Take a Walk with Birkenstock

If you are old enough to remember Ronald Reagan, before he was President and before he was Governor of California, he hosted and served as the spokesman for Death Valley Days. It was an early TV sh...

When you are at the bottom of Death Valley at Badwater Basin you are 282 feet below sea level. This spot has a spring-fed pool with high salinity. When an early survey crew happened upon this spo...

I had long known of Zabriskie Point from Michelangelo Antonioni's tedious 1970 art film of the same name. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of that film was Harrison Ford's tiny, uncredited part...

In Northwest Arkansas, the trees are starting to bud, daffodils are about spent, and the lenten roses are blooming. Spring is in the air. Whether you are marching in a rally or strolling along the...

A wild-goose chase is an often-used idiom. An idiom is a non-literal phrase or expression whose meaning is not discernible from the actual words of the phrase. From the process of usage, the phras...

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that state-mandated racial segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. That decision established the legal doct...

In the mid-twentieth century, J. Paul Getty was long thought to be the worlds' richest private individual. Even adjusted for inflation, his billionaire status - around six billion dollars (34 bill...

One of my favorite walks is along West Cliff Drive toward Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz, California. I must have traipsed out to Lighthouse Point a hundred times. Each time, there is fascination ...

One of Santa Fe's legendary figures is Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, near the Plaza in Santa Fe is one of its most famous landmarks. The structure...