The opening lines to Ben E. King's classic song "Stand By Me" describe the situation American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan face every night when their enemies are on the move. Fortunately, the U.S. leads the world in night-vision technology, which helps deny the bad guys their would-be invisibility cloak.

From a natural disaster to employee theft to bad-for-business regulations, the threats facing the small business owners we interviewed for this issue are real and could happen to any business any day. Just ask Nichole Yarbrough, owner of Shepherd, Texas-based Shepherd Auto Sales, whom we talked to for the Crisis Averted feature. In one day, everything she worked to create was taken from her when a thief stole her purse, which contained credit cards, checks, $5,000 in cash and more than 40 car titles. It was a rough two months putting the pieces back together, but she survived and has since learned the important lesson of protecting her business from theft by backing up data (and not keeping car titles in her purse, of course!).

Turn a few pages past Yarbough’s story and you’ll meet Michael Nevins, who is fighting a much different kind of threat—a challenging small business climate in Michigan, where his business, Full Spectrum Solutions, is located. Nevins uses his involvement in NFIB as a shield to combat onerous regulations. In this article, he explains why his commitment to NFIB is so important.

Also check out the MyBusiness Manual: the Essential Guide to Safeguarding Your Business, where you’ll find tips on assessing your insurance needs, how to prepare for an OSHA inspection and protecting your business against hackers and scammers.

For this and more, check out the “Current Issue” section of www.mybusinessmag.com.

Warriors have always struggled to find uniforms that provide both protection from the elements as well as from enemy arms. Solutions have ranged from the bronze greaves of Achilles' armor before the walls of Troy to the colorful garb of Louisiana Zouaves to the bulky battle uniforms seen on the cover of the new issue of Semper Fi, the Magazine of the Marine Corps League.

Though not as heavy as medieval armor, today's battlefield attire and accompanying gear can add up to 150 or more pounds to the average Marine's 163 pounds. Much of that is in the form of composite armor plates designed to stop a supersonic bullet or red-hot shard of shrapnel. Add to that eye protection, fire-resistant uniforms, weapons and ammo, communication gear, rations and water, and it's a wonder the Marine can move at all.

And what would a family scrapbook be without those faded photos of Aunt Norma and Uncle David posing in their Sunday best? Our cover story, “Treasure Hunt,” outlines new resources to track down family photographs. Thanks to digital collections at libraries and historical societies and Web sites devoted to genealogy, it’s easier than ever to find photographs of long-lost relatives on your family tree--and we show you how.

The April/May issue of MyBusiness which we publish for NFIB is hitting homes this week. The focus is on NFIB's ramped up efforts to reform small business health care. NFIB recently launched Solutions Start Here, an aggressive national campaign to ensure that legislators will keep small business in mind when discussing health care reform for the country. The feature article Solutions Start Here has more details on how small businesses can join the fight.

Also check out this issue's MyBusiness Manual: The Essential Guide to Small Business Benefits for tips on how to attract top notch employees---and keep the ones you've got happy and loyal.

As always, this issue of MyBusiness is packed with tons of great tips, tricks and other must-read stories for small business owners, so head over to MyBusinessMag.com to take a look.

Have you ever thought about how often magazine offices appear as settings in movies? From writer Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" to Andrea Sachs' (Anne Hathaway) stint as an editorial assistant at Runway magazine in "The Devil Wears Prada," movies are filled with characters who dream of making it big in journalism.

If you don't believe me, take a look at this list compiled by Rex a few years ago and you'll see how often it really is.

And it's not just on the big screen. One of my favorite shows (“Ugly Betty”) is all about the making of a Vogue-esque magazine and the crazy people who help put it together.

Whether or not your grasp of etiquette would past muster with Emily Post, be relieved that you didn't have to abide by the rules of courtesy books, 18th-century manuals on the proper behavior of gentlemen and women, which we also spotlight in this issue. From table manners—“Make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips or Breath, either in eating or drinking”—to personal appearance—“Wear not your clothes foul, ripped or dusty, but see to it that they be brushed once every day at least”—these books provide surprising glimpses into the everyday lives and aspirations of early Americans.

The issue also covers the recent International Preservation Trades Workshop, where experts demonstrate hands-on techniques for preserving historic structures. We feature some talented craftsmen and women who are whizzes at reglazing vintage windows, renewing wood finishes, repairing ornamental plaster, carving bricks and stone, and dozens of other traditional methods of historic preservation. This story is especially fitting now that DAR has embarked on a multimillion-dollar restoration of its many historically significant buildings, including the century-old Memorial Continental Hall. The next time you’re in D.C., stop by for a tour of the complex, only steps away from the White House. On 1776 D Street, of course.

