A man's got to know his limitations. I have many.

The list of subjects about which I can confidently say "Oh, I know a lot about that" is exceedingly small.

This comes as no surprise to my friends and family. They'll tell you my knowledge tends to be extremely focused and not altogether useful.

Which I suppose would be OK if I hadn't spent the past 50+ years expecting that at some point, through some unknown process, I would come to understand a wide range of things.

But it hasn't happened. I have very little wisdom and even less common sense. I continue to be mystified by how appliances in my own house work, for example.

It also bothers me that I write every day for both personal and professional reasons, yet I'm not confident I can fully explain the proper use of a comma.

And a semicolon? Forget it.

I am, in short, stunningly ignorant on most topics.

This is one reason I have very few opinions, especially when it comes to politics. Someone will explain their point of view to me on an issue and I'll say, "Well, that sounds right to me." Then another person with an opposing viewpoint will explain their perspective and I'll say, "You know, that sounds right, too."

Maybe I just don't understand the nature of opinions. I'm looking for 100% black-and-white clarity when instead I should be looking for the perspective that seems to carry at least a little more weight. You can, I guess, acknowledge that a person brings up some valid points and still overall disagree with them.

Now, I don't want you to think I'm entirely useless as a human being. There are subjects on which I'm a pretty reliable source. Or at least you could do a lot worse than me if you have questions.

Here is the complete list of those subjects:

• The Australian band Men at Work's full discography and song lyrics
• The 1979 Cleveland Indians
• World War I battles on the Western Front, 1917-18
• Oatmeal: Is it just for breakfast? (THE EXTENT OF MY KNOWLEDGE HERE: "No.")
• Rolling a 300 game in Wii Sports Bowling
• Ottawa Senators goaltenders, 1992-present
• Choosing the correct container size when cleaning up after dinner and storing leftovers

And that's probably about it.

Oh, I'm also pretty good when it comes to Flintstones trivia. Call me the next time someone asks you what Barney Rubble did for a living.

I've started reading books again, which is a good thing

For many years I described myself as a reader. Which was fine if you ignore the fact I wasn't doing much actual reading.

I was more of an "intended reader." I wanted to read books, but I never made much time for it.

All of that has changed over the last 12 months. It started last fall with me (finally) establishing and maintaining a morning Bible reading routine and has expanded to include the array of non-fiction books I keep in my home office.

More specifically, non-fiction history books. And even more specifically, books about World War I and historically related subjects.

I don't solely read WW1 books, of course – I'm currently working through a biography of Calvin Coolidge – but I do read a lot of them.

My Great War library expanded exponentially when my friend Bill Ross started giving me boxes of books. He knows where my historical interests lay, and he has generously given of his own extensive library to bolster mine.

The problem is, it's going to take years and years to read all of the books he has sent my way. Then again, there is no deadline for getting through them short of my own demise, which I presume to be many years down the line.

So, one at a time, I'm happily reading my way through the list.

If you're a reader or wanna-be reader, I recommend the Goodreads app. It allows you to post the books you're reading, the ones you want to read, and reviews of the ones you've finished. More interestingly, it also connects you with friends, family and other like-minded readers to see what's on their bedside tables at any given time.

Reading is inherently a solitary pursuit, but I think it's more enjoyable when you introduce a social aspect to it.

Unfortunately, I've found exactly one person who wants to start a World War I book club.

And that person is me.

I'll keep searching.

And reading.

The attraction of violence and war to some non-violent men (like me)

I have two interests that surprise a lot of people who know me, or who at least think they know me:

(1) War

(2) Combat sports

The second of those is somewhat sentimental in origin in that it was my dad who taught me about boxing and how to appreciate it. He watched the Friday Night Fights religiously, and when I watched with him, I was always amazed at how accurately he could predict the outcome based solely on the first few seconds of a bout.

I still catch a boxing match on TV every once in a while, and when I do, I think of the things he taught me about what separates good fighters from also-rans.

My interest in military history is more self-generated, though my dad did serve in the post-World War II U.S. Army and later the Army Air Corps. While my main interest is World War I, it's really the psychology of all war that draws me in.

For what it's worth  – and admittedly it's likely not worth that much, given my lack of personal experience on both fronts  – my theory is that most men overestimate how well they would do in a hand-to-hand street fight and underestimate how brave they would be in combat.

Because that's what I believe attracts many guys to study war and to follow violent sports: the question of how you yourself would do if thrown into those situations.

