This summer I moved. Across country. Not a big deal, people do it all the time. I’m fascinated by the stories of human migration. I’m not talking about diaspora, which usually refers to large involuntary movements, or scattering, of people away from their established or ancestral...
Read MoreI’m always interested in finding out why particular landscapes attract certain groups of people. (FREE LAND!! IT’S FREE!) Ok, seems simple, but there’s more to it than that. The improvements required by the Act within five years were substantial. Who would do that? Ultimately, 60%...
Read MoreI’m having a wonderful experience as Composer-In-Residence at Homestead National Monument outside of Beatrice Nebraska. Actually, the Parks call it Artist-in-Residence, but this way, people don’t ask me if I paint or sculpt. Composer Alex Shapiro says she believes we hear differently when we are...
Read MoreWe tend to look at the past in static terms – year, date, event. Almost like looking at disconnected photographs, we usually don’t see the full image outside of the frame. What were all the little incidences and decisions that led up to this event?...
Read MoreIt’s easy to forget how arduous a 60 mile journey was 150 years ago. We live in a world where information from 60 or even 6,000 miles away can be “oh, so 23 seconds ago!” Similar communication took days or weeks to arrive just a...
Read MoreOne of the traps I fear falling into, writing this blog, is redundancy. The lure of particular landscapes with their migration and settlement histories tend to have parallels, particularly during the middle to late 19th century. Yet, the individual stories and resulting culture of each...
Read MoreOn my journey through the south, I stopped for a few days in Alabama - the epicenter of Civil Rights - in an effort to understand its history, progress and current culture. One thing I’ve learned in doing these blogs is that a person living...
Read MoreAsheville North Carolina lies only 85 miles northeast of the Folk Pottery Museum in Sautee, Georgia, so I detoured for a couple of days to further explore if the landscape, shaped the culture of Southeastern Appalachians similarly or differently than the mountains of West Virginia...
Read More“Georgia” conjures up a diverse array of images: the languid coast, southern charm, the Civil War, a bustling city with a vibrant arts scene, and the Appalachians. Rare are the places whose cultural threads are unbroken and retied by history’s revisionists. Georgia’s culture seems, in...
Read MoreSometimes the landscape doesn’t appear to have shaped its culture in any way whatsoever. Durham North Carolina is known as the anchor of the Research Triangle – an area twice the size of Rhode Island and renowned for innovative excellence in medicine, new technologies, education,...
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