July is always a great month, not just because it's the month of my birth, but also because it's the time when Island Fever sweeps the country and happy people everywhere head to that friendly place North of the Tension…
As I've mentioned before, Santo Stefano di Camastra is a relatively small town. And yet, it is one of three Sicilian towns celebrated for their ceramics, the other two being Caltagirone and Sciacca. According to an article in Italy Magazine,…
We ate a quiet breakfast, packed our bags, and prepared to leave Palermo and the rest of the Road Scholar Treasures of Sicily participants. When we had first met two weeks before, the Group Leader, Enrico Nucci, asked each of…
We packed our bags. It was time to move on from Siracusa. On our way to the bus we passed a portrait on a fence near the hotel. I had not seen this style of portrait before. The entire image…
There's more to Memphis than Graceland, and much of it has to do with music! Beale Street Memphis hugs the east bank of the Mississippi River in the southwest corner of Tennessee. If you're a Bob Dylan fan, you probably…
I just watched the movie "Elvis." It's a biopic, not a documentary, so I suspect some of the truth was stretched a bit, but I enjoyed it. Although I remember listening to a lot of Elvis' music, I was part…
State Street starts on the west corner of the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin. It runs west for six blocks where it abuts the bottom of Bascom Hill, the tree-covered glacial drumlin that is sometimes considered "the heart" of the…
A wind blew in from the southeast Friday bringing ice to Madison! The creative folks from Art Below Zero -- which, by the way, is located in Franksville, Wisconsin -- were at Hilldale Mall installing an Ice Bar at Cafe…
The winter solstice, that magical shortest day of the year when the sun resets its clock and starts to bring us longer and warmer days. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, that comes on the 21st of…