Halloween has arrived once again.  Tonight, the streets will be filled with vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and a host of scary apparitions barely waste high.  Sure, there will be a few fairy princesses intermingled, but the night really belongs to the monsters and dybbuks who just a few hour… Read full post »

It was a cool morning on September 28, 1874, as the sun cast its first shadows over the canyon floor.  The past few days had seen the first hint of autumn’s refreshing relief from the harsh summer heat of the Southern Plains.  The heart-shaped leaves of the cottonw/… Read full post »

This week marks the anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall.  The story is familiar to anyone who grew up in the 1940’s through the 1960’s.  In the wee hours of the morning of August 13, 1961, East German security forces sealed off the border, hoping to stem the tide… Read full post »

For those younger than 35 or 40 years old, it is hard to imagine just how influential Walter Cronkite was.  He ruled the airwaves every evening for 30 minutes, when he told families all over the nation "the way it is."  There was no CNN, MSNBC, or FoxNews.  The Internet existed… Read full post »

In the mid-1980’s, I took my first trip to the Yucatan Peninsula.  Like many travelers, my first experience in that part of the world was the tourist mecca of Cancun.  One day during that initial trip, I rented a car and drove down the coastal highway, and fell in love with/… Read full post »

I will be out of town most of the July 4 weekend.  Consequently, I am posting my July 4^th essay early.  Posting on July 2 is not really inappropriate.  In fact, the Continental Congress voted to sever ties to England on the 2^nd.  We celebrate independence on the 4^th because that… Read full post »

Padre Island.

I was introduced to the island when I was 13 years old.  My parents packed up the station wagon and drove the family of five 350 miles to the newly opened national seashore.  Here, I was introduced to a coastline seemingly unchanged from from what the Spanish… Read full post »

Today is VE Day, the 64^th anniversary of Germany’s surrender in World War II.  Hitler had committed suicide a week earlier, but the final unconditional surrender happened on May 7.  During the previous six years, 8 million had been murdered in the Holocaust, tens of millions killed in… Read full post »

As many who follow my blog know, my employer declared me surplus last December.  I can't really criticize my immediate supervisory chain for what they were forced to do.  They simply implemented policy that was handed down to them from upper-most management.  Based on the company's sol… Read full post »

Late in the afternoon, the fog rolled in from beyond Madonna della Salute.

 By nightfall, it was cold and damp as we approached Rialto.

&nbs… Read full post »

Way back in the Dark Ages of Open Salon’s beta days, one of my most well received posts was about history’s pivotal events, those rare events that occur once every couple hundred years that irrevocably change the world.  For example, in the past 2000 years, I would cert… Read full post »

So, a new script has managed to migrate from Fox News to the major networks.  Last night, and again today, CNN and MSNBC are both entertaining guests whose message is that Obama has increased the partisan divide in America.  They fail to specify why that is, exactly, but they do cite… Read full post »

The two boys are both quite shy.  One is a 15 year old high school freshman.  The other is a 9 year old 3^rd grader.  They say little to one another, but eye each other with a mixture of nervousness and curiosity.  The two boys sit next to each other in… Read full post »

Some who have followed my blog may remember that I lived in West Berlin for a time in the early 1980’s.  I took time off from graduate school, flew to Amsterdam with my Student Eurrail pass, and began what would turn out to be the/… Read full post »

The Apostle Islands are a chain of 22 islands located off the Lake Superior shore of Northern Wisconsin.  They were so named by French missionary voyageurs who first noticed them in the late seventeenth century.  In 1970, the federal government completed the purchase of 21 of the islands, a… Read full post »

Living in a fairly small city in the American heartland, I could at least take some comfort that the insatiable greed and irresponsibility that has brought such damage to our nation’s economy was limited, I thought, to the financial bigwigs in New York and San Francisco, and 100 miles down I-90… Read full post »

(Scroll down for photos.)

When the state of Texas won its precarious independence from Mexico in 1836, it was immediately confronted with a hostile, revanchist state on its southern border, just waiting to reverse the outcome of the Battle of San Jacinto.  Unfortunately for the Te… Read full post »

Each of the last five winters I have taken my wife and son on a winter vacation to Northern Wisconsin, where we stay at a small family-oriented resort offering terrific Northwoods winter activities.  There are 20 miles of cross-country ski trails, horse-drawn sleigh rides, ice skating, scavenger… Read full post »

It's another cold, gray day Northern Illinois.  There were snow flurries yesterday, and large mounds of dirty snow still stand tall where parking lots, streets, and driveways were put to the snow plow last month.  Despite the cold temperatures, or perhaps because of them, the arrival of Mar… Read full post »

It's hard to name my favorite movie of all time, but if pressed I'd have to say it is "To Ki… Read full post »

Hell arrived in the city of Dresden on February 13, 1945, at exactly thirty seconds past 10:10 PM.  At that moment a squadron of British de Havilland Mosquito fighter-bombers dropped bright red targeting flares over the German city.  Two and a half minutes later, with the Mosquitos already/… Read full post »

In 1986 I made my first trip to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.  Like most first time visitors, my destination was the resort city of Cancun, with its white beaches, crystal clear turquoise waters, and thriving night life.  While there, I rented a car for a day and drove down the coast to/… Read full post »

Question 

What do the following companies have in common:  JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One Financial, and KeyCorp?

Answer

1. All of these banks have received billions of dollars in taxpayer money.
2. All of these banks have laid off hundreds, or thousands, of their employee
… Read full post »

This is the third in a series of posts detailing a trip to Cambodia I took in 1993.  You can read the other installments here and here.

In the spring of 1993, it was still quite dangerous along many of the poorly maintained highways in rural Cambodia.  The mountains in the/… Read full post »