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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 […]
4 – To Leningrad with the Finns (conclusion)
My senses sharpened when we finally arrived in Leningrad. Nearing the center of the city, we saw few cars on the streets. The cars were mostly small, and some veered around in odd ways. Buses were numerous, mostly unwashed, and often with multiple dents. Our tour included rooms in what had been described as one […]
