United States
Flags of the United States line both side of a road.
“The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don’t think that we use that. We don’t talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don’t use that. I think we should talk about who we are – that melting pot that we’ve become.”
–Steve Stoute
The lyrics in the anthem America the Beautiful expresses it best–the United States of America really is beautiful.
O beautiful for spacious skies…For amber waves of grain…For purple mountain majesties…Above the fruited plain!…America! America!…God shed His grace on thee…And crown thy good with brotherhood…From sea to shining sea!
The United States really is a beautiful and wonderfully diverse country. When you travel to each of the 50 States and even within each State you will feel as if you’re traveling to another country.
The United States is a country built by immigrants and each corner of this country is influenced by a variety of cultural diasporas including former enslaved people from Africa and the West Indies. Even traces of Native American culture can be found despite earlier efforts to erase them from the narratives of American history.
The United States has not always been the land of the free but it has always been the home of the brave.
As Paul Tsongas said, “America is hope. It is compassion. It is excellence. It is valor.”
The battle of Franklin was a turning point in the Civil War. Most historians agree it was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.
It’s a sunny summer morning at Buffalo Park in Flagstaff, Arizona. The San Francisco Peaks, Arizona’s top ski destination, rises into the sky to the north, the tip of Mount Humphreys sharp against the clear blue expanse.
Bedford Peak can be reached via a 12 km (7 miles) roundtrip hike and is located at an elevation of 1161 meters (3800 feet), offering an outstanding 360° view over the surrounding mountain range as well as the adjacent valleys. On days with good visibility, Lake Matthews can even be seen from there. I had a feeling this would be good, gratefully grabbed my purchase, and headed out.
Visiting the beautiful Red Rock Canyon, an often-overlooked national conservation area that is located only 15 miles outside Las Vegas and features hiking and trails, plants and wildlife, outstanding geology and camping.
Birmingham, Alabama is considered ground zero in the civil rights movement. In the 1950s, African-Americans of all ages in Birmingham drew a proverbial line in the sand against racial segregation. Their stories, struggles and ultimate success over Jim Crow laws is on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in an effort to keep the stories of this dark chapter in American history alive. Across the street from the Institute is the 16th Street Baptist Church where a 1963 bombing that killed four young girls changed the course of history in Birmingham and America. We will walk through this church that has, today, become a place to unify a community and people from all over the world. 16th Street Baptist Church. Photo: Tonya Fitzpatrick Downtown Birmingham is the home to the Civil Rights Heritage Trail. Kelly Ingraham Park, also known as Freedom Park, was the staging area for many of [...]
The Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia is a dramatic retelling of the events that occurred, focusing heavily on the experiences of the city’s Holocaust survivors.
The route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas may be a heavily traveled highway, but it’s still a long strip of road through the desert of the American Southwest.
The city of Houston, Texas is currently the fourth largest city in the United States. It serves as a twenty-first century melting pot, welcoming a myriad of cultures, communities, and ethnicities.
I’ll never forget the bright blue skies as I watched an airplane fly into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001.
The city of El Paso, Texas has a rich historical and cultural role that is reflected in the countries of the United States and Mexico.
In 1865, white settlers in California killed more than 40 Native Americans in what has become known as the Three Knowles Massacre. The remnants of the Yahi tribe fled into the forest and hid. For the next forty years, the last of the Yahi lived in the woods and gradually died off. On August 29, 1911, a group of farmers found an Indian near one of their barns. He was arrested and taken into town. He spoke no English. He was taken to San Francisco to the Museum of Anthropology. There, an astute researcher determined his language was a Yahi dialect. They gave him the name "Ishi" as the Indian would not speak his own name. Ishi is an adopted name that translates to "man" in Yana. He was given this name by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber because it was customary for him to remain silent about his own name until [...]
Kansas City, founded in 1838 (the Missouri side), is a city that has a full and rich history for being in the mellow Mid-West region of the United States.
