By Teresa Bergen Jason Spoolstra stands with his back to a mural of Jesus welcoming Stanley Rother into heaven. He is introducing a tour group to more than 20 martyrs depicted on the mural. “We’re going to start on the right,” says Spoolstra, the Rother shrine’s director of pilgrimage. “The gentleman closest to Jesus, he’s…
By Toby Saltzman What sounded like a pickup line turned out to be friendly banter from a local who enjoys meeting visitors in his quiet Mississippi River town. Seated on the step of a yellow clapboard house, smile lines wrinkling around blue eyes, he called out, “How y’all doin,’ lovely lady? Are ya off the…
By Nancy Wigston East of the wine-making capital of Bordeaux and north of the Canal de Garonne lies the River Lot, the seventh longest in France. Every day vacationers fresh off the fast train from Paris hop aboard boats on the Lot bound for a romantically medieval landscape that once belonged to English kings. Legendary…
When gold was discovered in a frigid creek running through the Sierra Nevada foothills in January of 1848, a headlong Gold Rush began that soon would change the American West. By the following year, hardscrabble prospectors called “49ers” were discovering gold, silver, copper, lead and other valuable metals in isolated canyons bypassed by earlier pioneers. Today, many 19th-century mining communities are eerie ghost towns whose storied pasts consist of crumbling foundations, swirling dust and dangerous fissures. And yet, over the course of time, as decades become eras before turning into centuries, a few towns have survived the sun, storms and inattention.
Romania conjures mysterious and sinister images of Count Dracula and the Transylvanian forests. The foreboding Bran Castle high in the Carpathian Mountains certainly looks like the location of Irish writer Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s story of vampires rising from their coffins is an invented tale. But in autumn when twilight comes early it’s easy to imagine ghostly spirits of the undead lurking in the shadows.
Yet the Bucharest I saw was a bustling metropolis with museums and traffic jams, wide boulevards and cobblestone streets, good restaurants and late-night clubs. And a handful of lakes and gardens.
By Tom Adkinson As I navigated the International African American Museum’s intellectually challenging artifacts and displays, a scene that lasted only a few moments captivated me. A Black man, perhaps in his 60s, stood at a floor-to-ceiling window and gazed out on Charleston Harbor. He was watching a hulking cargo ship approach, carrying who knows…
Petra’s fascination today lies not in its association with Indiana Jones but with lingering echoes of the Nabatean civilization that softly murmur at the end of the day when shadows envelop the terraced caves wealthy merchants once called home. Read More
New Orleans is not the only French city in America. From the cafes near the French Consulate to the celebration of Bastille Day; from the Museum of the Legion of Honor (a copy of the one in Paris) to the Matisse paintings donated by the Gertrude Stein family to the Museum of Modern Art, San…
By Teresa Bitler A flight of five bourbons sits on the thickly varnished wooden bar inside a Louisville, KY tavern. Nearby, office workers and tourists escaping the heat of the day enjoy the tavern’s justifiably famous fried chicken and pork ribs. The food is tempting, but I’m going with samples of middle-of-the-road Kentucky whiskey simply…
In April 1904, Chinese Prince Pu Lun, the 32-year-old heir apparent to the throne of the Manchu Empire, sailed to the United States, the first member of the Qing Dynasty ever to cross the Pacific. He was a “Kodak fiend” fascinated by everything he saw and Americans readily embraced him. En route to the St. Louis World’s Fair, where he would serve as China’s Imperial Commissioner, he attended a banquet where the host provided a dish he hoped would remind the young prince of home. Pu Lun looked at the platter curiously and asked his host what it was. “Why, that’s chop suey, Prince,” said the American. Eager to discover something new and foreign, Pu Lun smiled at this revelation, nodded his head slowly, and asked, “What is…chop suey?”