One of the photos from the making of the commercial, taken in Columbia, TN, a few miles from Hammock Inc.'s Nashville offices, graces the cover of the March-April 2008 issue of Semper Fi, the Magazine of the Marine Corps League, which we publish for the League.

Elsewhere in the issue, we encounter a different "kind" of Marine - one made of plastic and aluminum and electronics. The Marines and other services increasingly use robots to perform highly dangerous tasks such as reconnaissance, investigating potential explosive devices, even retrieving wounded comrades under fire. While there is not now and never will be a true substitute for boots on the ground, 'bots will take on new and more complex tasks as another weapon in the Marines' arsenal.

Speaking of that arsenal, the Marine Corps League co-hosts three trade shows a year that bring active-duty Marines together with military suppliers. The Marines are not shy about giving the vendors (many of them veterans) a quick and incisive analysis of their products. And the vendors hustle to fix, upgrade and adapt their products and services to meet the warfighters' needs. Semper Fi reports on the Marine West Expo in January aboard Camp Pendleton, CA; we'll be at the next one, Marine South at Camp Lejeune, NC, in early April.

Created by the National Federation of Independent Business for its small business owner-members, MyBusiness magazine handles tough topics like this every issue. A regular feature the past few months has also examined how small business is dealing with the health care crisis. We examine possible solutions, and NFIB's role as the voice of small business on critical issues like health insurance.

Hammock has produced MyBusiness since 2000, but it's only available as a benefit for NFIB members. You can take a sneak peak at MyBusinessmag.com -- also created by Hammock.

Here's a glimpse of the latest issue of Pharmaceutical Commerce, a magazine Hammock designed from the ground up in 2005.

The magazine, which covers the business side of the pharma industry, including marketing, finance, supply chain and packaging, delivers helpful and timely information to more than 16,000 readers.

The next issue should be out in a few weeks. In fact, as I type, Ben Stewart is probably designing some awesome illustration for it.

Other historical features in the January/February issue include David Bushnell, who created the first submersible warship -- in 1776! -- and Colonial businesswoman and indigo farmer Eliza Lucas Pinckney of South Carolina.

The January-February 2008 issue of Semper Fi: The Magazine of the Marine Corps League is headed for the presses this week, and will be arriving in the homes of some 70,000 Marine Corps League members in early January.

The issue also reports on the League's 27th annual Modern Day Marine Expo held aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. in early October. The Expo, and its cousins held in January at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and in April at Camp Lejeune, N.C., bring military suppliers together with Marines who use their equipment. More than just a show and tell for the vendors, the Expos allow the Marines to speak with the suppliers about what works and what doesn't. And when you are talking about something that can literally save your life and those of your fellow Marines, the talk is direct and to the point.

When faced with a tough decision, do you mull it over for weeks or go with your gut? Do you feel comfortable with your decision once you've made it? These are the questions we asked several of the subjects featured in the December/January 2008 issue of MyBusiness, the magazine Hammock publishes for the National Federation of Independent Business.

What we found in our feature "The Power of Trust" was that small-business owners listen to their instincts to help them make important decisions about their businesses, but deliberation is still necessary.

We also talked to some small-business owners who make their communities as much of a priority as their businesses in our inspiring feature "Like a Good Neighbor."

Check out these stories and more in the latest issue, including a staff favorite on how one Arizona business creates success by blending into the crowd—a crowd of trees, that is.

Over the weekend of 9-11 November, five members of our production team for Semper Fi, The Magazine of the Marine Corps League, went to Washington, DC, to participate in celebrating the U.S. Marine Corps 232 Birthday and also the annual remembrance ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Our group - John Lavey, Patrick Burns, Kerri Davis, Carrie Wakeford and Bill Hudgins - first went to the Marine War Memorial in Arlington, often called the Iwo Jima Memorial because it commemorates the raising of an American flag on Mt. Suribachi during the desperate struggle for the tiny island.

We spent part of Saturday afternoon at the year-old National Museum of the Marine Corps, discovering that the riches it holds take far longer than a couple of hours to see, even for the fleetest footed visitor.

Saturday night, we joined our client, the Marine Corps League, at its 2nd annual Birthday Ball. At both the museum and at the ball, Marine tradition was observed as a Marine sliced the birthday cake with a Marmeluke saber and handed the first piece to the oldest Marine present. That Marine took a bite, then handed to the youngestﾑthe passing of tradition and duty from old to new.

Sunday morning, crisp, clear and mild, we joined thousands at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the 48 million American veterans who, starting with the American Revolution, offered all, including their lives, to protect the nation. More than 310,000 of those veterans are buried at Arlington. The Marine Corps League was this year's host veterans' group for the national observance, and its commandant, Jack Ryan, was joined at the dais by Vice President Cheney after the vice president laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.