Punching at Destiny: The Uneven Path Forward

By Michael VargaU.S. Foreign Service, retired When I was a sophomore in high school, I was cast in a production of the musical play, Guys & Dolls. I was Gambler #3 and I had only one line to deliver. During a game of craps, I was supposed to get into a tussle with...

Improbably Grateful

Autumn 2023 In 1995 the doctors told me I would probably be dead of AIDS by April 1997. I had retired early from the U.S. Foreign Service, and AIDS patients were dying rapidly. There was no effective treatment for AIDS or HIV. It was a grim time, and I had no reason...

One April Day

A Short Story by Michael Varga(Winner of the Sophomore Literary Festival at the University of Notre Dame in 1984; published in Scholastic Magazine in March 1984) One of the great mysteries that mesmerized me as a child was wading through the ocean. Have you done that?...

Resilience

In the summer of 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and lymph nodes. In October I had surgery, removing more than half of my tongue and taking nerves from my arm to reconstruct a new tongue. From November 2020 through January 2021, I endured 33 targeted...

Iranian Seizure of an American Vessel, 1986

In 1986 I was the vice-consul at the American Consulate General in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It was my first assignment in the U.S. Foreign Service. My main responsibilities were providing a variety of citizen services to the American community, which numbered...