During the summer of 1967, I was making the transition from Jr. High to my freshman year in High School. Little did I know that events taking place across the pond in London during the first six months of that year would have such a profound effect on me. The wheels really started turning […]
Where to begin? On the back cover of his 2015 book Walking the Nile (Grove Press) Levison Wood is described as a “writer, photographer, and explorer. He served in Afghanistan as an officer in the British Army Parachute Regiment.” His resume is expanded some on the back of Walking the Americans (2017, also printed […]
While the live music industry has been in a COVID-19 induced coma, artists have gone to great lengths to fill up their empty calendars. Some have spent the time pumping out socially distanced events on various media platforms while others have hit the studio. Whether these have been low tech phone affairs or higher tech […]
In Part 1, we looked at how Ferdinand Magellan (born Fernao de Magalhaes in Portugal) was able to convince King Charles I of Spain to appoint him the Captain General of an expedition to the Spice Islands. Magellan was convinced one could sail west, find a strait that would deposit his ships at the […]
The date: September 6, 1522. Location: Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain. “As the ship came closer, those who gathered onshore noticed that her tattered sails flailed in the breeze, her rigging had rotted away, the sun had bleached her colors, and storms had gouged her sides. A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the […]
When my wife and I were still in dating mode, we used to commute on alternate weekends (she was working in Marquette and I was in Ontonagon). My habit of borrowing albums to transfer on to cassette tapes provided me with my road music. My vehicle’s radio was strictly AM, so my stash of cassettes […]
In August of 1964, the kids who worked as volunteer crossing guards for the Marquette Area Public Schools were rewarded with a trip to the Upper Peninsula State Fair in Escanaba. We were told to wear our iconic Safety Patrol belts to gain free entry to the fair, but it seemed unnecessary as we […]
A while back, we covered how the ups and downs of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (FTV: 1974 – 12-25-19) led to the normalization of huge venue concerts. These mega-events were quite common up until the COVID-19 pandemic pulled the rug out from under the music industry. At that time, I promised to take […]
On October 19, 2018, my wife and I were on the way to Houghton in the late afternoon when we happened to notice one of the cars from the Lake Superior Performance Rally (LSPR) traveling in the other direction. They were headed toward the Friday evening starting point of their weekend rally. Just for […]
After reading Cormac O’Brien’s book, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents – What your teachers never told you about the men of the White House (Quirk Books – 2009), I thought it might be interesting to examine some of the ‘one and done’ U.S. Presidents. We ended Part 1 with the death of #11 (James […]