Farm to Fame

Chuck Taylor waved at a hawk strafing the wheat field in front of him. “There is beauty everywhere. I just want to express what I am feeling.” He pushed up his feed company cap and began to sing louder than his farm tractor engine. Chuck’s voice boomed over that...

Payback Painter

 Bussey, Iowa may make you homesick for a place you’ve probably never been. Just 422 people lived there the day I dropped by.  But this small town has made a big difference in Todd Spaur’s life. He was in a terrible accident two decades ago when his car...

A True Fairy Tale Wedding

Deborah Huddleston fell in love with Glenn Gammage.  They were married out on the prairie, dreaming dreams, as if they were new.  He speaks 5 languages and has circled the world with the U.S. Navy.  She has seldom left Texas.  They fell in love and...

VANISHING SILENCE

No matter how far we go into the wilderness, we can seldom escape the sounds we make.  There are few places where planes do not fly or foghorns cannot pierce.  Just as city lights keep us from seeing dimmer stars, these noises of every day life drown out the more...

Cultural Center of the Country

New York spends more money on the arts than other city in the country, but a lot of those dollars come from outsiders. If you subtract all that out of town money, the place that spends the most per person for culture is Bassett, Nebraska.   “Huh?”  Yep. Share...

Lost Graves

I found myself in a forest filled with forgotten lives. Their final resting places were marked, not with names, but numbered stakes, unnoticed, until Bud Merritt stumbled upon them.  He found the first of six lost graveyards at what was once the largest mental...