By Mark Orwoll The summer of 2021 is full of hope and promise. If vaccinations proceed apace, it will be the season to celebrate our first breath of freedom in more than a year. Freedom from our homebound lives. Freedom from kitchen-table schoolrooms. Freedom from cultural incarceration. And, yes, freedom from Zoom. As Americans begin…
By John Gottberg Anderson My first semi-permanent home in Saigon, better known to many by its official name of Ho Chi Minh City, was in a hem (a narrow urban alley) in the heart of the city’s old banking district. It was only four blocks from the Calmette Bridge over the Ben Nghé canal, a…
Fairies are said to calm the horses living at the Irish Stud, so ethereal sprites are welcome though seldom seen using their fairie doors. By Liz Campbell Why do we travel? To stand awestruck at nature’s vibrant sculpting of rock and sand in the Grand Canyon or Rainbow Mountain? Or delight in human landscapes like…
By Nancy Wigston Argentines know it as Salta la Linda “the beautiful one.” Situated 3,400-ft above sea level in the De Lerma Valley of Northern Argentina, the city of Salta (pop 620,000) reigns in splendid isolation. Chile lies to the west, Bolivia to the north, and Paraguay to the east. But between Salta and Paraguay…
By Barbara Beckley “This is the spot! Here on the tarmac where William Shatner, Christopher Lloyd and Katrina Bowden, (a 20-something girl in a swimsuit) were chatting next to a fancy convertible parked between two Vietnam-era fighter jets,” says Ann Greer, an official with the Palm Springs Air Museum located at 745 North Gene Autry…
By Liz Campbell More than Chicken Wings Once one of the country’s most prosperous cities at the end of the 19th century, Buffalo by the mid-20th century mainly was known for obsolescence and frigid winters. But through it all, Buffalo held on to what counted – music, art, vintage architecture and a citizenry that never…
By Rich Grant “Wild Bill” Hickok, of Dakota’s most boisterous boomtown, was such a romantic figure that it is hard to believe he really existed. Of course, through dime novels, movies, HBO, television shows and merchandising for 155 years, his image has become a caricature of the real thing. Look back at what contemporaries wrote…
By Larry Bleiberg Everyone, it seems, has a theory about Peru’s Nazca Lines. The mysterious markings on the desert floor are a massive astronomical calendar. That’s a popular one. Or maybe they point to hidden reserves of water, the source of life in the desert. Then there’s my favorite: a UFO landing site. More than…
By Nancy Wigston Famously long and narrow—2,653-miles long with an average width of only 110 miles–Chile has been jokingly called the barrier that keeps Argentina from the Pacific. The Andes Mountains across Chile’s eastern frontier do a fairly good job of separating the two countries. The first Europeans arrived here in 1520 when Ferdinand Magellan…
