Country music giant Toby Keith died peacefully of stomach cancer Monday in his native Oklahoma. He was 62. He’s survived by his wife, Tricia, and three children. His family was with him at his death. Keith was a country megastar,…

Last month I had a feeling that something terrible had happened to one of my most beloved former girlfriends, Sherri Schultz. I looked for her on the internet and saw that she’d recently died. A couple of weeks before her…

The line between “labor union” and “secret society” wasn’t always clear during the 19th century — and the Molly Maguires were sometimes considered a bit of both. Back home in Ireland, where rent rates were too high and food was…

In Norman Rockwell’s famous 1943 painting Freedom From Want,” part of his Four Freedoms series, Rockwell depicts the traditional, American Thanksgiving meal. An elderly couple stands at the end of the table holding an impressive turkey on a platter. Meanwhile,…

Where to start? Certainly no point at which to end. Thank you, G-d, for allowing me to be born in America, to live in America from the 1950s to today and hopefully beyond, to learn American civics and American virtues…

Few things in the cultural landscape are instantly recognizable as quintessentially American: Elvis, apple pie, and the diner. In fact, it’s not unusual to find all three housed together in a chrome-trimmed roadside package. Although these mainstay eating establishments that…

Now that the dust has settled, it is possible to gain a clearer understanding of the most fascinating cultural phenomenon of late summer 2023: the skyrocketing success of a completely unknown musician’s protest song. In mid-August, Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men…

In 1982, the American economy was in recession: 30-year fixed-rate home mortgage interest rates were 16 percent, the unemployment rate was at a post-WWII high of 10.8 percent, and construction and manufacturing, already declining from the collapse of the automobile…

The Classic Car Show in downtown Hastings, Minnesota, is a summer tradition. Every third Sunday from May through September, cars and trucks manufactured before 1985 (a few years after I was born, so I can refer to myself not as…

This past April, I found myself lamenting the continued loss of America’s greatest generation, heartbroken by the news of the passing of Ken Potts, one of the two remaining Pearl Harbor survivors serving aboard the USS Arizona on that fateful…