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 […]
All posts by Ted Landphair
Head Scratchers
Posted January 26th, 2011 at 7:37 pm (UTC-4)
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)
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 […]
Tags: Civil War, George McClellan, Leadership, Ulysses S. Grant Posted in American History, Business, Industry and Economics
The Two Faces of Bawlmer
Posted January 21st, 2011 at 1:38 pm (UTC-4)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 […]
Tags: animals, buckeye, gopher, jayhawk, State nicknames Posted in American History, American States and Territories
Mum(mer)’s the Word
Posted January 7th, 2011 at 12:18 pm (UTC-4)
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, […]
Tags: Mummers, New Year's Day, Philadelphia, Race relations Posted in American Cities and Towns, Life, Lifestyles and Trends
