Early winter in America is a time of religious commemorations, including Christian Christmas and Jewish Hanukkah. But there’s one equally thoughtful, though entirely secular, celebration that African Americans observe this time of year, over and above any observance of Christmas, Hanukkah, or the Muslim holiday of Ashura. It’s Kwanzaa, which Americans of African descent mark […]
Bayou Country
Posted November 5th, 2010 at 1:11 pm (UTC-4)
You may have had a chance to visit one of those restaurants or clubs in which the owner proudly displays photos or cartoons on the wall, depicting the famous people who’ve preceded you there. Usually they’re autographed by the celeb, or sometimes just the signatures and a little message are scrawled there. Well, I’ll have […]
On the Road Again
Posted September 24th, 2010 at 6:39 pm (UTC-4)
Perhaps you’ve read Jack Kerouac’s coming-of-age novel On the Road or seen one of the classic movies about road trips across America: “Easy Rider,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Sideways,” or the comedies “National Lampoon’s Family Vacation” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” These stories offer a glimpse of the variety, vastness, and grandeur of the American landscape. […]
What’s in a (Hyphenated) Name?
Posted August 19th, 2010 at 9:34 am (UTC-4)
Who am I? That’s the kind of question one usually asks while in the midst of existential angst. But every year, untroubled American women pose the question as well. Women rather than men, because we men are born Theodore W. Landphair or John H. Jones and remain Landphairs and Joneses the rest of our lives. […]
Beantown
Posted December 29th, 2009 at 8:20 pm (UTC-4)
For some reason, this is the time of year that I think of Boston, the unofficial capital of America’s northeast New England region. That’s odd in a way, since I’ve never spent the holidays there, and now’s when the gray skies and snow and slush set in for the winter. One memory that I have […]
South Dakodak
Posted September 24th, 2009 at 4:41 pm (UTC-4)
If you’re like me, you sometimes look back at an earlier period in your nation’s history and think, “Those were the days!” We romanticize the slower pace and what today seems like their relative innocence — even if reality was something else again. I’ve already told you that I sometimes linger over old photographs — […]
The Plain People
Posted August 13th, 2009 at 7:27 pm (UTC-4)
Carol and I recently visited the land of the Plain People in Holmes County, Ohio, just down the road from the ordinary, middle-sized cities of Akron and Canton. These neatly tied shocks of barley epitomize the look of the countryside in Ohio’s Amish country This is “Amish country,” the largest, if not richest, concentration of […]
