Author: Ms. R.

The Mississippi Delta, an alluvial floodplain that covers roughly 7,000 square miles between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, is globally recognized as the birthplace of blues music. But the region is also known for a staple street food that has fueled Delta life and culture for over a century: the hot tamale. This cornmeal-wrapped treat even inspired blues legend Robert Johnson to pen an ode, They’re Red Hot, in tribute. While the hot tamale is still enjoyed by all……

Read More

The first-ever White House picket was led by women, lasted for more than a year, and was met with violence from both counter-protesters and law enforcement. In November 1917, after 10 months of picketing, the government’s crackdown on protestors reached a new intensity. Dozens of protesters were arrested and incarcerated at the infamous Occoquan Workhouse, where they faced brutality. One night, later dubbed the “Night of Terror,” a guard threw a protester on an iron bed, striking her head;……

Read More

So you’re driving the Horrocks Highway on a warm summer day, the Flinders Ranges rising majestically behind you, pastures undulating ahead for as far as the eye can see. Sheep graze, windmills creak, and it’s quiet enough to daydream. Then you see it: a red and white Douglas DC-3 planted in the blue, cloudless sky.  Charlie’s Aeroplane—a pole-mounted model—has been a beloved landmark, and sparked the imaginations of locals and visitors alike, in Murray Town, South Australia, for over……

Read More

In 1948, American visual artist and realist painter, Andrew Wyeth, created the painting “Christina’s World,” which became one of the most well-known works of the mid-20th-Century. The painting depicts a woman in a pale pink dress laying semi-reclined, as if crawling, in a barren field. She appears to be gazing towards a grey clapboard house, its barn, and outbuildings. The house in the painting is the Olson House, and aside from the artist’s rearrangement of some outbuildings, looks the……

Read More

Botanical gardens have allowed scientists to research plants for centuries, making far off and exotic specimens locally accessible. This practice has produced beautiful botanical gardens across the world. However, most of these are focussed on plants and smaller shrubs. What happens when a researcher wants to study trees instead? The Stockholm University arboretum is exactly that, a large collection of trees from across the globe waiting to be studied. The collection consists of well over 1,000 trees. The trees……

Read More

A trio of camera-toting 20-somethings stumble out of a Delaware-plated Honda Civic onto the shoulder of a rural Pennsylvania highway. It’s summer 2020, and amid the pandemic, they’ve road-tripped nearly three hours up circuitous, mountain roads to reach their off-the-grid destination: the notorious, smoldering, coal-country ghost town of Centralia. They’ve come to this remote corner of Columbia County to take in one sight in particular, the vast spray-painted surface a mile of the former Route 61, commonly known as……

Read More