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On the road...again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek    This Batter Wears a Sombrero(Debate With Self)   An unrequited debate, nay; an unstated debate that popped up in last night’s dream is all about softball.  More specifically, it is about unlimited-arc, slow-pitch softball.  Not many people relate...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek     Walter Van Tillburg Clark   A quick word search of the name above would turn up references to an author whose most famous novel was The Ox-bow Incident. This impromptu chronicle is not about Clark, the author, but about...

On the road, again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek    Flipping the Bird  It took an Internet newsfeed story to spark this attempt at a chronicle based on a similar gesture, both acted out some decades ago.  The Internet story in early 2025 was short, a text...

On the road...again!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   The Sausage Makers   Of the many reveries about those years in the poor country of Cape Verde, the fragmented tale about the Austrian sausage makers is likely to be full of holes, like a Swiss cheese.  That...

On the road...again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   The Long Arm of the (Slovak) Law   Spoiler Alert:  This chronicle is as much a reflective episode in modern reality than an admission of a miscue that cost the Footloose Forester a bundle of euros.  If records...

On the road…again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   On Empathy   As the Footloose Forester was describing the routing of his bucket-list road trip to Eastern Europe, his small audience of three listened politely. When he mentioned Auschwitz, Poland; and at that very moment, John Jacob who was...

On the road…again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek    Grand Theft Wheelchair   At some time in the near future, the Footloose Forester will have to confess that his legs, his wind, and his muscles are not up to each and every task.  That is why, when...

  On the road…again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek    Clichés, Memes, and Bumper Stickers   Old Ben and the Footloose Forester were pretty close because Ben was a veteran of the World War II air war against Japan and he might have some stories to tell....

On the road…again!!!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   The Two Lakh Homeless of Bombay     A chronicle about a strange city after dark, remembered from the window seat of a public bus at night, and daydreamed after a passage of 55 years…well it may be disbelieved. ...

On the road...again!!! Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester  By Dick Pellek      SERENDIPITY OF THE DAY    Occasional pictures of huge trees with buttresses on Facebook prompted the Footloose Forester to research some selected literature on Costa Rica in an attempt to put a species name on the most...

On the road...again!!! Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester  By Dick Pellek      The Generosity of Poor Farmers    Mental images of generous people often appear in the dreams of the Footloose Forester.  As it happens, they were all poor farmers or shopkeepers who were framed in the sunlight and...

On the road…again!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek     Gaslighting, Sophistry, and Transference   The season of political shenanigans is getting into full swing.  As if we haven’t already become numb with the rhetoric going back and forth, the major political parties are still jockeying for...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek     Bird Watching Fail     A story without a purpose, a story without a photo, a story devoid of observations—is not much of a story at all.  If the readers of these Chronicles of a Footloose Forester were expecting...

On the road…again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek    Photoshopped Deep Fake Photos and Fake News Get Married Not that anyone cares, but certain “news” feeds on the Internet continue to mislead readers with clickbait gambits to lure them into informational stories that have nothing to do...

A Vision From Heaven ***   ­No Body, No Wings   The Vision Couldn’t Be Seen by Eye   But Through My Humbled Mind   A Beautiful Spirit of Color   That Floated Tirelessly, From Here to There   From its Bottom, Stars Sparkled   And Bright Lights Shone Through  ...

On the road…again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Why Are The Birds Sending Me Signs?   They swoop in when they decide to congregate, they pick at their feasts in front of your eyes, and they stay until their leaders tell them to fly away.  All...

On the road…again!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek    On Smiles   If you are curious about where you might look to personally see almost everybody smiling, you might try a Catholic church, just after the priest says, “Let us show one another a sign of our...

On the road...again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek  Placerville, One Stop on the Road of Forest Consultancy   It must have been the spring of 1964 when the Footloose Forester returned to Placerville, California. In a recent dream, he recalled showing up before sunrise at a...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek  Chinese Party Balloon  The humor category of Chronicles of a Footloose Forester is pretty skimpy, not that there is no humor in the world. Lest the world forgets, however; more than a few comedians have enough gravitas to make us laugh at ourselves...

On the road…again!!!Essays, Stories, Adventures, DreamsChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Espionage and Transparency Espionage Espionage, spying or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of ... The on-line dictionary definition of espionage is...