My ancestors—at least on the paternal side—came from a small village named Pennington in Cumbria, located in northwestern England. Presbyterians, they crossed the water to the Isle of Man and then on to Ireland. They lived a few generations among...
“I was brought up in the greatest country in the world. Patriotism isn’t a matter of flag-waving but of work ethic and respect for authority.” That line came from an interview with Dick Young who covered sports—mostly baseball and boxing—in a...
Guilt motivated me to come back to these towns I had visited just a week earlier because both deserved a closer look. The taxi driver dropped me off in front of Ms. Lee’s Mexican chicken restaurant, but it was closed. So much for my lunch plans!...
While Melinda Ann French and I are both Dallas natives, we moved in very different circles. Second daughter of an aerospace engineer, she was valedictorian at the all-female Ursuline Academy. Me, I was a face in the crowd at a big public high...
Having recently completed Charles J. Hanley’s Ghost Flames / Life & Death in a Hidden War / Korea 1950−1953, I decided to embark on this day trip to a couple of towns in the eastern reaches of Gyeonggi Province. A bus ride, a subway ride and...
Nearly 200 years have passed since Romania—with some prodding by the Ottomans, the Russians, the Austrians, the British and the French—first discussed building a canal to link the Danube with the Black Sea. Its main portion of the river ran north...
Saturday morning, and no sooner had I stepped out of the subway train at Gangbyeon Station than this man accosted me. He noted that I was a foreigner and thus maybe an easy mark. Equally monolingual, he indicated that he was hungry and wanted me...
All right, I come from a different time. The Southwest Conference ruled supreme in my youth. Kern Tips’ radio broadcasts, the Cotton Bowl on January 1, colorful pennants representing Texas, Rice, SMU, Baylor, Texas Tech, Texas A&M...
A spinal fusion (ouch!) performed by Dr. T. Wiley Hodges at Presbyterian Hospital on June 5, 1970 effectively removed me from the Bryan Adams basketball team. There was just one in those days, limited to boys. Girls never played basketball—right?...
The Tokyo Olympics of 2021 are about to begin, and that is reason enough to hark back some 85 years. I refer to the so-called Nazi Games of 1936, held at Berlin’s new 110,000-seat Olympic Stadium. Swastikas were flying everywhere, as were chants...
Ah, the 1972 University of Texas football season! I was a sophomore, attending every game at Memorial Stadium and in October at the Cotton Bowl; OU spanked us there rather badly, 27-0. Since our quarterback, Alan Lowry, was a converted DB it...
I have been to Hahoe Folk Village near Andong, the Minsok Folk Village in Yongin, the Jeonju Hanok Village and maybe a couple of others in my travels around Korea over the last 13 years. All of them have their charms. But when my friend Teresa...
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