All Blog Posts (2,378)

February, 1964.

It was an event, a strange one, but one that turned out to be immensely important, an event that marked the start of a change in much of was, and what was going to happen to a country and the people in it. It was actually a small event, just an airplane and four passengers, but when the plane dropped out of the sky, landed, unloaded its passengers, the earth seemed to shake with screams and shouts, voices and the people with those that said this meant something new,…

With all the publicity about Sochi toilets, I thought I would relate some of my own experiences with toilet facilities and the like in Russia.

In the past, I have had occasion to visit Russia twice, once for two weeks on a bus tour from Finland, returning to Germany and visiting Moscow. The tour…

It didn't start off that way, certainly not with roman numerals, it was just the Championship Game between the leagues, the National and the upstart American. And in the beginning it was no big deal, until, the National lost to  a brash American league team that  made Joe Namath's boast real, and to some shocking, as the American League's New York Jets, beat the unbeatable National League's Baltimore Colts in what became known as Super Bowl III, changing how the game, the Super Bowl, would…

There are words and phrases that become symbols or shorthand for mixed items and events, and recently the word "Keystone" is but one more example. "Remember the Maine" was a term that inflamed the country to take action against the vestigial Spanish empire, to bring the advantages of democratic nation building but at the price of being made a colony subject to occupation and exploitation. Or better, the emotion of national destiny of what…

And no, it is not raw fish wrapped with rice on a plate.

Sochi is the next Olympic extravaganza that will start in a few weeks. As such, this is a spectacular brought to us by the largesse of the Russian people as expressed by the Russian president, Putin. It has been estimated that as such the Russians have put in $50 billion into their new venue, its operation and security.

And yes, it is all about television and then something about sports and athletes. And no, Pierre de…

After a day of fine, dry snow and the horrendous wind gusts that blow it around, the park was empty of walkers as I stood on the banks of the Mississippi and observed the texture of its frozen waters. Any slightly raised surface had captured a tuft of snow as the wind carved across the ice. With the light coming from the side, each tiny snowy hillock was illuminated as a white dot or curve marking the surface topography against the gray of the ice. I stood silently taking it in before I…