There are only a few places outside of my actual home that I ever felt I could call “home.” One was the U.S. Army Security Agency, where I spent almost four years on active duty. Another was the University of Kansas, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. However, …
Today I am sharing some obscure knowledge with you, as well as a short and dubious yarn. Just what’s needed for a Friday morning. Enjoy! Yesterday I got my permit to carry a concealed weapon. So, today I went over to the local gun shop to get a 9mm handgun …
California is in trouble. For the first time since a prospector struck gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1849, California has recorded an annual net loss in population. The state’s population, which has for years been inching toward the 40-million mark, actually dipped by 182,083 people last year as Californians packed …
Today, at the request of several followers and subscribers, I am reposting a commentary I did a while back about the late Kurt Vonnegut. It is jam-packed with great advice on writing. Enjoy! It’s been 14 years since the world lost Kurt Vonnegut–one of America’s greatest writers and writing teachers. …
PBS is currently running a new three-part documentary about Ernest Hemingway by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick which explores the famous author’s own image-making. In the documentary, we see Hemingway as a “man’s man–” a battle-hardened war veteran, a big game hunter, a deep-sea fisherman, a brawler, a boozer, a …
I posted the following commentary in 2018 when the Chicago Tribune moved out of Tribune Tower and into the One Prudential Plaza building a few blocks south of the Chicago River. I wasn’t there for the move, but it was nevertheless dispiriting and disheartening for me because in that building …
My introduction to Hong Kong was via the 1960 film The World of Suzy Wong, starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. The movie was based on the 1957 novel of the same name by British author Richard Mason. It is a classic East meets West story in which a British …
(NOTE: Tomorrow and Thursday I invite you to join me as I relive the last 24 frantic hours in Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops on April 29-30, 1975–an event I covered for the Chicago Tribune in 1975. I hope you will stop by) Forty-five years ago …
Two years ago Clare Hollingworth, one of the toughest, most determined, and inexhaustible war correspondents who ever lived passed away in her Hong Kong home. I posted on her passing at the time, but because she was such a unique and iconic journalist, I feel compelled to post my story …
Along with a few hundred other authors, I attended the 2019 Chanticleer International Book Awards Conference which took place April 26-28 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Washington. As with some 275 other authors from around the world, I was a semi-finalist in one of 16 divisions from which …