In Indiana’s Amish Country, visitors are welcome to enter their quiet world. In Search of the Amish The Saturday Evening Post
Linda King is serving me and some friends the same dinner she’d prepare for her husband, Lamar, and their seven children. Well, in a way, we’re serving ourselves: Dinner tonight, in a dining room just off Linda’s home in Shipshewana, Indiana, is a traditional Amish “Haystack,” a do-it-yourself meal that allows diners to stack the ingredients to their particular taste. <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200373" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860haystack-dinner-at-taste-of-shipshewana-dinner/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner.jpg" data-orig-size="860,484" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"1.64","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 16e","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779305669","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.2","iso":"250","shutter_speed":"0.025","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Haystack dinner at Taste of Shipshewana dinner" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Haystack dinner at the Taste of Shipshewana dinner (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner-500x281.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200373" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="484" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner-400x225.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner-500x281.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Haystack-dinner-at-Taste-of-Shipshewana-dinner-600x338.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Haystack dinner at the Taste of Shipshewana dinner (Photo by Bill Newcott) Bottom level: crumbled Ritz crackers. Above that, lightly seasoned ground beef. Then rice, tomatoes, peppers (no onions, thank you), pumpkin seeds, sour cream, lettuce, crumbled Doritos and, as a crowning glory, melted cheese. Lots and lots of melted cheese. Yes, you’re right: This traditional family meal, an Amish staple for the better part of a century, is pretty much an open-face taco. For me, it’s a surprising Amish acknowledgement that there is a big world outside this decidedly insular community. Some attribute elements of faith-infused meaning to the haystack’s various layers (the bottom level represents the world, the sunflower seeds new life, the layer of cheese the daily miracle of sunrise), but Linda suspects the genesis, as with many Amish customs, is considerably more down-to-earth. “It’s a great way to serve a lot of people,” she says with a shrug. “Everybody gets what they want, the way they want it. “And always,” she hastens to add, “always, there’s fresh bread.” Linda and Lamar offer dinners to non-Amish visitors through A Taste of Shipshewana, named for the northern Indiana town that has, since the 1840s, been a center of Amish community. It’s their way of combining a family business with their desire to help outsiders experience the quiet pleasures of Amish fellowship. I have come to this one-square-mile town of 840 full-time residents – which swells to tens of thousands during the summer tourist season – to get a sense of everyday Amish life beyond the decades of TV series, reality shows, and movies that have largely shaped the way the Amish are perceived by the “English” (as the Amish refer to anyone not of their religious denomination). <img decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200374" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860shipshewana-barn/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn.jpg" data-orig-size="860,484" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"10","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779375310","copyright":"","focal_length":"22","iso":"100","shutter_speed":"0.005","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Shipshewana barn" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" A Shipshewana barn (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn-500x281.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200374" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="484" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn-400x225.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn-500x281.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-barn-600x338.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> A Shipshewana barn (Photo by Bill Newcott) I suppose I’ve driven through Lancaster, Pennsylvania – America’s most celebrated Amish enclave – a dozen or more times. I’ve even stayed there occasionally. The trademark horse-drawn carriages and lines of hanging, muted-color laundry were always evident, of course. But amidst the theme parks and outlet malls, I’ve always felt the Amish of Lancaster dwell behind an unbreachable invisible wall; always observed, seldom encountered. In Shipshewana, the vibe feels considerably different: The Amish have linked arms with the English to not only welcome visitors, but also to explain themselves – on their own terms – to a historically curious world. For anyone seeking a window into Amish history and culture, their first stop has to be Shipshewana’s barn-shaped . If the name is something of a mouthful (“Menno” was the first name of Menno Simons, a German leader of the Anabaptist movement, which gave rise to the Amish church; “Hof” is German for “farmstead”), the immersive walk-through exhibits succinctly spell out the sometimes-convoluted history of the Amish. Our tour guide, a soft-spoken, bespectacled fellow named Al, leads our little group from gallery to gallery, each one containing an elaborate walk-through historical setting. The exhibits narrate the emergence of the reform-minded Anabaptists in 16th century Germany, the fierce prosecution they faced, and their eventual three-way split into the Mennonites, the Hutterites, and the Amish (each of which imposed varying – but always highly restrictive – levels of domestic simplicity). <img decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200375" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860menno-hoff-museum-typical-amish-children-clothing/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing.jpg" data-orig-size="860,484" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"4","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779282805","copyright":"","focal_length":"16","iso":"1600","shutter_speed":"0.00625","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Menno Hoff Museum typical Amish children clothing" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Typical clothing worn by Amish Children at the Menno-Hof Museum (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing-500x281.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200375" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="484" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing-400x225.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing-500x281.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum-typical-Amish-children-clothing-600x338.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Typical clothing worn by Amish Children at the Menno-Hof Museum (Photo by Bill Newcott) The groups’ core beliefs – and rejection of Rome as the ultimate authority of all things Christian – led to some pretty extreme resistance. “Some of you may want to skip this room,” warns Al, leading us into what could easily be mistaken for the set of a 1950s Hammer Studios horror movie. “Some people do. I have to tell you, it gets a little gory.” Of course, that gets everyone’s attention. Mounted on the walls are the sorts of implements Catholic officials used to, let’s just say, try and convince Anabaptists to alter their point of view. Among them is a devilish little device called the tongue screw, which was used to clamp a condemned heretic’s tongue in place to keep them from preaching while being burned at the stake. Elsewhere hang illuminated images from a 17th century book, Martyrs’ Mirror, illustrating unspeakable evils foisted upon the religious outsiders in the name of Christianity. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200376" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860menno-hoff-museum-a-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-europe/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe.jpg" data-orig-size="860,516" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"3.5","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779280927","copyright":"","focal_length":"16","iso":"4000","shutter_speed":"0.00625","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Menno Hoff Museum. A long-handled pitchfork and images of abuse in Europe" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" A long-handled pitchfork and images of abuse in Europe at the Menno-Hof Museum (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe-500x300.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200376" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="516" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe-400x240.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe-500x300.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe-768x461.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe-300x180.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hoff-Museum.-A-long-handled-pitchfork-and-images-of-abuse-in-Europe-600x360.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> A long-handled pitchfork and images of abuse in Europe at the Menno-Hof Museum (Photo by Bill Newcott) Dominating the room, at its center, is what looks like a rectangular well. Peering down through its grated lid, I can make out the figure of a robed mannequin, representing an Anabaptist hurled into this no-exit dungeon. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200377" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860menno-hof-museum-an-anabaptists-dungeon/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon.jpg" data-orig-size="860,573" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"3.5","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779280435","copyright":"","focal_length":"16","iso":"6400","shutter_speed":"0.016666666666667","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Menno Hof Museum An Anabaptist&#8217;s Dungeon" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" An Anabaptist&#8217;s dungeon at the Menno-Hof Museum (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon-500x333.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200377" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="573" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon-500x333.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Menno-Hof-Museum-An-Anabaptists-Dungeon-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> An Anabaptist’s dungeon at the Menno-Hof Museum (Photo by Bill Newcott) Al shakes his head. “It was not good to be an Anabaptist,” he says mournfully. A subsequent room is dominated by a full-size sailing ship, representing the Anabaptists’ ultimate deliverance: an invitation from William Penn to come to the American colonies, where they would be free to observe their religion without repercussions. In America, the Amish and Mennonites flourished – which is to say they were free to refrain from flourishing in just about all the ways most people define the term “flourish.” The Mennonites – whose modest fashions and lacy women’s caps still echo the style of their Amish brethren – continued to live simply, but also chose to enter the mainstream to become professionals and establish colleges and universities. The Amish, on the other hand, doubled down on the whole notion of withdrawing from the world: To this day they largely shun any technology that post-dates the mid-1800s, and cease formal education after the 8th grade. Still, a visit to Shipshewana serves as a cautionary tale for those who feel they can pin down precisely what it means to be Amish. A cool Indiana spring breeze whistles through my bike helmet as I pedal along the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail, a 25-mile route following an old railroad track bed. On both sides, violet flowers called dame’s rocket, as lovely an invasive species as you will find, zip by in a beautiful blur. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200378" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860dames-rocket-on-pumpkinvine-nature-trail/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail.jpg" data-orig-size="860,645" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"1.64","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 16e","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779358350","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.2","iso":"20","shutter_speed":"0.0047846889952153","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Dame&#8217;s Rocket on Pumpkinvine Nature Trail" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Dame&#8217;s rocket on the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail-500x375.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200378" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="645" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail-400x300.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Dames-Rocket-on-Pumpkinvine-Nature-Trail-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Dame’s rocket on the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail (Photo by Bill Newcott) Beyond the trees that line the trail, the fields of dairy farms and cattle ranches reach to distant barns, some bright red, others gleaming white. Nearby stand farm houses that have, over a century or so, sprouted sizeable, if awkwardly attached, additions. I stop to look both ways at the point where the trail crosses a rolling two-lane county road. The clatter of machinery draws my attention; my eyes follow the sound to the sight of four chestnut horses pulling a mechanical tiller – essentially a gas-powered digging mechanism propelled across the field by real horsepower instead of an engine. Sitting atop the contraption is a farmer, not in overalls and a baseball cap, but black pants, a crisp-looking white shirt and a wide-brimmed black hat. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200379" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860shipshewana-amish-farm/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm.jpg" data-orig-size="860,484" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"5.6","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779305431","copyright":"","focal_length":"50","iso":"125","shutter_speed":"0.0125","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Shipshewana Amish Farm" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" An Amish farm in Shipshewana (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm-500x281.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200379" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="484" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm-400x225.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm-500x281.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Shipshewana-Amish-Farm-600x338.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> An Amish farm in Shipshewana (Photo by Bill Newcott) That Amish farmer is, within context, among one of the more progressive of his clan (although he would surely shudder at the notion): Not far from here, more strictly observant fellows are standing atop tillers that are smaller, completely horse-powered – and much slower. That dichotomy informs the most eye-opening realization of my brief time in Indiana Amish country: There is a seemingly infinite number of gradations when it comes to pursuing the simple life. Take my current mode of transportation: I’m riding this 13-mile stretch of the Pumpkinvine, from Shipshewana to Middlebury, on an e-bike, rented from a business called Otto’s Bicycle Repair & Water Shop. Otto, a quiet man with a sweet smile, is Amish, but the elders of his particular church have decided that while the universally forbidden automobile has an intolerable tendency to literally drive families apart, e-bikes are not a threat to the family unit. “So, do you have an e-bike?” I ask the shop employee who meets me upon my return. He smiles and shakes his head. “My church doesn’t allow them…yet,” he says. “I can work on them, and I can ride one around the parking lot to make sure it’s working right. But I can’t go out and ride one.” I try mightily to fight back a sympathetic smile. It seems wrong for me to be enjoying something that is forbidden to the very man helping me have the experience. “Someday soon, maybe,” he adds, and I’m afraid he’s just trying to make me feel better. But here is the important thing: The two of us, from very different worlds, are sharing slivers of our existence in ways that, I suspect, seldom occur outside the friendly confines of Shipshewana. In the course of two days in Shipshewana, I find myself immersed in the soft rhythms of life in the analog lane. Inside the sprawling shed that houses the splendidly random, 104-year-old Shipshewana Trading Place, every Wednesday fast-talking auctioneers move everything from antique signs to cast metal toys to 1980s stereo equipment (pro tip: Do be careful not to absentmindedly nod your head – or you may accidentally signal a new bid to the auctioneer). At Teaberry Wood Products in downtown Shipshewana, third-generation woodworker LaVern Miller patiently guides a tourist group through the steps of creating a handsome handcrafted basket. Early one morning I make the trek to nearby Millersburg for a local rite of passage: buying a just-out-of-the vat pastry at Amish Kuntry Fried Pie (cherry, please). That evening at the Blue Gate Music Hall, I sit with a wildly appreciative audience at an original Amish-themed musical – A Simple Sanctuary, based on a best-selling novel with music by a team from Nashville. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200380" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/400fried-cherry-pie-at-amish-kuntry-fried-pies/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/400Fried-Cherry-Pie-at-Amish-Kuntry-Fried-Pies.jpg" data-orig-size="400,420" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"1.64","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 16e","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779351751","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.2","iso":"32","shutter_speed":"0.0010615711252654","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="400Fried Cherry Pie at Amish Kuntry Fried Pies" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" A cherry fried pie from Amish Kuntry Fried Pie (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/400Fried-Cherry-Pie-at-Amish-Kuntry-Fried-Pies.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200380" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/400Fried-Cherry-Pie-at-Amish-Kuntry-Fried-Pies.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="420" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/400Fried-Cherry-Pie-at-Amish-Kuntry-Fried-Pies.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/400Fried-Cherry-Pie-at-Amish-Kuntry-Fried-Pies-300x315.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> A cherry fried pie from Amish Kuntry Fried Pie (Photo by Bill Newcott) Master Amish furniture maker Delmar Bontrager walks me around his at-home workshop, proudly explaining the intricacies of creating bedroom sets and entire kitchens with wood planks recycled from demolished barns. “You never really know what kind of wood you’re going to get from a barn,” he tells me, surveying a four-foot-high stack of gray, century-old planks. “But I like working with what life gives me.” Just north of town, in her modest shop at the end of a tree-shaded drive, Leanna Fry stands by a stack of hand-made Amish quilts, helping fold back the layers that resemble pages of some enormous picture book: an array of multicolored maple leaves, a tight pattern of concentric squares in wildly varied colors, a stately flower design set against a quilted white background. Amish and Mennonite quilt makers from miles around trust Leanna’s Quilts as a reliable clearing house for their work. