Author - Don Pogreba

Don Pogreba is a current writer and retired teacher of English, Social Studies and Debate, and a loyal, if often sad, fan of the San Diego Padres and Portland Timbers. When he is not traveling, he is working on his classroom web site or dreaming about another adventure.

Baltics and Bono: July 2017 Trip

This is the itinerary for my July 2017 trip which will involve visits to Helsinki, the Baltics, Poland, and Paris, culminating with seeing U2 in concert in Paris.

Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation by Buck Stuart

Yet today, the “acting white” criticism that was once occasionally used by racist whites has been adopted by some black schoolchildren. That is the central mystery that this book addresses: what happened between the nineteenth century and today? The answer, I believe, springs from the complex history of desegregation. Although...

A Bit More Personal Reflection Than Normal

The photo on the right was me six years ago. After years of failing to control my weight and pretending that I was going to do something about it, something clicked and I was able to shed weight rapidly and reasonably healthily. After a six-month diet (that extended to eighteen months) I lost a significant amount of weight, and more...

Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917 by Michael Punke

Mark Twain, who knew William Clark personally, said that “by his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has an offensive smell.” With diabolical brilliance, Fritz married his knowledge of Butte’s geology with a pernicious mining law known as the Apex Rule. According to the Apex Rule, rights to...