Showing Archived Posts

Noble Barns

Posted July 24th, 2009 at 3:58 pm (UTC-4)
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Everywhere Carol and I go — well, maybe not everywhere — we look for old barns. Georgia farmers haul fertilizer to their barn — by horse wagon, you will note — in 1940 “Old barn” is nearly redundant, unfortunately, since just about every barn is old. As “Market to Market,” the online weekly journal of […]

The New Prometheus

Posted July 17th, 2009 at 4:31 pm (UTC-4)
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Journalists are taught to “peg” our stories to something. We mustn’t just wade into a topic for no reason but should reference a breaking-news development to explain why in the world we’re writing a particular story. It would be perfectly OK to compose a “sidebar” about, say, marshmallows if a marshmallow factory has just exploded. […]

Cause Celebrity

Posted July 10th, 2009 at 1:28 pm (UTC-4)
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What’s the difference between a prehistoric dinosaur and a journalist dinosaur? A prehistoric dinosaur didn’t know it was a dinosaur. The “bullpen” at the New York Times in September 1942, my birth month. For the benefit of our young readers, the instrument in the foreground is a “rotary” telephone, and those things spread across the […]

What’s in a (Nick)Name?

Posted July 2nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm (UTC-4)
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The College of William & Mary, America’s second-oldest college (after Harvard), whose graduates include two U.S. presidents and 16 signers of the Declaration of Independence, is one of several academically superior schools of higher education in Virginia. But William & Mary, chartered in 1693 by Britain’s King William III and Queen Mary II, is also […]

IX at 37

Posted June 26th, 2009 at 1:10 pm (UTC-4)
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“Time will show that this is the most important law in our culture over the last 40 years,” USA Today columnist Christine Brennan wrote recently. The most important? That must be some kind of law! Brennan is a sports columnist specifically, and like it or not — and there are plenty in both camps — […]

Hatred and Tranquility

Posted June 19th, 2009 at 7:39 pm (UTC-4)
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A week or so ago, when I heard that an 88-year-old virulent white supremacist had shot and killed a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a few blocks away, my thoughts drifted to a serene spot — an almost eerily peaceful, contemplative patch of green — 2,200 kilometers (1,340 miles) away in […]

Valley of the Stun

Posted June 12th, 2009 at 2:51 pm (UTC-4)
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Only one lonely, two-lane highway pierces Monument Valley, a vast natural wonder that straddles the Arizona-Utah border in the Desert Southwest. And then one unpaved, rutted, 27-kilometer [17-mile] loop trail winds through it once you get there. Stubs of sandstone jut upward like broken lower teeth on Monument Valley’s desert floor The air is clear […]

The (Condo) Good Life

Posted June 5th, 2009 at 3:53 pm (UTC-4)
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I was going to write about Carol’s and my recent visit to Monument Valley, in sweeping Navajo tribal land on the Arizona-Utah border. But I need to spend a tad more time “studying up” on Navajo history and culture in order to put this awesome terrain in context. Next posting, I’ll show you some of […]

Paradise Redefined

Posted May 29th, 2009 at 5:49 pm (UTC-4)
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Wh`y Hawai`i? The Hawaiian state flag is certainly a curious one for a U.S. state. It’s actually a hybrid of the British Union Jack and the American standard’s stripes, with blue ones thrown in Until relatively recently, most Americans, including me, have identified our 50th and newest state – if you call admission to the […]

Remembering the War to End Wars

Posted May 22nd, 2009 at 3:17 pm (UTC-4)
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In 1917 and 1918, many ordinary Americans and most soldiers heading off to fight on the European Continent in World War I crossed the country by rail. And those who passed through Kansas City – once a brawling cowtown on the wide Missouri River that had grown into a brash city of a quarter-million people […]

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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