A humble building known as the Abbot Pass Hut is one of the Western Hemisphere’s most intriguing structures. It was constructed 98 years ago as a shelter for mountaineers attempting to scale either Mount Victoria or Mount Lefroy, two of the higher peaks in Banff Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. The hut continues to serve as an overnight waystation for hikers… Read more »
Maya Angelou’s life did not have a hopeful beginning. At the age of eight she was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Maya told her brother what had happened. The boyfriend was apprehended. Incredibly, he was jailed for only one day. But four days after his release he was murdered, almost certainly by Maya’s uncles. The trauma of the rape now… Read more »
How much is a trillion? A trillion is the number one followed by 12 zeroes. Mathematically, it represents a million millions or a thousand billions. If you stack a trillion one-dollar bills on top of each other, the stack would be 68,000 miles high – one third of the way to the moon. If you count off a trillion seconds, one at a… Read more »
City Slickers is a film about three Manhattan men, lifelong friends, who are wrestling with the harrowing approach of middle age. Together they head out West in the hope of finding adventure (and maybe even themselves) by participating in a cattle drive. One of the characters, named Phil (played by Daniel Stern, wearing the white hat), has recently seen his… Read more »
When Dick and Judy Hoyt became parents on January 10, 1962, it quickly became evident that something had gone terribly wrong. The umbilical cord was wrapped around their son’s neck. Because of oxygen deprivation to his brain, little Rick had cerebral palsy. He would never be able to walk or talk. Numerous physicians assured the Hoyts that their son was… Read more »
There’s a Hall of Fame for almost everything. Seriously. Almost everything. The Polka Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. In New York City you can visit the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame. The Barbed Wire Museum and Hall of Fame is found in Lacrosse, Kansas, which advertises itself as the Barbed Wire Capital of the World. Want to experience… Read more »
Benjamin Franklin was savagely denounced by a fellow member of the Pennsylvania legislature in the mid-1700’s. His antagonist, who apparently enjoyed talking about him, had never even bothered to talk to him. Franklin promptly initiated a response. He had all kinds of weapons at his disposal. A master of linguistic cleverness, he could have nailed his adversary with a few Twitter-length putdowns. An… Read more »
When teammates touch each other, good things happen. That was the conclusion of a study a few years ago at the University of California, Berkeley. Researchers tried to discern the likelihood of success in the National Basketball Association based on how often fellow players went out of their way to experience mutual physical contact. The research group watched hundreds of early season… Read more »
In 1984, the Hasbro company hit a consumer home run. They introduced a set of action figures called Transformers – vehicles, devices, and animals that could be reshaped into robots and then back again. For Gen X kids, these toys were indisputably “more than meets the eye.” After invading playrooms everywhere, the Transformers went global. They became the stars of their own comic… Read more »
What are the most memorable meals you have ever eaten? I’ll never forget a clambake I enjoyed almost 40 years ago near the coast of Maine. I was one of the adult leaders of a high school mission trip. Local people, grateful for the work we had been doing for the past week, spent half a day preparing veritable mountains… Read more »
