All Posts
One on One in Kuopio Addendum
If you’ve read my previous post, the one in which I describe my energetic examination of a doctoral student in Kuopio, you know that story ended with a critical question unanswered, with a mystery unsolved. I have just received further intelligence pertaining to that story, as I describe below. However, if you haven’t read my […]
One on One in Kuopio
After a refreshing night in my Kuopio hotel, I took on a hefty breakfast before getting down to the business I had come for. I opened the dissertation of the doctoral student I was to examine, now being familiar with him as the young pilot who had ferried me from Helsinki the evening before. His […]
Flying above Fire
When I landed in Helsinki, the middle leg of my previously-mentioned tour, I was met by the young pilot assigned to fly me to Kuopio. By odd circumstance that fellow was the very candidate I was to examine on the following Monday. Apparently those who arranged this scheme thought it would provide a pleasant avenue […]
Second Thoughts on First Impressions
We all know the cliché, the one that usually goes something like this, “You won’t have a second chance to make a first impression.” There is of course irrefutable logic tied to that notion, but if one digs more deeply into the concept, thought-provoking flags begin to wave, at least they do if someone as […]
Free Travel Addendum, and Note
After writing about my jaunt to Jerusalem, Kuopio, and Oxford, I dug back and discovered I had gone on eleven other trips in 1987, so I soared through more clouds that year than I would have guessed. Each journey brought back wisps of memory, one of which made me cringe. Below are the trips and […]
8 – Free Travel
Two decisions of mine, both made relatively early in life, provided means for me to travel a bit over the years, mostly on somebody else’s dollar. The first was my decision to enlist in the Air Force at age nineteen, a wise commitment that sent me zig-zagging through a number of states before being shipped […]
Housekeeping Note
I’m sorry to have been away for a couple of weeks, which in Blog Land apparently is about equivalent to a cosmic year. I’ve been entangled in a string of urgent but not necessary important threads that have kept me away. I did manage to write the ending to the Brandenburg Gate story, but have […]
7 – Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate
Up to the time I enlisted in the Air Force at age nineteen, I had rambled through only two states, both with names ending in Dakota. After my basic training in Texas and a later course in weather observing in Illinois, I was shipped (on a seven-day waterlogged and bumpy cruise) to Germany for my […]
6 – Vanishing Comments and a Sincere Apology
I’m pretty good at turning my computer on, and I enjoy tapping the keyboard when the machine behaves, but that’s about the limit of what I can do. A huge expanse of the digital world lies beyond me. Asking me to do anything requiring technical skills, like constructing a website, is like asking a […]
5 – Donald Trump, Pro and Con
Donald Trump – Pro and Con A friend and former neighbor of mine, having read my first two blogs, emailed me asking if I was for, or against, Trump. That jolted me because I’d never thought in quite those terms. I’ve been focusing on a larger screen, one with Trump as a single character in […]
