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 »

The old one-room school stands by a country crossroads, miles from the nearest town.

 

 

 Abandoned and forgotten, it bears the scars of years of neglect.

 

 

 

 

 

The small cloak room by the front entrance has not held a child's coat since…

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As America entered the First World War in 1917, the federal government established a network of new army posts throughout the country to train recruits for combat.  One of those posts was Camp Grant, located in Northern Illinois, just outside of Rockford and about 90 miles from downtown Chicago.… Read full post »

 

I was 13 years old when I first fell in love. 

There were many lovely girls my own age I could have fallen for.  There was Sharon, who always laughed at my stories, and whose big brown eyes I would frequently catch looking my way.  Alas, my friend… Read full post »

I have had the opportunity to travel to many outstanding destinations during my lifetime.  Some trips have taken me to the great centers of culture, places like Paris or London, and many of the great cities of North America.  Other times, I have opted for places far off the beaten path,… Read full post »

 

We were far more nervous than you, of that we're certain.  Still, you were no doubt confused.  Things had been difficult for you during your first year.  We don't know the details, and we are probably glad of that.  There were certainly ugly moments, though, inci… Read full post »

The Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm, Sweden, has confirmed that the Nobel Prize awarded to Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been posthumously rescinded on grounds that the author misrepresented the activities that took place in the so-called “concentration camps” of Soviet Siberia.

“… 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.

 

 

 

 

  No gondoliers would ply their trade tonight.

 

 

&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 »

 

This is a re-post of an essay I composed last summer, during the early days of Open Salon.  It remains one of my favorite posts, so in honor of Open Salon's one year anniversary, I am showing it again, with apologies to those who may have viewed it earlier.

 … Read full post »

As the Rio Grande River courses through the rugged Chihuahua Desert along the U.S. - Mexican border, it cuts a series of spectacular canyons in a 250 mile stretch of wilderness known on the northern side of the river as "the Big Bend Country".  The western most of the canyons is… Read full post »

 

 

How lonely sits the city                                              &… 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 »

 

 

In the mid-1870’s, the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad completed a new rail link between Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul.  The track ran in a fairly straight line for 400 miles, and it took 400 minutes to complete the journey, earning this route the nickname of the &ldqu… 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 »

Is anything for free anymore that is worth seeing?

I asked myself this question after reading Chicago Guy's piece lamenting the Chicago Art Institute’s recent decision to raise the price of admission to the museum to $18.00.  It wasn't all that long ago that the Art Institute charged abso… Read full post »

This is a tribute to the city of my birth.  Not the entire city, though.  I could sing the praises of the city’s world-class museums, or its opera and symphony orchestra.  I could tell about its beautiful houses of worship, or centers of higher education.  I could wax poetic… 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 »

 

 

This morning, as I engaged in my usual early routine of taking the dog out to do his business, an amazing thing happened.  I was seranaded by mourning doves.  Not just one or two, but lots of them.  For some, their music may/… 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 »