One day, an elderly Vietnamese man walked into the office of Người Việt Tây Bắc. He wanted to place a classified ad in the largest and oldest newspaper for Vietnamese immigrants in Washington. Julie Pham, 33, … Read more
Here is a look at our day in Seattle’s most famous market. Video by Dan Q. Tham
On the fortieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, Vietnamese immigrants and their children gathered alongside Vietnam War veterans to reflect on the dramatic events that forever changed both of their destinies—the siege of South Vietnam’s … Read more
When the doctors couldn’t completely remove the large and painful cyst on her son Kent’s lower back, Chung Kim Do, who insists that we call her Miss Kim, took matters into her own hands. Miss Kim, … Read more
After Matthew Shepard’s bloodied and frozen body was found tied to a buck fence on October 7, 1998, the city of Laramie, Wyo., changed the names of the streets. On a wintry day, at the intersection … Read more
Our last night on this amazing Twain adventure. I encountered some fire spinners at the top of the hill at Gas Works Park in Seattle. It’s hard to derive symbolism from these images, so I didn’t … Read more
After visiting the Lower Ninth Ward and seeing for ourselves the devastation that Hurricane Katrina caused in the area, we stopped at the Bayou Bienvenue, hoping to find a vantage point from which to film the … Read more
We met Trevor Thomas in a futuristic office on Massachusetts Avenue. Blue neon lights cast a ghastly hue on the employees at Media Matters, a Web-based progressive research and information center. The employees’ eyes were focused … Read more
Eugene Robinson spoke to us in his office at the Washington Post, where he’s a Pulitzer-prize winning columnist. On one of many book-lined shelves in his office, there’s a piece of paper stuffed among coffee mugs, … Read more
New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon felt like a sacred and salacious holiday. With the weather in complicity, we sinned over hot chocolate and beignets at Café du Monde and I quickly learned that breathing is … Read more
Mark Silk heads the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He is the author of Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America and … Read more
I woke up with the light in my eyes, because I have been sleeping with at least one lamp on every night since the start of this trip (Embarrassing Admission #1). Vestigial childhood anxiety about the … Read more
Though the period represented by Old Sturbridge Village, a living history museum in Sturbridge, Mass., is slightly earlier than when Samuel Clemens worked as a printer, the Village’s printer, 62-year-old William Contino, demonstrates what it was … Read more
The video interview we obtained with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of Harvard’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, symbolizes an issue for journalists, especially … Read more
Dan Tham’s videos capture two of the Mario Picciones I know from my 26 years, 1969 to 1995, of putting out the Southbridge (Mass.) Evening News. As the owner for decades of Mario’s, a local restaurant, … Read more
She was described as “the most noticed figure among American Muslim women” in a 2010 New York Times article. At 48, Ingrid Mattson struck me as a mirthful, sassy person, whose eruptive laughs were punctuated with … Read more
Let me just start by saying that Steve Courtney, publicist and guide at the Mark Twain House & Museum, does not believe in ghosts. But in the sleepy Hartford pre-dawn, Team Twain was intrepidly coming into … Read more
Andrew Walsh, associate director of Trinity College’s Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and a former Hartford Courant reporter, is an expert on Hartford immigration. He kindly took us around … Read more
Craig Hotchkiss is the Education Program Manager at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Conn. In this video, Hotchkiss addresses some of the topics we’ve been dealing with, including race and sexual orientation, as … Read more
You’ve probably noticed that this video is six minutes long. So far, I’ve been making an effort to keep the videos I upload brief, sometimes (read: most times) under a minute. That’s, of course, a response … Read more
I, like other Ghigliones born in the United States, returned to Pontedecimo, Italy, birthplace of my great-grandfather, Angelo Francesco Ghiglione, in search of the holy grail. Our holy grail took the form of descendants—any descendants—of Angelo … Read more
Larry Mass invited us to his Manhattan apartment to discuss the sense of wistfulness that the gay community feels as it becomes more and more assimilated in society. Mass, co-founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, … Read more
Ellis Cose is a renowned American journalist whose most recent book The End of Anger: A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage was published May 2011. We interviewed him in his writing apartment in Manhattan. … Read more
