Photo: danmachold

Why would Sir-Mix-A-Lot need to clarify that he's not lying about his affinity for big butts? It's not as if "Baby Got Back" — his 1993 Grammy award-winning anthem for women with curves — is so ambiguous we might not otherwise know he's sincere.

"I like big butts," he states firmly as the song's thesis. We know his point of view practically before the music starts...<< MORE >>

I spent most of my life within a thirty minute drive from one of the continent's oldest known Native American archeological sites, and never saw it until recently. I didn't know it was there. This astounds me because I even attended middle-school camp at the adjacent property named for it. If there was a nature walk over to this treasure, I must have opted for crafts instead.

Eagle Rock in Eatonton, Georgia is an effigy mound estimated to be some 3,000 years old. Believed to be a burial site, It depicts a bird, measuring a third of a football field's length from head to tail and nearly as far from from wingtip to wingtip. That's no craft project. Near the chest, it measures up to eight feet in height...<< MORE >>

Photo: Bala

Tom Kelly was an accordion player and owner of an old west saloon. I suppose it's possible he threw a few punches in his day, but I'd bet he never threw stones.

He shouldn't have anyway - the man lived in a glass house. Built it himself out of bottles. Some 50,000 beer, soda and whiskey empties became its walls. In 1906, this kind of recycling program was simply called resourcefulness....<< MORE >>

Rufus is in the kitchen cooking up some pot stickers. My chop sticks are at the ready, because it smells great.

He's not in there dicing veggies and folding wonton wrappers, because tonight's dinner is courtesy of the freezer section. We don't know if they contain the special ingredient...<< MORE >>

I don't remember most of the Spanish I learned in school, but there is one word I'll never forget. I choose not to repeat it. I learned it from my own studies, not in the classroom. It represents the best lesson I learned in college.

The class was Spanish 2-0-Something. Each of us had to give an oral presentation to our peers. My assignment was: Guatemala.

Okay... Guatemala... Guatemala...

This took place in 1992 BG (before Google). I went to the library and checked out two books. One in English. One in Spanish. They were the first two on my presentation subject I came across... << MORE >>

The weather is warming up here in Vegas, and the birds are starting to sing about it. I spent some time this morning on the patio with my coffee just listening. It made me think of the time the Bluebird of Happiness visited us at Washington's Mount Rainier National Park.

It wasn't really the Bluebird of Happiness, of course — The birdwatchers among you might tell me it wasn't even a bluebird. I don't know what this blue-colored feathered friend is called by ornithologists. All I know is that it chose my car door as a perch.

"Well, zippity do da, Mr. Blue Bird on my car door!"...
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Photo: Nolly

The first day I woke up as a New Orleans resident, I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. Cotton-brained from days on the road, I heard the music before I opened my eyes. A choir was somewhere in the distance. Muffled, as if it were calling to me from the other side of a pine box.

"What have I done?" I thought as what sounded like the undertaker's theme swirled around my head. I lifted one lid, then the other, and blinked at the pastel wall until I figured out where I was...<< MORE >>

Photo: Madeline Fox

Before I moved to New Orleans, I had visited for Mardi Gras once. I thought I knew what it was all about: Expensive beers, raucous crowds and frat boys offering beads for bad behaviors. My college trip to the French Quarter for on Fat Tuesday was all I thought I needed to know. I arrived as a new resident of New Orleans with the idea that I'd checked that square.

I was wrong.

As a tourist, I hadn't experienced Mardi Gras at all. It's not a weekend of hedonism for the sake of all things pleasurable. It's a season between twelfth night and lent where everyone eats and drinks, and drinks and eats, and is generally merry, all in the name of the baby Jesus.... << MORE >>

This Wanderlust Sunday is dedicated to romance — after all, it's Valentine's Day. I mentioned earlier in the week that Rufus and I had gone to the ostrich races on our sweethearts getaway last year, but we've been lucky to see lots of other swoon-worthy places together — here's my list of the eight, for infinity, I consider most romantic.

What about you? Feel free to comment on the romantic places you most love. Happy Heart Day...<< MORE >>

Photo: Harbus for News

It might have been a little old lady who saved the Former President's life this week. She may or may not wear dark glasses. She wouldn't know she saved a President's life, but that doesn't matter — her motivation is completely democratic. Besides, it could have been any one of her peers in this special Secret Service who saved the Former President instead.

It might have even been you... << MORE >>