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.
People like Larraine lived with so many compounded limitations that it was difficult to imagine the amount of good behavior or self-control that would allow them to lift themselves out of poverty. The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out even...
I read this book for debate on the 2015-16 debate topic, and it didn’t disappoint as a resource for some excellent impact cards. This litany of economic and political risks might be enough to cause observers to alter their long-term assumptions about Asia’s prospects. Yet there is a fifth risk to be mapped, the most dangerous of...
The weather was certainly gray and snowy for most of my trip through Cappadocia, but the overcast conditions only served to make the moments of vibrant blue skies even more beautiful. The weather prevented me from experiencing one of the iconic hot air balloon trips, but I had an incredible experience exploring underground cities...
I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates last year shortly after it was released, but had the opportunity to read it again with my AP Language class this year, where it sparked some really interesting conversation and debate. While I highlighted some thought provoking, engaging, enraging, or beautiful passage on almost every...
While this was the year I finally read the Harry Potter series and revisited some old favorites like Jose Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, I also managed to read a collection of surprising and interesting titles that were neither about wizards and witches nor books I had read and loved before. Of the 80 or so...
The rich have always lived differently than the poor. What is new is that globalization speeds up the economy, magnifying the chasm between them. Both at home and abroad, the extremes of wealth and deprivation have become so great that the stability of the global system is threatened. Indeed, the very existence of individual freedom and...
There are a dozen things that could have gone better with this trip: Delta could have cared about me getting on a flight out of Montana in time to see Istanbul, my not unreasonable fears about the dangers in Turkey could have abated, and I could have planned better than to be in Athens for two nights when the archaeological sites and...
My second (and last) day in Cappadocia ended with a visit to a carpet collective, where women are trained to produce Turkish rugs and tourists like me are shown the process before watching a salesman and his staff throw down a couple of dozen rugs to entice us to buy. Once the assembled group realized that I was unlikely to throw down...