Ezra's Essays

Month: February 2016

  • THE GREAT NEPAL ROBBERY

    In an earlier episode of this great World Wide Travel Report, it was reliably reported that Cal Tuggle, Howard Pappert and I were headed for the mystic delights of Bahrain. Such as they are. And then on to India, Nepal, Bangkok and Kuwait, such as they are. You may recall the Blah, Blah Blah incident…

  • ON TO MOTHER ENGLAND AND THE U S OF A

    Now that we have finished with the Iron Curtain, there may be some small merit in a review of the trouble of a Libyan tour group in Heathrow and finally, a call to personally minister to the needs of a fine group of Overseas operators and executives in Pittsburgh. We may as well start with…

  • BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

    The world may be broken into three parts, as the French say, but for us in the Overseas business of the Bell System, it had a great many more parts. I found them all fascinating from the Indians, to the Saudi Arabians, to the various tribes in Africa as well as to the more familiar…

  • DECEMBER 8, 1997

    Back in 1943, I was in a terrible slump. A slump is a bad day at bat; it is a bad day on the basketball court when the ball never goes in. It is when your battery doesn’t turn the engine over and when you have a flat tire. I had such a year –…

  • INTRODUCTION

    On November 1997 I wound up being speechless and without the ability to write.  My total speech consisted of the words “thank you” and in writing I could only write a few spelled out numbers like “six” or “seven”. After release from the hospital, I entered the speech therapy program at Kessler Institute headed by…

  • WHY NOT?

    There are some times when the New Jersey winters just won’t let up. There are gray days and there are many sunless days. In the midst of one of those endless periods without seeing the sun, Walt Fennessey walked into my office. Walter had responsibility for business and correspondent relations with several African countries, including…

  • ON WOMEN

    The news from South Dakota this week is that the legislature there has passed a bill, and the governor has signed it, which forbids abortions anywhere in the great state of South Dakota. There are no exceptions for rape or for incest. This is simply a return to the days before Roe v. Wade was…

  • “…AND THEY DID NOT BURY THE DEAD”

    If you will lend me your eyes for a few moments, I will try to give you a nickel’s worth about aphasia and several dollars’ worth about the realities of being a soldier. My thoughts about the realities of being a soldier have been rolling around in my mind and have been keeping me awake…

  • Unpause

    Hello everybody, I’m sorry that the essay hiatus was significantly longer than originally anticipated. I’ll be sorting out a consistent publishing pace in the near future, so stay tuned. Best, Kevin