Berlin is the city that makes my heart skip a beat. The buildings and streets define and narrate my lifelong obsession with my ancestral home (Germany) and its history like an interactive storybook. First, Berlin was the cultural center of the Weimar Republic era (between WWI and WWII) when the painters, filmmakers, musicians, architects, scientists,…
Tell me if you’ve heard this before: “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. I’ve been around for a long, long year, stole many a man’s soul and faith. And I was round when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain, Made damn sure that Pilate washed…
A kremlin, the fancy Russian word for fortress, is not an entirely rare sight across Russia but only one has the distinction of being THE Kremlin. Moscow and its Kremlin were founded in the 12th century. Prior to the 1900s many people lived inside the Moscow Kremlin walls just as they would in any village. Soviet…
In the Heart of Transylvania is Harghita County, home of the Szekelyfold. The Szekelers are a group of Magyar/Hungarian origins who formed a battalion of frontier guards that defended the land against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages.
Something bit me in Transylvania, and that is no joke. I kept a close eye on the painful new swellings and watched for any strange symptoms but they have healed, and now… I guess I’m fine now. Before I begin, I found a video on Youtube that someone else filmed of Sighisoara that truly shows…
In 1940, when President Theodore Roosevelt spoke and dedicated the monument to the Rockefellers, that 5 million was the equivalent of over 90 million dollars today.
When I was very little, I vaguely but fondly remember going to Cumberland Gap with my mom. We were on our way to visit relatives somewhere and I don’t remember much except the Iron Furnace, wading across the waterfall, and the tiny condensed town. My song for this entry is Thou’s cover of the infamous…
“Hand me my swish” is a real sentence that actually came out of my mouth the other night.
I, just a little tipsy, was referring to the ever-evolving boozy concoction I had been sipping throughout the evening, enjoying that fleeting sense of rebellious freedom one finds in drinking alcohol in a city that permits open containers in public.
Swish.
Hi friends, I am proud to report that I have finally put a little muscle into one of my other blogs after a long period of dormancy. It is published and public, but still in progress. Venerate Your Dead is a death-positive ode to ancestor veneration rituals and spirit festivals around the globe, with a focus…
It is said that the last shot of the Civil War east of the Mississippi River was fired in Waynesville, North Carolina in May of 1865. You can visit the memorial on Sulphur Springs Road.
Lake Junaluska is a census-designated territory, which occurs when a thriving community extends past the legal and/or geographical borders of an incorporated city.
Boojum was a mystical 9 feet tall creature covered in grey hair. Half mountain man and half Sasquatch-like beast, he liked to drink his home brew, hang out in caves with his woman, and roam around collecting sparkly things which he was known to stash all across the Smokies.
