Mississippi Blues Trail
When tourists started showing up here, I couldn’t figure out what they saw in the place,” says Jimmy “Duck” Holmes
In memory of Charles Bowden
Last August, when I heard that he’d died – peacefully in his sleep aged 69, and not gunned down by cartel assassins, as so many had predicted
Hunting is for girls
THORNTON, Miss. — Cadi Thompson saw the deer first, but she wanted to give her friend Amber the chance to kill it. It was a frozen winter dawn on the Thompson family farm and hunting property. The two nursing students were concealed in a box stand, a simple wooden structure with openings to shoot through.…
Walter Kirn on being conned by a murderer
People are always saying to me, how could you fall for it? How could you be so blind? How could you be such a fool?’ The American author and journalist Walter Kirn, 52, eating a brunch omelette in his adopted hometown of Livingston, Montana, is a graduate of Princeton and Oxford, and a highly intelligent…
Namibian flying safari
The facilities are basic, the transport has seen better days and the bill is hefty. So what’s the big attraction of a safari by plane in Namibia? Swakopmund is a dusty windswept town on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast; its name means Shit Rivermouth. The airport departures terminal consists of two small concrete rooms with paint peeling…
In Mississippi,Obamacare rolls out on wheels
JACKSON, Miss. — A custom-built bus with oversized windows is parked outside a health fair at the University Medical Center. The decal on its side reads, “Making Healthcare Reform Transparent.” Inside the bus are snacks, Wi-Fi and three booths where sales agents from the Humana health-insurance company sit behind laptops and explain cheap HGV insurance…
Protester attempts to stop bison slaughter in Yellowstone
A lot of people ask me about the young man Comfrey, who we saw ride off on a freight train in the American Nomads documentary. He is alive and well, and protesting the slaughter of buffalo in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone National Park officials found 20 year old Comfrey Jacobs chained to a barrel and…
In Livingstone’s footsteps with Sir Ranulph Fiennes
The Daily Telegraph are re-running classic travel stories from their archives. Here’s one I wrote about going down the Zambezi river in dug-out canoes with Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Britain’s greatest and arguably most eccentric explorer Last week we began a new series drawing on the deep and rich store of travel writing in the Telegraph…
Novelist Ann Patchett on opening an independent bookshop to rival Amazon
When the American novelist Ann Patchett is not writing about loyalty and commitment she is putting those virtues to good use as an independent bookseller in the battle against the online giants. Read More
delta crime report
A random assortment of crimes in the Mississippi Delta in the last week or so. In Clarksdale, the president of the school board was caught stealing three bottles of air freshener, and has been banned for life from Fred’s store. Dr. Roger Weiner, former candidate for mayor of Clarksdale, was stopped at a roadblock with…