The Good Lord Bird by James McBride My rating: 1 of 5 stars The Good Lord Bird is an example of an overhyped (National Book Award winner), deeply flawed contemporary title, which the PC-mavens must adore for it potential virtue-signaling, as I can’t think of another reason. This wreckage of […]
The third largest national park in the continental U.S., the Everglades get little respect. In the 17 years I have been visiting, most tourists are foreign. True, it is flat. There are bugs. But it is the largest tropical wilderness in the U.S. and endlessly fascinating. There are three land […]
Take III, also from last December’s Art Basel extravaganza in Metro Miami, returns us to Miami Beach, the bacchanal’s birthplace, for Art Aqua, a more intimate and disturbing exhibition.
Take II, also from last December’s Art Basel extravaganza in Metro Miami, takes us down a few more Art Miami corridors and then into the Art Context annex. As always, many attendees put on their own show to compete with the wall flowers.
Art Basel/Miami Beach has expanded over the years, now including dozens of art fairs and events. In December a friend kindly invited me to Art Miami, which occupied the bayfront property where the Miami Herald once stood. As always, fascination with the female form, followed by celebrity glam, reigns. What […]
I visited the Abita Mystery House (or, more accurately, it visited me) in backwater Louisiana a few years back, and it remains the gold standard of roadside attractions. Owner/eccentric John Preble, inspired by Albuquerque’s Tinkertown masterpiece (tucked away in the Sandias), opened up UCM Museum – You See ‘Em or, […]
Last November, the Museum of the Bible opened (the books). In April, I spent a weekend in Washington D.C., the city by chance crawling with 2nd Amendment protesters, including innocent tweens with tees emblazoned with “F— the NRA.” How fortunate to have a much more edifying option! For a nation […]
The Florida Keys – borderlands on many levels – are otherworldly. Most tourists fly by car down the Upper and Lower Keys, Key West or bust, but I prefer poking along, not only for the spectacular views but for a sense of Old Florida, quirky and friendly. I recently took […]
As a lovely welcome-back to Miami Beach, I recently attended a dynamic, even aspirational, rendition of Handel’s Messiah in a Jewish synagogue. That’s right, music whose normal Yuletide purpose is to emphasize that Jesus Christ was the Jewish Messiah, as predicted throughout the Old Testament, which they missed. To add […]
Holy Land USA, easily seen if you lift your eyes off of I-84E in Waterbury, CT, I have wanted to visit for years. It is not easy to access. Built in the early 1950’s by lawyer and evangelist John Greco, the 17-acre Biblical theme park closed several years before Greco’s […]
“Maine, along with Florida, is the most geographically isolated of the lower forty-eight, which may explain its agelessness. Although only the 11th largest, it feels massive by northeastern standards, and wild beyond this New Englander’s imagination, the wildness compounded by a sense of enormity – and isolation.” p.25, Borderlands USA […]
Our borderlands contain many natural ones. Some are wildlife refuges that soften the borders between man and animal. I grew up in one, called the Great Meadows in eastern Massachusetts where my grandfather, Dick Borden, a wildlife filmmaker and conservationist, maintained an entire ecosystem of wildlife, including pet otters, geese, […]
The mystique of trains plays a large role in borderland culture. Here, a museum lovingly rose from Roanoke’s former Norfolk & Western passenger terminal, with an amazing photography collection that captures the dying years of America’s last steam railway. O. Winston Link, a commercial photographer from New York, had a […]
Your fearless fellow borderlander returned to Miami just in time to ride out Hurricane Irma. With 6.5 million under mandatory evacuation, it was safer to stay put than add to the chaos of the roads – where gas shortages were prevalent 4 days prior. Then, a day or two before […]
From the ever-borderland of Miami Beach, here is some water ballet from the Momentum Dance Company, performed at an Art Deco gem, the National Hotel. ★Happy Independence Day!★ ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]
The MFA, Boston’s premier art museum, received a glorious new wing for the Art of the Americas a handful of years ago. What a borderland pleasure it is! The old MFA, like much of Boston, was proper and stodgy. The modern wing, and the newly enclosed courtyard attaching the buildings, […]
La Frontera: The United States Border with Mexico by Alan Weisman My rating: 2 of 5 stars This sprawling journey along the Mexican border is a classic in borderlands literature: it sings the songs of unsung lives while also crossing into identification with our southern neighbors. Identification can help understanding, […]
Where else but in the borderlands of New Orleans can you visit the spiritual borderland of voodoo? Last year I visited the town’s Voodoo Museum, which boasts that it is “the ORIGINAL and ONLY actual VOODOO MUSEUM in New Orleans, and the World.” Beyond the starkness of the claim, much […]
Up from Brownsville, TX, the land border changes to a sea one, arcing across East Texas, through Louisiana all the way to Florida. The luxury of hugging the Gulf and escaping the interstates is pure road bliss. [please hover over images for captions] ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]
After Big Bend, Texas plunges south again, transitioning from the desert southwest of Pecos (where law, west of the Pecos, was the Wild West) to the balmy tropical climes of the Rio Grande corridor, with the border towns of Del Rio, Laredo, Hidalgo, and Progreso. Come see parts of the […]
