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Surviving everyday family situations can seem like an impossible chore at times, but with a little bit of humor (and perhaps some peanut butter and valium cookies) Jeremy Greenberg can help anyone triumph over the headaches of holidays and special occasions with those oft forgotten relatives.

From the Amazon.com product review:

If your family more closely resembles the Simpsons as opposed to the Tanner, Keaton, or Huxtable clans, then chances are this book is for you. International headlining comedian Jeremy Greenberg writes from the premise that although we love our families, many of us don’t particularly love spending time with those who share our dysfunctional DNA.

To liven up the holidays, bar mitzvahs, funerals, and other family gatherings, Greenberg offers a collection of tips, tricks, games, and helpful hints that will not only help you survive your cousin’s combination wedding/baby shower/high school graduation, but will also provide insights on how to move back into your parents’ home when you’re no longer a kid, or how to kick your adult-age son or daughter out of the family home if you’re a parent.

MOAA contributor Greenberg  says, “seeing family is like catching a head cold: a temporary discomfort relieved by a snifter or four of brandy.”

For more of his humorous anecdotes you can read about his comedy tour through the Middle East in his MOAA mini-blog Stand Up For the Troops.

It started off as a simple homework assignment. Collect as many stamps as possible that then would be donated to charity, enabling the purchase of a wheelchair for a needed party. The winning second grade class would score an ice cream party. Not a bad deal all the way around.

 Clearly it was time to pull out the scissors and my secret weapon in the sacred name of Ben & Jerry. In the attic, under an inch of dust, sat a box of old postcards certain to have a mother lode of stamps affixed to them.

 Ice cream was a’coming for the seven-year-old set — or at least I thought so until I started sorting through the box. Before I knew it, I found myself walking down memory lanes that I nearly had forgotten existed.

There were old postcards showing:

- Toulon, France, where my brother’s ship docked once on a med cruise in the early ‘80s;

- a faded view of the front gate at Quantico, Va., in the ‘70s, where my Marine Corps family always seemed to end up at sooner or later;

- the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, also in the 1970s, where my oldest brother was stationed early in his now-retired Marine Corp career;

- Kuwait, where my husband was stationed one Christmas and we opened presents over the telephone while the dog happily attacked the wrapping paper;

- a tank rolling down a street in Kosovo;

-a slot machine with some random player on some base in Okinawa, Japan, where my Dad pulled his last tour of duty in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s;

- a North Carolina beach and a promise of love to one of my other brothers’ many, many old girlfriends from over the years; and

- a skyline view of Frankfurt, Germany, in 1983 when I sent a note to my husband (then boyfriend) canceling our first date — compliments of a barracks bombing in Beirut and my brother’s safe arrival at 97^th general hospital.

There was a postcard from my mom to her mom, both now passed on to what I hope is a better place, and many of the hastily scribbled notes I sent to my mother when I first was married that were returned to me after her death. 

I put the scissors down and vowed to buy as many books of stamps as necessary for my second grader’s class to win.

About the Author: Janet Farley is the author of The Military Spouse’s Complete Guide to Career Success (Impact Publications, 2008) and writes the career advice column JobTalk for the Stars and Stripes newspapers.

Brig. Gen. Darrell Jones and his wife Holly have won the 2008 General and Mrs. Jerome O’Malley award. This honor recognizes the couple’s contributions to the nation and their local community when Jones commanded the 37th Training Wing at Lackland AFB, Tex., from June 2006 to January 2008. Jones is currently director of force management policy on the Air Staff. ”

Holly and I had outstanding community support, great honorary commanders, and a fabulous team of commanders, spouses, and senior noncommissioned officers who all came together for the common cause of serving our airmen everyday,” said Jones. “We really feel like this is a team honor that should be viewed as another award for the outstanding professionals at Lackland.” The couple will be formally recognized in an awards ceremony later this year at the Pentagon.

Read the full press release from the Air Education and Training Command center.