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200381" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860leannas-quilts/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts.jpg" data-orig-size="860,720" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"1.64","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 16e","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779378191","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.2","iso":"125","shutter_speed":"0.016666666666667","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Leanna&#8217;s Quilts" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Leanna’s Quilts (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts-500x419.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200381" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="720" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts-400x335.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts-500x419.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts-768x643.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts-300x251.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Leannas-Quilts-600x502.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Leanna’s Quilts (Photo by Bill Newcott) “Look closely at the needlework,” Leanna tells me, gesturing toward the back side of one quilt. “Every quilt maker has a unique pattern. If the needlework is the same all the way across, then you know this was made by a single quilt maker. Different needlework means it was made by a group of women.” Leanna hastens to add that distinction does not define the quality of a quilt: Artistic collaboration often leads to uniquely unexpected designs. I ask if I could take a photo of Leanna with her quilts. “I’d rather you not,” she says sweetly – words that have been repeated to me, almost verbatim, everywhere I’ve gone in and around Shipshewana. The Biblical caution against graven images, it seems, is very much alive for 21st century Amish. A final stop introduces me to Ben Miller, co-founder (with his wife, Elizabeth) of Ben’s Soft Pretzels, where each year, in a dedicated room behind his flagship shop, thousands of visitors learn the ropes of folding dough into a traditional pretzel shape. Raised Amish, the couple married at age 20 and, for reasons still unclear even to them, went into the pretzel business. “We knew nothing about pretzels,” says Ben. “I mean, nothing! Elizabeth came up with the recipe all by herself. We started selling them at the auction place and a couple of other spots.” They’ve stuck with it for 20 years. Today he and Elizabeth have 200 franchises in 28 states. Ben deftly demonstrates how to fold a pretzel (the distinctive shape, created centuries ago by European monks, is meant to represent arms folded in prayer). I do my best to copy his work. Into an oven my creation goes, and in remarkably short order, it is done: brown, raised, and smelling like Heaven’s kitchen. A coating of butter, a pinch of salt, and it’s ready. “Go ahead, take a bite!” he almost whispers. “It’s the best pretzel you’ve ever had.” And you know what? He’s right. Maybe it’s the fresh-from-the-oven thing, but these pretzels also seem extra light and flaky. My compliments to Elizabeth the chef. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200382" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860not-bad-for-a-first-try-my-pretzel-before-i-inhaled-it/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it.jpg" data-orig-size="860,645" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"1.64","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 16e","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779367339","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.2","iso":"125","shutter_speed":"0.016666666666667","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Not bad for a first try My pretzel before I inhaled it" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Not bad for a first try: My pretzel before I inhaled it (Photo by Anne Braly) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it-500x375.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200382" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="645" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it-400x300.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Not-bad-for-a-first-try-My-pretzel-before-I-inhaled-it-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Not bad for a first try: My pretzel before I inhaled it (Photo by Anne Braly) Ben smiles recalling the day a couple of decades ago when first he shared some of those early pretzels with a non-Amish hunting buddy. “He said, ‘You should really focus on building up your pretzel business,’” Ben recalls. “And at the time I was so Amish I didn’t even have electricity!” It’s hard to miss the fact that Ben does not have the below-the-chin beard common to Amish men, and there is, of course, a story there: A decade or so ago, he and Elizabeth and their six children left the Amish church, about 25 miles north of Shipshewana, that had always been their home. They have since joined a non-Amish church – which to many in the Amish community is akin to heresy. Ben still has good relationships with his Amish family; Elizabeth, whose father was a church leader, has been shunned by hers. Ben’s eyes brighten, though, when he talks about their reception among the Amish of Shipshewana. “The people down here, they could not be more friendly,” he says. “They’re helpful and supportive toward all of us. It’s really special; a real welcoming community.” The sun is just about to dip beyond a farm field to the west as I emerge from Linda King’s Amish dinner. Across the yard, near a stable, her husband, Lamar, is standing next to the family’s black horse-drawn carriage. His hand is resting on the neck of their horse, named Buzz. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200385" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860view-from-the-king-family-farm/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-scaled.jpg" data-orig-size="2560,1440" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"8","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779304433","copyright":"","focal_length":"50","iso":"100","shutter_speed":"0.01","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860View from the King Family Farm" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" View from the King family farm (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-500x281.jpg" class="wp-image-1200385" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="484" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-400x225.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-500x281.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860View-from-the-King-Family-Farm-600x338.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> View from the King family farm (Photo by Bill Newcott) Scuffling and throwing his head around, Buzz seems ready to get going. “Want to go for a ride?” Lamar grins. The answer, of course, is yes. A minute later we are clopping along the paved road that runs along the King family’s farm. The only traffic out here seems to be another carriage, coming the other way. Lamar and the driver nod wordlessly. Buzz does not acknowledge his opposite number. He’s pushing anxiously ahead. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200386" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/in-search-of-the-amish/860buzz-on-the-road/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road.jpg" data-orig-size="860,484" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"4.5","credit":"","camera":"ILCE-6100","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1779304615","copyright":"","focal_length":"28","iso":"250","shutter_speed":"0.016666666666667","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="860Buzz on the road" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Buzz on the road (Photo by Bill Newcott) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road-500x281.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200386" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="484" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road-400x225.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road-500x281.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/860Buzz-on-the-road-600x338.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Buzz on the road (Photo by Bill Newcott) “Oh, I think he wants to run,” says Lamar. Wordlessly, Buzz gets the memo, and we are off. My instinct is to try to gin up a conversation with Lamar. But his eyes are straight ahead; his mouth is fixed in a tight smile. He’s loving this as much as I am, and really, there seems to be nothing to say. To our right, up a hill, a colt races to a low wooden fence and pokes his head over it. Lamar glances up at him. That same nod. One of these days, it will be his turn. Out here, there’s no rush. In Search of the Amish The Saturday Evening Post
The Forced Florida Exile of an Apache Warrior
After surrendering to the United States government, Geronimo and several Apache warriors were dispatched to Florida as prisoners of war, becoming an unlikely — and unwilling — tourist attraction. The Forced Florida Exile of an Apache Warrior The Saturday Evening Post
During the era of Manifest Destiny in the mid-19th century, the United States expanded westward. Following the Mexican-American War, lands inhabited by Apache peoples became part of the United States, intensifying decades of conflict between Apache groups, settlers, and the Army. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200310" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/geronimo-raid/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-raid.jpg" data-orig-size="400,596" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="geronimo raid" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Illustration by Frederic Remington from the August 18, 1888, Harper’s Weekly of Geronimo and his band returning from a raid into Mexico (Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-raid.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200310" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-raid.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="596" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-raid.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-raid-300x447.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> Illustration by Frederic Remington from the August 18, 1888, Harper’s Weekly of Geronimo and his band returning from a raid into Mexico (Library of Congress) A man named Geronimo led raids against soldiers in his homeland in modern-day Arizona and New Mexico, pushing back against the encroaching settlers. It’s this fearless leadership that transformed him into a Wild West folk hero, with sensationalized accounts from people who never interacted with him. After several attempts to subdue him, he surrendered to the United States government in 1886, making him one of the most prominent Indigenous leaders to do so. But this isn’t where his story ends. Authorities seized Geronimo and his fellow Chiricahua Apaches, stripping them of their weapons and sending them by train to live as prisoners of war. They imprisoned not only Geronimo’s followers but also Chiricahua Apache scouts who had served alongside the Army against him. It was believed that this would prevent other Indigenous people from continuing the fight against their colonizers. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200311" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42.jpg" data-orig-size="860,688" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Chiricahua Apache prisoners, including Geronimo (first row, third from right), seated on an embankment outside their railroad car in Arizona, 1886 (Picryl) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42-500x400.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200311" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="688" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42-400x320.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42-500x400.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42-768x614.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42-300x240.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/chiricahua-apache-prisoners-including-geronimo-1886-nara-530797-d8cc42-600x480.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Chiricahua Apache prisoners, including Geronimo (first row, third from right), seated on an embankment outside their railroad car in Arizona, 1886 (Picryl) The group was stationed at Fort Pickens, outside Pensacola, Florida, far from their homelands and familiar climate for the people from the mountain desert. Built in the 1800s to protect Pensacola Bay and the city beyond, the fort was exposed to the elements, with few trees for shade and protection. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200312" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/ft-pickens/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens.jpg" data-orig-size="640,474" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="ft pickens" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Fort Pickens, ca. 1860 (Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens-500x370.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200312" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="474" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens.jpg 640w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens-400x296.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens-500x370.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens-300x222.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ft-pickens-600x444.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> Fort Pickens, ca. 1860 (Library of Congress) Local groups petitioned that Geronimo and his men be kept here, and that his wives and children be sent to another fort in St. Augustine, which was dangerously overcrowded. By the time the Chiricahua Apaches arrived in Florida, many Indigenous peoples of the Southeast, including the Seminole and Muscogee, had already endured forced removal through policies associated with the Trail of Tears. Word of the famed war chief’s arrival spread quickly in the community, leading an estimated 400 people to take the boat to Santa Rosa Island and pay the 50-cent admission to see Geronimo for themselves. Geronimo and some of the other Apaches embraced the commercialism of their situation, selling photographs and homemade crafts. They were also hired for work by local farmers. Geronimo continued this practice of selling wares throughout his life, and allegedly had $10,000 in the bank at the time of his death. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200313" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/geronimo-bow/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow.jpg" data-orig-size="529,535" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="geronimo bow" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Geronimo kneeling with bow and arrow, 1904 (Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow-500x506.jpg" class="wp-image-1200313 size-medium" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow-400x405.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="405" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow-400x405.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow-500x506.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow-300x303.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow-100x100.jpg 100w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-bow.jpg 529w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> Geronimo kneeling with bow and arrow, 1904 (Library of Congress) But the Apaches were also forced to live in open-air casemates at the decommissioned base, enduring unfamiliar humidity and mosquito-borne diseases from the waterfront location. They were also forced into dehumanizing manual labor, including sawing logs and moving cannonballs, which some historians noted was against the terms of Geronimo’s surrender. It followed a previous legacy of the Army’s forced labor of enslaved Africans to maintain the fort. In 1887, surviving Chiricahua Apaches were transferred from Florida to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama amid concerns over disease outbreaks, including yellow fever, and finally ended the journey at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. They left behind the grave of one of Geronimo’s wives, Ga-Ah, after her death from pneumonia. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200314" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/geronimo-world-fair/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair.jpg" data-orig-size="860,637" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="geronimo world fair" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Geronimo and seven other Apaches pose in front of tents at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904 (Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair-500x370.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200314" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="637" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair-400x296.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair-500x370.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair-768x569.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair-300x222.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-world-fair-600x444.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Geronimo and seven other Apaches pose in front of tents at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904 (Library of Congress) Geronimo’s life as a public spectacle, however, didn’t end with his imprisonment in Florida. Though still classified as a prisoner of war, Geronimo was permitted to appear at the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska, the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in New York, and the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Theodore Roosevelt even recruited him for his inauguration parade, saying, “I wanted to give the people a good show.” <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200315" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/inauguration/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration.jpg" data-orig-size="860,790" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="inauguration" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Indian chiefs headed by Geronimo, passing in review before President Roosevelt on his inauguration day, 1905 (Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration-500x459.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200315" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="790" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration-400x367.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration-500x459.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration-768x705.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration-300x276.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/inauguration-600x551.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Indian chiefs headed by Geronimo, passing in review before President Roosevelt on his inauguration day, 1905 (Library of Congress) After many years of travel and exposure, Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 in Oklahoma, never making it back to his homeland. He’s now buried at Fort Sill, and, according to a long-circulating allegation, members of Yale’s Skull and Bones society removed Geronimo’s skull from the grave in the early 20th century, though definitive proof has never emerged. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200316" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/the-forced-florida-exile-of-an-apache-warrior/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e.jpg" data-orig-size="860,430" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Geronimo near the end of his life being interviewed by his biographer Stephen Melvil Barrett (left), with the help of translator Asa Daklugie (right), 1906 (Picryl) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e-500x250.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200316" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="430" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e-500x250.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e-768x384.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e-300x150.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/geronimo-biographer-and-translator-96ce6e-600x300.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Geronimo near the end of his life being interviewed by his biographer Stephen Melvil Barrett (left), with the help of translator Asa Daklugie (right), 1906 (Picryl) Today, you’ll find the fort that held Geronimo as part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. Geronimo’s impact in boosting visitors to the area is undeniable, but it likely extended the Apaches peoples’ imprisonment, never allowing them to return home to Arizona. The Forced Florida Exile of an Apache Warrior The Saturday Evening Post
