by admin | May 19, 2007 |
These words uttered by General Douglas McArthur as he left Corregidor for Australia in 1941 shaped his place in history as well as the strategy of the Pacific Command and his own behavior for the next three years. It also pretty much sums up what most Americans know about the Republic of the Philippines today. I first visited Manila almost exactly twenty years ago as I was surveying possible new locations to plant the my company’s flag in Asia. My mind was pretty much made up as I left the doors of the worst airport I’d seen in Asia and entered what Dante might have called the gates of hell. It surely had the same climatic conditions, and the sights,...
by admin | Apr 15, 2007 |
S. decided without much discussion that another morning of birding was out of the question for her. The downtown shops were a powerful morning attraction, and knowing that we had the afternoon booked for birding at the Fennessey Ranch was the clincher. S. dropped me at the docks to join Capt. T and his boat the Skimmer about daybreak. I was lugging all my gear, and he and his first mate were prepping the boat. In a quiet moment before the rest of the group arrived, I chatted with him, asking how long he’d been doing this, and he quickly surmised that I really meant why are you doing this? He presented himself as an outgoing, well educated, aggressive...
by admin | Mar 28, 2007 |
In a previous posting (In the Springtime an Old Man’s Fancy Turns To…10 Mar 2007) I wrote a paean to the virtues of Spring. The birds chirping and cavorting, flowers blossoming, trees abudding and that sort of thing. But like every thing good, beautiful, and pure in life there is a dark side that we don’t like to recognize, or if we do, we wrap our thoughts in words like “on the other hands” and “howevers”. There can be no denying that Spring has it’s own special baggage that we ordinarily do not discuss in polite company. For example, June Bugs. There I’ve said it. My most recent encounter with these most distasteful of critters was yesterday...
