The 125-kilometer bus ride from Seoul to Gongju in Chungcheongnam Province is usually about 2 ½ hours long, but on this Thursday morning and afternoon it lasted almost six. The Chuseok holidays caused the roads to be packed. Gongju was not my...
The fall semester has now begun at the University of Georgia, located in the charming town of Athens. I surmise that each of the 5,750 students in the present freshman class (largest in UGA history) has high hopes, dreams and aspirations. This is...
Marching and picketing, sit-ins, court rulings, freedom rides, grassroots activism, soaring oratory, physical resistance and fervent prayers contributed to the success of the civil rights movement. But minor league baseball also helped eliminate...
As I have said before in various ways, I am ambivalent about my alma mater. I attended and graduated from the University of Texas and spent about 30 years in Austin, but it is not the central fact of my life. While UT is a big school (more than...
Not long ago, my friend Ruby Lee stated her admiration for women’s fashion designer and perfume maker Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. Ruby is a smart person whose opinions I respect, so I went in search of information about Chanel. That’s not to say I...
It was liberation day—the defeated Japanese having begun a hasty exit from Korea 74 years ago—and President Moon Jae-in, in a pale blue hanbok, was addressing the nation from Independence Hall in Cheonan. I saw him on the TV from my seat at the...
Among the 125 or so books I shipped from Texas to Korea in June was Armadillo World Headquarters, a memoir written by Eddie Wilson with help from Jesse Sublett. Published in 2017 by University of Texas Press, it was considerably better than...
Each of the last two weekends, I have left the friendly confines of Gangnam and traveled north of the Han River to explore Gwanghwamun, and I may very well go back next weekend. There is always so much to see—maybe too much. What is this place...
Robert T. Hill Junior High School was not exactly a cornucopia of athletic talent in the 1966−67 school year, at least among the ninth graders. The Highlanders football team went 1-8, and most of its top players were eighth graders like Blake...
Shocked if not flabbergasted to realize that I had yet to visit three small towns in the northwest corner of Chungcheongbuk Province, I set out to rectify the matter with a mid-summer excursion. Although Tropical Storm Falcon coming up from the...
May 29 is a festive holiday in Turkey. That is when people—most of them, I should say—celebrate the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the forces of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, also known as Fetih or “the Conqueror”; that day culminated a long...
Less than two weeks have passed since I came back to Korea. Now, nine boxes of books—all of the nonfiction genre—have been delivered to my office, carted to my apartment nearby, catalogued and stored. As a bibliophile, I find this deeply...
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