Open houses offer Rosa a chance to connect, but with what? Someone an Awful Lot Like Me The Saturday Evening Post
An attempt has been made, the house polished and perfumed with the fragrance of lemon and pine. All for nothing. This house, Rosa knows within a minute of stepping inside, is pure crap. She sees the slug-colored tiles, the yellowed doilies, the kindergarten-bright floral wallpaper that whispers laziness and vulgarity, and she knows that anyone with this sort of taste would let a house go sour in ways not obvious. Standing in the hallway is a real estate agent that Rosa has not encountered before: female, younger than usual — obviously no college degree, Rosa thinks, no other viable options — wearing a pressed blazer over dress pants, a sparkly necklace, a glossy-lipped smile. Outdated, but earnest. Worth some of her time. “I’m Denise,” the agent says. “Would you like a tour?” Rosa is in her Sunday best, a navy-blue skirt whose zipper doesn’t quite close at the top, a white blouse with yellowed stains under the arms, unseen if Rosa keeps her arms down. She’s not the kind of woman to wave her arms. She knows that real estate agents do not give priority to 65-year-old women, not their best house-buying demographic, but she is all there is. “Certainly.” Denise takes her through the house, pointing out features obvious and unremarkable. Rosa sees vague watercolors on the walls, limp curtains in the windows, and in every room a scarcity of personal items. Rosa believes that prior inhabitants leave layers of residue like a palimpsest, the artwork she used to teach, residue she touches when she glides her fingertips on furniture, residue that lifts past conversations into her ears. This house presents silence. A house barely occupied. She thinks of the small apartment she shared with Manny, barely containing their life together, his booming voice, his ardor. “Pay attention,” she tells herself. The tour ends in the entryway. A business card pressed into her hand. Denise asks, “Are you looking for a house for yourself?” “Are you asking why a woman my age would buy a house? Will I not live long enough to enjoy it?” Denise’s face reddens. Not an attractive look, the agent’s fleshy cheeks highlighted, a chipmunk stuffed into a blazer. “I just want to know how I can help. What is your name?” “Rosa Taylor. I want a house big enough for my daughter and her family. They visit often. Camila has two sons. I’m a grandmother to teenagers.” Rosa waits as the hallway clock ticks off seconds, many seconds. “People tell me I don’t look old enough to have teenaged grandsons.” “That’s true, you —” “Thank you.” Rosa leaves. The agent was obtuse, unattractive, and, like that house, not worth her time. * * * In her car, Rosa removes the top sheet of paper from the stack on the passenger seat, exposing a new sheet containing directions and a map to the next house. She learned to do this a few months earlier when she left an open house and couldn’t find her way to the next house or back home. She ended up in front of a nondescript bar in a strip mall, crying, before she called Camila, who guided her home, one street at a time, Camila speaking with a patient, pained voice. Rosa plans her Sunday open houses carefully, looking up addresses on her computer, finding the simplest routes. She has taken to writing the addresses with a fat black marker because her doctor said her eyes are degenerating and she hated that, it sounded distasteful, her eyes corrupted and immoral. Rosa’s mobile phone rings through the car’s speakers. Camila checks on her often, ever since Rosa’s husband, Manny, passed away several years ago. Rosa answers, “Hello.” “Rosa Morales?” It is not Camila. “Yes.” The young man states his name and the name of her credit card company. “Did you recently purchase several items online? An Xbox? An HD TV?” “I’m sure I’d know if I did. My memory is fine.” “What about a bicycle? A mini refrigerator?” That sounds like the day Rosa and Camila went shopping as Camila prepared for college, the bittersweet mood of the day, how proud Rosa had felt and how forlorn to have Camila leaving, the conflicting emotions weighing on her until every item she picked up took on an aspect of solemnness and, relinquishing her usual frugality, she bought everything Camila desired. Pay attention, she thinks, the young man is talking. “What did you say?” “You’ve been a victim of identity theft.” Rosa tries to recall her kitchen that morning, the unwashed dishes in the sink, the dead houseplants on the windowsill, the stacks of books on the table. She reads histories and biographies, especially of the presidents, the good — shepherding the country through wars and recessions — and the bad — the slave owners, drinkers, womanizers — and the indifferent. The presidents had one thing in common; they were persons of consequence, they had mattered. Did she matter to anyone? “I’m sure I’d know if something was taken,” Rosa says. “They stole your identity. Someone used some of your personal data to get a credit card and pretend to be you.” “Someone wants to be me?” “They want credit cards that bill to you.” Through the window, Rosa sees the hulking form of Mount Diablo. She remembers the long runs in the foothills with the high school cross country and track teams, her body chiseled, her mind sharp. She should have kept running, she could be one of those wiry elderly runners, lording over everyone their physical prowess, the sleek fit of their clothing, their mental clarity. “My daughter will take care of this.” “We’re handling it. Your daughter doesn’t need to do anything.” “I had a son.” “Excuse me?” “I lost him. Carlos.” Rosa pictured him with Manny’s size and charisma combined with her studious nature and artistic capabilities. He would have been something. “Sorry? I don’t understand.” “Manny thought I shouldn’t miss someone that I never laid eyes on. But I felt him inside me. I knew what he would be.” Silence on the line, then, “We will cancel the card.” Rosa pictures a college-bound teen buying those items to build a new life, to become someone of consequence. “You won’t have to pay for those purchases,” the young man continues. “And, truthfully, the police don’t usually catch identity thieves. People always hope the thieves get caught.” Why would I wish trouble on someone, Rosa thinks, someone trying so hard to get by, someone an awful lot like me? * * * Rosa resumes driving, the speakers playing a song from the playlist on her phone. “Wild Horses,” Mick Jagger’s voice melancholy and raspy, Jagger claiming he can’t let her slide through his hands. She’s let so many people slide through hers. They lapse away. A few minutes later, she slows as she approaches the next house, a one-story ranch, lattice riding the fences, fluted white columns in the front. Scarlet O’Hara in a bungalow, Rosa thinks. Hearing Jagger’s voice in her head, telling her you can’t always get what you want, she does not stop. In elementary school, when Rosa first heard the Stones on the radio, she loved the vibrancy, the energy, the belligerence in their music. Her parents didn’t approve. That may have been part of its appeal. They didn’t approve of Manny, either. Manny had been on the track team of another high school, a pole vaulter of all things, outgoing and energetic, accustomed to being seen hurtling through the air, the center of attention. He approached her at the end of a track meet, struck up a conversation, asked for her phone number. In a group of girls, all tanned and toned, in shorts and tank tops, she had been chosen. They went out that weekend to see Star Wars at the theater, her first date. When he picked her up at her house on Bartlett Drive, he called her “the Rose on Pear Street.” She saw that he carried something with him, some gravitas; it implied in that moment a whole future life of similar moments. The only man she had ever dated. That night, in front of her house, kissing her, he told her, the first of countless times, “You’re really something.” Now, she lives alone in that small, old house. She and Manny lived in apartments, could never afford a house, until Manny died and she moved back in with her widowed mother. Two widows, decades apart in age, eating in silence, the only sound a scrape of utensils, a cough, two widows missing their husbands. Then her mother passed away and now Camila says that house is Rosa’s primary retirement plan. When Rosa tours nicer houses, she thinks her own house seems aged, inconsequential. Like herself. * * * She tours the next house on her own, finds the bedrooms lacy and colorful, an overtly feminine house. Their residue shimmers and she sees them: girls in ponytails, girls strapping on shin guards, girls dressing for dances in their brightest hopeful best, girls sharing makeup and arguments and secrets. She hears their conversations, conversations she should have had with Camila but felt that, as a mother, for propriety, she should keep a certain distance, a maternal aloofness, a president leading a family. Rosa steps into a kitchen where a man hunches over a laptop, his shirt untucked around a paunchy waist, hair teased out to disguise a receding hairline. A man like that, Rosa knows without peeking at his hand, is not married and has given up on the premise. Another agent Rosa has not met before. Another opportunity. Rosa says, “Hello.” He looks up. There it is, that moment, she can always see it in their yes — young, strong eyes — when they suddenly perceive her as a prospective buyer, someone of consequence. “Can I show you around?” he asks. “I showed myself around. While you were occupied.” “Any questions?” “I didn’t come here to exchange recipes.” She takes a deep breath, from the diaphragm; she’s been learning yoga. Camila says it is good for her. “Tell me about this house.” The agent stands up. He’s talking now, but the words aren’t registering. She listens for conversations from prior residents that have accumulated in the corners of the rooms, left floating on drafts of air. She trails her fingers over the cool granite of the kitchen counter, hoping for dust motes spun up into air, each mote a part of the family that lived here, particles of family DNA alighting on her hand like ladybugs. She wants to feel the vibrancy of the girls who had lived here. The agent says, “Solar panels decrease the electricity bill.” Rosa pictures hideous black mats on the roof. How did I miss that? Degenerate eyes. “Some days,” the agent continues, “you’ll produce so much electricity you won’t have to pay the power company. You’ll be off the grid.” Camila once told her that since Manny died, Rosa has pulled away, become more independent, gone off the grid. Rosa did not understand but heard something like admiration in Camila’s voice and Rosa took to telling herself, you are the kind of person who goes off the grid. A recent forest fire, news on the television, the pretty girl talking about power outages, grid problems, no concern to her. “I like to be off the grid,” Rosa says. “Right,” the agent says. “Then this is the place for you, Ms.…” “Fillmore.” He hands her a business card. She deposits it in her purse pocket, the pocket bulging with dozens of the small, stiff cards, the pocket difficult to close. * * * In her car, Rosa’s phone rings. She pulls over to the curb. “Mama, where are you?” Camila asks. “Down the street.” “Are you okay?” “Yes. For the millionth time.” “You aren’t visiting open houses, are you?” There is an accusation in Camila’s voice that Rosa has become familiar with; her child now parents her. If only she’d gone to college, if only she’d worked in a smart business suit in a high rise building in downtown San Francisco, Rosa’s life would be different, her daughter would not talk to her this way. If only Rosa had kept running. She was fast. Her name was in the newspapers. She was someone. “You’re only supposed to drive to the grocery store,” Camila continues, her voice softer. “I will take you anywhere else.” But not to the open houses. Her life feeling as constrained as a prison sentence, Rosa looks forward to this; she needs something to give each week a certain dimension, a separation. Sunday morning Mass serves the same purpose, but she often misses it, misjudges the time, arriving to an empty church. “Driving is dangerous,” Camila says. “Remember, the doctor said you had early onset de— … sometimes you have trouble remembering things. You might get lost again.” Rosa feels as if her life has been taken from her incrementally — Carlos, her father, Manny, her mother. So much loss is depleting. She remembers her father working often on their old car, keeping it running. She needs someone to keep her running. Manny was not mechanical. “I’m fine.” “Mama, we can’t ignore—” “Thank you, dear.” Rosa disconnects the phone. * * * The next house: a ranch house, squat and boxy. Rosa is barely in the door when an agent greets her. Fortyish, wide hips flaring out a dress that’s too tight, that looks uncomfortable. A woman, Rosa thinks, who has always been close — the cheerleader in the back row, a homecoming princess, a basketball player sitting on the bench during the final minutes of a game — and the constant effort to break through wears on her like the makeup she applied today with diligence but no artistry. “I’m Tiffany,” the agent says. “Can I show you the house?” Of course you’re Tiffany, Rosa thinks. A name as obvious as her makeup. “Certainly.” Tiffany leads Rosa into the kitchen and it’s so bright as to make even degenerating eyes squint, light sweeping in from floor-to-ceiling windows. Tiffany bends to slide out a wine drawer, her dress tightening, and from the lines she sees that under the dress, Rosa suspects that Tiffany wears that skimpy thing, the thing that got the president, the one who played the saxophone, in trouble. Tiffany is too old for that. “The drawer keeps wine cool,” Tiffany says. “My husband always preferred beer,” Rosa says. “Beer bottles will fit in the drawer.” “Manny passed away.” “I’m so sorry.” Rosa doesn’t like the way Tiffany is looking at her, sad-eyed, as if Rosa is a lonely old woman, bereft of family and friends. She has friends who come over for dinner and card games, who hugged her at Manny’s funeral. She hasn’t seen them lately. Where did they go? “Let’s see the rest,” Rosa says. Walking behind Tiffany in the hallway, Rosa feels the liveliness of this house, a house unable to contain the energy of its past, the wallboards pockmarked from games of Frisbee gone awry, floorboards scuffed by boxes carrying siblings dragged like sleighs. In her own house, she wonders what strangers would feel. In the small bedroom once inhabited by her mother Rosa keeps an easel, a tray full of crumpled oil paint tubes, canvases leaning against the wall. Rosa had been a painter most of her life, setting it aside with the absence of Manny, as if he might be her muse, something he would have found humorous. She had worked for decades as an aide in the nearby elementary school, eventually teaching art lessons. She never mentioned that she was a painter; it seemed dishonest, with no paintings hung on anyone’s wall, not even her own. At the end of the tour, the handing of a business card. Rosa turning to leave. A slight tap on her arm, a cool fingertip to her skin. Tiffany, smiling, her eyes still sad. “Have a good day, Ms…” “Pierce.” Rosa feels the touch after Tiffany pulls her hand away. When had someone last touched her in the soft, lost places, touched her with tenderness or expectation? Like losing a limb, sometimes she can still feel it: his breath against her neck, the stubble on his checks, his skin against hers, they made life, they made Camila, they made Carlos. Who will now tell her she is really something? Rosa finds it hard to breathe, the air gaining weight, her lungs unequal to the task. She is no longer what she used to be. She used to a painter, a wife, a mother, a teacher’s aide, a runner. What role can she still inhabit? Runner? What would her body do with sudden and surprising demands placed on it? Something is off, the day shaping up to be ordinary and forgettable. She sits in her car, skips the playlist so she can listen to “Angie.” Did Manny ever think that of me, she wonders, like there is no other woman who could come close to me? She feels herself sliding into one of her melancholy moods, as Manny called them. It sounded better than being depressed. It sounded old-fashioned and fleeting. Driving, Mick Jagger’s words, ain’t it good to be alive, floating in the car. Rosa, wanting to believe. * * * The next house has a sloping gray roof from which two dormers jut out, jaunty and showy and out of place. Rosa follows a middle-aged couple through the house, listening as they whisper their observations. “It’s ordinary,” the man says. “It’s a good house,” Rosa says. “What?” The husband turns to her. “A good foundation. No cracks. Never settle for a house that settles.” “Isn’t there a fault line near here?” asks the woman. “This house will stand longer than you,” Rosa says. Rosa leaves the room, heading for the front door, encountering a small knot of people. A young couple — she can’t see their hands, can’t see if they are married or shacking up — talking to two real estate agents, judging by their pretentious clothing and hearty manner. Is the young couple aware of the importance of a house purchase? A house holds a family like an envelope holds a letter; it contains their story. The young couple leaves and Rosa finds herself alone with the agents. One is female, wiry, in her mid-30s, with short blond hair, lively eyes. The other agent is male, thin, eyes deep set behind fleshy gray pads, as if he’s peering over sandbags. A scarecrow on the front lines. “Are you looking at houses?” the female agent asks. “Dear, if you’re asking am I alone, yes, I am. Alone. Looking for a house.” “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult—” “It takes a lot to insult me.” “I’m Cindy,” the agent says. She states the name of her agency, but it’s lost as Rosa thinks, of course, Cindy Brady from the old sitcom. Perky. Grown up now. Kids of her own. More cute than beautiful when young but aging into something that might approach attractiveness if she encourages it, if she applies more sunscreen, seeks out shade. Pay attention, Rosa thinks. “And you are?” Cindy asks. “Angie Buchanan.” “Didn’t I meet you a few weeks ago?” Cindy asks. “The house on Keller Ranch Road with the oval windows you thought looked out of place?” More than out of place, Rosa recalls, they were