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. […]
The Front Room
Posted September 3rd, 2010 at 7:45 am (UTC-4)
In a recent New York Times “Opinionator” blog, Joan DeJean, a University of Pennsylvania professor of romance languages, wrote — not about Portuguese declensions or the Indo-European roots of Romanian — but about living rooms, of all things. What exactly IS an American-style living room? the posting asked. But instead of definitively answering that provocative […]
Cause Celebrity
Posted July 10th, 2009 at 1:28 pm (UTC-4)
What’s the difference between a prehistoric dinosaur and a journalist dinosaur? A prehistoric dinosaur didn’t know it was a dinosaur. The “bullpen” at the New York Times in September 1942, my birth month. For the benefit of our young readers, the instrument in the foreground is a “rotary” telephone, and those things spread across the […]
Sad Times in Slavic Village
Posted April 17th, 2009 at 1:46 pm (UTC-4)
If you’ve been with me from the start of Ted Landphair’s America, you’ll remember that I began with some memories of a pleasant childhood in the first suburb to the west of bustling Cleveland, Ohio. When I was a lad of 8 in 1950, the big city next door was at its apogee – pushing […]
Culturating
Posted April 9th, 2009 at 7:18 pm (UTC-4)
This time out, I want to explore some aspects of American culture. Not the flute-recital kind, though I’ve long thought of culture in that regard. Rather, a glance at several other aspects, some of which aren’t cultured at all. Pop culture’s not quite like this. Although, come to think of it, sometimes people in it […]
Dried-Up Ink
Posted March 19th, 2009 at 6:17 pm (UTC-4)
I’m hoping to hit the road in April and report to you from someplace other than this moldy office. OK, it’s not moldy, and the asbestos was removed years ago. But winter, even Washington’s tame one, has that effect on you. Fortunately the fruit-and-vegetable vendor returned to his spot across the street this morning – […]
