A Beached Whale: Then and Now
Sunday, March 10 2024
Recently a humpback whale washed ashore at Virginia Beach. Even in death, it’s a magnificent creature. The beached whale reminded me of an incident during the winter of 1805-1806 at Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Ocean.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Reading Orwell’s 1984 In 2024
Thursday, March 07 2024
The question is: how prophetic was Orwell? What does he say to us in the age of “fake news” and “alternative facts”?
- Published in Books
Notes on Geert Mak’s In America: Travels with John Steinbeck
Saturday, March 02 2024
Mak’s In America: Travels with John Steinbeck is without question the best book written about retracing the 1960 Travels with Charley journey.
- Published in Books
Printed Maps and an Atlas: Old School, Indeed!
Friday, February 23 2024
We’re hard at work detailing plans to follow in the footsteps of John Steinbeck’s journey chronicled in Travels With Charley.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Space: The Final and Unforgiving Frontier
Monday, February 19 2024
The inverted landing of the $125 million Japan Space Agency lunar probe makes us realize not what can go wrong but how many things must go exactly right for one of these incredibly complicated space missions to succeed.
- Published in Features
My Life as a Space Junkie
Sunday, February 18 2024
I’ve been captivated by humanity’s exploration of the heavens since I was a boy growing up on the plains of western North Dakota.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
On Oppenheimer — Video Dispatch
Monday, February 05 2024
Clay reads from an essay about Robert Oppenheimer by the author Richard Rhodes.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
The Glamorous Life of the On-Camera Talent
Monday, February 05 2024
Ken Burns once told me: You want to know the key to being in my documentaries, all other things being equal? Stick the landings.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Sports as American Metaphor
Tuesday, January 30 2024
The Super Bowl has become an unofficial American holiday. Though it may not be as important as Christmas or the Fourth of July it fixes everyone in the country on a single monumental event.
- Published in Features
Seeing America Through the Eyes of a Visitor
Saturday, January 20 2024
My daughter Catherine, now living in Great Britain, brought her boyfriend Simon to America for the holidays. He’s French-Swiss.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road