Some of our contributors to Story Chip found us through a program we conducted as part of the Osher Foundation's continuing education program, Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes. Bob Grady began adding his stories to our archive as a result of the OLLI program at UCONN in Waterbury. He has been fascinated with flying since he was a boy, but you can read his stories in his own words.
Links to Bob's Story Chip's:
Change
Change. I would not want to be looking for a job in this economy. My daughter, who has just reached the half century mark, has been searching for a teaching position since she came home from Singapore two years ago. She has a Master's in Fine Arts, taught five years at Nanyang University in...
Education and Jobs
EDUCATION AND JOBS How would you like to be graduating from college and looking for a job in today's market? Pretty scary, right? The cost of higher education has skyrocketed and even post high school vocational-school fees are prohibitive and do not guarantee a job. The American Dream was achieved...
1968 and Me
The year 1968 saw many horrendous events take place. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The TV showed the killing of a man by a Vietnamese Officer with a gunshot to the head of a bound prisoner. 70,000 North Vietnamese troops took part in the Tet offensive which took the...
Reflections
There are some questions I would like to pose. They concern situations like the Boston Marathon, Sandy Hook Elementary, Gabby Giffords, the Colorado shooting and the approximately 3300 people who died because of shootings since the massacre of 20 first graders and six school personnel on December...
40s Music
I went to high school from 1946 to 1950 at Sacred Heart, a converted elementary Catholic school located on Wolcott Street in Waterbury, Connecticut. Dances were held on Friday nights in the all purpose room and the music was provided in most cases by a DJ playing the favorite songs of the time. It...
Bull Fight
Bull Fight It was April, 1971, and I was in Madrid, Spain, with a group of teachers visiting on Spring Break. As an English teacher and admirer of Ernest Hemingway, the macho writer, with his descriptions of death in the afternoon at the bullfights, I was eager to partake of one of his favorite...
A Modest Proposal
With apologies to Jonathan Swift, I suggest the following modest proposal. There are many people who are concerned about rights given to them by the Second Amendment which confers the duty to bear arms to every citizen. This necessity, for everyone to bear arms, supposedly protects us from the...
World Changing Events in MY Childhood
I was nine that December day in 1941. I had been playing in the yard at 11 Gates Avenue in Waterbury, and had come inside for some reason-probably to get warm. It was a Sunday, so, many of the aunts and uncles were at our house which seems to have been the Mecca for social events. The quiet was...
Dream Catcher
DREAM-CATCHER “Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings ” -John Magee I now own a Piper Cherokee PA28-150, a four-seat single engine airplane, built in 1967, which I acquired in 1998, after a rather interesting flying incident occurred , the...
The Color Green
THE COLOR GREEN My ancestors are mostly Irish. The color green seems to be associated with Ireland-especially around St. Paddy’s Day when everybody wears green. So why did my aunts hate the color green? They always associated it with bad luck. I made fun of their superstition many times. In fact, I...
Millie
MILLIE I must have been nine or ten at the time of this incident but it has remained a vivid picture in my mind ever since. We were driving to my grandmother's house on Pearl Street in Waterbury, and were on the street between Pearl and Bishop Street when my father pulled over and got out of the car...
Coincidence?
Coincidence? The sixties for me was a time of stabilizing my personal life. In 1960, I was twenty-eight, newly married, a substitute teacher and looking for a permanent job. But some things happened that were newsworthy and I participated in them. I voted for the first Catholic President and waited...
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