Traveling with Twain

Michael Fosberg plays the race card, literally. He joked about it as he handed us his business card. “RACE” is emblazoned on the back in big black letters. The other side listed Fosberg’s contact info and … 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 >>

Whatever the upbringing of Mark Twain (Sam Clemens) in slave-state Missouri, he was a critic of lynching by adulthood. In “Only a Nigger,”—an August 26, 1869, Buffalo Express column attributed to him—he told of the rape … Read more >>

Chicago’s Hyde Park Hair Salon, 5234-B South Blackstone, bills itself as the official barbershop of President Barack Obama. True, the president has been going to the barbershop for at least 20 years (though security now requires … Read more >>

Sorry, world, beginning today, Oct. 2, I’ve decided to report on our daily misadventures, however insignificant, complete with sexy starlet sightings (just kidding). Our 13 hours of driving begin at 7 a.m. in Chicago with Alyssa … Read more >>