I have fallen for Mississippi. It is an opera — great drama, tragic sadness, indomitable spirit. Geographically, there are four distinct regions: The Delta, which I had always thought was the area where the Mississippi met the Gulf, but is the region between the Mississippi and the Yazoo; the Northern Hills, a border region with […]
Lorraine Motel – National Civil Rights Museum
Note: If you have not been to or know about the National Civil Rights Museum experience, this is a spoiler alert. Read past the ================ demarcation and you will learn about the reveal for which I was unprepared. The National Civil Rights Museum is the most surprising museum I have experienced. The museum has a […]
Sumner, MS – Emmett Till
I cried at the door step on leaving. Joe Biden established the Emmet Till Memorial sites in 2023. In a store front, among vacant store fronts, at a sleepy intersection, in a past over town, across from the courthouse, with its National Park Service placard and shield, is the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. Unfinished concrete […]
Vicksburg
Gettysburg was disquieting; Vicksburg, peace and reconciliation. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle […]
Clarksdale – The Blues
Photos taken in 1977 in Wise Fools Blues Bar, Chicago – © W. Brett McKenzie I began this trip without a theme other than it was a voyage to my future life. I knew leaving the Northeast would mean traveling well-trodden paths. South and west was new, undiscovered country. That meant west of the Alleghenies […]
Native Americans
I knew sometime on my travels south I would cross wakes with Native American/US history. In New England their memory was all about us in places: Sakonnet Point, Wampanoag Trail, Narragansett Bay, or Aquidneck Island (for a time Rhode Island); in foods: quahog, tautog, or succotash; in culture: powwow, wampum, or sachem. But their presence […]
Gettysburg – A Backwards Glance
Memory and acting on memory can lead to unexpected and surprising discoveries. My previous visit to the battlefield, close to forty years ago, was purely functional. It was a stop on the way to Pittsburgh, a ride we found too far to manage in a single bite from Rhode Island. I had no particular interest […]
Gettysburg – Redux
Gettysburg launches my discovery of America. I had visited before (detailed in another post). The battlefield is hallowed ground, like Pearl Harbor that I visited in February. I mourn my wife’s death so these places hold a special appeal. A moment to pause, to reflect, quiet, private, although often strangers are with me. What is […]
To Roads
I’ve got to show roads some love. Without roads, I could not embark on this adventure. So here’s to the roads—my close, close companions. My voyaging began in New England. I know those roads well, having lived there longer than anywhere else in the world. North and south, they run long; east and west, they’re […]
Wilson – My patient traveling companion
I worry about Wilson. Is he happy? Am I treating him well? Is this a good life for him? He did not ask for this life. This contains a presumption that he has asked for a certain life – a little anthroprocentric. A good friend tells me to stop worrying – “He is more resilient […]
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