My Portfolio

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   L is for Laos Laos is as exotic a country as most people will ever visit.  In the 1960s when the Footloose Forester first visited, the market place reeked of the distinctive smell of marijuana in the...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   T for Thailand Two weeks was the limit for a visa to Thailand, so the Footloose Forester too soon had to leave the vacation atmosphere of Bangkok and seek adventure elsewhere.  Vacation, yes, since eating good food everyday and...

I love animals and I love to travel so when the opportunity to combine these passions presents itself, I rarely pass it up. That is how my husband, Mike, and I found ourselves at the top of a mountain in Mexico surrounded by millions of butterflies in the winter of 2008....

        UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT MEMORANDUM DATE:                                   1 April 92 REPLY TO ATTN OF:             Dick Pellek, REDSO/ESA Natural Resources/Policy Advisor SUBJECT:               ...

After much anticipation and planning we were leaving snowy Ohio to enjoy sunny Spain in January of 2005.  A special part of our good time on this trip was having our older son John to join us.  John, flying up from Nashville, met us in Philadelphia for the big hop over...

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...

For a girl who had never been far from home, flying to Cancun was a big adventure. I was going with my new husband, Greg, on our honeymoon and this man was someone I wanted to travel with. In my previous life(before Greg I had always found excuses about why not...

Over the past couple of years, Diane and her sister had been heavily engaged in caregiving for her parents, but by 2010 both of them had passed on.  My wife, Diane, decided it would be great to have some time with her sister, Colleen, who is the caregiver for her husband,...

I flew to San Antonio, Texas in late January 2012. This is an interesting City for many reasons. Culture, history, and many interest sites that are unique to this town. I was very interested in the Alamo. Davy Crocket was killed defending the Fort at the Alamo. No defenders servived the attack by the...

I had the good fortune to travel through Russia on a riverboat cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1997.  We traveled first on the Moscow River and then the famous Volga!  Many locks enabeled us to make it all the way to the Lake Lagoda.   This lake is famous for...

    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...

Streetcar: I can remember that as a young girl, we had the streetcars that went along in front of our house on Seventh East in Salt Lake City, Utah.   There was one streetcar driver whose name was Bill.  He was a friend of my father, and Daddy made arrangements for him...

I have a locket.  I 've had it since I was a teenager when my mother gave it to me.  At her death, I found a picture of her prior to marriage to my father.  She was wearing the locket.  My father does not know who gave it to her, as he...

I was one of those people that married into a ready made family. My wife had a 2 year son when we met and I fell in love with both. It was several years later that we expanded the family. Thirty years ago tomorrow afternoon, a beautiful gift from God arrived...

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...

  I just want to mention that in my life time I have seen so many things come and go and just wanted to mention a few, S & H Green stamps, metal ice cube trays with a lever to loosen and drop the ice out, Roller skates with metal wheels...

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...

If I could only broadcast one message to the world that has come from my faith, it would be that the gospel of Jesus Christ--His Church and kingdom-- was lost to the world through the dark ages, known as the Apostasy, and that through His grace and tender mercies, it has...

The premier lesson I've learned from my faith is God really does know what is best for us and doesn't give us anything we can't handle. Of course it never feels that way when we are going through difficult experiences. But with time, God's compassion becomes apparent. We just need to keep our...