Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
My Olympic Moment — Finish of the Women’s Marathon
Almost immediately, a truck appeared to begin collecting barricades. Traffic was flowing freely again within five minutes. Workmen appeared to reset gates and take down decorations. They would be needed again next Sunday for the Men’s Marathon. The marshals gathered for a round of self-congratulations and to wait for transportation back to the RAND Corporation.
My Olympic Moment — The Start of the Women’s Marathon
I didn’t sleep well last night. Maybe it was because I was getting up at 4 am, or because I was in a strange bed (I was at my friend Ken’s house to save travel time), or because I was going to help with the first women’s marathon in Olympic history. We were up and
My Olympic Moment — The Orientation Meeting, Part 2
When we reconvened one of the topics was — security. There were no, repeat no, anticipated security problems. None. The possibility was very remote. However, even though there will be security people, and one of the three radio nets will be reserved for security, they wanted race marshals who will be alert, intelligent, and capable
My Olympic Moment — The Orientation Meeting, Part I
The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC) was nothing if not prompt. The meeting began precisely at 7:00 with a slap of a palm to the podium. The first of six speakers welcomed us. I quickly lost track of who was what. It takes a big bureaucracy to put on an Olympics. First, we were
My Olympic Moment — Signing Up
I was living in Anaheim, CA in 1984 when the Summer Olympics came to Los Angeles. I wrote up my experiences at the time and they have never been published. With the Summer Olympics about to start again in Rio, I’ve dug out the old files and decided to start posting them here. (Please be
Alternate History Revisited — America’s Dunkirk
In December 2015, I wrote about some examples of one of my favorite subjects — alternate history. I thought of this again while following our contentious election campaign. We may take our democracy for granted, but it was actually hard-won, and could easily have been lost many times. In the book What If?, historian Thomas
The City Where College is Free
It’s called “The Promise”. Any high school graduate in Kalamazoo, Michigan gets to go to college for free. The website Kalamazoo Promise lays it out clearly — 1. The Kalamazoo Promise is for ALL students of the Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS). 2. You must reside within the boundaries of KPS. 3. You must have at
Have You Ever Heard of the Five-Hour Rule?
When I opened my email today and saw this, I thought it might be a come-on for a self-improvement course. But the source is “The Brief” daily news summary from Time magazine for July 29, 2016 and it sounds worth repeating. The Five-Hour Rule is credited to Benjamin Franklin’s practice of investing about an hour
Where History Comes From, Part 2385
How much of history can you trust? As a history nerd, I’ve thought about this often (at least 2384 previous times). I usually end up pondering some of my favorite quotes — “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it” — Sir Winston Churchill “History is the version of past events
How Trees Talk to Each Other
There are many things in this world I don’t understand. How women can walk in high-heeled shoes, for example. Now I can add tree communication to the list. Recently I ran across a TED Talk by a forest ecologist named Suzanne Simard. She has been researching Canadian forests for thirty years, and she’s concluded that