Posts By: occh4@comcast.net

It started during the War of 1812. The United States was at war with Great Britian. Major George Armistead, the commander of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, was preparing for an attack by the British. He ordered two flags from Baltimore flag maker Mary Young Pickersgill. He specified that one flag be made, “so large that

He was called “the man who saved the world”, and you probably never heard of him. I hadn’t, until I saw a story about his death on the Evening News. This morning, I read his obituary. Stanislav Petrov is someone everyone should know about because without him, the world would be a very different place.

How much of our lives do we spend on hold? We have the world of information at our fingertips if we want the news, weather, traffic reports, to buy something, pay for a purchase, or see how our friends and family are wasting their time on social media. There is a commercial for e-bay that

It started when we moved into the new house. The previous owner had bird feeders hanging outside the kitchen window. They attracted small colorful birds, and unfortunately, squirrels. I filled the feeder with birdseed, and I’d catch the squirrel hanging upside down on top of the feeder helping himself to a free meal. I changed

Our environment is under attack. We have a president who wants to turn back the clock 50 years and undo decades of work that made the planet cleaner, safer, and healthier.  He doesn’t believe in global warming. He appointed an EPA Secretary who wants to essentially destroy the department. He wants to pull out of

It’s been two and half years since the initial reconnection was made. My brother mentioned that a childhood friend, who lived across the street from us, had asked about me in a Facebook group. When I joined the group, I received a friend request from my cousin Regina, who was also part of the group.

  It started with a unexpected invitation to Ireland, and a seventeen year old letter. My brother-in-law was renting a cottage in Adare, and asked Maureen and I to come and spend a week. We had been to Ireland back in 2000 on a tour. My mother’s cousin Joe and his wife Mary were living

When you travel by ship, you move into a new community. But there are two segments to the population, those on vacation and those who are working. They can take you around the world from the Midwest to Manila. The majority of the crew was from the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Ryan, a bartender from

Alaska is about man and nature living in harmony. In the 1970s, when the country started to understand the importance of protecting and saving the environment, the Alaskan commercial fisherman and the government joined together to save the salmon for themselves and future generations. Our last stop in Ketchikan is “The Salmon Capital of the

The vastness is what you notice first. We started up the Inside Passage from Vancouver, British Columbia at 7pm. The ocean was still. The wind was bracing. The sky was streaked with clouds against that sky blue that only nature can achieve. It’s hard to tell how far away the mountains are in the distance.