hideous, a submarine house, a Disneyland ride. “I don’t think so.” “I must be wrong,” Cindy says. “Because I thought you said your name was Van Buren. I usually am bad with names, but I remembered that because my husband has Dutch relatives.” The entryway feels tight to Rosa, the walls pinching in, bowed by the weight of the people upstairs looking at the house. This house doesn’t hold people well. “I’m sure I’d remember.” Cindy offers a small smile, her eyes searching Rosa’s face. “Wait,” the scarecrow says. “I met you a few weeks ago. I was showing the house on Salvio. You said your name was Jackson. I have a great memory for names and faces.” Rosa sees that while he did shave that morning, dots of dark hair stipple his pallid skin, like the canvas of an untalented painter experimenting with pointillism. “I know my name.” Cindy Brady and Scarecrow exchange glances. A humming in her ears crowds out thoughts. Rosa fights the desire to turn, head out the door. She remembers fingering the tassels on her childhood bedspread, fingering them like rosary beads, as worries flashed through her mind. Deep breathes, she reminds herself, deep and cleansing. The agents narrow their eyes. Accusing eyes. What is she being accused of? “Are you okay?” Cindy Brady asks. “Would you like us to call someone?” Scarecrow asks. He is so skinny that if he dove into a pool, he would make no ripples. An apt metaphor for his life. She wants to say, I’m famous, I’m traveling incognito, I’m in witness protection. She says, “I have nothing to hide.” “Jackson, Van Buren, Buchanan?” The scarecrow says. “What did you use after Van Buren, Tyler?” Cindy Brady says, “What are—” “Presidents,” Scarecrow says, with a look-at-me-I’m-so-smart smile. “She’s going through the presidents.” “Young man, if you knew history,” Rosa says, “you’d remember that Harrison, with his very brief term, not Tyler, came after Van Buren.” She still remembers presidential history, all those books, etched into her brain. Scarecrow opens his mouth to speak, something forming on his face, his muscles tensing with effort but nothing witty is available in there, it’s like watching her grandson as a baby sitting in his car seat, his entire body tense with the effort to expel something into his diaper. “Thank you for your time,” Rosa says. Then she is out the door, knowing the agents are talking about her, their words cut off by the closing door, words held in that house with all the other conversations. She sits in her car and wonders which cars belong to the agents. She could look for them at future houses, avoid them. But she’s not sure she will remember the cars unless she writes down the license plate numbers, which feels like too much effort. Rosa does not remember when she first began to forget. She feels tense, baffled by how unsettled her life feels. Her hands shake. When she reaches to remove the top page, the entire stack scatters to the floor. She picks up the pages, they make no sense, she can discern no order, they aren’t numbered. How to get to the next house? Giving up on that idea, just wanting to get home now. She can’t call Camila, not again. Camila has threatened to take Rosa’s car. Rosa feels the morning tilt away, Sunday morning drained of possibility, the week upended. Her mother would have said give it up to God. Rosa is not sure she still knows how. She feels strange to her own life. It begins to rain, not a steady, cleansing rain, just drizzle. The dreariness of it. She drives so many streets, looking for something that will orient her, Jagger singing about hanging a name on someone who changes every day. Finally, seeing the small park on Aspen, the park she used to run through as a teenager, her body knowing the way home from there. * * * At home, she finds her front door unlocked. “Mi casa,” she says. She sees her mother’s ofrenda, the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the pictures of Rosa’s father and Manny, items representing things they had enjoyed, making them always welcome in the house. In the kitchen, Rosa finds a can of soup. They are so convenient now, no need for can openers, no need to add water. She sits at her kitchen table, next to a stack of presidential biographies. What names will she use now? She could use the names of her favorite biographers. Angie Ambrose, Angie McCullough, Angie Goodwin. She tries a new name for every new house, imagines herself for the duration of a tour a new person, in a new house, a new life. The soup is cold. She forgot to heat it. She doesn’t bother, starts to eat, aware of the sound of the scrape of her spoon, the clock ticking. She lives alone, every day indistinguishable from the day before. Except for Sundays. Her week a long lead into Sunday and all those houses to visit, all those lives to briefly inhabit, all those real estate agents looking for someone to talk to. Someone like her. She remembers being a young woman, her life a blank canvas. An early marriage, early pregnancies, Manny dying young. The painting left vague, and despite its age, unfinished. Rosa sifts memories like flour through her fingers. I used to bake, she thinks. Cookies for Camila. Polvorones. No, her mother made those for her; Rosa made chocolate chip cookies for Camila. She looks at her soup: carrot segments, pale potato squares, meat. Bland and lifeless, not like Warhol’s can of soup. Viscous splotches of soup on her blouse, her skirt, hearing her mother’s voice telling her clean it, it will stain. Rosa feels stunned by a sadness she wasn’t prepared for. Bleak despair. She hadn’t realized until recently that melancholy was something that carried weight. Perhaps it is time to take up painting again. Camila tells her to do something new, give your brain a workout she said, keep it stronger, like a muscle. Write a memoir, Camila said, as if Rosa has lived a life worthy of reading about. Take up golf, learn Russian. It all sounds so very energetic and she does not feel up to any of it. She could run again — she could stand to lose a bit of weight, she feels she has become stout — the memory of it perhaps still in her legs. She could lose weight, wear clothes that fit, her life reversing, getting fitter, smarter, returning to the person she once was, when there was still the possibility of anything. * * * She walks the quiet rooms of her house, the house she once lived in with her parents, then with her elderly mother, then alone. Iterations of family. She feels slow and ponderous, a heavy solitude descending, something like grief. She knows that feeling: Carlos, Manny, her parents. The house folds in around her, smaller and tighter. She ends up in the garage. She presses the wall button and the garage door rumbles up. She wonders where she’ll put a mini refrigerator. She pushes aside empty boxes and suitcases to get to her bicycle; wipes dust off the seat. Flat tires. Maybe Camila or her husband can fix that. What is his name? Can I still ride? Is that secret balance still within me? She sees herself a wispy teenager, browned by the sun, running in the low hills. She remembers being that girl, sleek and fast, the simple joy of it, knowing where she’s going, filled with aspirations. Her life, like the trail she was running on, stretched out in front of her. Did that girl know? Where it would all go? Rosa realizes that she does not have the list of afternoon houses, does not have her purse or phone, does not have the paper with her own address. Retrieving all of that, finding all of that, feels arduous, overly ambitious. She stands in the open garage door. Wind swirls dirt across the driveway. A car goes by. The driver, a middle-aged woman. Is that Camila coming to visit? It is not Camila. The driver slows and looks at Rosa. Why is the driver staring? Rosa feels scrutinized. Does the driver have sad eyes? Accusing eyes? Rude to stare like that. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know that I’m the kind of person who goes off the grid. That I am the kind of person someone else wants to be. Rosa looks down, sees bare feet and a blue terrycloth bathrobe, flapping open, her underwear on display. She cinches the robe. When did I put that on? Did I change at lunchtime? As a girl, I had a pink robe. Worn in places, tattered at the edges, very soft. A melancholy mood. She needs to move, get out, like those long runs in the hills. There is only one thing to do — even in her robe and slippers, her body stout and soft, there is only one outlet for her grief. She gets in her car, turns on the Stones singing about not getting any satisfaction, starts the car, pulls away, driving down her street in the dreary rain, anticipating the houses she will visit, anticipating who she will be while inside them. A person of consequence. Someone an Awful Lot Like Me The Saturday Evening Post
Review: Office Romance — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
This undeniably appealing pair provide more than enough spark in this diverting-if-somewhat-rote story of an airline CEO taking up a forbidden romance with her company’s top lawyer. Review: Office Romance — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott The Saturday Evening Post
Office Romance Rating: R Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Brett Goldstein Writers: Brett Goldstein, Joe Kelly Director: Ol Parker Streaming on Netflix Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Boy and girl live happily ever after. That’s the time-honored formula that has defined romantic comedies since at least the days of Charlie Chaplin, and anyone who has dared tried to fiddle with that formula (other than, maybe, Woody Allen) has paid the box office price. The trick has always been in finding new ways to make the couple “meet cute,” and novel obstacles that threaten to derail their blossoming love affair. Above all, though, the two leads must not only have individual appeal – they also need, jointly, that special something that we’ve come to describe as “chemistry.” Tracy and Hepburn had it. Hanks and Ryan had it. And while no one this side of a fever-dreaming publicist would hope to place Jennifer Lopez and Ted Lasso costar Brett Goldstein in that romcom pantheon, the undeniably appealing pair do provide more than enough spark to power through this diverting-if-somewhat-rote story of an airline CEO (Lopez) taking up a forbidden romance with her company’s top lawyer. Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, the no-nonsense head of CruzAir, an up-and-coming regional airline based in Northern New Jersey (shoutout to Jersey City, which finally gets a claim to screen fame beyond The Sopranos). CruzAir is about to expand service to Dallas, but faces some regulatory problems because Jackie is suspected of obtaining access to those arrival gates via a romantic tryst with an airport official. (Not clear: how that would make any legal difference. And in any case, it’s not true; we know full well that Jackie is a shrewd negotiator who would never use her superstar-class charms to close a business deal.) When CruzAir’s top lawyer (Bradley Whitford) is suddenly incapacitated, his second-in-command, company newcomer Daniel Blanchflower, takes over the company’s defense (one can only guess that mouthful of a last name is Goldstein’s tribute to Irish soccer legend Danny Blanchflower). From the moment Daniel walks into the big boss’s office, natch, you can almost smell the pheromones in the air. But CruzAir has a strict no-dating policy for its employees, and there’s no way two of the company’s top executives could ever violate it, right? No, not right: With a toss of her hair and a lift of his eyebrow, these two are off to the races, maintaining a mostly professional relationship by day, steaming up the windows by night. Will these two maintain their secrecy? Can they keep canoodling on her office credenza? Or will their affair explode into the open in a scandal that would, for reasons that remain unclear, cause CruzAir to crash and burn? More importantly, who cares? Because we’re really just here to enjoy two attractive people sneaking around, saying snappy dialogue, and flying off to exotic locales. Check, check, and check. Lopez, a real-life business mogul, is just fine as a woman driven not only to succeed in business, but also to earn the respect of her pilot/company founder father (the great Edward James Olmos, of whom we don’t see nearly enough these days). Goldstein, who co-wrote the script with Ted Lasso creator Joe Kelly, is sneaky good as the high-powered lawyer who’s slumming it as an airline corporate guy for reasons known only to him. Were you to take 10 random screen stills from Office Romance, you’d swear Goldstein never once changes his expression. But in real time, with a turn of the head, a dart of the eyes, an almost subliminal hint of a smile, he manages to convey the precise degree of fun required for a lighter-than-air romcom like this one. One more ingredient common to every single successful romantic comedy you’ve ever seen: a strong supporting cast. (Remember Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby in When Harry Met Sally? And Robert Loggia in Big? And Carol Kane in Annie Hall?) Director Ol Parker (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) has assembled here a very deep bench: Whitford is ferociously hilarious as the corporate lawyer, Betty Gilpin nearly steals the whole show as Jackie’s incredibly pregnant and fiercely competitive right-hand woman, Jodie Whittaker (the first female Dr. Who) is unrecognizable as Daniel’s jailbird sister, and Amy Sedaris almost criminally turns what should be a cameo into a comic tour-de-force. You will learn nothing from Office Romance. Goldstein and Kelly freely pilfer material from The Desk Set, Woman of the Year, Broadcast News and, in an over-the-top finale, The Graduate. In other words, film historians will never type the words, “It all started with a film called Office Romance…” Still, there is nothing wrong with spending a couple of hours admiring the most enduring of movie templates. Plus, those of us who have found the loves of our lives at a nearby desk might just feel their hearts flutter a bit as these two steal glances across the lobby, share eyerolls at corporate meetings, and count the number of floors they’ll have that empty elevator to themselves. Review: Office Romance — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott The Saturday Evening Post
News of the Week: Hurricane Names, the Return of Dracula, and Marilyn Monroe at 100
In the news of the week ending June 5, 2026, are Hurricane Nana, the best vampire movie, and some luscious lemon recipes. News of the Week: Hurricane Names, the Return of Dracula, and Marilyn Monroe at 100 The Saturday Evening Post
Is Your Name on the List? The 2026 hurricane name list has been released. This year’s winners (?) are Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, Isaias, Josephine, Kyle, Leah, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paulette, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicki, and Wilfrid. I guess if you’re a “nana” in your family you can say that it refers to you. Is it an “honor” to have your name on the hurricane list or something you don’t want to be associated with? It probably depends on how devastating the damage is. Why Is Everything So Stupid? I didn’t even realize that this was a thing, but publishers are “updating” older books with modern references. For example, the 2006 young adult novel Pretty Little Liars had a reference to the reality show Fear Factor. But apparently nobody thinks that kids and adults can handle such a “dated” reference so they’ve replaced it with Instagram and Billie Eilish. Why do books have to change from what they originally said? How far can we take this? If a book written in the 1950s mentions President Eisenhower, will a future edition of that book have to update it with whoever will be president when the new version comes out? Will the books being changed have to be changed yet again in 20 or 30 years when these references are dated? By the way, to show how pointless this all is, Fear Factor is back on TV now. The worst part about this is that many of the authors of these books are actually okay with it! The new version of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret has a cover that shows the main character texting. Get it? She’s talking to God. In other books, they’ve taken out references to VCRs, tape decks, and phone books. And people wonder why younger people today have no knowledge/interest in the past. The publishers and agents and authors think that books should be “time-agnostic,” which is insane. What’s next, editing films and TV shows to take out the “dated” buildings and actors and music? Honestly, writing your book using AI would be less embarrassing than this. I can’t wait until they update The Great Gatsby. They can have Gatsby vaping and Nick Carraway doomscrolling and trying to find a place to charge his phone. Horror of Dracula 1958’s Horror of Dracula is one of the best vampire movies. It has the best Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), the best Dracula (Christopher Lee – sorry Bela Lugosi), and one of the most exciting endings to a monster movie. This Halloween a full-restored 4K version will be released on Blu-ray and will also be in theaters. The restoration includes three minutes of footage that was found decades later and hasn’t been seen by the public in over 65 years. Headline of the Week “French Museum Reports Theft of Arty Banana” RIP Peabo Bryson, Claude Lemieux, Bob Horner, Raymond Berry, Charles Cioffi, Marcia Lucas, Jay Daniel, Judith Barnard, and Caitlin O’Heaney Peabo Bryson sang such classic Disney songs as “A Whole New World” (a duet with Regina Belle) and “Beauty and the Beast” (with Celine Dion), as well as “If Ever You’re in My Arms Again,” “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love” (with Roberta Flack), and the theme song to One Life to Live. He died Tuesday at the age of 75. If Ever You’re in My Arms Again (Uploaded to YouTube by Peabo Bryson – Topic) Claude Lemieux won four Stanley Cups as part of three teams: The Montreal Canadiens, New Jersey Devils, and Colorado Avalanche. He died last week at the age of 60. Bob Horner was the Atlanta Braves third baseman who once hit four home runs in one game. He died last week at the age of 68. Raymond Berry was a Hall of Fame receiver for the Baltimore Colts and later a coach that led the New England Patriots to their first Super Bowl. He died last week at the age of 93. Charles Cioffi was a recognizable character actor. He’s the FBI agent who assigns Scully to work with Mulder on The X-Files. He also appeared on Assignment: Vienna, The Practice, and many soap operas, and was in such films as Shaft, Klute, Time After Time, and All the Right Moves. He died last week at the age of 90. Marcia Lucas was a film editor who had a big influence on the films of her husband George Lucas, including Star Wars (for which she shared an Oscar) and American Graffiti. She also edited Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and New York, New York. She died last week at the age of 80. Jay Daniel produced such TV shows as Roseanne, Cybill, and Moonlighting. He died last week at the age of 82. With her husband Michael Fain, Judith Barnard wrote under the name Judith Michael and penned several bestselling novels, such as Deceptions. She died last month at the age of 94. Caitlin O’Heaney starred in TV shows like Tales of the Gold Monkey and The Charmings as well as the horror movie He Knows You’re Alone. She died last month at the age of 73. This Week in History Marilyn Monroe Born (June 1, 1926) The Post’s Pete Martin wrote a revealing profile of Monroe for the May 5 and 12, 1956, issues. For a more recent appreciation of the actress, here’s the Self-Styled Siren. Elvis Presley Sings “Hound Dog” on The Milton Berle Show (June 5, 1956) Interestingly, he sang it (and danced controversially) on the show a couple of weeks before he recorded the album version we all know. Elvis Presley Sings ‘Hound Dog’ on The Milton Berle Show (June 5, 1956) (Uploaded to YouTube by Random Chet) This Week in Saturday Evening Post History: Massachusetts Mutual (June 2, 1951) <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200405" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/news-of-the-week-hurricane-names-the-return-of-dracula-and-marilyn-monroe-at-100/massmutual/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual.jpg" data-orig-size="697,946" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="massmutual" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-500x679.jpg" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1200405" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual.jpg" alt="" width="697" height="946" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual.jpg 697w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-400x543.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-500x679.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-423x573.jpg 423w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-148x200.jpg 148w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-300x407.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/massmutual-600x814.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 697px) 100vw, 697px" /> It’s graduation season. Perhaps your son or daughter needs some advice? National Lemon Month Let’s start with the most obvious lemon recipe, Homemade Lemonade, from The Pioneer Woman. Then we can try Curtis Stone’s Spaghetti with Garlic, Lemon, Kale, and Parmesan. Food.com has a Lemon Risotto, Salt & Lavender has Easy Lemon Chicken, Food52 has these Lemony Broccoli and Mozzarella Sandwiches, and Sally’s Baking has a Lemon Layer Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Buttercream. Sally also has a recipe for Lemon Bars, which I like, but as is the case with Malted Milk Balls, I can only eat one before they get to be too much. Next Week’s Holidays and Events D-Day (June 6) The timing of the invasion depended a lot on the weather, which is the plot of the new movie Pressure. French Open Finals (June 6 and 7) The women’s final airs Saturday at 9 a.m. ET and the men’s final is Sunday at the same time. Both air on TNT, TruTV, and HBO Max. Tony Awards (June 7) The 79th ceremony airs on CBS at 8 p.m. FIFA World Cup Begins (June 11) Here’s the schedule. News of the Week: Hurricane Names, the Return of Dracula, and Marilyn Monroe at 100 The Saturday Evening Post
