Laura McTaggart
Cognoscenti contributor
Laura McTaggart is a U.S. Navy veteran and a management consultant specializing in nonprofits. She blogs here.
Recently published
Call me old fashioned, but I still love writing letters
Receiving and sending letters is like dancing, each partner taking turns in a reliable rhythm across time and distance, writes Laura McTaggart, who regularly puts pen to paper to write...
Pete Hegseth's one-dimensional view of combat readiness
I served on the Navy’s first combatant ship to have women permanently assigned, and all of us on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower were completely qualified for our jobs, writes...
What does the great horned owl say?
Even better than identifying the birds was identifying with the birds, writes Laura McTaggart. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but I was sure it wasn’t the price...
A Michelin star meal? No thanks, chef
Every tiny portion of Laura McTaggart’s first Michelin star meal was served on a gigantic piece of stoneware. As if I needed this absurd ratio of food to plate to...
32 years and counting: A love letter to my Michigan Wolverines
In the stadium, we ride an emotional roller coaster with tens of thousands of like-minded strangers, writes Laura McTaggart. Everyone knows it’s only a game and doesn’t really matter. We...
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Veterans share a strong bond. But this election season showed me its limits
That many of my fellow veterans did not vote for Harris isn’t surprising writes Laura McTaggart. What shocks me is the level of vitriol. And it’s gotten so much worse...
The first rule of book club is: We do not talk about books
The first few meetings of Laura McTaggart's book club involved minimal scholarly discussion and no one complained. We must be doing something right because more than a decade later, the...
The clock is ticking. It's time to write my annual holiday letter
Every year I feel compelled to write a holiday letter that is informative, entertaining, and clever, writes Laura McTaggart. Now here I am, procrastinating so much about writing the letter...
The Supreme Court doesn’t think my daughter deserves to be safe
It’s a slippery slope from sanctioned discrimination to serious harm, and we’re sliding down it, writes Laura McTaggart.
The best beach books have 5 things in common
I’m not a snob about books, writes Laura McTaggart. But I do have standards, and even my beach reads must meet them. In fact, I have even higher standards for...