Call me crazy, but I like the feel of a pole bent over the side of a boat as I struggle to take-in line from a wild Pacific Ocean Salmon that keeps pulling away from me, wanting very much to enter some stream, span, and suffer a slow death – as opposed to me detouring […]

What is the most effective way to break the cycle of poverty for kids and motivate them to enter college or trade school to make something of themselves? Answer: Capture their imagination and interest. then direct them down a new life-path.  I am talking about a program with the unlikely name of Santa Barbara School […]

Six-hundred miles due west of Ecuador lie the Galapagos Islands. Born of volcanic fire and lava that broke through faults in the earth’s crust on the ocean floor, the magma rose to form underwater mountains and some of the mountain tips emerged forming islands, which continues to this day. It is estimated that this archipelago […]

The trip was called “Cruise the Face of Europe” and, in fact, it was a 15-day river trip from Amsterdam to Budapest that did just that. Not surprisingly, early outposts, ports, and villages at strategic locations along the Rhine, Main, and Danube rivers provided early opportunities of commerce and control for centuries, from Roman times […]