We met with Michael Kupperman in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on a windy New York day. Kupperman is an American cartoonist and humorist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker. His most recent book Mark Twain’s … Read more
In Dan’s video you can follow our drive around Staten Island with Roger’s Effehi, a United Cars taxi driver from Nigeria, in search of where my great-grandfather and his family lived at the end of the … Read more
This is Chandelier, one of the first people we talked to in New York City. We met her after having brunch at Red Rooster in Harlem. Chandelier has aspirations to be famous. Video by Dan
Follow our tour of the Elmira Correctional Facility with Superintendent Paul Chappius and Deputy Superintendent Steve Wenderlich. During his Elmira years, Twain tested his lectures on prisoners. Video by Dan
Scenes from Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Financial District: a look at Wall Street’s occupants with a surprise cameo from Mark Twain himself. Video by Dan
After Jervis Langdon died in 1870, his eldest daughter, Susan Langdon Crane, inherited the vacation home nestled in the hills of Elmira, Ny. Crane’s famous brother-in-law, Mark Twain, would spend his summers at Quarry Farm for … Read more
In 1885-86, James F. Gluck, a young attorney in Buffalo, N.Y., received from Mark Twain half of the manuscript of his recently published novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Gluck was collecting letters and manuscripts by important … Read more
On our first night in Elmira, Ny., we stayed at a bed and breakfast called the Painted Lady. The rooms were Twain-themed because Samuel Clemens had spent a significant portion of his life in Elmira, where … Read more
New York State Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Catholic, agonized about his vote on legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. In the end, as the video indicates, he decided the denial of rights to same-sex partners … Read more
A fabulous way to end a long day of interviews. We were blessed with inordinately good weather during our stay in Buffalo, New York. Here’s proof, along with some snapshots of Niagara Falls, just as the … Read more
Priscilla Cooper, a former welfare recipient, started the Family Connection Center to empower the impoverished living in Cleveland, Ohio. The lakefront city competes with Detroit for the title of “Poorest Large City in America.” In the … Read more
Our visit to Marion, Indiana was sobering and tense. The last lynching in the North happened here on August 7, 1930, an event immortalized by Lawrence Beitler’s photograph, Abel Meeropol’s political poem and Billie Holiday’s rendition … Read more
It’s easy to miss the hulking brick building on Broadway when you’re in a hurry to get to Argyle, the busy hub of the Vietnamese refugee community in North Chicago. Nicknamed “New Chinatown” by Chicagoans, Argyle … Read more
From bowling and dancing trophies to a sign that says “Don’t Mistake Me For That Nice Little Old Lady,” almost 80 years of living cover every inch of the tiny living room in Audrey Ghiglione Bender’s … Read more
The Hill, a 50-square-block area in South St. Louis, is the city’s Italian neighborhood. On Sunday, September 25, 2011, the St. Ambrose school cafeteria hosted a ravioli dinner from noon to 6 p.m. to benefit the … Read more
Gerald Early, 59, shares his experience with racial profiling in the wealthy St. Louis suburb, Frontenac. We sat down with him to discuss race in St. Louis and the next step for racial harmony. Early is … Read more
“In a city like New York, they have happy hour every week,” joked Doug Moore, the Missouri Chapter President of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. With only ten members in the Missouri branch of … Read more
Actor Hal Holbrook, 86, has been playing Mark Twain for 57 years, a decade longer than Samuel Clemens wrote as Mark Twain. In the first week of our Twain trip we drove 1,325 miles (almost 500 … Read more
All aboard the Mark Twain! A video of our experience floating down the Mississippi.
On my first night on the trip, I met Mark Twain’s spirit at a midnight record release party. Loren and Alyssa, already two days into the project, picked me up at the St. Louis airport. After … Read more
Even the locals here never quite get used to feeling like amphibians, their skin slick with oil and sweat, goaded on by the sultry climate like a dare. I’m in India. A place I’ve always associated … Read more
Dan Q. Tham (b. Dec. 4, 1990), was born and raised in Salt Lake City by Kim Hoa Nguyen and Hoa Tram, immigrants who fled Vietnam by boat shortly after the Vietnam War ended. At Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism Dan, a junior, has served as video editor of the Daily Northwestern and co-directed a short documentary about a Chicago woman who has successfully made living with AIDS compatible with being a sassy diva. Dan spent this summer interning at the Berlin broadcast station ALEX and working in Dharamsala, India, on a documentary about the future of Tibet.
