Tall ships to sail to Duluth again this summer

On April 1 - the first day that tickets went on sale for Tall Ships Duluth 2013, July 25-29 - every single ticket for the two-hour day sails on these old beauties had been sold. Latecomers (by which I mean the lazy folks who logged on for tickets on April 2) had to content themselves with dock or onboard tours. Fortunately for fans of old-time wooden ships (and their modern-day reproductions), ...

Cold War era sites feature weapons of mass attraction

In the early 1980s, when I was a fifth-grader at Jefferson Elementary School, in a small town in Minnesota, our teacher, Mr. Odegaard, asked us if we wanted to see something. We did. So he took us down a little-used stairway, through a door and into a tunnel beneath our school. He flicked on the lights. The sound of our shuffling feet echoed down a long, dark corridor. "The walls down here ...

Piecing together the art of mosaics in Italy

The ancient art of mosaics thrives in Ravenna, the Italian city known for the art form. A master's five-day crash course teaches the technique to ...

Woody Guthrie Center opens in Tulsa Okla.

The woman in the wheelchair and headphones is watching pictures go by and hearing a narrator speak about a place and a moment long ago. On the screen a typewritten love letter appears and as the words scroll down, you can imagine the woman when she first laid eyes on those words. It was 80 years ago in Pampa, Texas, when Mary Jennings, then 16, succumbed to the sweet words and married Woody ...

How to find gay-friendly vacation spots

As more countries propose legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, as Minnesota just did, destinations and travel companies are increasingly marketing themselves to gay travelers. But John Tanzella, president of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association, warned that not all those who talk the talk necessarily walk the walk. "Let’s say a hotel is doing an ad campaign, but ...