If a guy came up to me on the street and started swinging, could I defend myself? If I was called to run into machine gun fire and try to take a trench 400 yards away, as the soldiers of World War I were often commanded to do, would I have the guts to do it? If I was challenged to a scrap by a bigger guy in the middle of a hockey game, would I be willing to stand in there and trade punches?

That, I find, is what many men want to know when it comes to these subjects. How did others react, and would I be able to do the same (or to avoid their mistakes)?

By the way, I'm referencing only men here because (a) I am one, and I can really only relate to my own gender when it comes to these questions, and (b) The wars I study most closely all happened decades or even centuries ago, when 99.9% of the combatants were male. I fully realize there are highly skilled female boxers and women in all branches of the military who take part in combat now. But what little understanding I have of these questions derives fully from a man's perspective.

I think it's important here to acknowledge some hard truths:

• War and violence in general are stupid. They are ugly and vulgar and should be avoided in all but extreme cases.
• Boxing and ultimate fighting are problematic. They have the potential to cause devastating long-term neurological and other damage, and in some cases even death. I don't disagree with those who see combat sports as barbaric.
• Street fights are incredibly dumb, driven as they usually are by fragile male egos, unrestrained machismo, and quite often, alcohol.

Yet at the same time, I find the following also to be true:

• There is a certain degree of nobility in the soldier who picks up a rifle and defends not only his foxhole buddies but also the nation standing behind him.
• To a far lesser extent, there is something to be admired in the hockey fighter who comes to the aid of a teammate, standing up for someone on the ice who cannot stand up for himself.
• No matter how "enlightened" I think I am about violence, the world is full of lunkheads who don't have the brain cells required to think through these questions, and who will start throwing punches at the slightest provocation. As a Christian, I am called to turn the other cheek in these situations, but as a male, the unfortunate reality is that I am probably not going to back down. I am going to fight back.

There is dichotomy in all of this. I will continue to study war despite its ugliness, and I still condone fighting in hockey and the sport of boxing despite the issues associated with both.

I'm not a fan of spontaneous street fights, but I know they will continue to happen for reasons that are as old as time.

The eternal question of "why," and the primal inclination of many men toward violent behavior, are puzzles that neither I nor anyone else is ever likely to solve. All the same, I can't stop myself looking for the answers within myself and from others.

I took the SAT 34 years ago today. Why does my brain retain this information?

THINGS THAT ARE STUCK IN MY BRAIN FOR WHICH I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO USE:

• The B-side songs for every Men at Work single on 45
• The usual starting lineup for the 1979 Cleveland Indians
• Casualty counts for a host of World War I battles
• Detailed plotlines for most episodes of The Andy Griffith Show
• The quadratic formula
• My News-Herald paper route from 1981 (seriously, I could deliver that route today and not miss a house)
• The fact that I took the SAT on this date in 1987.

To that last point...who cares? Why would my brain decide this is something worth remembering?

It also likes to point out that, after I finished the test, I drove directly to Solon High School to join my track team at the Solon Relays.

Is there any practical use for this information? Of course not. But this has never deterred my brain, which delights in storing away the most irrelevant of nuggets.

On the other hand, it will not reveal to me such things as where I put my wedding ring, the exact ingredients in my wife's favorite Starbucks drink, and which light switches control which lights in our house (the house where we have lived for nearly 18 years).

Why, brain, why? Why do you do this to me?

Maybe you explained it to me one time and now I'm just forgetting.

With some time suddenly on my hands, I'm going to do a little reading

As an officially unemployed person, my main job is of course to get a job. And I spend time each day trying to do just that. Something will eventually come along, so I'm not especially worried.

In the meantime, I'm able to engage in household chores, do a little yardwork, and even indulge in some leisure activities that never seem to fit into my daily schedule when I'm working.

An example of the latter is reading.

I have always called myself a reader, which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I haven't done that much actual reading over the past, oh, say 30 years. I like to read, I want to read. I've just not elected to make the time for it since my college years.

Oh, I've read several books in the intervening decades, but it's not the regular sort of pastime I would like it to be.

In particular, I like to read my World War I books. I've checked several of those off my list over time, but there are still many more in the "planning to read" column than there are in the "been there, read that" column.

A good number of these books I own, but others I get from our excellent public library here in Wickliffe.

There is essentially one small section of Great War books at the Wickliffe Public Library, as shown here:

You will notice two red circles in that photo, both depicting larger books that have been on my list for quite some time.

