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Throwback Thursday: Staying in New York (January 1985)
I saved this magazine cover from Dec. 1984; it’s displayed on a wall of my condo. Thirty years ago, as I approached my final semester of law school at New York University, I accepted an offer to join...
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Bowing to my middlebrow appetite: Give me a good diner any day
Silver Diner, Reston, Virginia (Photo: DY) When it comes to food, my tastes are distinctly middlebrow. Fancy French meals? Nah. Pricey steakhouses? Ok, but I don’t crave them. A place setting with...
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“Had Anne Frank been able to survive for just a few more weeks…”
Anne Frank House museum, Amsterdam (Photo: DY, 2013) It has been one of history’s heartbreaking “what ifs”: What if Anne Frank had been able to survive the typhus that would claim her for just a few...
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My fascination with Abraham Lincoln
From my modest Lincolnania collection: Reprints of Harper’s Weekly following the assassination and the playbill from the fatal night (Photo; DY) One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Abraham...
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Visits to London
A grainy image alongside my sharp memories: My first ever snapshot of London (January 1981) London has long been one of my favorite places, a huge yet walkable city steeped in history, tradition,...
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Throwback Thursday: Vienna waits for me
Prater Wheel, Vienna (Photo: DY, 1981) On Thursday evening, I’ll be hopping on a plane for Vienna, Austria, for the biennial International Congress of Law and Mental Health, a week-long event that...
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Classic movie report: July 2015
A film clip by the co-founder of the Third Man Museum in Vienna, running on an old-style projector. I declared as one of my New Year’s resolutions that I would watch more classic old movies, so each...
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Throwback Thursday: Old haunts and lasting friendships
I made an extended weekend trip to northwest Indiana for a long overdue visit with friends and family, one filled with both nostalgia for the past and appreciation for enduring friendships renewed....
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A nostalgic traveler’s dilemma: Explore new vistas or retrace old steps?
Vienna, Austria: I love turning a corner and finding an old city street Travelers who suffer from chronic bouts of nostalgia (i.e., me) may face a familiar dilemma: Given a choice, do we explore new...
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A quick visit to Hyde Park, Chicago
Yours truly in Hyde Park (Photo by Sharon Franklin Driscoll, 2012) During my recent visit to Northwest Indiana, I made a quick side trip to the Hyde Park section of Chicago, largely to browse through...
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Too many road warrior gadgets?
….and add my iPhone, which took this photo This week I took a super quick, one night trip to Washington D.C. for an awards banquet, and I found myself chuckling over how much gadgetry I was packing for...
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The day the House Minority Leader took my photo in the Luxembourg Gardens of...
The Hon. Richard Gephardt (Photo: Wikipedia) Back in the summer of 1998, I was attending a continuing legal education seminar in Oxford, England. The two-week program had a built-in extended weekend...
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International travel before globalization
Vienna, Austria (photo: DY, 2015) My visits with long-time friends Sharon and Don Driscoll inevitably include good conversations, and some of them revolve around our shared status as members of...
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New England autumn, that Halloween feeling, and scary stories
Boston Common, October 2015 (Photo: DY) Friday was a raw, wet, overcast October day here in Boston. For me, it meant that fall has truly arrived in New England. As my wholly repetitive earlier posts...
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When the World’s Fair came to Chicago in 1893
Although Christopher Columbus isn’t on my list of favorite historical figures — click here and here for reasons — the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that bore his name was a sight to behold. The “Columbian...
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Diaries & journals as time travel devices
As both a history buff and a wannabe time traveler, I find that historically significant journals and diaries can be a wonderful way of jumping into the past. In the hands of gifted chroniclers, they...
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The hazards of study abroad
Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 1981 (photo: DY) The terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday tragically reminded us that when students go abroad, they are not provided with a protective bubble. Among...
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Nostalgia for a New York experienced and occasionally imagined
Awaiting the okay to board, South Station, Boston (Photo: DY) My annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to New York included a traditional feast with family and friends and a lot of walking around to absorb...
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Big Apple ghosts
Flatiron Building, 23rd Street, Manhattan (photo: DY) Of all the places I have lived for long stretches of time — Northwest Indiana, New York City, and Boston — the Big Apple has made the deepest,...
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Imagining the Ye Olde English coffee houses
In 1750, the first coffee house in England opened in Oxford, and it wouldn’t take long for the concept to take hold across the country. According to Aytoun Ellis’s The Penny Universities: A History of...
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