My Portfolio

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Potatoes,  Corn, Wheat, and Rice   You probably know as much about rice as you do about potatoes, corn, or wheat.  Your consumption of french fries, baked potatoes, potato chips, and mashed potatoes probably puts the common...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   On Common Sense   Many people who opine about common sense probably don’t have a clear idea about what it is and what it is not.  If you can’t define it, you should probably stop making reference to...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     A Few Snippets, The Stuff From Whence Legacy Stories Are Born   Ø  That time in Germany when Lt. Nick Tompras fired off 250 rounds with a single pull of the trigger.  It was an M-60 machine...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Life Lessons in the Mahjong Tiles   Who among frequent computer users does not occasionally play a game or take an anonymous on-line quiz?  Call the practice a diversion, a habit, or an addiction…but one thing is clear,...

On the road…again!!! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Follow the Trail of Breadcrumbs   As movie fans and tv viewers know all too well, there are certain lines in the scripts that become classics that develop a life of their own.  We subconsciously get...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     But Don’t Take My Word For It    Trolling the waters of Internet social sites leads to the realization that among the millions of people who choose to respond with comments, there are the cautious ones, the...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Simple Answers: Complex Questions   Did you ever notice that some people in a group get irritated when you give a complex answer to a seemingly simple question? Or, conversely, when you give a simple answer to...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek     Plant Adaptation to Global Warming   The debate about climate change is not going away anytime soon.  For whatever reasons, there are plenty of climate change deniers holding firm in their beliefs.  Some offer mild objections because they can...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     The Short Course Building (The Helyar Experience)     People who visit social media sites are inclined to reminisce about the old days.  They remember growing up in ____ or hanging out with ____­ and the allure...

  Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Aesthetic Trees Legacy trees evolve from singular or group specimens that have had, or will become, historical, cultural, or botanical icons.  The mystique and mystery of remote forests of towering giants, the wildness of tropical jungles, and the...

On the road...again!!! Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Those Fruitful Lunch Hours   Over the years, the Footloose Forester had developed a modus operandi for achieving some of his planned free time activities.  He was not unlike other people who had both...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Resentment-update Why do acts of resentment linger in our memories?  We remember our most shameful acts, we remember our failings, and we remember our most embarrassing moments.  And it is also indisputable that at some level of consciousness, we...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   KMB662…939…4-16   He remembers faces and most names, but not all.  Those mental blocks explain a person’s propensity to block certain unpleasant memories but do not explain the inability to recall happy events from the past. When it...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Smoke Along The Rubicon Trail     From among the few categories that form the framework of the storyteller’s letterhead of the Footloose Forester: Essays, Stories, Adventure, Dreams, this chronicle and a delicious story is based on...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Deforestation, Reforestation, and Afforestation   The continuous evolution of digital technology across written, audio, and pictorial media has resulted in each medium of expression having an ever-improving capability to create and to share our personal expressions of...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Eureka! Koa is a Superstar Getting to travel into rural areas in The Third World gives the traveler a perspective you won’t find in the glossy photos of glamorous magazines. Whereas most people can relate to a stroll...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Memes That Miss The Mark   These days it is ever so common to see memes posted on social media sites, that we are lulled into thinking that we are seeing pearls of wisdom.  In addition, it...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek    The Dirty Rifle   Every company in the training battalion at Fort Ord, California had an ongoing but unspoken competition for best company in each training cycle.  Basic Training in the US Army in those days of the...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek    With Tears in My Eyes Of the many times when melancholia starts to overwhelm his senses, the Footloose Forester is often visited by a couple of stories that can easily bring tears to his eyes.  Although he was...

­­ Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Four Days to Uhuru Peak   In March of 1994, the Footloose Forester joined with nine other adventurers to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.  It was one of those bucket list adventures that got a high priority not...