The one on the left is called "Castles of Steel." It details the naval conflict between Britain and Germany before and during World War I. And when I say "details," I'm not kidding. It's 788 pages long, not counting the notes, bibliography and index.

"Castles of Steel" was published in 2003, and ever since then I've wanted to read it. Just never had time. Here's what it looks like up close and personal:

It's sizeable.

The book on the right is titled "Isonzo," and it chronicles the long series of wasteful battles between Italy and Austria-Hungary in the area of the River Isonzo during the war. It's a relatively pedestrian 350 pages, but given how much I don't know about the campaign, I've always wanted to dive into it.

Faced with the choice of how to spend some of the open time on my sparse appointment calendar, I went to the library yesterday and checked out "Castles of Steel." Go big or go home and all of that, you know. I'm starting it today and estimate it's going to take a good month to get through.

I do, after all, have to spend some time finding a job. I'm not a total slacker.

I actually have hobbies now and that's an accomplishment

I have long lamented my inability to relax. It's not that I feel constantly stressed out (that actually happens relatively infrequently). It's just that I always have this drive to accomplish something, to check something off the to-do list, to make the most of my time.

You could argue very convincingly that relaxing is making the most of your time, and that as humans we need our relaxation. I just hate to have chores/tasks hanging over my head, so I'm always running to get stuff done.

Or at least that's how it was for many years. I'm still like that to some degree, just not as hardcore as I used to be. Ever since I finished my master's degree last summer, I've made an effort to engage in true leisure time activities.

And I have a few now. Like playing my saxophone, for example.

I bought a gorgeous new tenor sax recently (I'll blog about it sometime soon), and I'm enjoying regular playing and practicing time. Over the holiday break I read a book that is apparently much revered in saxophone circles called "Developing a Personal Saxophone Sound." It was a revelation to me.

The book goes into very technical detail on how to create the sort of tone that professional players make. I never understood how they did it until now, and it slowly dawned on me that in 41 years of playing the instrument, I learned only how to blow into the instrument and finger notes.

Only now am I learning to make music and really control the horn. It's a long process, but I'm enjoying it.

I'm also reading other nonfiction. I made it through Hew Strachan's 350-page "The First World War" over the break and am currently enjoying "The War Poems of Wilfred Owen," which my daughter Elissa and her boyfriend Mark gave me for Christmas.

I also walk quite a bit, as I've mentioned, and am continuing my immersion into the core classical music repertoire.

None of these activities gets the dishes washed, the bathroom cleaned, or the laundry done, and that's a good thing. They feed the soul, which is what we all need.

I will not, however, collect stamps. Tried that back in the early 80s and it's not for me. But classical music CDs? I have a couple hundred of those, to the point that the CD rack in the basement is ready to tip over.

I couldn't be happier about it.

Now we can all become experts in things no one else cares about

I was kind of late to the podcast game.

I have friends and co-workers who have been regular podcast listeners for years, but my indulgence in the medium really only started about 12 months ago.

For whatever reason, I had always ignored that little Podcasts app on my iPhone. But then I started messing around with it and discovered "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," a hilarious podcast in which Conan interviews famous people and makes jokes. I loved it, and for a time I listened to every episode.

Later I added "Literally with Rob Lowe," which I also enjoyed, largely because Rob is a fascinating 80s figure to me.

But I didn't fall in love with a podcast until I discovered–and you're going to laugh at this if you don't know me well–the "Battles of the First World War Podcast."

This podcast, which is nearly five years old and still regularly cranking out new material, was conceived and is hosted by a guy named Mike, a social studies teacher in Massachusetts. Like me, Mike has a fascination with World War I (I've written about my intense interest in this conflict several times, including this post and this post, both from 2012).

The BFWWP, as Mike himself calls it, is exactly what you think it is. It's an in-depth look at the battles of the Great War. Like, really in-depth in some cases. I'm 26 episodes in and we still have yet to wrap up the Battle of the Somme. Next is Verdun.

Mike has a dry sense of humor and takes an intensely passionate approach to his narration, which I think is why I love listening to him describe this battalion's attack on a German redoubt or the intricacies of trench warfare or the technological details of the earliest tanks (Mike himself was a tanker when he served in the military).

I have no use at all for this knowledge, you understand, nor will I ever, unless I manage to weasel my way onto a third game show. I listen because I'm enthralled by the war and the men who fought it. I listen because I care about the tactical details that determined its outcome.

