Worried about Money? Take the Point!

One of our favorite shows from the 1960s is Combat. Combat was the longest-running show about the Second World War. Mostly filmed in noir-ish black and white, and with great scripts and special effects, it followed the men of the K Company as they made their way across Normandy. And what kid from the 60´s didn´t play the games they saw on Combat every week? The show aired just a couple of decades after that war ended, and maybe these things should be viewed in a new light now, but…we played with plastic hand grenades with "exploding" caps, tommy guns that rat-a-tatted like Vic Morrow´s did, and the everyday things that made up a soldier life like canteens, tents, and so on.

If you watch a lot of Combats you can learn a fair amount about how soldiers fought then. Each soldier has his own role in the Company. The most-skilled soldier was the one who "took the point." He was the scout who was sent first to see what danger might lay ahead. And while his job was fraught with danger it was also exciting; he was the first to see what was ahead for his fellow soldiers.

Maybe it´s because we just spent am embarrassing amount of time watching these great old Combats but we´ve decided that we must "Take the Point" too. Or at least we must try. For us as writers that means we must scout ahead to see what´s coming, and write about it. It´s fun! (And a lot less dangerous we´re happy to say.) Over the years we´ve written about Solar Energy, Working From Home (this was so long ago we had to explain what "telecommuting" was), the Internet, and now YouTube and LinkedIn. (We can´t say what we found when we last took the point….everybody´s gotta eat, right).

So we Take the Point. And that´s something maybe more of us will need to do in these scary economic times. We all are making do with less. We can´t coast. We can´t just lay back or lay low. It´s not business as usual right now. We all have to take the point!