Woodstock — Forty Years Ago? Wow….

 
My friend Kathy and I took a photography class in a Wichita, Kansas, high school during the summer of 1969.  Mark, one of the other students, told us about an outdoor three-day music concert he was going to in New York state after the end of classes.  He was sketchy on the details, but it sounded like they’d [...]

Old Cowtown Museum Celebrates Independence Day

 A few decades ago, when I was a Girl Scout I spent a week during a couple of summers as a tour guide at a living history museum called Old Cowtown in Wichita, Kansas.  There were only a few buildings in those days, and it was hot and dusty, but I loved it! 
 This past weekend, I returned with my [...]

Old Photographs of the Famous and the Not-So-Famous

In January, Ulysses S. Grant VI discovered a photograph in his great-great-grandfather’s album of President Abraham Lincoln standing next to the White House.  Lincoln is especially “hot” right now, because his birthday was 200 years ago this year.   A collector paid Grant $50,000 for the tiny photograph, which is thought to be the last one taken of Lincoln. (See [...]

Starry, Starry Night

It was almost midnight when we arrived at Macquarie Lighthouse in Sydney for the second time.  In the afternoon, we’d come as tourists to this spot, checked it off our list and hadn’t planned to return.
“We’ve lived here for decades and never seen this lighthouse, and now we’re seeing it twice in one day,” David said.  
Okay, so [...]

Merry Christmas from Nikola Tesla

Forget Albert Einstein. Forget Thomas Edison.  It’s Nikola Tesla you need to thank for many of the revolutionary contributions to physics we use in our daily life.  I’m talking about almost everything you use in your daily life that requires electricity, including the current that runs your television, the lights that brighten your home and even the remote [...]

Zombies or Ghouls?

All Hallow’s Eve.  Lost, we creep along a dark road toward a lighted porch. A chilly wind rushes past, dry leaves dancing in its wake.  We shiver.  Is it the cold?  Or is it fear?  A dog howls. We hear rustling in the brush. 
“Hurry!”  We almost reach the porch.  My foot is on the step.  The porch light begins to flicker.  Behind us, the rustling [...]

Study Shows That Narcissists Often Become Leaders, But Not Always Good Ones

If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the President of the United States, you might be a narcissist, according to a new study (See link below.)  Wall Street traders and CEOs of financial companies might also score high on the narcissist chart.  Congressional leaders, too.  If only a big ego meant competence.  But it doesn’t, [...]

Don’t Fence Me In!

Devon, England, has some of the most ancient and renowned hedgerows in the world. I haven’t been there in person, but Paula of Locks Park Farm in Devon (link below) took her readers on a virtual tour of the hedgerows on her farm.  You could almost hear the song thrush singing in the trees as we “walked” along the [...]

Generation Tattoo

When I was growing up, the only “person” I knew with a tattoo was Popeye the Sailor Man.  Now, I can’t go anywhere without seeing one or more tattoos on one or more people. 
It won’t be long until at least half of the population has a tattoo. The Pew Research Center reports that 36 percent of people age [...]

Sunflower Season

Kansas is the sunflower state, but we had to go to Oklahoma to find these vast sunflower crop fields (pictured above and at the bottom) near Quapaw in mid-September. 
Heading south on Highway 69 in Kansas, we passed mile after mile of green soybean rows and the brown stalks of ready-to-harvest feed corn.   Cattle and horse grazed in lush [...]