I listen because I'm a 51-year-old white male, and that's what many of us do.

That is one of the quirks of the Internet: You can become an authority on almost anything, even if it won't benefit you in any way. Maybe because it won't benefit you in any way.

It is the ultimate proving ground for the idea that a thing worth learning is worth learning well, whether you're talking about beer, crocheting, medieval cooking techniques, or World War I.

I like that.

World War II was a lot more real when I was growing up

Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean?

This year marks the 70th anniversary since the end of the Second World War. And of course today is December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, commemorating 74 years since the Japanese sneak attack on U.S. Navy installations in Hawaii. That's the event that brought the U.S. into the war and kept it there until the very end.

When I was a kid, there were WWII veterans all over the place. They're still with us, but there are a lot fewer of them every day, and the ones who are left are older and, well, quieter, I guess.

The WWII vets I knew often told stories about their experiences when I was growing up. Or at least the ones who didn't mind talking about their service did. Others had such harrowing memories of combat that they never discussed them.

Mine is the last generation of people that had dads who fought in the war. And even then I'm really at the tail end of that class. My dad entered the Army in 1946, a year after the war officially ended, and served in the Occupation Army of Japan. And he was older than most of my friends' dads.

So my experience of the war was more third-hand than anything else. But even in the 1970s and 80s, you heard about the war more than you do now. Which is understandable, because it's slowly fading into a more distant past. We'll have WWII vets around for many more years, but their numbers will drop precipitously as time goes on. They already have, really.

I know this partly because I am particularly interested in the First World War, and the last few veterans of that conflict died out in the past five years or so. (This Wikipedia article provides a good summary.) I've read and studied so much about "the Great War" for so many years that it has become somewhat personal to me, even though I obviously don't know anyone who fought in it.

So when the last WWI veterans passed in the early part of this decade, I felt like that really shut the door on an era of history. The First World War brought about a wealth of technological advances, but it was still in some ways very much a 19th-century war, with horsed cavalry and bright uniforms (early on, at least) and things we associate more with the Civil War than "modern" military operations.

Those 100-plus-year-old First World War vets were our last direct and human links to one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of mankind. Their deaths meant we could only relate to that war through the written and recorded word.

And the same will one day soon be true of the Second World War. It's a conflict whose flame will burn brighter and longer here in the U.S. simply because we were so much more deeply involved in it, but eventually those living, breathing connections to this momentous historic event will be gone.

And I guess that makes me sad. Especially on Pearl Harbor Day, when our country was finally awakened from the blissfully ignorant thought that maybe we can just keep ourselves out of foreign conflicts and "Those People" will simply leave us alone.

It's not so much history that repeats itself, folks, as the lessons of history.

Here's wishing a blessed Pearl Harbor Day to those men and women who lived through it and are still around to talk about it.

One soldier's life, long forgotten

Every Memorial Day, I think of Merwin Brewer.

There probably aren't many people who think of Merwin Brewer on Memorial Day anymore, or on any other day, for that matter. He has been dead for nearly a century.

Merwin Brewer was an American soldier who died on the Western Front at the tail end of World War I. His official address was listed as Cleveland, Ohio, but he was born in my hometown of Wickliffe, Ohio. Our local American Legion post is partially named after him (Brewer-Tarasco).

The annual Memorial Day parade is a big deal here in Wickliffe. It's one of the better parades around, with two marching bands, lots of candy, and 45 minutes or so of entertainment for anyone willing to stand and watch the whole thing.

Every year, the American Legion has a group of local kids walk in the parade carrying signs with the names of Wickliffe natives who have died in war. And every year at the front of this group is a young person holding a sign emblazoned with Merwin Brewer's name.

The 30 seconds or so it takes for that sign to pass by us is the only time the Memorial Day parade turns truly somber for me. This is partly because, as I've mentioned before, I have a morbid fascination with the First World War and the way millions of young men were killed during it. No war is good, but this one was particularly tragic.

According to this web page, Merwin Brewer died on November 13, 1918, from earlier wounds sustained in combat. That was two days after the war in Europe had ended. No one wants to be the last man killed in a war that’s already over, but Merwin was one of those who fell just short of making it through alive.

Merwin served in the Argonne and in Flanders, both the scenes of brutal, bloody fighting. I often wonder exactly how he died. Probably from a shrapnel wound. Artillery was the #1 killer in the war, and countless soldiers succumbed to infections and internal injuries suffered when they were hit by flying hunks of metal from exploding artillery shells.

