The City of Las Vegas, individual casinos, and airlines that serve the city want your visit and your money. Repeat visitors with lots of it get exceptional deals and VIP treatment They say that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” True, true, true. Many’s the time I’ve left my money in Las Vegas. […]
Mall of Americans
Posted November 7th, 2008 at 6:02 pm (UTC-4)
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to work in an ordinary office or veterinarian’s clinic or wine shop next door to some historic landmark, say the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What would it be like to walk to work each day past the Taj Mahal, or live in a little cottage half a […]
Texians
Posted October 24th, 2008 at 6:03 pm (UTC-4)
President Bush has frequently vacationed at his Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford. Like former President Ronald Reagan at his Western White House, Bush relaxes by clearing brush. On the January day that he becomes our former president, or soon thereafter, George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, will leave Washington for their ranch near tiny […]
N’Awlins
Posted October 17th, 2008 at 5:47 pm (UTC-4)
It’s been 23 years since I left New Orleans, and still, to quote the Eddie De Lange and Louis Alter song of half a century ago, I know what it means to miss “New Orleens.” Oh yeah, I know. This old postcard view captures the Pontalba Apartments, built by Baroness Michaela Pontalba, who also convinced […]
Old 11
Posted October 10th, 2008 at 3:14 pm (UTC-4)
Eighteen years ago during a short stint in management here at the Voice of America, I sent a superb reporter named Bill Torrey on a journey that I longed to make myself. As it turns out, my photographer-wife Carol M. Highsmith and I would later retrace a good deal of his route, to our deep […]
Featherisms
Posted October 6th, 2008 at 8:49 pm (UTC-4)
The other day I needed an aphorism, a nourishing nugget of wisdom, ideally couched in wry wit. I found some by the usual suspects: In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes, by the brilliant statesman Benjamin Franklin, who slipped apt adages into his yearly Poor Richard’s Almanack. Always […]
Ioway
Posted October 2nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm (UTC-4)
A while ago I walked down the hall and sprung a word-association test on three colleagues, chosen strictly by whom I ran into first. “I’ll name a U.S. state,” I told them, “and you tell me the first word that pops into your head.” The state was Iowa, and here’s what they blurted out: “Fields.” […]
Almost Heaven
Posted September 29th, 2008 at 5:01 pm (UTC-4)
Coonskin caps were warm accessories in the cold southern mountains. The raccoon’s tail, hanging down one’s back, might have been a fashion statement. Back when Hector was a pup, as my mother used to say in one of her imponderable expressions, I went spelunking — cave exploring — for the one and only time, somewhere […]
Where the West Begins
Posted September 25th, 2008 at 4:52 pm (UTC-4)
A family poses before their Custer County, Nebraska, sod house in 1886. A “soddie” was one of the few options on the plains, where trees were scarce. In “The Ballad of East and West,” Rudyard Kipling wrote what may be his most quoted line: “East is East and West is West, and never the twain […]
