I like to watch the Amazing Race. It’s one of my favorite shows. With each new episode the show’s producers must find interesting and compelling new challenges for the race’s contestants, tests of grit and fortitude that have included everything from diving off a 30-foot platform into frigid water to…
Read moreWhen they came to Wirz with the offer, he refused them. He was not a man to play games. He had already told them he knew nothing that would implicate President Jefferson Davis in the calamity that was Andersonville, but they kept pressing him, thinking he would crack, thinking he…
Read moreHistory cannot be forced on a people. In 1983 the people of Africatown tried to get their neighborhood declared a National Historic Park. It was a non-starter. Not only was their plan opposed by the adjacent International Paper Co. plant, which was reportedly eyeing the land for possible expansion, but…
Read moreFew places in America are as interesting as the Mississippi Delta. Stretching 250 miles from Memphis in the north to Vicksburg in the south, and about 80 miles wide, the Delta is a pancake flat alluvial plain bordered by the Mississippi River on the west and the Mississippi hill country…
Read moreIn the parking lot of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, freelance tour guides wrangle tourists onto the grassy knoll and make wild claims about the Kennedy assassination. “51 people saw two gunmen shoot the president from this spot!” The obvious question: “And none of them…
Read moreSome warning labels are ridiculous. A warning label on a chainsaw says: Do not attempt to stop chain with hands. A warning label on a wheelbarrow says: Not intended for highway use. A warning label on a mattress says: Do not attempt to swallow. The lengths we go to prevent…
Read moreWhen he found the bodies, George Bascom was furious. Didn’t this prove what he had been saying all along, that the Indian chief and his followers were ruthless killers? They had undoubtedly slain the little boy too, which was why they had been refusing to return him. The four bodies…
Read moreAt Windy Point in Palm Springs the wind is said to blow so hard that you are advised to wear goggles and a bandana to keep the grit out of your eyes. I was prepared with these accessories but hardly needed them. The day was sunny and still. The dunes…
Read moreBelieve it or not, the Right and the Left are at it again. Among other things we’re squabbling over that old saw, how and where to spend our tax dollars. We’ve got a problem and it’s called debt, and it just keeps getting bigger every day. The solution is up…
Read moreSteve Jobs was a jerk. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a visionary. In fact, Jobs was almost singlehandedly responsible for making computers well designed and user friendly. If it wasn’t for Jobs, the prickly and aggressive founder of Apple, you would still be looking at a command prompt when…
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