My Portfolio

On the road…again! Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Growing Bamboo Almost every time that he passed the dwarf bamboo thicket planted alongside his house in Pennsylvania, the Footloose Forester was reminded that bamboo was part of his family life. At one time or another, he fished...

    On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Belly Laughs, Here and There Tis not certain that this chronicle will result in a contented memory, the kind that the Footloose Forester hopes to add to his collected assemblage of stories.  Nonetheless, the process of recalling...

  On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Learning The Local Geology Around Netcong, New Jersey OK, maybe he always was a slow learner.  For sure he would never deny that he was slow to put things together.  So it took 50 years to come to...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek The Katzenjammer Twins Lived in Venezuela   Twenty-six years would pass before the Footloose Forester learned about what developed in the Rio Caparo and Rio Camburito watersheds of Venezuela, where he was part of an environmental assessment team. Our team...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Backpackers   Part I As the two-year Peace Corps assignment in Pakistan was coming to an end, the Peace Corps Representative in Lahore began setting up the details for a return flight to the USA for a restless Footloose...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek Remembering our Patriots   Memorial Day weekend, 2011 and time to carry on a recent custom of thanking veterans who served the United States, especially those who fought in bloody combat. All one has to do is to go...

On the road… again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Things Ain’t Always What You Think   What would you think if you walked into a well equipped chemical laboratory during the middle of a work day and didn’t see white smocked chemists and technicians as they went...

On the road….again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek São Jorge dos Orgãos, Cape Verde People, places, and events are sloshing around in his memory in such an unconsolidated way that it would be fair to describe the state of affairs as a mental soup, with individual places, people,...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek Nightmares and Daydreams of Indonesia   Of all the many memories of foreign lands that are among the very deepest in the conscious and sub-conscious thoughts of the Footloose Forester, more of them are about Indonesia than elsewhere. Sleeping in...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek Zaire The Footloose Forester had many a stopover in transit countries that hardly count as experiences that deserve to be included in memoirs. A few stopovers, however, are linked to other events that are burned into the memory...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek J for Jordan Being in Jordan during the mid-1960s was a bit of good news-bad news for a Footloose Forester hoping to take a dip in the Dead Sea and spending a day in the western part of Jerusalem. Merely...

On the road… again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Mist in the Volcanoes Anyone wanting to adventure and drink in the wonders of nature at the same time might consider visiting a few volcanoes. The fearsome earthquakes and tsunamis of the last two decades are reminders of...

On the road… again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek On Moseying It all started one morning when I was suspected of moseying on the job. I had never thought of myself as a moseyier, so it got me to thinking about moseying, in general. Is moseying a good...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek Deadline On Guam Of the many lucky breaks that made life a lot simpler and saved a ton of money at the same time, going to Guam was one of them. It really was planning, and not luck that...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Virtual Flight Around A Volcano   Foresters rely on more than their feet. A few foresters have more experience in helicopters than most professionals outside of the military services. This Footloose Forester certainly does. One memorable episode occurred...

On the road… again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek Haiti in Tears The Footloose Forester knows there are plenty of times when emotions seeped out from his subconscious to the daylight of his true nature. Sometimes in the past, he challenged danger to prove to himself that he...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek Birthday Challenge   When he was a teenager, the future Footloose Forester saw a small graph in a local newspaper that showed how physical capability peaked in adolescence, then continued on a plateau until age 55, then began a straight-line...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Blue Rose of Kenya Young Lucy Pellek was given the privilege of naming our pets. She grew up chasing Dolie around our house in Cape Verde, so was comfortable with the idea of having a dog as a playmate...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   The Tiger and The Bear   Lots of couples have nicknames for one another, and Footloose Forester and his soul mate were among that group. Thu’s mother was known by some people as Tiger Dao, and with the...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Faithful Four-Footed Friends in Saigon   Humans tend to crowd out unpleasant thoughts and retain the memories of the happy times in their lives. Living in a war zone in Viet Nam for almost three years had its...