america

When the great B&W nature photographer Ansel Adams first gazed upon Yosemite, he must have stared dumbfounded at the splendor and thought, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat--er, I mean...view camera.” — a line that would later be co-opted by Roy Scheider in the movie “Jaws.”

Having read that a famous architect had designed an interesting bridge in Reading, I suggested to my wife that we drive there for our 15th wedding anniversary. Now, my wife generally loves to travel, but the thought of spending five hours traversing the “picturesque” scenery along I-505 to visit some bridge struck her as the romantic equivalent of gift-wrapping a vacuum cleaner. Luckily, her expectations of me are even more modest, so she took what she could get. | Read more »

When we first made plans to go to Hawai‘i, we didn't know much about the place, like the fact that you put an upside-down apostrophe between the last two ‘i’s. But we’d been to Honolulu before and thought we’d gotten the gist of the 50th state: Hot sun, lots of flora and fauna, with sprawling beaches, bars and barcaloungers. So it came as quite a shock to us when our plane touched down in the Proterozoic Era. | Read more »

If you only ever visited Austin and San Antonio, you could be excused for thinking Texas was a pretty good place to live. The people seem nice, and the cost of living is relatively cheap. Even better, you don’t see hordes of cowboy hats everywhere like you do in Dallas or Houston. In fact, you could probably get by your entire life there just fine without ever buying a pair of cowboy boots (assuming the 24/7 Country Musak® doesn't drive you effing insane first). | Read more »

Having been to New Orleans a few times, I'd still never fully explored this cultural anomaly; this veritable European city within America's American borders. Lacking only a fleet of washing machine-sized automobiles and a staunch refusal to use deodorant, New Orleans could pass one of the Old Country's crown jewels such as Roma or Paris. Its ample European influences—French-inspired architecture, for example—give the city a character that's unique, sophisticated and almost universally ignored by drunk American tourists. | Read more »

Planning a vacation in a foreign land can really be a pain, what with finding lost passports, figuring out currency exchange rates, and overcoming language problems (ours). Frankly, it sometimes makes sense to not even bother. That's how we ended up spending a week in the not-so-exotic—but still technically foreign—Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. | Read more »

Okay, we got back from Jamaica and things went along as usual. Then, around March '97, I get a call from my friend Jeff. It is "the call". For some reason, he wants to give me a job at OWN&P. I disregard this obvious lapse of judgment and accept.