TEXT_SIZE

Opinion

We will never forget the Sept. 11 attacks

Sept. 11, 2012 — President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy” after the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Most Americans are too young to remember that early Sunday morning raid 71 years ago that killed 2,225 servicemen and wounded 1,143 more, sank or damaged all eight American battleships in the harbor and thrust our country into the fray of World War II.

While the attack on Pearl Harbor may be a distant memory conveyed through old black and white news footage, most Americans are young enough to remember the horror wreaked by 15 terrorists armed with box cutters who hijacked three commercial jetliners full of civilians and flew them into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City, and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virg. Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Other terrorists, who apparently intended to make the U.S. Capitol building their target, also hijacked a fourth plane, but the passengers confronted them and all 44 souls were lost and four hijackers killed when the plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Penn. Just before the crash passenger Todd Beamer asked several passengers who sought to regain control of the jet liner, “Are you guys ready? Okay. Let’s roll.”

Read more...Add new comment
 

Retirement plans: Wallow for a while, then it’s back to work

Sept. 11, 2012 —By the time you read this I will have sailed off into the sunset of retirement. In reality it’s likely to be a semi-retirement because I am not the kind to sit around. Still, I do plan to take some down time.

First off, I will ride my bike in preparation for a 50th-birthday trip with my twin sister. We plan to cycle through the wine country of Napa and Sonoma. Despite being an avid cyclist and a 36-year resident of California, I have never visited this classic cycling destination.

Read more...Add new comment
 

Listening to the universal language of poetry

Sept. 11, 2012 — This is about poetry, but it’s also about rivers, about what we hold sacred and the price we exact upon those things we love most.

This is about a poet, Susheel Kumar Sharma, an English professor at the University of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, India.

I met Professor Sharma at a conference in Assam. His second book of poetry, “The door is half open,” was about to come out from Adhyahan Publishers in New Delhi. When it was published last March, Professor Sharma mailed a copy to me.

Read more...Add new comment
  

When a cane is more than just a simple walking stick

Sept. 4, 2012 — My first full year of teaching was in a very small village of 550 people in the Alaskan “bush,” what folks in the lower 48 might call “boonies.”

To get to this village, named Quinhagak (Kwin-a-hahk), you have to fly in a small plane from Bethel, about 70 miles away, a 30- to 45-minute flight, depending on the size of the plane.

Bethel is the hub for some 56 villages in the Lower Kuskokwim Region, an area 300 – 400 miles west of Anchorage that is sparsely inhabited, mainly by native Alaskans, mostly Yup’ik Eskimos.

What’s remarkable about this village is that one of the school’s teachers made a video last year with his class, featuring students and villagers“performing” the Hallelujah chorus.

The video was posted to You-Tube and has had more than a million-and-a-half hits. In other words, it has gone viral.

Going viral sounds like something you’d stay away from at all costs if you had any sense. You wouldn’t touch it with the proverbial 10-foot pole.

Read more...Add new comment
 

Remembering a man’s small step, giant leap

Sept. 4, 2012 — I shall never forget the evening of Sunday, July 20, 1969. The night before I’d made my first appearance at a then new little vegetarian eatery near Cannery Row in Monterey, just up the hill from that hard left hand turn across the railroad tracks on David Street that marks the boundary between the cities of Monterey and Pacific Grove.

In those days Cannery Row was little more than a string of mostly abandoned buildings with twisted corrugated walls slowly rusting in the fog and the salty sea air.

Several beat up old railroads cars sat akimbo on the sidings above the dusty, deserted street, and one could easily imagine Doc and all those other colorful characters from the Steinbeck novels lounging suspiciously on the relics or searching for specimens amid the chaos of the pounding surf, the sting of the high-flying spray and the crisp, ear-numbing hiss as the cold, blue-green water rose and fell with each passing wave.

Little coffee houses like Tilly Gorts (still in business today, by the way) wouldn’t pay entertainers, but they’d let a traveling musician like me play for an hour or so and pass the hat. Usually, they’d offer a free meal, too.

Read more...Add new comment
  

More Articles...

Page 19 of 69

"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}