Hello, Dolly!
Dollywood is the Disneyland of Appalachia
‘We’re not meant to be slouching from grief to grief’
Save those Precious Memories on your iPhone
On a crisp Friday morning in early October, before the first frost, mom and I set out from our home in deep Southwest Virginia to visit the Dollywood theme park in East Tennessee. We’d been there once before, years ago, when I was five or six years old. Dolly’s Eagle When She Flies album had just been released, and my parents bought me the cassette tape as a Christmas gift. I loved Dolly on the cover, in her white blouse and tight denim. I loved the tune “Silver and Gold” even better. Mom sang it to me as a lullaby: “Time can’t be brought back with silver and gold.” When I think of it now, I hear it in mom’s voice.
“Do you remember anything about that trip?” Mom looks over at me expectantly. Through the windshield, I watch the car swallow the pavement beneath us. “I don’t know,” I reply, hesitating. “I sort of remember women dressed in pink and purple spandex with butterfly wings.” Mom …
Welcome to Bizarro Texas!
Deep in the jungles of the southern hemisphere lies an eerie version of my homeland; the natives call it 'Brazil'
Cattle auctions are regular TV fodder; their favorite drink is ‘the little redneck’
As rural culture is throttled and the countryside is depopulated, we await a future of economic bifurcation beneath the cruel lash of our overclass masters
It is a place from the nightmares of America’s elite metropolitan progressives. A place where there is a steakhouse in every neighborhood. Where the favorite drink is called “the little redneck.” Where new Ford F-150s sell out as soon as they are offered by dealers. Where crowds gather to watch football on TV, with their cheers echoing blocks away when their team scores. Where Pentecostal street preachers and televangelists are gaining ever-more converts and political influence. A place whose history is defined by both cattle ranches and slave plantations. A place where courtesy and violence are two sides of the same coin. The perfect target for a boycott.
Texas? No, Brazil.
Brazil is like a southern-hemisphere Bizarro World version of the United States. As a sixth-generation Texan, when visiting Brazil I confess that I feel more at home than I do in the American Northeast or West Coast. …
Oswald and the CIA
The CIA knew exactly who Lee Harvey Oswald was
Because they were watching him, that’s why
Agency hoards secrets in service of lies
Six decades after the attack in Dallas that claimed President John F. Kennedy’s life — and killed his evolving policy of winding down the nuclear arms race and Cold War conflicts in Cuba and Vietnam — J.F.K.’s assassination still matters. Some lament the continuing influence of “conspiracy theorists.” Others point to abundant evidence of high-level malfeasance in J.F.K.’s assassination. The very night of the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald told reporters that he was “just a patsy” while being walked down the hallway of the Dallas Police headquarters. Oswald was then murdered in police custody two days later, before he could explain himself further.
If you believe the sworn statements of the CIA, the US intelligence service knew very little about the man who supposedly killed President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. As director John McCone told the Warren Commission in closed-door testimony in May …
