Author: Ms. R.

When Isha Gutierrez-Sumner cooks, she’s often swept away by memories of her grandmother, who taught her how to prepare cassava—a tuberous root packed with cyanide. She remembers how her grandmother peeled its brown skin and grated the white flesh. Then, the two of them packed the shredded cassava into a long, snake-like woven tube made from palm fronds, called a ruguma, to hang from the roof. As the sun dried the cassava, the compact tube squeezed out toxins. The……

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Kearney, Nebraska, is best known as a stopping point for migrating sandhill cranes. Other than seasonal birdwatchers, the town doesn’t get too many other tourists. But some people make the pilgrimage to Kearney for something else entirely. Past the endless cornfields, a building beckons visitors to stop with a red-and-white sign, offering a free cookbook to all comers. A step inside will whisk you away from the surrounding farmland and into a magical cookbook collection, filled with creative tomes……

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As far as small-town opera houses go, this one has enjoyed a pretty illustrious career. The Woodstock Opera House has appeared much more in national culture and history than its charming setting might suggest. It was the backdrop to the 1890s prison release of a famous labor leader and would-be presidential candidate, several notable actors began their showbiz careers on its stage, and in the 1990s, moviegoers watched as a curmudgeonly protagonist played by Bill Murray jumped from its……

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People always had an obsession with records, taking immense pride in having the biggest, longest, oldest, or smallest version of a thing. Sometimes the records are small, and only count for a neighborhood or city, and sometimes they cover a country or even more. The exact object can seem very arbitrary, like the world’s biggest Dalarna horse, which is located not far from the world’s smallest Dalarna horse. The Västra Skogen area of Stockholm does not pride with Dalarna horses,……

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The tragic death of 19-year-old Mabel Tainter in 1886 led to the construction of this unique and historic Victorian-era theater in the northern woods of Wisconsin. Lumber baron Captain Andrew Tainter, who clear-cut most of northern Wisconsin, and his wife Bertha lost their daughter Mabel when she was just 19 after she suffered a short illness in 1886. As a memorial for his daughter, who loved the arts, the Tainters built a public theater and library out of locally-quarried Dunnville……

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In 1883, an Italian-crewed lugger moved slowly through the shallow, murky waters of the Louisiana bayou. At times the men aboard used poles, or grabbed onto muddy banks with their bare hands, to push the small ship through the swamp amid a cacophony of frogs and insects. A day’s journey east from New Orleans, Lafcadio Hearn, a correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, saw the first steep-roofed houses rising on stilts above the green waters of Lake Borgne. The lugger and……

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Page Ranch was homesteaded by Mormon pioneer Robert Ritchie in 1858, who passed it to his grandson Dan Page in 1890.  Dan and his wife Sophia commissioned the building of the ranch house in 1898 and it was completed in December of 1900.   The brick for the home was manufactured on-site by the builders using clay located on the property. They hand-packed the clay into molds to shape it into bricks, let them dry, then fired them in……

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From a distance, this gas station looks a little like a blue castle tucked between a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s. It is a Kentucky County Music Museum, hidden inside an Exxon/Baskin Robbins located on Highway 23, also known as “County Music Highway.” You might stop for gas on the outskirts of Lousia, Kentucky and not notice the two 10-foot-tall guitars outside, one painted for Townes Van Zandt, another with Hasil Adkins, whose home in Boone County, West Virginia is just over……

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