Author: Ms. R.

I feel like the transitional month of June is everything for African Americans that February is not. June provides warm weather and two more days of quality time. June is National Black Music Month. June is National Soul Food Month. And, after the 2020 awakening of the revolutionary spirit, centered in Black joy, there is the refreshed expanded celebration of Juneteenth. As we recover from the pandemic, the week leading to and the weekend of Juneteenth 2021 is an……

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When she was 13, Fannie Lou Hamer came across a scene of death and destruction. It never left her mind. A stranger had snuck onto her family’s property in Sunflower County, Mississippi, one evening as the Great Depression loomed over America. He poured a gallon of Paris green, an arsenic-laced insecticide, into the feeding troughs of their livestock, poisoning them until their stomachs swelled. Some of the animals were dead by the time Hamer returned home. Others perished soon……

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Located just across the border from Washington, D.C., the town of Bethesda, Maryland is a fairly well-to-do suburb and one of the last places one might expect to find a fantastical novelty house. But that is precisely what sits on Allan Road, just off of Western Avenue. Eye-catching, to say the least, this strange residence was given its curvy configuration in the late 1960s. Architect Roy Mason, known for his futuristic Xanadu Houses, was hired by owners Edward and……

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June 7, 1971, marked the birth of an island icon. One rainy night after their graduation ceremony, two young people went out to fulfill their part in a local tradition known as “Paint Night.” A rock formation at the corner of Madison and Phelps Road had long been subjected to various graffiti, but Bob Green and Linda Barnes decided it looked like a frog and proceeded to paint it that way. The rocks are technically a glacial erratic, a……

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In Brooklyn, a piece of public art covers the walls of a passageway that leads from Marlborough Road to Newkirk Plaza station on the B and Q lines. Until the large mural and mosaic were added in 2012, it was just a dirty and neglected tunnel. The two works of art are united by the theme of flying machines. The mosaic was designed by Juan Carlos Pinto of the Brooklyn Recycle Project, and features materials (broken china pieces, dominoes,……

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Constructed by Harriett Bladen Mitchell Weir and her husband William James Weir in 1825, the Liberia house was a plantation house. Across the property grew various vegetables and grain crops, as well as space for sheep, horses, cattle, and hogs. In the years leading up to the Civil War, it was considered one of the largest plantations in western Prince William County. The property was also home to some 90 enslaved people.  The winds of change blew hard through……

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When driving along Upper Big Chute Road in Ontario, you’ll come across something unusual. At what looks like a railroad crossing, the tracks disappear into the water. The crossing is still in operation, so what’s happening? Originally, there were plans to build a lock to transport boats from the Severn River to Georgian Bay (and vice versa). However, this was during the First World War, so there weren’t enough workers to build a full and proper lock. Instead, a……

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This undulating, ghostly landscape of dead trees rooted in sand dunes might bring to mind the surrealist art of Salvador Dalí or the always striking Namib Desert, but it’s actually a zoomed-in view—just a few yards across—of an Icelandic glacier’s meltwater, illustrating a geological process seldom captured in such mesmerizing, dynamic detail. Glaciers sometimes grow tongues: long, narrow ice streams that extend downhill, usually toward a body of water. These formations can be unstable, and are more prone to……

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The historic symbol of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, is a large kapok tree known as the “Cotton Tree.” According to legend, the tree gained importance in 1792 when a group of formerly enslaved people settled the site of what is now Freetown. After the American Revolution, the British granted freedom to the enslaved people who had fought with the Crown during the war. Some so-called “Black Loyalists” were given land and supplies to resettle in British-controlled Nova Scotia,……

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Rich in local history, the Aldie Mill Historic Park offers patrons a chance to step into the early 1800s and experience a taste of industrial life and culture from days of yore. Constructed between 1807-1809, the Gristmill boasts fully functional tandem metal waterwheels and docents demonstrate how grains were (and still are) ground into meal. In addition to impressive mill demonstrations, visitors can enter the miller’s chamber where former president and local legend James Monroe once marked time while……

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Metropolis is an unusual Nevada ghost town. The town was developed from an early 20th-century attempt to grow wheat in the sagebrush lands near Wells. The town had largely dried up by the mid-1930s due to low agricultural prices and conflicts over water rights. In particular, a lawsuit from downstream water users in the Humboldt River drainage blocked using irrigation water from a local creek. All that remains of the once-bustling town are the ruins of the school and……

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Diana’s Punch Bowl is a spectacular hot pool in a large travertine basin in the middle of Monitor Valley, northern Nye County, Nevada. Many natural wonders such as this would require entrance fees, contain interpretive stations, and would be very crowded; however, this site is open to all, only shut off by a barbed-wire gate. Quoted values of the pool’s temperature range from about 140 to 180 Fahrenheit (60-82 Celsius), cool enough for thermophilic algae. The whole depression is……

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