During a hot summer day in 1975 in Nacogdoches, Texas, I was talking with a neighbor named Jim. He was a woebegone individual who drank too much. His story was a strange mixture of complaint and braggadocio. I listened until I could stand no...
One night in the summer of 1993, I flew—not literally—from Cairo, Egypt to Manama, Bahrain. It was the worst flight of my life. There was no danger per se, but it was very uncomfortable in that cramped airplane with air so...
Exactly a century ago, in 1913, American librarians began calling the New York Times “the newspaper of record.” They perceived that its circulation, editorial and news-gathering capabilities were unmatched, at least in the USA...
In the summer of 2000, I climbed into my rusty but trusty Mazda and drove to Houston to take in a baseball game. The Astros had just opened a new stadium, and I wanted to check it out. I vaguely recall that the opponent was the San Francisco...
This was my fourth visit to Cheongju, starting in June. The people at the Early Printing Museum there know me and my goal, my quest, my mission, which is quite simply to persuade the National Library of France to return Jikji to Korea as soon...
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797 Exactly 170 years after Coleridge wrote his famous poem about the mighty Khan, my grandfather “Papaw,” my uncle Gary, my aunt Dot...
I was a freshman at the University of Texas in the fall of 1971. Had I gotten to Austin four years earlier, I would have had the chance to see the most spectacular player in the history of college basketball—Pete Maravich. On December 4...
I recently went to Amazon.com in hopes of finding a biography of Muhammad Ali and came away disappointed. Oh, there was no shortage of books about the former heavyweight boxing champion. But I could not find a single one I would want to read...
In more than six decades of life, whatever wisdom has accrued to me has been in bits and pieces. Slowly, tentatively, with more than a few stops and starts, I have learned things of value. As the old saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds an...
Five years ago, I was doing my best to inspire reluctant Daegu kids to read, speak and write in English. In a few cases, I may have been successful. It was a two-way street, as I learned things from them. I had not been in the classroom long...
Some of my colleagues at the law firm are rather picky about where they are willing to eat. I go to lunch with one of them—let’s call her Ms. Lee—every couple of weeks. When I make suggestions, she votes them down quickly...
“The Shot Heard ’Round the World” and “The Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff.” Those are the two most famous names given to the game-winning home run Bobby Thomson hit off Ralph Branca on October 3, 1951. Thomson...
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