Hundreds of healthy, strong Americans who awaken to a new day do not live to see the next one. In a blur, they’re killed by a gun, a knife, a screeching car or the proverbial bus. They are gone from us, and the lives of their loved ones and friends are changed, usually for the […]
All posts by Ted Landphair
Ever ‘Green’
If you’re like me, you get lots of stories, jokes, anecdotes, offbeat videos and the like in your email inbox. The other day, a genial acquaintance sent me a tale that, others tell me, has made the Internet rounds for years. But it was the first I’d seen it. I’ve fluffed it up a little, […]
Strange Places I’ve Been
As you know if you consult this space regularly, I love geography, travel, and words. Especially when writing about America. A good friend of mine, Walker Merryman, whose personality fits his surname, wrote recently to tell me he, too, has been a lot of places of late. Why, he said, he’d been in Cognito, but […]
No Comment
As those of you who check in regularly know, I was away for a couple of weeks on a trip from which I’ll have a few stories for you in the days ahead. I returned to find 1,800 emails on my office computer. These included faithful reports by my colleagues to their editors that, yes, […]
Wit Watching at Wintzell’s
For 73 years, one of the must-visit locations in the moss-draped city of Mobile, Alabama, has been Wintzell’s Oyster House. And not just for the “oysters fried, stewed, or nude.” Nude, as in raw, served on the half-shell. While some restaurant owners display celebrity photographs and autographs on their walls, Wintzell’s has hundreds of little […]
Freedom, Expressed
Before I begin, a quick note: Carol and I will be off on another of our madcap excursions across the country — or part of it — for two weeks or so. One the places we hope to visit is New Orleans, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I believe it has come […]
Remembering 1942, Sort Of
Last month I got a modest but much-appreciated birthday gift — appreciated because the giver knows I love brief historical adventures. The gift was a booklet, entitled Remember When . . . 1942. That’s my birth year, back in the Pleistocene Epoch. The publisher, Seek Publishing, makes editions for every year from 1920 through 2001. […]
The National Road
Recently I told you about one of our meandering old national highways — U.S. Route 11, which winds from just below Montreal in Canada all the way down to New Orleans, near the Gulf of Mexico. And it got me thinking about THE National Road. The original one. It was our first interstate highway of […]
English Talk — and Other Stuff
Last year, Ozzie Guillen — who’s of Venezuelan extraction and was then the manager of baseball’s Chicago White Sox — ignited a controversy when he asked why many, if not all, Asian ballplayers in America are provided translators, while Spanish-speaking players must fend for themselves as they learn a new culture and language. “Latin players […]
The (Concrete) French Connection
About 20 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 […]