Arctic Hive: An Alaska Backcountry Retreat Under the Northern Lights
This off-grid immersive experience puts guests in tune with remote wilderness. Arctic Hive: An Alaska Backcountry Retreat Under the Northern Lights The Saturday Evening Post
Layer upon layer, I get dressed in my stove-warmed cabin: wool, synthetic fleece, down, then nylon. At 15 degrees below zero, the wall of cold hits immediately as I step outside and turn on my headlamp to illuminate the snowy trail. My breath hangs in front of my face like clouds, and in the five minutes it takes to hike to my destination, an icy fringe has formed in my eyelashes. Inside the yoga dome, candles glow and mats are set on top of fluffy, faux-fur rugs. While celestial green ribbons still twist in the dark sky, practice begins. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200323" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/yoga-2/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga.jpg" data-orig-size="860,645" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="yoga" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" A yoga session (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga-500x375.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200323" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="645" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga-400x300.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/yoga-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> A yoga session (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200324" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/northern-lights/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/northern-lights.jpg" data-orig-size="400,533" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="northern lights" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" The Northern Lights (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/northern-lights.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200324" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/northern-lights.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="533" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/northern-lights.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/northern-lights-300x400.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> The Northern Lights (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) North of the Arctic Circle in Alaska’s interior, Arctic Hive’s small collection of cozy cabins and fiberglass domes are still under dark skies at 9 a.m. in December. The off-grid destination tucked into the Brooks Range near the Gates of the Arctic National Park operates wilderness retreats from yoga to dog mushing to skiing and snowboarding — but the sky is most dramatic during polar night. With only a muted blue twilight for about four hours per day, it’s not uncommon to see the Northern Lights from dinnertime straight through breakfast. The route here begins with a flight to Fairbanks, followed by a 7-hour van ride on the Dalton Highway, a 414-mile stretch of gravel road that runs north to Prudhoe Bay through some of the state’s most remote wilderness. It’s been described as “vast emptiness,” though it’s all but empty, with birch and spruce forests giving way to snow-dusted scrublands that take on an ethereal quality in the pastel winter light. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200326" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/daltonhighwayalaskaviewsofthesnowtoppedmountainsfrom/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179.jpg" data-orig-size="860,574" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Shutterstock","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"Copyright (c) 2024 Suemb/Shutterstock. No use without permission.","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"Dalton,Highway,,Alaska,,Views,Of,The,Snow,Topped,Mountains,From","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Dalton,Highway,,Alaska,,Views,Of,The,Snow,Topped,Mountains,From" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" The Dalton Highway (Shutterstock) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179-500x334.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200326" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="574" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179-500x334.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179-768x513.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dalton-hwy-shutterstock_2556254179-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> The Dalton Highway (Shutterstock) After stops in Yukon River Camp and Coldfoot, the van arrives in the historic mining village of Wiseman — population 11. It’s here where visitors meet Mollie and Sean Busby, who founded the hike-in backcountry retreat center for those looking to explore the arctic ecosystem through yoga, meditation, hiking, skiing and snowboarding, and dog sledding. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200327" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/arctic-hive-mollie-and-sean-busby/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby.jpg" data-orig-size="860,637" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Arctic Hive &#8211; Mollie and Sean Busby" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Mollie and Sean Busby (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby-500x370.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200327" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="637" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby-400x296.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby-500x370.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby-768x569.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby-300x222.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Arctic-Hive-Mollie-and-Sean-Busby-600x444.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Mollie and Sean Busby (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) The short trek to Arctic Hive is only about a mile, but once there, it feels a world away from everything. In the effort that it’s taken to arrive, my sense of time has dissolved, and the raw pulse of life without the anxieties of being a human in the modern world is felt once more. Following a dream of living in Alaska, Mollie and Sean skied out to the property that was to become Arctic Hive and found that the mountains reminded them of Arctic Norway, which was special in their travel memories. “Before we moved to the Brooks Range, I thought I knew wild places,” says Mollie. “But nothing prepared me for the tundra igniting in fiery reds and oranges, or for the punch of antioxidants packed into tiny Arctic blueberries. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw hundreds of caribou migrating across snow-covered mountains — it’s like witnessing the land itself in motion.” Yoga and adventure retreats began in 2021 and are held from late September through late April, as well as dog-assisted backcountry ski and snowboard opportunities, yoga teacher trainings, and learn-to-mush retreats for those who yearn for the thrill of driving a dogsled with a team of Alaska huskies in the Arctic. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200329" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/dogsledding/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding.jpg" data-orig-size="860,573" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"14","credit":"","camera":"Canon EOS 5D Mark II","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"95","iso":"400","shutter_speed":"0.0015625","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="dogsledding" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Dogsledding (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding-500x333.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200329" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="573" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding-500x333.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/dogsledding-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Dogsledding (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) The women-only Winter’s Womb retreat takes place during winter solstice — the darkest time of the year. Near the bridge of one calendar year to another, it seems the perfect moment to slow down and meet the wild world surrounding me. The four-night adventure includes twice-daily yoga and meditation practices, vegetarian meals, snowshoeing, dog sledding, and a visit to Wiseman to learn more about what it takes to live in the Brooks Range — the world’s highest mountain range within the Arctic Circle. After dinner, we cuddle with new sled dog puppies Hygge, Kaamos, and Lykke, as well as Darla, the queen of Arctic Hive’s 32-dog population. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200330" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/dcim100mediadji_0403-jpg/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range.jpg" data-orig-size="860,645" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"2.2","credit":"","camera":"FC220","caption":"DCIM100MEDIADJI_0403.JPG","created_timestamp":"1556309233","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.7","iso":"100","shutter_speed":"0.001167","title":"DCIM100MEDIADJI_0403.JPG","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="DCIM100MEDIADJI_0403.JPG" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" The Brooks Range (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range-500x375.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200330" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="645" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range-400x300.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Brooks-Range-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> The Brooks Range (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) Only three to eight participants can attend each retreat session. When my session’s four attendees retire to our cabins for the evening, we choose aurora watch times to wake up, peek out the window, and dash outside to knock on doors and marvel together at the undulating emerald and amethyst lights. It feels like a game to measure the childlike experience of wonder against the growing feeling of cold to determine just how long I can remain outside before returning to the warmth of my bed. No matter how much I wake up each night, I never feel tired in the morning. The aurora magic carries me through the day. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200331" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/arctic-hive-an-alaska-backcountry-retreat-under-the-northern-lights/snowshoeing/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing.jpg" data-orig-size="860,645" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="snowshoeing" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Snowshoeing (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing-500x375.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200331" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="645" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing-400x300.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/snowshoeing-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Snowshoeing (Photo courtesy of Arctic Hive) “Guests sometimes ask if we think they can do this, but it seems that the people who can’t are those who never ask the question,” says Mollie. “By the time guests get here, they’ve worked very hard by planning and packing the right gear. It’s powerful to experience the Arctic without having to worry about your survival, and enjoy the wilderness in a comfortable bed in a warm cabin with the aurora just overhead.” In addition to Arctic Hive, the Busbys also run Riding On Insulin, action sports camps for kids with type 1 diabetes — a non-profit born in 2010 out of Sean’s desire to give back to kids who inspired him to continue his pro snowboarding career after his own diagnosis at the age of 19. The ski and snowboard camps are located across North America, but a summertime Alaska wilderness adventure retreat for teens takes place on the Busbys’ remote arctic property. In the moody dimness, following the fairy string lights between the trees to yoga practice and meals often makes it feel as if this snow world is ours alone. On the day before we pack into the van to return to the land of grocery stores, traffic, and airports, we take a twilight dogsled journey along the frozen Koyukuk River beneath jagged peaks to see herds of caribou. Their collective breath, like ours, twines and rises into the crisp air, dissipating in the boreal forest. To experience wilderness in this rare way is to feel the spirit of the Arctic deeply and remember the importance of protecting the “vast emptiness.” Arctic Hive: An Alaska Backcountry Retreat Under the Northern Lights The Saturday Evening Post
Here on Main Street: The Age-Old Question
I could buy 75 bottles of Plymouth Gin, a box of matches, and a book on the history of arson, and they wouldn't bat an eye. But I have to prove I'm of age when I buy something to help me get over a cough. Here on Main Street: The Age-Old Question The Saturday Evening Post
Could I have your birthdate? You could, but it would be a remarkable coincidence. That’s part of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with the cashier at the supermarket. I was buying some cough medicine, along with chicken, carrots, corn, mouthwash, and those Riesen candies, which are insanely delicious but sometimes get stuck in my teeth. She asked me for my birthdate because I was buying cough medicine to help me get rid of a nagging cough. I guess there are a lot of addictive ingredients in cough medicine, and they want to make sure I’m not 16 years old and sharing it with my buddies on a Friday night. I gave my age, and she punched the numbers into the register. I was a little surprised by her question. Not completely, because I know that CVS and other stores are locking up razor blades, something else that’s maddening, but it’s odd that an adult has to prove their age at the supermarket when it’s just one item among 30 others that they’re buying. Cough medicine is something that people have bought for a century with no problem. Apparently, I can buy sharp knives and painkillers and dangerous, corrosive cleaning fluids and not have to prove my age, but buying cough medicine is beyond the pale. I paid by debit card, and I was wondering what would have happened if I had tried to pay with cash. Would they have looked at me funny? Maybe they would have thought I was paying in cash because I didn’t want any kind of electronic trail tied to my name when buying cough medicine. Like I was making a drug deal. Do they really think I’m going to get hooked on a cough suppressant? There are so many other better-tasting substances I could take too much of (and have), why would I choose Formula 44? Do I look that desperate? And just because I’m old enough, why does that prove to the store that I’m not going to use the cough medicine incorrectly? Do only underage people abuse it? When I buy alcohol at the liquor store, they don’t ask me for my birthdate. They don’t even ask for an ID anymore, because of my baldness and the specks of white in my beard. I haven’t had to show a proof of age in probably 30 years. I could buy 75 bottles of Plymouth Gin, a box of matches, and a book on the history of arson, and they wouldn’t bat an eye. But I have to prove I’m of age when I buy something to help me get over a cough. And I didn’t have to show my ID to this cashier either. She simply believed me when I told her my birthdate, or she didn’t care because she probably has to ask the question several times a day. I could have said anything that sounded realistic. November 9, 1972! March 13, 1980! August 22, 1946! Okay, I hope she would have questioned that last one. I don’t look that old. Here on Main Street: The Age-Old Question The Saturday Evening Post
A waiter’s job is rarely fun, but it can be funny! Cartoons: A Spate of Waiters The Saturday Evening Post
