then it got picked up by a Doctrineman, a military issues focused Facebook Page. Then it got published at Goodmenproject.com. That all got it spread around a fair bit and MURCA’s website got about 12,000% more traffic than normal for a couple of days.

https://marineultrarunners.com/2018/08/25/running-in-pursuit-of-being-better-men-by-worth-parker/

I wrote this for the New York Times Magazine At War page. It was a great, and educational, experience. I got to work with professional editors and correspondents and I learned a lot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/iraq-marine-phraselator.html?fbclid=IwAR0xwEu_srlXfTsBSr3Gv2EOjf1n00F1BNtdfr9C1s6xFMDWkb8qL-a27LU

In this paper examining US efforts in El Salvador, Colombia, and Vietnam I tried to distill lessons for military advisers working with foreign militaries. I earned a runner-up cash award in the 2017 Small Wars Journal/Military Writer’s Guild Essay Contest. SWJ changed the title on me, so I stuck it back in here.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/us-foreign-advisory-missions-rich-history-mixed-results

Some of my writing has been academic. This paper comparing notions of Just War Theory to fundamentalist ideology as a means of de-legimitizing it earned an honorable mention in the 2017 Strategy Bridge Writing Contest.

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/10/22/terrorism-and-just-war-a-comparative-analysis-of-western-and-islamic-precepts

I wanted to call this “Earl’s Last Gift” but the Editors at G&G Suggested “Four Star Canine” and it was hard to disagree. This essay was one of the “20 Most Read On-Line Articles for Garden and Gun in 2019”. Earl was more than a dog to me, he was friend, family, and a mirror that reflected the best of all of us. I miss him every day. A desire to see Earl memorialized in G&G is what really got me started me down the writing path, which is just another thing for which I owe him. Sleep well, sweet prince.

https://gardenandgun.com//four-star-canine/