His story doesn't sound particularly distinctive. His life ended the same way millions of others ended, probably in some military hospital. But Merwin Brewer is as real to me as any one of my family and friends, because he was born in the same place I was born. He was a real person whose death, now long forgotten, probably brought unimaginable grief and sorrow to his family back in Ohio.

And chances are good he was no more than 19 or 20 years old. Just a baby. "Virgins with rifles," that's what Sting called the soldiers of the First World War.

I'm as guilty as anyone of treating Memorial Day as a festive day off from work instead of a time for reflection. But while I'm eating my grilled hamburger later today or lounging outside with my family, I promise I'll spend at least another couple of minutes thinking about Merwin Brewer.

It seems like the least I can do.

Why I hate war but love reading about it

If you're someone who flies with any regularity, try this:

The next time you're sitting in the gate area waiting to board a plane, look around at what everyone else is reading. And specifically, look at what the middle-aged males are reading. Three-quarters of the time, if they're reading a book rather than a newspaper, it's going to be some sort of nonfiction history. And most of the time, that means military history.

As a group, we guys in our 40s and 50s LOVE us some military history. The Civil War is a big one. Lots and lots of Civil War books to be seen at airports. Many of these readers, I've noticed from their accents, are southern. Which means for them, they're not "Civil War" books at all, but rather "War of Northern Aggression" books. No event in American history has been debated, discussed and generally dissected more than the Civil War, especially among those who are still fighting it for one reason or another.

You'll also see a lot of guys with books on World War II. There's a more direct connection there, since many of our fathers and grandfathers actually fought in "Dubya-Dubya Two," as Archie Bunker always called it. A lot of men can picture themselves as GIs slogging it out at Guadalcanal or fighting the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge.

Which I think is sort of the point. I believe one of the main attractions of military history for men of my generation (or maybe any generation) is that they see war as a manly, virtuous thing. When you sit at a desk all day, there can be a part of you that longs to do something macho. And what's more macho than carrying a rifle and killing foreigners?

My war of choice is World War I. At last count, I had read, cover to cover, 25 to 30 different books related to the First World War. I've done sermons at church that tie into it, and I genuinely want a membership to the Great War Society (yes, there is such a thing).

But if you have any compassion at all, to be a student of World War I necessarily means that you are anti-war. No one with a shred of decency can read about the slaughter of millions of young men on the battlefields of France and Russia and think that war is anything but vulgar.

And yet I'm fascinated by it. When I read about trench warfare and what it was like to go "over the top" with 60 to 80 pounds of gear on your back into heavy machine gun fire and poison gas shells, I invariably try and put myself into that situation. I wonder if I would have had what it took to attack knowing the odds of my survival were slim. Knowing that a single bullet to the gut could mean a slow and painful death in No Man's Land. I want to see how I would measure up.

Because that's how we guys are raised, you understand. It's always about passing tests and showing you're tough and all of that. Some boys are smart enough to avoid that stuff and seem to understand their inherent self-worth without having to prove it by fighting.

I didn't get into many fights myself, but I still did pretty much whatever anyone dared me to do. I guess I felt better about myself when I passed whatever "test" was put in front of me. Many times, the "test" was something stupid and dangerous. And I still did it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The point is, part of my fascination with war is wondering how I would handle it. And at the same time, I feel incredibly blessed that I've never had to find out. Nor would I ever want my sons to experience it. When it comes to All Things Soldier, I walk a fine line between obsession and repulsion.

When I used to hang around airports, I often wondered if the guys reading those war books were thinking the same thing I was. If they were wondering, "Oh sure, I can write up a memo and do a sales forecast, but how would I react if a 6-foot-4 German came at me with a bayonet? Would I be man enough to handle it?"

Such a strange and pointless way of thinking, I know. What does it matter? If my boys are going to wonder about their manhood, I would rather they ask themselves how they would handle their anger in an argument with their girlfriend or wife. Or how they would react to the sorts of moral and ethical dilemmas that define who we really are. I would rather they ask how tough they are in spirit rather than in fist.

But still, I have to admit, whenever I read one of my Great War books, I always end up mentally putting myself in those filthy, stinking trenches. And the answer to how I would perform in battle really matters to me. I wish it didn't, but it does. I have a sinking suspicion it always will.