Want even more laughs? Subscribe to the magazine for cartoons, art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199737" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx4-5-58-8/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7.jpg" data-orig-size="750,599" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1626447432","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx4-5-58" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" “I’ve been expecting you.” Scott Taber April 5, 1958 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7-500x399.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199737" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="599" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7.jpg 750w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7-400x319.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7-500x399.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7-300x240.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx4-5-58-7-600x479.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> “I’ve been expecting you.” Scott Taber April 5, 1958 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199738" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx3-31-62-4/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3.jpg" data-orig-size="750,589" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1673447318","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx3-31-62" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" “Who gets the extra-dry Martini?” Elmer Atkins March 31, 1962 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3-500x393.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199738" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="589" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3.jpg 750w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3-400x314.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3-500x393.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3-300x236.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-31-62-3-600x471.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> “Who gets the extra-dry Martini?” Elmer Atkins March 31, 1962 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199739" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx2-11-61-2/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1.jpg" data-orig-size="750,655" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1660060917","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx2-11-61" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" “Waiter! How about a little action around here?” Herb Green February 11, 1961 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1-500x437.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199739" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="655" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1.jpg 750w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1-400x349.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1-500x437.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1-300x262.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-11-61-1-600x524.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> “Waiter! How about a little action around here?” Herb Green February 11, 1961 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199740" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx2-7-59-4/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3.jpg" data-orig-size="650,759" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1635182306","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx2-7-59" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" “The main difference between the two-dollar dinner and the three-dollar dinner is one dollar.” Jack Markow February 7, 1959 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3-500x584.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199740" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="759" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3.jpg 650w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3-400x467.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3-500x584.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3-300x350.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx2-7-59-3-600x701.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px" /> “The main difference between the two-dollar dinner and the three-dollar dinner is one dollar.” Jack Markow February 7, 1959 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199741" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx1-6-62-4/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3.jpg" data-orig-size="750,657" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1671017249","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx1-6-62" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" “I said those veal cutlets. What’s holding up those veal cutlets?” Robert Day January 6, 1962 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3-500x438.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199741" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="657" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3.jpg 750w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3-400x350.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3-500x438.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3-300x263.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-6-62-3-600x526.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> “I said those veal cutlets. What’s holding up those veal cutlets?” Robert Day January 6, 1962 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199742" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx1-5-63-7/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6.jpg" data-orig-size="750,504" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1679497263","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx1-5-63" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" “Sir, do you want that businessman’s lunch with an olive or a twist of lemon peel?” Bob Schroeter January 5, 1963 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6-500x336.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199742" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="504" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6.jpg 750w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6-400x269.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6-500x336.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6-300x202.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx1-5-63-6-600x403.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> “Sir, do you want that businessman’s lunch with an olive or a twist of lemon peel?” Bob Schroeter January 5, 1963 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1199743" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/cartoons-a-spate-of-waiters/cx3-16-57-3/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2.jpg" data-orig-size="750,530" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Jennifer Bortel","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1615396348","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cx3-16-57" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Glad you could make it!” Bill Yates March 16, 1957 " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2-500x353.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1199743" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="530" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2.jpg 750w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2-400x283.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2-500x353.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2-300x212.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/cx3-16-57-2-600x424.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> Glad you could make it!” Bill Yates March 16, 1957 Want even more laughs? Subscribe to the magazine for cartoons, art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives. Cartoons: A Spate of Waiters The Saturday Evening Post
Missing in History: The First Female Pinkerton Detective
Kate Warne claimed that she could worm out secrets in many places where it would be impossible for male detectives to go. Missing in History: The First Female Pinkerton Detective The Saturday Evening Post
In July 1856 when 23-year-old Kate Warne answered an ad for a detective at Pinkerton’s Chicago agency, Allan Pinkerton was stunned. It was “not the custom to employ women detectives,” he told her. Warne persisted, claiming that “she could go and worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access.” She added that women more easily befriended other women whose husbands and mates were suspected criminals, especially since those men often bragged to them about their deeds. Pinkerton decided to hire Kate Warne that day, and she went on to become one of the shrewdest detectives of the 19th century. Within two years, Warne proved her value after she befriended the wife of Nathan Maroney, a suspect in the $50,000 embezzlement of the Adams Express, a freight and cargo company. Warne replaced her northern accent with a southern one and eventually won the wife’s trust. Using information she gleaned from her “friendship,” Warne not only proved the suspect’s guilt, but also facilitated the return of nearly $40,000 after forcing the embezzler to make a full confession. Pinkerton was so impressed with Warne that in 1860 he appointed her head of his new Female Detective Bureau in Chicago. Soon afterwards, Warne recruited Elizabeth H. Baker and Hattie Lawton for her bureau; they both later served as Union spies during the Civil War. The same year that Pinkerton appointed Warne head of the Female Detective Bureau, Abraham Lincoln was elected to the presidency, outraging the Southern states that had seceded from the Union. Their secession created hostilities and disruptions in trade, including reports of threats to the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. Pinkerton sent Warne and other agents to Maryland to investigate. On February 2, 1861, after Warne informed him about a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln, Pinkerton assigned her to Baltimore to find out more. As she did in the Maroney case, Warne disguised herself as a wealthy southern lady. She wore a cockade pin signifying allegiance with the rebels, hobnobbed with locals at secessionist social gatherings, and uncovered key details about the assassination plot. To do so she had to “cultivate the wives and daughters of suspected plotters.” <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200236" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/missing-in-history-the-first-female-pinkerton-detective/pinkertonlincolnmcclernand/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand.jpg" data-orig-size="960,1342" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="PinkertonLincolnMcClernand" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Allan Pinkerton, President Abraham Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand, Antietem, 1862 (Photo by Alexander Gardner, Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-500x699.jpg" class="wp-image-1200236 size-medium" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-400x559.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="559" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-400x559.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-500x699.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-768x1074.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-300x419.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand-600x839.jpg 600w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/PinkertonLincolnMcClernand.jpg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> Allan Pinkerton, President Abraham Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand, Antietem, 1862 (Photo by Alexander Gardner, Library of Congress) By then, the president-elect was planning a whistle-stop tour from Illinois to Washington, D.C. leading up to his inauguration. One of those stops was in Baltimore, a hub for southern trains. Lincoln’s train would terminate at Calvert Street Station, and he would need to be driven by horse and carriage from Calvert Street to the connecting train at Camden Street Station. It was during that transfer, Warne discovered, that the secessionists planned a street brawl that would immediately summon Baltimore’s police force. Inevitably, that would leave Lincoln “entirely unprotected and at the mercy of a mob of Secessionists.” After being told about the plot, Lincoln seemed skeptical, but when Frederick W. Seward, the son of William H. Seward, the secretary-of-state designate, confirmed it, the president-elect agreed to amend his travel plans. After arriving in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Pinkerton arranged for Lincoln to travel to Philadelphia on a secret Pennsylvania Railroad train. The detective also had the telegraph lines temporarily closed to avoid publicity. As Pinkerton had planned, on February 22, Lincoln changed clothes at the Philadelphia station, wearing a loose overcoat, a hat pulled over his forehead, and a shawl to disguise himself as an invalid. Surprised to see a woman detective as part of the Pinkerton team, he told Warne, “I believe it has not hitherto been one of the prerequisites of the presidency to acquire in full bloom so charming and accomplished a female relation.” Warne had also arranged for four berths on a Baltimore-bound train for her “sick” brother, herself, and two relatives. The train arrived in Baltimore around 3:30 p.m. Lincoln and his party were secretly transported by carriage to the Camden Street Station where they caught a 4:30 a.m. train for Washington, D.C. During that trip Warne stayed awake all night, which subsequently inspired the Pinkerton agency’s slogan “We Never Sleep.” <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200237" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/missing-in-history-the-first-female-pinkerton-detective/pinkerton/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton.jpg" data-orig-size="860,284" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="pinkerton" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" The logo of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, “We Never Sleep” (Wikimedia Commons) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton-500x165.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200237" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="284" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton-400x132.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton-500x165.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton-768x254.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton-300x99.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/pinkerton-600x198.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> The logo of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, “We Never Sleep” (Wikimedia Commons) The Baltimore Plot, as the foiled plan was later dubbed, was the most famous of Warne’s operations as a detective. Later, during the Civil War, Warne continued her spy work, often infiltrating Confederate groups by posing as a Southern sympathizer and sending the information to Pinkerton. In the post-war era, Warne helped solve several high-profile murder cases. One of them involved the murder of bank teller George Gordon, who had been killed with the blow by a hammer to his head. Pinkerton already knew that Gordon had been stealing money for his friend Alexander P. Drysdale, but lacked enough proof to have him indicted. Warne consequently assumed the identity of a Mrs. Potter, befriended Drysdale’s wife, and discovered where he had hidden the stolen money. Another high-profile case solved by Warne’s chameleon-like talent to assume other personalities concerned Captain J.N. Sumner, who believed his widowed sister Annie Thayer and her married lover Mr. Pattmore were trying to poison him and had already murdered Pattmore’s wife. By taking on the identity of a fortune teller, “L.L. Lucille”, Warne coaxed information out of Annie Thayer during a mystical session which led to the conviction of Pattmore. Simultaneously, she supervised other female detectives in Pinkerton’s agency. Pinkerton told new women recruits that they would train “with the head of my female detectives, Kate Warne. She has never let me down.” Warne died on January 28, 1868, at age 34 or 35 from pneumonia. It was believed that she was Pinkerton’s mistress, and while that was never confirmed, she was buried in his family plot at the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Her March 19, 1868, obituary in the Democratic Enquirer praised Warne for her “great mental power,” found her “an excellent judge of character” and “the best female detective in America, if not the world.” Later the Pinkerton Agency claimed that Warne was “a source of inspiration” in the agency’s history and that it sustained her legacy by continuing to hire female detectives. Missing in History: The First Female Pinkerton Detective The Saturday Evening Post
Don’t let scammers ruin your summer vacation. Con Watch: Tips for Scam-Free Travel The Saturday Evening Post
“Summertime,” goes the classic George Gershwin song from Porgy and Bess, “and the living is easy.” Many people look forward to summer vacation all year. Unfortunately, scam artists — the only criminals we refer to as artists — do as well, because all too often the scamming is easy. Here are three common vacation scams and how you can avoid them. H.R. Vacation Scam: You get an email that appears to come from your employer’s Human Resources Department, asking you to follow a link to submit your request for vacation time. Clicking on the link can cause you to download dangerous malware or trick you into providing your online credentials, giving scammers access to your company’s computers and data. How to avoid it: Never click on a link or provide personal information in response to an email or text message unless you have confirmed that the communication is legitimate. If you receive a communication that appears to come from your H.R. Department, contact the department directly through an official company email or phone number. Car Rental Scam: Scammers create phony car rental company websites that appear to be legitimate. A.I. has made it easy for even technologically unsophisticated scammers to create such counterfeit sites. SEO poisoning is a cyber­attack method in which criminals manipulate search engine rankings to push harmful websites to the top of search results. The websites can look legitimate, and the online ads can look polished, but you can bet that any money you pay to them won’t go toward renting you a car. How to avoid it: Phony car rental websites can be hard to distinguish from websites of real rental companies. Always check the website’s URL carefully before responding to an offer. Is that O really a zero, or that capital I really a lowercase L? Go the extra step and determine who owns the website. There are several ways of doing this. One of the easiest is to go to ICANN (lookup.icann.org), enter the domain name, and click on “Lookup”; it can tell you who actually owns the website. For instance, if you think you are renting from Hertz and the website you are on is owned by someone in Nigeria, you can be pretty confident it is a scam. Airbnb Scam: Scammers create listings for nonexistent properties on Airbnb, complete with fake reviews and A.I.-generated photos. Generally, a telltale sign that an Airbnb listing is a scam is when the “host” — the person who interacts with guests on a reservation — asks to communicate or make payments outside the Airbnb platform. How to avoid it: Though Airbnb collects your money when you schedule a stay, it doesn’t issue payment to the host until after you’ve checked in; a host claiming before your stay that you haven’t paid is either scamming you or is new to Airbnb. Only communicate with hosts through the ­Airbnb website or app, and only use the Airbnb payment system with a credit card — never pay via wire transfer, Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, certified check, debit card, or any other method. Credit card companies provide higher levels of protection from scammers and are quite good at refunding money lost to scams. Steve Weisman is a lawyer, college professor, author, and one of the country’s leading experts in cybersecurity, identity theft, and scams. This article is featured in the May/June 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives. Con Watch: Tips for Scam-Free Travel The Saturday Evening Post
Slave Patrols Didn’t Just Oppress Enslaved People
Maintaining slavery necessitated the construction of large surveillance apparatus driven by fear and held together by the deployment of violence. But this larger infrastructure also impeded the rights of white Americans. Slave Patrols Didn’t Just Oppress Enslaved People The Saturday Evening Post
