" Meek shares one important trait with (Ernie) Pyle. He tells good stories. To me that is the highest praise a writer can receive." Jim Kiser, Arizona Daily Star People who have known John Martin Meek know he has never been reluctant to express his opinions with one regrettable exception. In the Cabinet Room of the White House one evening, President Johnson went around the table to ask all present what he or she thought about the Vietnam War. To his deep regret, Meek failed to tell LBJ he honestly felt the war was going to destroy his presidency. But by then the president was getting the same advice from The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and other distinguished Americans. Moving from Washington, DC, to Southern Arizona in 1999, Meek began teaching journalism at Pima Community College (60,000 students) in Tucson and jumpstarted his journalism career by writing features and all but two of the columns included in this book. After leaving the University of Oklahoma journalism school, where he was editor of The Oklahoma Daily, Meek worked on newspapers in Texas and New York while earning an MA in communications at Syracuse University. He then had a long and, to him, exciting career in political and private sector public affairs in New York, Chicago and primarily in Washington, DC. He has drawn from these experiences for some of the columns in this book. Meek, writing under the pen name of John Martin Hill, is the author of "The Christmas Hour" (www.thechristmashour.com), a novel set in Washington, DC, and editor of a book of photos of the Johnson presidency.