Schools and Society

Emanuele Corso Good bye to my old stomping ground, “siteseven”, and welcome to the new “Schools and Society”. Perhaps some background about the provenance of “siteseven” is in order. My first assignment as a very young Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force’s, Strategic Air Command was to actually “buy” an Atlas F ICBM silo launch site. That was one heck of an experience for 22 year old. Our crew of five tested and operated each and every system and sub-system short of actually launching the “bird” (as it was known to all). At Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg AFB in California the test launchings of these liquid fueled ICBMs was attended by small armies of technicians and here in the middle of the Kansas prairie that task was now the responsibility of five men – 2 officers and 3 enlisted. The targets were half way around the planet. That was a long time ago in the early 1960s and marked by the famous “Cuban Missile Crisis”. I had the interesting experience of being on alert duty when President Kennedy made his famous Cuba speech which broadcast was followed immediately by a coded message from SAC headquarters directing us to initiate a countdown to minimum hold. Well, so much for all of that in the past (May it never happen again!) and now we move on as I did when I left active duty and attended graduate school at Madison where I took a PhD in Educational Policy studies and where I taught for several years. Read on! Any all feedback will be appreciated.