All posts by Ted Landphair

First Beach

Posted January 28th, 2011 at 3:13 pm (UTC-4)
4 comments

America has a First Family, a First Lady, a First State, the First Man on the Moon . . . and a First Beach. Or more precisely, its first beach resort, which is still going strong. I should pause before identifying it to tell you why in the world I’m talking about beaches when it’s […]

Head Scratchers

Posted January 26th, 2011 at 7:37 pm (UTC-4)
Leave a comment

Normally I’m an organized Virgo of the sort who might alphabetize the soup cans in his pantry. So when I travel across country or just around town on the subway, you’d think I’d keep a neat notebook at hand, ready to jot down odd thoughts as they come to me. I have no such notebook, […]

Lessons from Long Ago

Posted January 24th, 2011 at 4:10 pm (UTC-4)
Leave a comment

If you’re into the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, this is your year in heaven. It’s the 150th anniversary of the beginning of that brother-against-brother conflict in which more than 600,000 Americans died, many quite miserably in hand-to-hand battle. For the sesquicentennial year, a number of Civil War scholars are trotting out new books […]

The Two Faces of Bawlmer

Posted January 21st, 2011 at 1:38 pm (UTC-4)
Leave a comment

  I get several chances each year to drive to, through, and around Baltimore, Maryland, usually without spending more time there than it takes to watch an Orioles’ baseball game.  But it’s always high on Carol’s and my “bucket list” for exploring, just for the atmosphere.  Not its modern side that I’ll describe, but its […]

Telequirking

Posted January 19th, 2011 at 3:36 pm (UTC-4)
Leave a comment

Tuesday morning, I skated to work. Not on blades, and not along some designated trail. I slip-slided in, to borrow a phrase from the Paul Simon song, after freezing rain turned Washington, D.C., into a hockey rink. “Miracle on Ice” would describe my commute, if that title hadn’t already been taken. I didn’t skate the […]

Tinnissee, Y’all

Posted January 17th, 2011 at 5:01 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

I haven’t written much about my father. That’s because I didn’t know him very well. He split when I was four. That’s a whole story for another time. But I spent a little time with him late in his life, after he had remarried, to a lovely retired schoolteacher whom Carol and I liked very […]

Memories in Stone

Posted January 14th, 2011 at 12:13 pm (UTC-4)
2 comments

Whenever I get the chance — and it isn’t often enough — I’ll take my lunch hour across the street from our VOA offices, briskly walking as much of the Washington National Mall as time and weather will allow. So briskly, and so preoccupied by matters at work or the sports conversations streaming into the […]

Aardvarks on the March!

Posted January 12th, 2011 at 2:42 pm (UTC-4)
Leave a comment

I’m on a bit of a nickname kick, as you know if you read my last posting about nicknames given to the 50 U.S. states. Some things actually cry out for catchy names. You couldn’t very well talk about a college sports team as “that Harvard squad” or “the Texas A&M team” or “those Clemson […]

The Funky Fifty

Posted January 10th, 2011 at 4:45 pm (UTC-4)
Leave a comment

I’m a Buckeye. Carol is a Gopher. A buckeye is a nut, so I guess that fits me, but Carol is assuredly not a buck-toothed rodent. Yet, since I’m from Ohio — the “Buckeye State” — and Carol’s a native of the “Gopher State” — Minnesota — you’d be safe in calling us by our […]

Mum(mer)’s the Word

Posted January 7th, 2011 at 12:18 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

No doubt the star of this posting will be Carol’s photographs, so I urge you to hang in to the end to take them all in. She and I spent New Year’s Day in an unlikely place: Philadelphia. Unlikely, because we had long figured that Philly’s cherished New Year’s Mummers Parade would be an earnest, […]

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

Calendar

December 2024
M T W T F S S
« Nov    
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031