Over 20 years ago, I wrote about this experience relating it to America of that day. It’s time for a new telling. I grew up in the Chicago area. In the mid-fifties I was in the sixth grade. During those years I had a paper route. Talk about anachronisms, newspapers were actually read back then.…

What you are about to read is disjointed. Maybe a better word is ragged. This is because the memories are ragged. They refuse to be condensed and organized into neat, traditional forms. Partly this is because I am writing about two things at once, a very influential documentary about Vietnam by Ken Burns and about…

Anyone with any experience in public speaking should find this little nightmare fascinating. I don’t get terrified easily.  There have been many moments of fear in my life, but sheer, stomach-churning, nausea-creating terror?  Not often.  I want to tell you about a moment of sheer terror that I experienced a number of years ago.  If…