Showing Archived Posts

Cures for What Ails You

Posted February 24th, 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

I’m old enough to remember, not fondly, mustard plasters applied to my chest during my childhood bouts with the “croup,” and Vicks Vapo-Rub spread beneath a warm humidifier to help keep my perpetually clogged sinuses clear.  So I was filled with a kind of warped nostalgia when someone gave me a little booklet at the […]

In ‘Class’ — at Home

Posted February 16th, 2012 at 2:23 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

This week, the Virginia General Assembly agreed to consider and later vote on a bill that would allow some students who had been barred from playing high-school sports to compete on the school teams. These kids are not lawbreakers, academically inferior, or lousy athletes.  In fact, they’re among the best and brightest, and in some […]

Depression Ethic

Posted February 10th, 2012 at 7:28 pm (UTC-4)
5 comments

I’m a Tweener.  Not an 11- or 12-year-old between childhood and teenage years, certainly, but a child of what’s been called “The Smallest Generation,” born during World War II between the Depression-era “Greatest Generation” and the postwar “Baby Boomer” generation. We war-baby Tweeners would have had to be pretty precocious to know about the war […]

The Harlem of the South

Posted February 9th, 2012 at 10:24 am (UTC-4)
1 comment

In the years immediately following the American Civil War of the 1860s, thousands of African Americans, including both former southern slaves and northern soldiers, moved into a lively neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the defeated Confederate States.  The neighborhood became known as Jackson Ward locally, and to blacks across the American East […]

Man Caves and Woman Caves

Posted February 3rd, 2012 at 8:19 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

I sort of hope you’re reading this before the big Super Bowl American football game on Sunday — an undeclared holiday in millions of U.S.  households.  But the points I’ll make hold, even after the game. There’s a sports-talk host whose work I like and follow, both on local radio in Washington and on his […]

Ted Landphair

About

This is a far-ranging exploration of American life by a veteran Voice of America “Americana” reporter and essayist.

Ted writes about the thousands of places he has visited and written about as a broadcaster and book author. Ted Landphair’s America often showcases the work of his wife and traveling companion, renowned American photographer Carol M. Highsmith.

Ted welcomes feedback, questions, and ideas. View Ted’s profile. Watch a video about Ted and Carol by VOA’s Nico Colombant.

Photos by Carol M. Highsmith

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