The man in the picture is my grandfather, Earl C. Mayers, better known to many as “Smokey”.  To me, he was “Grandpop”. My whole life he served as “the Fire Marshal”.  I say it like that because he carried that title in several jurisdictional responsibilities, the most visible being the Chief Fire Marshal for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania until his death […]

We all face it. Adversity. It’s what we do with it that matters. I’ve been slogging through a rough month and a half.  Things that have always gone right have gone inexplicably awry. People I thought I could count on, managing to question my faith. Even the things I have always sought to be my […]

NOTE: I added a few other resources at the end of the post.  Please share these if you know someone who needs help. In the very first week of November  in 1993, a week I remember well, a fellow responder of mine put a bullet in his head.  He, along with many of my friends, were supposed […]

This is the five hundred and fifth post for Firehouse Zen. I would probably have called attention to number five hundred, but it was in the middle of the series honoring my brother’s 50th birthday and didn’t want to distract from THAT celebration. That is a lot of writing over a lot of days.  If you […]

I happened to read Chief Matt Tobia’s piece on racism in the American fire service the other day (and you can read it here at FirefighterNation.com). The United States has a long and embarrassing history of discrimination.  This is not to say other nations have not, but given that the United States of America was […]

There is a tenet of Eastern philosophy, heijoshin, that translates to maintaining a “constant, stable spirit”.  The premise is that while we are constantly buffeted by distractions and emotions and other tumult, the true master lives in a constant and stable spirit, considering that nothing is permanent, that nothing is sacred, and that everything and […]

I woke this morning for a third time, having gone back to sleep when the alarm rang (twice- it’s a holiday), then later taking a nap (third time). Feeling refreshed, I sat down to take care of the business end of Firehouse Zen: answering e-mails, checking the Twitter feed, etc.  I also decided a “first post” for […]

Back in 2012 I ran a 21-part series on Firehouse Zen on altruism and leadership (going back I realized I skipped Part 18- go figure).  There are any number of analogous theories that run along this vein, including just culture, transformational leadership, and servant leadership.  In each, the common thread is the concept of leading from […]

The useful part of a wheel is not the wheel or the spokes, but the hole where all the spokes meet. We have to look past the obvious and turn to the esoteric; despite what we see, it’s deeper than that. Logical solutions exist to every problem, but the emotional mind fights those solutions because they aren’t, […]