In an April 22, 1820, letter to Massachusetts representative John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson encapsulated the nation’s struggle over the vexing issue of slavery: “As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” Jefferson’s quote underscored both slavery’s power and fragility: It was a brutal system that enslaved millions and delivered great wealth but required constant vigilance and filled enslavers, like Jefferson, with nightmares of rebellion. Maintaining slavery necessitated the construction of large surveillance apparatus driven by fear and held together by the deployment of violence. This surveillance was meant to control enslaved people as well as freed Black people (who were seen as a dangerous contagion carrying the disease of freedom). But this larger infrastructure also impeded the rights of white Americans and contributed to future violations of civil rights. Securing labor in North America was always difficult. As a result, controlling workers required the threat and deployment of violence. Virginia, which heavily influenced slave control structure across the colonies and states, enacted coercive measures to control labor — first over indentured servants and later the enslaved. In his study of colonial Virginia, American Slavery, American Freedom, historian Edmund S. Morgan wrote, “Virginians dealt in servants the way Englishmen dealt in land or chattel.” Servants, and later slaves, were little more than “machines,” Virginia’s treatment of labor “producing fortunes for a few, misery for many.” One of the key methods used to oppress and control enslaved and free Black people was the use of slave patrols. Slave patrols did not formally coalesce until the second half of the seventeenth century, based on the widely imitated Barbadian slave code passed initially in 1661. South Carolina, the first colony to organize slave patrols, replicated the Barbadian code in its 1696 law, which “enjoined town constables to organize white men in to groups which would capture, whip, and jail slaves from the countryside found in town on Sundays,” writes historian Sally E. Hadden in her 2001 work, Slave Patrols. Slave patrols did not limit themselves to the enslaved; rather they regulated all “suspicious groups” including indentured servants, fleeing debtors, and Native Americans, observes Hadden. Though initial patrols varied in their membership, they were later drawn from colonial militias, which were dedicated to battling external threats — foreign invasion and conflict with indigenous peoples — and patrolling the enslaved. Virginia took longer to adopt slave patrols. Its militia first focused on repelling threats from Native Americans until, in 1727, the House of Burgesses passed a law mandating that the militia form slave patrols. Though some historians have argued that only the lowest class whites served on slave patrols, others like Hadden suggest they were drawn “from virtually all social classes.” The expansion of tobacco, rice, and cotton production led to an increased dependence on slavery, and to more slave patrols. Initially, the fate of a runaway or unruly slave was thought to be a private concern of the slaveholder, but as agricultural production expanded, so too did the public interest — or the public interest as defined by planters — in controlling the movement of enslaved people. During the second half of the seventeenth century, planters convinced colonial legislatures to commit their respective colonies to approve and fund a “rudimentary policing power to [preserve] a white supremacist labor system and a vision of public order” while also establishing “pass laws” that required enslaved workers to carry documentation issued by their enslaver approving their movement, writes historian Gautham Rao in his new book on the topic, White Power: Policing American Slavery. The free movement of enslaved people, as well as free Blacks, was perceived as a threat that needed to be controlled. Following independence, the United States Constitution codified the practice by requiring that escaped enslaved people be returned to their owners. It was followed by additional laws such as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to say nothing of state laws in Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, Maryland, and elsewhere that strengthened the power of enslavers and enacted a larger infrastructure of slave control. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200137" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/slave-patrols-didnt-just-oppress-enslaved-people/conqueringprejudice860/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860.jpg" data-orig-size="860,692" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="ConqueringPrejudice860" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Lithograph by Peter Kramer depicting Daniel Webster as a member of an enslaver&#8217;s posse in pursuit of a fugitive slave (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860-500x402.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200137" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="692" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860-400x322.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860-500x402.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860-768x618.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860-300x241.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/ConqueringPrejudice860-600x483.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Lithograph by Peter Kramer depicting Daniel Webster as a member of an enslaver’s posse in pursuit of a fugitive slave (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress) Slave patrols preceded even the formation of formal police forces, although the distinction between patrols and police may have been negligible to the enslaved population, according to interviews with formerly enslaved persons conducted by the Works Project Administration during the 1930s. “They jes’ [sic] like policeman, only worser,” W.L. Bost told WPA interviewers in 1937. In urban areas like Charleston, the slave patrols often operated at night and carried out functions we might associate with policing, such as the night watch. Rural patrollers held similar responsibilities. According to historian Jennifer Tucker, it was in the South during the antebellum period that “an unfettered constitutional right to carry weapons in public originated.” The deputization of whites as the bulwark against the enslaved carried long term influence. Deputizing all white men to address “public danger” — as unattended enslaved people were viewed — functioned to “criminalize Blackness,” Rao notes. Additionally, slave patrols meant the state was explicitly funding racial violence while political leaders stoked fears by describing the potential for a burgeoning racial “apocalypse” should slavery end or the enslaved go unsurveilled. What did this policing of slavery encompass? It required public arrests, beatings, and sometimes killings. After all, what looked like a “corn shucking party, prayer meeting, or loud gathering could well serve as a prelude to a slave rebellion,” Rao writes in White Power. “Enslavers could never be too careful.” But the perceived threat to the antebellum way of life came not only from local tensions, but also from larger geopolitical forces — namely war. Indeed, nearly every military conflict from the American Revolution through the Civil War threatened the state of slavery because the need for men at the front compromised enslavers’ ability to police the enslaved. One enslaver, recounted in Rao’s book, commented that war “destroys our efforts against the external Enemy paralyzes everything like vigilance & Police in respect to the more dangerous internal population.” “The heart of the entire story is white fear,” Rao notes. Such fears were both contrived and real, and persisted even without war. The Stono Rebellion of 1739 serves as a very tangible instance of violent revolt, and its memory reverberated among enslavers for decades. On September 9, 1739, 20 enslaved Africans secured weapons by robbing a local general store in Wallace, South Carolina. Joined by between 40-60 more Africans, the rebellion proceeded to march toward Florida in hopes of gaining their freedom, killing 20 white people before local militias put down the insurrection. The 1811 German Coast Uprising and the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion furthered such fears and led to increasingly brutal systems of control based on the Virginia example, which established a more centralized “heavily militia based” approach, according to Rao. Eventually, the Virginia system became the dominant model, a result that Rao says, “speaks to the growing fears over time of the possibility of slave rebellions and the idea of armed Black resistance.” <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200138" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/06/slave-patrols-didnt-just-oppress-enslaved-people/whitneyplantation860/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860.jpg" data-orig-size="860,645" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="WhitneyPlantation860" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" Whitney Plantation memorial to the German Coast Uprising of 1811 outside New Orleans (Photo by Ryan Reft, April 2026) " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860-500x375.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200138" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="645" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860-400x300.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860-500x375.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/WhitneyPlantation860-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Whitney Plantation memorial to the German Coast Uprising of 1811 outside New Orleans (Photo by Ryan Reft, April 2026) Simultaneously, many enslavers believed enslaved people to be satisfied with the perceived benevolence of slaveholders. These same slave owners expressed shock that their enslaved workers would desert them, before and during the Civil War. Regardless of their beliefs regarding the satisfaction of their enslaved workforce, enslavers expressed great fear that, given the opportunity, rebellious enslaved people would murder white families and sexually assault their wives and daughters. While slaveholders often made self-serving paternalistic arguments regarding their enlightened treatment of enslaved peoples, many, consciously or unconsciously, understood that their own treatment of the enslaved deserved retribution, Rao points out. While obviously targeting America’s Black population, slave patrols and the various fugitive slave laws passed over the course of American history affected white Americans too, compromising their own freedoms in the name of maintaining the nation’s fealty to slavery. South Carolina, a colony in which enslaved people outnumbered whites, serves as an example. In addition to establishing slave patrols in the early 1700s to control the movement of enslaved workers, South Carolina also passed legislation that enabled constables to force free whites into these slave patrols. This model privileged whiteness, but also forced whites to enforce slavery. In North Carolina, a 1729 law asserted that any “’loose, disorderly or suspected person, black or white” discovered in the proximity of an enslaved person at night was subject to apprehension, an appearance before a justice of the peace, and a possible lashing. Because most whites did not have enslaved workers, impressment into slave patrols by local authorities on behalf of enslavers sometimes heightened class tensions. Enslavers recognized that “poor white populations were also threats to their hegemony,” says Rao. Deputization of whiteness through racial slavery and slave patrols did unify whites in the South to some extent, but class tensions persisted. The nation’s highest court facilitated the growing power of enslavers at the expense of others. The 1842 Supreme Court decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania ruled that states could not pass laws infringing on the rights of an enslaver to recapture fugitive slaves. The Court, Rao writes, threw away civil liberties and “radically rewrote what were once accepted boundaries of state and federal authority.” Sympathetic members of Congress used the decision to craft the more expansive Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The law furthered tensions as it enabled the dragooning of local whites in Northern states where slavery had been abolished into patrols to retrieve fugitive slaves. “A fugitive slave meant that any free persons could be turned into a slave catcher,” Rao writes. The law served as the fulcrum upon which the Civil War would tilt roughly a decade later. Even in the absence of slavery following the Civil War and Reconstruction, totalitarian systems of control over the Black population persisted as a combination of racist state governments and violent paramilitaries like the Klu Klux Klan sought to maintain the racial hierarchy established under the slavery regime. Though paramilitaries never entirely “usurped the rule of law,” writes Rao, “they scored their greatest successes by stationing their bayonets next to the voting booth … [V]iolence and politics were one and the same.” The Supreme Court here too played a role: Several rulings during the Reconstruction era undermined federal efforts to protect Black populations against violations of their civil rights and political violence. This represented a sharp legalistic change: Earlier in the century, the Court had emboldened federal power on the part of enslavers through fugitive slave laws, but then shifted to a states’ rights perspective that neutered federal efforts to protect Black Americans. Fear played a role in the absence of slavery as well. Following the passage of the 13th Amendment and the conclusion of Reconstruction, many white political leaders and paramilitaries spoke of “vengeful Black people” “killing and murdering our people” as part of a larger paranoid fictional racial apocalyptic landscape used to justify violent repression of Black voters and the implementation of Black Codes and Jim Crow segregation, writes Rao. Slavery ended more than 150 years ago, but the systems built to control it, namely slave patrols, the larger infrastructure of surveillance, and the fear that drove it have persisted over time. “The ghosts of this old system are not dead but woven and knotted in the fabric of American political culture,” Rao asserts. We still see fear driving “division and discord” in key national moments: the Yellow Peril hysteria of the late nineteenth century, the rise of the Know Nothing Party and anti-immigrant sentiment of the same period that seeped into the early twentieth century, and the Red Scare of the 1950s serve as just a few examples. A system built to control one group never limits itself. The same concepts and forces that drove slave patrols inspired campaigns to drive out Asian immigrants on the West Coast, established a government of surveillance of them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and enabled the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The lynch mobs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century — whether targeting Jews, immigrants, or African Americans — sprang from the same impulses and legal structures established by the slave control systems decades earlier. As William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Slave Patrols Didn’t Just Oppress Enslaved People The Saturday Evening Post
Patsy Mink’s Battle for Fundamental Human Rights
The first Asian American woman to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives fought for what she argued were the most basic needs of our society. Patsy Mink’s Battle for Fundamental Human Rights The Saturday Evening Post
In 1947, Patsy Takemoto Mink wrote to the University of Nebraska’s student paper, The Daily Nebraskan, “When I arrived here, I hoped I could find some link with what I was told America was like. I cannot understand how people, believing they belong to the greatest nation on this Earth, can tolerate such lowly practices.” Her comments addressed the university’s then segregated housing policy that prohibited non-white students from residing within the main dormitory. Seventeen years later, Mink would walk the steps of Capitol Hill as the first Asian American and non-white woman to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her journey began on the sugar plantations of Maui, where she was raised as a third-generation immigrant to Japanese grandparents. Growing up on the sugarcane fields, Mink noticed how her Asian and Native Hawaiian neighbors were segregated from the plantation’s often white landowners. Mink’s father, inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt and his experience as the plantation’s land surveyor, was adamant about educating his children on issues of politics. Unlike the other kids, Mink spent much time attending local election rallies with her siblings. It was from listening to campaign speeches and tuning into FDR’s radio addresses that Mink understood the potential politics had to improve daily life. The Japanese-American experience changed dramatically after the attack on Pearl Harbor, just a day after Mink’s 14th birthday. Japanese-Americans in Hawaiʻi were not confined to internment camps like those on the mainland, but were still seen as suspect and controlled under martial law for the next two years. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, a historian at UC Berkeley, and Gwendolyn Mink, Patsy Mink’s daughter, write that it was in the years following Pearl Harbor when she “developed a painful awareness of racial, linguistic, and class hierarchies, instituted into the fabric of the school system.” Despite the ever-shifting racial dynamics and witnessing her father be taken in by authorities for questioning after the attack, Mink wasn’t immediately drawn to work in politics. Rather, the young Mink, inspired as a child by a local physician, sought to become a doctor. After graduating as her high school’s valedictorian in 1944, she enrolled into a pre-med track at the University of Hawaiʻi. But Mink’s undergraduate studies were nothing short of turbulent. In a span of three years, she transferred to two other universities — first Wilson College in Pennsylvania, then the University of Nebraska. During opening week at Wilson College, Mink was ushered into a meeting with the university president who expressed concern for her academic success and social life, assuming that English was not her first language. This encounter was likely Mink’s first brush with a microaggression — the often-unintentional act of racial stereotyping — that led her to transfer out after one semester. Mink’s experience in Nebraska was no better. There, she challenged the school’s discriminatory housing policy that placed her, as well as other Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, in an international student’s dormitory. Mink launched a letter-writing campaign that protested the university’s segregated housing, which eventually forced the board of regents to rescind the policy. After her two-year-long stay on the mainland, Mink eventually returned to Honolulu to finish her education at the University of Hawaiʻi. Mink’s future in medicine quickly came to an end. After earning her B.A. degree, Mink applied to dozens of medical programs only to be rejected because she was a woman. Left with few options, she found work as a typist for the Hickam Air Force base in Honolulu. Mink couldn’t help but feel stuck. With the help of an advisor, she decided to apply to a few law schools, and to her surprise, she was admitted to the University of Chicago’s law program as one of two women. Not long into her first semester, she met John Francis Mink at a dinner held in International House, one of the university’s dormitories. “People just looked at her and wanted to be with her,” the World War II veteran went onto say, and within six months the couple wed. Chicago winters were harsher than anything Mink had known in Hawaiʻi. After three long years, in 1951, she and her husband graduated. They remained in the city with hopes of finding work and settling down, but Mink struggled to land a spot at a law firm. She wrestled with the Chicago job market for a year before having her daughter Gwendolyn in 1952. Not long after, the pair decided to pick up their things and move back to Honolulu to raise their young daughter. Finding work in Honolulu proved equally difficult. Again, no law firm would hire Mink — not only was she in an interracial marriage, but she also faced skepticism for being a mother. Each rejection brought the same excuses: that the job required long hours, that she should stay at home to raise her daughter, and that it was ill-advised to be out working late at night. Frustrated, Mink decided to open her own law practice, doing whatever it took, including accepting fish as payment, to get by. From 1953 onward, Mink practiced law as the first female Japanese-American attorney in her home state, while also providing services for the territorial House of Representatives. Through all this, politics lingered with her. Mink’s investment in the democratic cause began to deepen, founding and serving as the president of the Oahu Young Democrats in 1954, a grassroots political organization of young progressives. Eventually, she ran a brief, and unsuccessful, campaign for a House seat upon Hawaiʻi’s admission as the 50th state in 1959. Despite her loss, Mink refused to be discouraged, finding success in her second bid for Congress in 1964 when an additional congressional seat opened up. This victory marked the beginning of Mink’s trailblazing political run, spanning 12 terms in the House of Representatives from 1965 to 1977 and 1991 to 2002. With the women’s movement gaining momentum in the late 1960s and 1970s, Mink brought public attention to gendered issues that were generally dismissed, including workplace discrimination, childcare legislation, and educational equality. