As a historian I recognize that every generation thinks that the next is going to hell in a hand-basket.   I personally was raised with c...

I received a thank you note in the mail the other day.  You could have knocked me over with a feather!   I don’t even remember the last t...

Traveling with a purpose is the latest buzz-phrase in the travel business,  and I always get kind of a kick out of it,  because I can’t i...

Editor’s Note:  At a recent social function,  I found myself talking to a friend whom I see only once or twice a year.   But she is an av...

Everyone living in the 21st century is familiar with this scenario:  you run into a problem with the internet,  a database or other softw...

The phrase “Lest We Forget” came to mind recently.   In America,   and I dare say,   much of the world,   this phrase has come to be dire...

It is interesting how some things that you learned as a child stick with you,   even when the years and decades pile up.   I was thinking...

I don’t know where you live,  but have you ever noticed that there is a world of difference between Spring Fever and actual Spring?   Ess...

My library has a really cool feature.   If you have read more than one Trail Talk,  you may be surprised to learn that I spend very littl...

It is embarrassing to open a sentence with,  “I was taught”.   I like to think of myself as a free-thinker even in my developmental years...

Have you ever wondered just how the man most widely perceived as our best US President,  managed to triumph in a field of four candidates...

Most of us can relate to Tom Hanks’ adolescent wish to be Big in the delightful movie comedy of that name  (1988).   One of my first memo...

Where do you find the books you read?   No, wait.   Before we get to that,  I want to know if you make a distinction between the books yo...

This isn’t a story about “days dwindling down” that we all know from the familiar “September Song” by the twentieth century composer Kurt...

There is a sign on a shelf of my living room library bluntly stating that “Censorship is Obscene”.   I’m guessing this may require a bit ...

I’ve been contemplating mortality lately – a natural thing, I suppose, as one progresses along the human timeline.   But I have been expe...

One of my earliest memories of my father was his boast that he had gone to graduate school with Martin Luther King, Jr.   In fact, Rev. K...

Thomas Jefferson famously stated, “I cannot live without books”.   In fact, this quote is so well-known that you can find it on tote bags...

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.   I mean, really!   What’s the point?   They would only end up in the proverbial dustbin of history ...