From our youth we are each raised to value freedom. We sing about it in patriotic songs, practice it in elections of all scales, defend it in the courts, even send soldiers to remote corners of the planet to somehow secure freedom’s future. But what is the true essence of this intangible virtue? We […]
In the Fall of 1980 I fulfilled a personal dream by traveling to rural Honduras. I was in medical school at the time, and went on location for two months of tropical medicine study and service among the indigenous Mosquito people. The site was Ahuas, a town on the northeastern coast of this Central
I am writing at this moment from Shanghai, China, where I’m overlooking the Huangpu River. This waterway is extremely busy, with dozens of barges, freighters, cruise ships, ferries, and junks maneuvering for space in the channel. Complicating matters is the fact that several tributaries feed into the river at this point, with vessels constantly entering
My father, third from the left in the above photo, was a volunteer firefighter when I was a boy. I got excited whenever the siren sounded from the firehouse. Dad would dawn his protective gear and race to meet the fire trucks before they sped to rescue person or property. It never occured to