Thistle Farms staff hamming it up for the 2013 holiday season in their manufacturing area. (Photo by Peggy Napier)
Fiona Prine knows a few things about turning the page.
It has been 21 years since she moved to the United States. Fiona Whelan met her future husband, Maywood, Ill.-born singer-songwriter-storyteller John Prine when she was working in a recording studio in Dublin, Ireland. They married and she moved to Nashville, Tn. where they have raised three boys.
Fiona has said she heard all the words in the old country then found her voice in this country. Her sense of discovery [...]
Steve Liacopoulos of Rite Liquors helps launch Isaac’s art.
When you show your art on the outside border of the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago, you must really be a renegade.
That is where I found Isaac G. Abarca last month. He was propping up his oil on canvas paintings on a sidewalk near the entrance to the popular arts and crafts fair. He also hung his paintings like Christmas ornaments in a large honeylocust shade tree in front of Rite Liquors, 1649 W. Division.
“Hanging paintings in a tree is a beautiful thing,” Abarca said during a Sunday alcohol free conversation at [...]
Lou. Enough said.
CUBA, Mo.—-Lou Whitney was proud to tell tourists and visiting musicians that the Carter Family lived in a two story Victorian brick house in 1949-50 when they appeared with Red Foley on the radio version of the Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Mo.
That was Lou; talking about Springfield history before he would talk about himself.
In July we took Lou to the empty lot off of old Route 66 where Mother Maybellle, Anita, Helen and June Carter once lived. Lou stood tall, like a mountain in a meadow. His eyes squinted into the Ozark evening sun. He had his [...]
Ilse in Albuquerque on her Route 66 road trip. (Used with permission.)
I wonder what my roadie friend Ilse would say about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s piece in Atlantic magazine where he wrote that he only wanted to live 75 years.
Ilse is 86 years old and just finished her solo Route 66 trip from Chicago to a photo conference in Albuquerque, N.M. Ilse is too busy to mope around and think about dying young.
Dr. Emanuel wrote, “The fact is that by 75, creativity, originality and producitivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us….People can continue to be [...]
