Academy Award-nominated Andra Day began singing at Chula Vista’s First United Methodist Church, then studied music at the School of Creative and Performing Arts. Her 2012 cover of Jessie J’s “Mamma Knows Best” peaked at …

There’s a place on the Gulf Coast where the ocean sparkles turquoise, white sand sifts through your toes, and the water teems with fish of all types: amberjack, snapper, grouper, triggerfish, mackerel, shark. Alabama’s Gulf …

For those of us living in Southern California, Alabama is not what one might call a vacation destination. Driving along Highway 59, I can’t help but think that if history had run a different course, …

Empires rise and they fall, leaving behind the ruins of their fortresses. Until armored warships rendered masonry forts and their black powder cannons obsolete, warring European empires set on colonizing the rest of the world …

Imagine any Mr. and Mrs. Smith and their six-year-old daughter Suzie from Cairo, Illinois. They have just finished touring England on a bus. At Heathrow, they check in for their flight home. They give their …

Birmingham, Alabama, was founded in 1871 – after the Civil War – but quickly caught up with other Southern cities’ cruel segregation and Jim Crow practices. Some say it bested them. Dr. Martin Luther King, …

Eight days into our around-the-country trip, my friend and I walked the long stretch of white sand beach in Grayton Beach State Park from the setting sun towards the rising full moon. We had pulled …

I was in my second grade history class, here in Southern California, when I first remember seeing the video images of men and women shotgun-hosed ruthlessly, police dogs trained to bite the nearest dark-skinned person, …

I’m originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and all my slang is dirty South. “I’onte mut know,” is something that you say if you don’t know an answer. Like if someone asks you if you’re going to …

The Poet of Tolstoy Park. Ballantine Books, 2005; $21.95; 274 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: "The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain, the less you become afraid of death." …