I hadn’t completed even my 1st semester at college when the Dean of Students paid me an unscheduled visit. Hebinformed me I was being relocated to another dormitory because I posed an unfavorable arson risk where I currently resided. Humiliatingly, I was burned in effigy in front of probably 30 guys from my dorm who … [Read more…]
Throughout my adolescence and continuing through much of my adult life, I’d often go to bed and see this recurrent dream disrupt my sleep; a nightmare actually. I was being chased by some unrecognized assailant. He’d be leaping into the air in an effort to grab my ankles – to do who knows what?? Why … [Read more…]
Weight Watcher’s, Jenny Craig, NutriSystem, Atkins, Ketogenic – we all know what these are: false hope. Kidding. They’re diet plans. Many of them have worked for many people while others have tried many of these plans (and others) and none have worked. Many friends and acquaintances over the years have asked me what diet plan … [Read more…]
A university library represents the pinnacle of literary scholarship and exhaustive research. It’s one of the signature places where minds expand, values are shaped, and causes are born. So, who would have ever guessed on an otherwise vacant wall of one of our nation’s best, some unremarkable student scrawled his ideological conviction that shattered the … [Read more…]
Sometime during the 105-day Winter War in Finland, but before the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty on March 12, 1940, my wife’s mother, Anna-Liisa Kumpulainen, fled for her life; as did just about everyone from her hometown. “The Russians were coming!” to take over her beloved Viipuri and all of the Karelian Isthmus. 400,000 … [Read more…]
