Monthly Archives: June 2020

Like few others, Juan Manuel Ballestero understands the long trek home. With all flights cancelled to return home in mid-March to Argentina for his father’s 90th birthday, he sailed 85 days across the Atlantic. He loaded his 29-foot sailboat with … Continue reading →

“I think it’s because I love them so much that God let me see all these different colors,” Rosa Lee Tompkins once said of her quilting patchworks. “I hope they spread a lot of love.” Tompkins’s quilts, observes New York … Continue reading →

Excerpt from Colleen Dulle’s review of “Chromatica” in America Magazine: Growing up in an Italian-American Catholic family, Gaga was formed with these ideas, and they continue to appear in her art and her public persona in ways both reverent and … Continue reading →

One of my favorite questions and answers in the article, “Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind” — an interview between historian Douglas Brinkley and Bob Dylan in the New York Times.  Why didn’t more people pay attention to … Continue reading →

Forty years ago, the Blues Brothers movie launched a whole slew of fabulous performers into my life’s soundtrack: Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, Elmore James, and the unmistakable growl of John Lee Hooker. Grateful for soul & … Continue reading →

By Steve Beard Frederick Douglass grew up under the perverse shackles of slavery on a plantation in Maryland more than 200 years ago. He never knew the identity of his father, barely saw his mother, and witnessed unspeakable violence and … Continue reading →

By DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post Juneteenth … is one of the oldest celebrations commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. It has its roots in the long-awaited moment of emancipation in Texas, where more than 250,000 enslaved black people … Continue reading →

“I would like for those officers to be charged with murder because that’s exactly what they did,” Bridgett Floyd, the sister of the victim,  said on the Today Show. “They murdered my brother. He was crying for help. I don’t … Continue reading →