This month marks the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. Since then, much of the  burden of our nation at war has been borne by a small segment of the population. In a Time of War tells the story of the entire war so far, honestly and unflinchingly, from the point of view of a small group of soldiers, their families, and their friends.

After 42 months of work, more than 600 interviews, and reporting that took the author, Bill Murphy Jr.,  across the United States and to Iraq, the new book In a Time of War: the Proud & Perilous Journey of West Point’s Class of 2002 is set for release on September 16.

Visit the promotional Web site for the book www.inatimeofwar.com to read more, and even download the first chapter for free.  Find book tour events so you can meet the author and hear him talk about what he describes as a “labor of love”.

You can now also join the group on Facebook!

The Postal Service and DoD will combine efforts and expertise again to delivery absentee ballots to members of the armed forces serving abroad during this election season.

As in 2004 and 2006, the Postal Service is working with the DoD’s Military Postal Service Agency (MPSA) to make certain ballots are transported and delivered to and from Army/Air Force Post Offices (APOs) and Fleet Post Offices (FPOs) overseas.

Postal officials explained how it works:

• Servicemembers should request their absentee ballots early from their local election officials, and verify with local election officials that their address on-file is correct.
• Local election officials mail the absentee ballots to overseas service members about 45 days before elections.
• Servicemembers overseas return their ballots free of charge from any APO/FPO, American embassy or consulate.

Accurate addresses are essential to timely delivery, postal officials stressed. “Please help us make your voice heard,” says Jeff Burger, Military Mail Operations Specialist. “Make sure that the address on file with local election officials is correct.”

The Postal Service and the MPSA have special handling procedures in place to expedite the transportation and delivery of absentee ballots. The ballots will be shipped via the Postal Service’s Express Mail transportation network, the fastest delivery option.

Last year more than 17 million absentee ballots were delivered by the Postal Service.

The Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2008, signed into law on June 17, 2008, changed the federal income tax filing deadlines and the length of the look-back period for amended tax returns when retirees are affected by a retroactive VA disability compensation determination.

Amended tax returns usually are required when you have paid income taxes on past retirement income that later becomes tax-free income as a result of the award of retro-VA compensation.

Get full details on this timely news item on compensation from MOAA!

Being the soldier who has to kick down a door and face the possibility of bullets from the other side is not an enviable combat task. But there’s help for the door-kicker in the form of a door-breaching rifle grenade.

Developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., the Simon — known in the U.S. as GREM (M100 Grenade Rifle Entry Munition) is designed to breach an entry into a building while posing minimal collateral damage or risk to the gunner. It’s a lightweight, 1.5-pound, rifle-launched grenade that uses a one-foot-long stand-off rod and a 120mm warhead.

Consisting of a bullet trap tail section that slips over a rifle’s muzzle, a warhead in the middle and a front standoff rod, GREM can be propelled by either 5.56 mm ball or tracer rounds, with the bullet impact and barrel gasses thrusting the rifle grenade forward.

Fired from the barrel of an M-16 rifle or an M-4 carbine, the GREM is as effective as any battering ram, simply punching down doors with its explosive charge. Typical ranges for the GREM are from 15 to 30 meters.

Amit Zimmer, Rafael’s corporate spokesman, says troops like the GREM because of its reliability, light weight, and performance.

He notes GREM is specially adapted for breaching steel and wooden doors, as well as being designed to minimize collateral damage.

The standoff rod assures the explosive charge will detonate at the optimal distance from a door’s surface to form a controlled blast effect that defeats the door by tearing it from the wall or breaking it down, he says.

Zimmer says the GREM won’t harm people inside a building, and while the warhead doesn’t produce any lethal backward fragments, its safety distance is 6 meters.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems currently is supplying $52 million in GREM rifle grenades to the U.S. Army.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz. freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He also is the author of the historical mystery, Full Moon (JoNa Books, 2005).