Jacki Lyden

Sounds From Space, Recorded By An Astronaut

Jacki Lyden — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:12:00 +0000

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield arrived at the International Space Station late last month. He has kept busy updating his Twitter followers about life in space. For those on Earth wondering what space sounds like, Hadfield has recorded the sounds of everyday life aboard the ISS, including a toilet flushing.

Around The River Bend, A Flood Of History

Jacki Lyden — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:18:00 +0000

The Bark River is my backyard, childhood river. And yet, in a lifetime of travel, I'd never explored it.

I knew it carved the land from the Ice Age to settlement times, from the Black Hawk War of 1832 (in which young Abraham Lincoln appears) to the era of grist mills. But the Bark also flows past impressive Indian mounds.

Meet Al Black: Florida's Prison Painter

Jacki Lyden — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:15:00 +0000

In the 1960s, Al Black could be found cruising up and down Route 1 in his blue-and-white Ford Galaxy — with a trunk full of wet landscape paintings.

At the time, he was a salesman who could snatch your breath away and sell it back to you. As artist Mary Ann Carroll puts it, he could "sell a jacket to a mosquito in summer."

"A salesman is a con-man," Black readily admits himself today. He's a storyteller. And does he have stories to tell.

Black was born on a plantation in Mississippi. One day, he says, a crew boss came by, needing more hands to pick crops.

The Highwaymen: Segregation And Speed-Painting In The Sunshine State

Jacki Lyden — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:24:00 +0000

In the 1960s and '70s, if you were in a doctor's office, or a funeral home, or a motel in Florida, chances are a landscape painting hung on the wall. Palms arching over the water, or moonlight on an inlet.

Chanticleer: A Botanical Distraction From Daily Life

Jacki Lyden — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 20:03:00 +0000

Ever wanted to just disappear into a secret garden of earthly delights, of twists and turns of evocative ruin, exuberant tropics, the Zen of a Japanese teahouse?

Consider Chanticleer, in Wayne, Pa. It's part of the old Main Line ring of estates around Philadelphia. In fact, right across the street from the garden is the former home of Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, the heiress portrayed by Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story.

Chanticleer is, quite simply, one of the most delightful gardens in the world.