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200276" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/05/patsy-minks-battle-for-fundamental-human-rights/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default.jpg" data-orig-size="860,701" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="mink &#8211; iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" x " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default-500x408.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200276" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="701" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default-400x326.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default-500x408.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default-768x626.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default-300x245.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-iiif-service_mss_mss84957dig_001_12_0001-full-pct_25-0-default-600x489.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> Mink campaigning for Congress with family and supporters, circa 1966 (George Dean Studio Inc. Patsy T. Mink Papers, Library of Congress) Today, Mink is known best for co-authoring and defending Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in all federally funded educational programs. It is the most widely cited legislation of the Education Amendments of 1972, passed during President Richard Nixon’s tenure. Though Title IX is credited for propelling women’s participation in sports, its primary goal was to mandate equal access for women in both admissions policies and scholarship selection. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200277" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/05/patsy-minks-battle-for-fundamental-human-rights/mink-protest/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-protest.jpg" data-orig-size="400,493" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="mink protest" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" x " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-protest.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200277" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-protest.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="493" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-protest.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-protest-300x370.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> Congresswomen Charlotte Reid (R-Illinois), Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), and Catherine May (R-Washington) protest the meaning of the “Members Only” sign at the entrance to the U.S. House of Representatives gym, February 6, 1967. (Patsy T. Mink Papers, Library of Congress) “I certainly consider Title IX one of my most significant accomplishments while I served in Congress from 1965 to 1977,” Mink announced in a speech to Congress on the bill’s 25th anniversary. She championed education as one of the most powerful ways to empower marginalized communities, saying “equal educational opportunities for women and girls is essential for us to achieve parity in all aspects of our society.” Though Mink is primarily remembered for her contributions to Title IX, she was outspoken about many other issues plaguing women. The congresswoman introduced policies to improve child care and early childhood education, shaped from personal experience of raising her child while balancing a demanding legal career. In 1967, Mink pioneered the first comprehensive child-care bill that required not only custodial care but also educational development services for pre-school-age children from all backgrounds. Mink was also passionate about securing federal funding for women’s centers, feminist studies programs, nonsexist curricula, and training for teachers to make sure that school girls were guaranteed equitable educations. In addition to defending women’s rights, Mink staunchly supported civil rights and the anti-war movement. Only a few days after being sworn in to Congress in 1965, she helped challenge the election of the all-white Mississippi congressional delegation on account of discrimination, intimidation, and violence against African American voters. Throughout this time, Mink kept Martin Luther King Jr. updated with the happenings on the House floor. She further faced criticism from her peers for attempting to organize peace talks with foreign political leaders to end the U.S. occupation in Vietnam. And her opposition to G. Harrold Carswell’s Supreme Court nomination for his alleged sexism and misogyny “felt very momentous and risky,” <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=when+did+gwendolyn+mink+say+this+%22%E2%80%9Cfelt+very+momentous+and+risky%2C%E2%80%9D&oq=when+did+gwendolyn+mink+say+this+%22%E2%80%9Cfelt+very+momentous+and+risky%2C%E2%80%9D&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRiPAjIHCAIQIRiPAtIBCDk4NDlqMGo5qAIGsAIB8QW9ZgmQEB4USA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&source=chrome.ob#:~:text=Web%20results-,Patsy%20Mink%20Opposed%20Carswell%20And%20Helped%20Pave%20Way%20to%20%27Roe%27,https%3A//www.theatlantic.com%20%E2%80%BA%20archive%20%E2%80%BA%202018/09%20%E2%80%BA%20pats...,-Sep%2016%2C%202018">according to Mink’s daughter in an interview with The Atlantic. When she returned to Congress in the 1990s after being away for 14 years, she faced a very different political climate, one that was much less accommodating toward liberal democratic values. Her final terms in office were spent defending the policies she helped implement, including Title IX, against an administration that appeared to have lost sight of its purpose: improving the lives of Americans. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200278" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/05/patsy-minks-battle-for-fundamental-human-rights/mink-2022/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-2022.jpg" data-orig-size="400,517" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="mink 2022" data-image-description="" data-image-caption=" x " data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-2022.jpg" class="size-full wp-image-1200278" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-2022.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="517" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-2022.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/mink-2022-300x388.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> The official House of Representatives portrait of Congresswoman Mink, ca. 1994 (Wikimedia Commons) Mink’s contributions were crucial for the burgeoning feminist second wave, demonstrating how intersectionality worked in practice as both a woman and Asian American. She longed to take part in shaping a freer America: “Her personal experience with gender discrimination fueled her desire to make sure other people didn’t have that experience,” Wu said. After Mink’s death in 2002, Title IX was renamed the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act to honor her legacy. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month may be coming to an end, but we must always be reminded of all that Mink, and other prominent AAPI leaders, risked to ensure that all Americans regardless of race or gender could lead their best lives. “If to believe in freedom and equality is to be a radical, then I am a radical,” she proclaimed before an audience of 10,000 at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Mink is celebrated as one of America’s great progressive politicians, but she never saw herself fighting for something inherently special. The late congresswoman battled for what she argued were the most basic needs of our society — fundamental human rights. Patsy Mink’s Battle for Fundamental Human Rights The Saturday Evening Post
Classic Covers: Rural Wedding by John Clymer
Clymer’s Rural Wedding appeared on the May 29, 1954, cover of the Post. Classic Covers: Rural Wedding by John Clymer The Saturday Evening Post
Scenes from small-town America: Part of the Post’s fame rested on its reputation for capturing the scenes and spirit of America’s villages and towns. Norman Rockwell was just one artist who painted in this vein. Just as important was John Clymer, who painted the passing seasons of nature and life far from the city. In his landscapes, which ranged from suburbs to wilderness, he captured moments of picturesque childhood, tranquil nature, and family life — scenes presented as they’re recalled in happy memories. He specialized in aerial landscapes, as seen here, which enabled him to include more detail and an evocative stretch of landscape. Clymer’s Rural Wedding appeared on the May 29, 1954, cover of the Post. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200128" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/05/classic-covers-rural-wedding-by-john-clymer/lastpage_clymer_600no_9540529-full/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full.jpg" data-orig-size="860,880" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full-500x512.jpg" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1200128" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="880" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full.jpg 860w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full-400x409.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full-500x512.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full-768x786.jpg 768w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full-300x307.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/LastPage_Clymer_600no_9540529-full-600x614.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px" /> This article is featured in the May/June 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives. Classic Covers: Rural Wedding by John Clymer The Saturday Evening Post
News of the Week: Goodbye Schlitz, Hello Typos, and the Best Place to Live in the U.S.
In the news of the week ending May 29, 2026, are beer, best cities, and beating AI at its own game. News of the Week: Goodbye Schlitz, Hello Typos, and the Best Place to Live in the U.S. The Saturday Evening Post
When You’re Out of Schlitz, You’re Out of Beer I’m not the biggest beer drinker in the world, but when I do buy beer, I have to admit that Schlitz is probably the last beer I think of. Okay, that’s not really fair. I have nothing at all against Schlitz beer. It’s the gateway beer (along with Budweiser) for a lot of people when they first starting drinking beer. I loved the commercials. I remember my family drinking it in the ’70s. Maybe it’s just that I stopped thinking about Schlitz when I moved on to Sam Adams and Blue Moon. (The last beer I would buy is Guinness, which is too strong and thick and almost chewy for my liking.) But I think people who regularly drink beer have their favorites, and the people who make Schlitz have discovered that theirs isn’t one of them. After 177 years, Schlitz has ceased production. Officially it’s on “hiatus,” which means “maybe we’ll be it back for nostalgia purposes at some point but probably not.” Indiana Wants Me, But I Can’t Go Back There What’s the best place to live in America? Well, I think I gave the answer away above but I haven’t told you which particular cities are the best according to U.S. News & World Report. You can click on that link to find the top two places to live (and the other 248). Coming in third is Flower Mound, Texas. Other places that made it into the top ten include Ankeny, Iowa and Hoover, Alabama. Massachusetts, where I live, usually has cities near the top on lists like this, but the highest-ranked city is Newton, at 116. That can’t be right. Indiana Wants Me (Uploaded to YouTube by R. Dean Taylor – Topic) I Typo, Therefore I Am This is what artificial intelligence has driven us to. Because people are so worried that others will think what they’ve written was actually written by AI — whatever you do, don’t use an em dash! — they are purposely inserting typos into their text. Apparently, mistakes, even if they’re on purpose, are how we prove ourselves human now. (Too bad most resumes are read by machines and will probably disqualify you because of those typos.) Wood I due something like that? Of kourse knot. World War II Veteran with No Family Honored by Strangers My favorite story of the week: Uploaded to YouTube by CBS Boston RIP Kyle Busch, Sonny Rollins, Grizz Chapman, Rob Base, Robert Daley, Sam Sianis, Peter Helm, and Ike Willis Kyle Busch was a champion NASCAR driver. He won a record 234 races. He died last week at the age of 41. Sonny Rollins was a legendary and influential jazz saxophonist. He died Sunday at the age of 95. Grizz Chapman played Grizz, Tracy Jordan’s bodyguard, on 30 Rock. He died last week at the age of 52. Rob Base was the rapper known, with DJ E-Z Rock, for the song “It Takes Two.” He died last week at the age of 59. Robert Daley was the author of several acclaimed books, including Prince of the City and Year of the Dragon. He died Tuesday at the age of 96. Sam Sianis owned Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern, the inspiration for Saturday Night Live’s classic “Cheezborger Cheezborger” sketch. He died earlier this month at the age of 91. Peter Helm appeared in the films The Andromeda Strain and Inside Daisy Clover and on many TV shows in the 1960s. He died last week at the age of 84. Ike Willis was a singer and guitarist for Frank Zappa. He died earlier this month at the age of 70. This Week in History “Hands Across America” (May 25, 1986) It was a great idea — forming a human chain from coast to coast to show unity — but there simply weren’t enough people in certain parts of the country to complete the chain. And it didn’t raise as much money for charity as organizers had hoped. This might be a good time to try it again, though. Patrick Henry Born (May 29, 1736) People know that he said “Give me liberty or give me death!” But do you know why he said it? This Week in Saturday Evening Post History: Del Monte (May 26, 1923) <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="1200257" data-permalink="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/05/news-of-the-week-goodbye-schlitz-hello-typos-and-the-best-place-to-live-in-the-u-s/delmontead2/" data-orig-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2.jpg" data-orig-size="696,891" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="delmontead2" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2-500x640.jpg" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1200257" src="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2.jpg" alt="" width="696" height="891" srcset="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2.jpg 696w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2-400x512.jpg 400w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2-500x640.jpg 500w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2-300x384.jpg 300w, https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/delmontead2-600x768.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 696px) 100vw, 696px" /> If you look on the left, you’ll see a can of olives, which I point out because … Monday Is National Olive Day Olives: a food I like that I never eat for some reason. Here’s a recipe (scroll down) from Curtis Stone for a Tuna Salad Picnic Sandwich, which has kalamata olives. Iowa Girl Eats has Herb and Garlic Marinated Olives, The Kitchn has Easy Green Olive Pasta, and The Pioneer Woman has a recipe for Chicken with Olives. How about some Beer Battered Fried Olives from Spoon Fork Bacon? You can use Schlitz. For dessert, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can try this Orange and Black (Olive) Chocolate Cake from Food52. Next Week’s Holidays and Events Turkey Lovers Month Begins (June 1) Shouldn’t Turkey Lovers Month be celebrated in November? Repeat Day (June 3) Shouldn’t Turkey Lovers Month be celebrated in November? News of the Week: Goodbye Schlitz, Hello Typos, and the Best Place to Live in the U.S. The Saturday Evening Post
Have you heard about what this word used to mean? In a Word: What’s the Gossip? The Saturday Evening Post
Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today. In some Christian traditions, infant baptism involves not only the parents, child, and church, but other people who sponsor the baptism and who promise to help guide the child’s spiritual growth. Today, we call these people godparents. Becoming a godparent links the adult and the baptized child spiritually, and the word godparent indicates that one is the child’s “parent” not through blood but through God. The tradition is an old one, going back more than a millennium. But a millennium ago, during the Old English period, they weren’t called godparents; the word parent wouldn’t arrive in the language until after 1066. In Old English, a godparent was called a godsibb. The word sibb (which lives on today in the word sibling) meant “blood relative.” Like a godparent, a godsibb was an adult who was related to the child through God rather than through blood, but without the inherent parent-child structure of godparent. If you’ve ever been around an infant, you know how horrible they are at even the simplest conversation. This has always been true. Interactions between a baby and a godparent/godsibb must be mediated through the child’s parents or other godparents, which can create stronger bonds among the adults involved even while they focus on the child’s needs. Godsibb, then, came to indicate the relationship between the godparent and the child’s parents or between multiple godparents of the same child. Naturally, these are pretty close and amiable relationships, so during the Middle English period, the word came to describe any close friendship. The word itself changed, too. Godsibb over time became more clipped, evolving into gossip. And what do friends do when they get together? They chat. They natter and jabber, kibitz and prattle. Sometimes about other people. By the 16th century, gossip had taken a downturn: It was a person who participated in idle chatter or who spread rumors. After that, gossip progressed in fairly expected ways. By the 17th century, the noun had been verbed: Gossips were gossiping. And by the 19th century, the shared bits of information (or misinformation) had themselves become gossip. In a Word: What’s the Gossip? The Saturday Evening Post