My Portfolio

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Legacy Stories Get Remembered Best When They Are Recorded First   When asked by the Co-Founder of LegacyStories.org to compile a list of the legacy stories we had submitted in 2013, some of the regular contributors and visitors to...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Always An Amateur   Life can be so disheartening when you grow up without good looks, athletic ability, high intelligence, or with physical limitations.  Poor posture and annoying mannerisms also add to the handicaps that we may have and...

If I Had 3 Wishes As often as I have heard that expression, starting with my childhood, I have never been able to provide an answer.  The inquiry is simple and innocuous enough, “what would you ask for, if you had three wishes?”  Perhaps it was the recognition that such rhetorical...

On the road …again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Not All Modern Hotels Have Modern Architecture And Amenities   One of the minor issues that travelers encounter when they move from city to city and hotel room to hotel room is that blissful period when they step...

The Longest Day of John Steele (Revised and Edited) Private John M. Steele (1912–1969) was the American paratrooper made famous in the movie, The Longest Day. He literally parachuted onto the roof of a church in Sainte-Mère-Église, the first village in Normandy liberated by the Americans on D-Day, June 6, 1944....

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Escape From Laos   When the communist Pathet Lao took over the country late in 1975, in the same year that the bloody war in Viet Nam had finally ended, the citizens of Laos held their collective breath about...

On the road… again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Gifts of Finest Wine   We couldn’t send them home, so we proceeded to drink them—one bottle at a time.  First was a Haut du Médoc (2009), then a Mouton Cadet (2011), then a Gewurztraminer...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Duty Roster   Family is important in Vietnamese society; and taking care of elders is one of the expectations one has while growing up in the Vietnamese culture. Xuan Thi Nguyen is now the oldest member of her clan...

On the road …again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Five Languages At Lunch   It was a typical family get-together for lunch.  Except this was no typical family and no ordinary lunch.  The sit-down lunch was composed of extended family members from different towns, regions, and countries....

On the road…again…! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     France Revisited   Footloose Forester wrote briefly in his Chronicles of a Footloose Forester about the Comoros Islands, Cambodia and France; but also about how the people and events in those three countries were blended...

  On the road …again!Afghanistan to Zambia  Chronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   It's Saturday, Where Is The Yardstick?   There were seven kids in the Pellek household, so there was plenty of mischief under our roof, and elsewhere.  Five boys and two girls kept our mom awake sometimes,...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Fish Bait or Shark Bait?   The Belgian ex-paratrooper and the Footloose Forester met at Sal Island, Cape Verde under circumstances that are long forgotten.  It didn’t matter; the rough and tumble Belgian was coming to work for a...

On the road …again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Looking Back With Mixed Emotions and Memories   Thanks to the photographic record, recalling a few details of the lavishness of Anh Sao’s house in Viet Nam can be shared with others.  As time passes, it becomes harder...

We All Have Core Beliefs;  These Are Some Of Mine      1.  Despite the darkness of the night, I believe that the sun will shine again.  Despite the depths of our despair and sorrow, that sun will warm our hearts and spirits.  There is nothing I can do to suppress...

On the road… again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   What Goes Around Comes Around   The first time that the Footloose Forester ever set eyes upon a  Zyzyphus  jujuba tree was in a desert region in Sind Province, Pakistan.  Travelers in the desert always welcome the sight...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Colt .44 Bandanna For Suburban Cowboys   Some thoughts for stories come out of dreams, and others come while mowing the lawn. After many years of evidentiary coincidence, it is time to conclude that; for the Footloose Forester, at...

On the road…again!!! Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Nostalgia Is Easier To Do These Days As computer technology advances, month by month, it becomes easier for everyone to capture and then ultimately re-live many things from the past.  Photographs and videos make it...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Global Warming…Or Not?   We hear it all the time…global warming is a hoax. That statement comes from the right wing of the political spectrum.  It would seem that their agenda is to convince us that...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   A Buddhist Burial   Among the keepsakes we can expect to see in future years are digitized photographs and videos of funerals and burial rituals.  In our family, we have a lengthy video of the burial ceremony of my...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Working As A Career Sharing personal stories with family and friends about where we worked is an easy topic to open a conversation. Each of us has a treasure trove of stories locked away in our memory banks. The...