The church looked awfully busy for a Wednesday afternoon. As I walked through the double doors, I immediately noticed there was something a little different about this house of worship. The pews had been replaced by tables and the altar was adorned with giant beer tanks. The stained glass windows and other church decor had been left intact when the building had been...
I hear this phrase a lot: “They don’t like Americans over there”. Usually the person saying it is an American and has never been “there” or anywhere else for that matter. The world is easier to understand if you make assumptions and base opinions on what you thought you saw or read somewhere. Just apply the principles from what you learned in cartoons: The bad...
When you think of Jamaica, you’re likely to conjure up a mental picture of Bob Marley before you think of anything else. There’s no other country in the world where one musician seems to represent the embodiment of an entire culture like Marley is to Jamaica. The dreadlocks, the red/green/yellow color scheme seems sooooo Jamaican. But is it...
First Avenue Night Club in Minneapolis was starting to fill up. I sat on the end of the bar sipping a Purple Rain, a drink made famous by the 1984 Prince movie filmed in this legendary venue. Whether Prince ever drank one himself remains a mystery, but as I sipped my violet colored libation, I had to smile. I was going to visit Paisley Park the next...
The immigration officer asked me where I had flown in from. “Lebanon”, I replied. “It’s pretty dangerous over there”, he remarked. “Actually not” said I, “they were some of the nicest people I ever met”. He muttered something as he put a special mark on my embarkation card: a “random” mark according to...
I must admit, after my travels around the world, Dallas has never been on my “must-see” bucket list. It’s always been a city that I drove through on the way to somewhere else or a measuring stick to compare my hometown of Houston. However, I found myself there this week, and count me impressed. This city of full of fun things to see and do. I...
Huey Lewis once told us the heart of rock and roll is in Cleveland. However, if you want to go to where rock and roll was born, Memphis is it. It’s the city that created Elvis, and without Elvis there would be no rock and roll. Elvis was born in Tupelo,Mississippi and moved to Memphis as a young boy with his family. He was shy, unpopular in school and seemed an...
You might remember a long, long time ago in the olden days (15 years ago) when people took pictures with their cameras, rushed to the nearest one-hour photo and waited patiently to see exactly what surprises lay in store on their camera rolls.No one had ever heard of IPhones, apps, memes, or selfies. If the lighting was bad or the subject on your...
I won’t tell you how she died. Technically she wasn’t REALLY murdered, but the purple slippers and the missing banana made everyone noticeably suspicious. I was sitting at a table at Sleuths Mystery Dinner and we had been given ample time to digest the facts (as well as our prime rib). The show was one of the best murder mystery dinners I’ve...
Machu Picchu. The name conjures up images of impossibly tall mountains, llamas, colorfully dressed natives and amazing ruins. Machu Picchu means “old mountain” in Quechua. “Inaccessible mountain” might be a better name since there’s nothing really easy about getting there. However, with a little patience and determination, anyone can...