My last posting on Abraham Lincoln is the jumping-off point for today’s missive. Last time, I pointed out that Abe’s is one of four gigantic sculptures of the heads of former U.S. presidents that were blasted out of a granite hillside on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Someone here in the […]
Abe
Posted February 12th, 2009 at 6:37 pm (UTC-4)
When I was knee high to a bobcat, as my mother liked to say, the birthday of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, was a huge day in school. We reviewed and recited the many accomplishments of “Honest Abe,” the “Rail-Splitter.” This classic photographic portrait of Abraham Lincoln was created by Alexander Gardner, a Mathew Brady […]
Pretty as a Picture . . . Postcard
Posted January 16th, 2009 at 9:45 pm (UTC-4)
I love to travel across America . . . by postcard! When I cannot actually get somewhere – or even if I do – I look for a beautiful picture postcard of the place. Not one of those overly bright and blue-sky-perfect cards made from cheap color slides, either. Even you and I can take […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
