As part of my trip to check up on Sweet Springs, WV, my thesis site, I decided to stop by the Greenbrier in neighboring White Sulphur...

"It's a very old church. Hundreds of years old. Most of it [the graffiti] is from the Civil War," a parishioner said to me out in the...

For Christmas last year, I received a gouache painting that my parents framed from my grandfather. There is no date or signature on it...

I took a side trip to Lost World Caverns outside Lewisburg while in West Virginia. Although these were not found until 1942, caves like...

While visiting Sweet Springs the other month, I was able to stay at Elmwood in Union, WV, which I had previously visited as part of my...

I don't know how many times I've driven past the Falls Church Episcopal without noticing it. In the hurry, hurry, hurry of traffic going...

Just one day under a six-month streak, I have finally completed every lesson and read every story on the DuoLingo Portuguese language...

It had been about four years since I last visited Sweet Springs, WV, until this past month. The focus of my graduate thesis, Sweet...

It is common, my teacher tells me, for many people who live in Brazilian cities to also own a small farm known as a chácara in the...

While I have been focused learning Portuguese, I’ve still been trying other languages on DuoLingo. Someone once told me that people who...

The end of summer, the month of August in particular, has always been busy with family reunions. One weekend after another and the next,...

In my collection of ocean liner memorabilia, I have eight menus from a transatlantic crossing on the SS George Washington from 1922....

Over the weekend, I sat down and drafted a watermark for my photography. I had been wanting to do so for a while now but nothing...

My DuoLingo streak hit 124 today which doesn’t earn any achievement on the app but it does mean that I’ve practiced second languages...

The first World War left the White Star Line struggling. They had lost many of their largest vessels and never really could recover size....

In fifth grade, I had a very special opportunity to meet Robert Ballard who was my childhood hero. Best known for discovering the...

My apartment looks a little different now. Wigs, my pet betta fish, has moved up from a one gallon jar to a ten gallon tank. It's an...

Not every photograph I take is worth keeping as a photograph. In many cases, I am moving past somewhere interesting so quickly that...

I remember my first Spanish class in elementary school. Sra. Santaniello walked around the room and asked everyone our names. John, she...

I have spent Independence Day in Maryland with friends since 2016. To us, this tradition has become increasingly valuable as a halfway...