FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES THIS
BY BRIGHT MAGAZINE GROUP
A philanthropic journey started with one small step AMERICAN ESSENCE
Exploring a wild horse sanctuary in Wyoming Mustang Mystique
Revolutionary War banners reflect solidarity Flags of Liberty
The beloved actor is honoring his son’s musical legacy in a most special way
“We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies.”
Emily Dickinson
Brooklyn, New York City
12 | The Perfect American Road Trip
Let the call of the open road take you across America’s most beautiful expanses.
14 | Opening Our Homes and Hearts
An etiquette expert’s advice for entertaining to bless, rather than to receive.
16 | Resilience and Grace
Gary Sinise reflects on his blessings, from his family to his work with veterans.
24 | Stepping Forward
Chris Meek’s experience on 9/11 gave him a new life mission.
32 | The Library in the Woods
A beloved private library serves families through its collection of wholesome, inspiring books.
36 | Magnificent Mustangs
Wild horses run free at Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary in Wyoming.
44 | The Power of Second Chances
Former prisoner Darnell Epps finds a new purpose in advocating for the value of skilled trades careers.
46 | Finding Home
A chance encounter with a homeless woman changed Karen Olson’s life—and those of countless families across America.
48 | Widows United
One woman’s journey to help other grieving widows heal their pain.
52 | Forged to Last Smithey’s American-made skillets are inspired by the golden age of cast iron.
54 | Horse Whispering
A farmer and his mischievous gelding offer a peek into the millennia-old bond between man and horse.
56 | The Science of Great Grilling and Barbecue
A Barbecue Hall of Famer debunks seven stubborn myths.
60 | The Best Cherry Pie
Wisconsin cherry royalty shares a family recipe for the summer favorite.
64 | Empress Eugénie’s Refuge
As the French government unraveled, trusted friends abandoned the empress—except for a respected American dentist.
70 | Quelling a Rebellion
When angry farmers took to the streets, President Washington personally led 12,000 soldiers to handle the situation.
72 | Surmounting the Odds
Once an unimaginably sickly child, Wilma Rudolph became one of the fastest and most decorated athletes worldwide.
76 | Standards of Allegiance
The Continental Army units each designed and flew their own flags.
80 | Happiness Through Virtue
Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, believes that a successful self-government is a reflection of each citizen’s virtuous self-mastery.
84 | Gunston Hall Plantation
Founding Father George Mason penned influential documents about America’s foundational principles from his storied Virginia home.
88 | Why I Love America
Schoolteacher Thomas Craig draws from reallife examples to teach his students the righteous values that America represents.
90 | My Family Roots
The story of his immigrant Greek grandmother inspired Darrell P. White never to give up in the face of challenges.
92 | Unlocking Celestial Secrets
Richard Panek enthusiastically retells the history and science behind the James Webb Telescope in his new book “Pillars of Creation.”
98 | Rx for Life
Integrative nutritionist Cara Clark explains how maintaining good eating habits can alleviate common ailments.
BY
FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES THIS COUNTRY
JULY – AUG. 2025 | VOLUME 5 | ISSUE 4
PUBLISHER
Dana Cheng, PhD
EDITORIAL
Editor-In-Chief
Managing Editor
Lifestyle Editor
History Editor
Arts & Letters Editors
Editor-At-Large
Production Manager
Channaly Philipp
Annie Wu
Crystal Shi
Sharon Kilarski
Sharon Kilarski
Jennifer Schneider
Tynan Beatty
Astrid Wang
CREATIVE
Lead Designer
Designer
Photographers
Illustrators
Jane Russo
Karen Tang
Samira Bouaou
Adhiraj Chakrabarti
Biba Kayewich
Oriana Zhang
SALES
Sales Director Sales Assistant Ellen Wang Onon Otgonbayar
CONTRIBUTORS
Sandy Lindsey, Tim Johnson, Annie Holmquist, Kenneth LaFave, Walker Larson, Jeff Minick, David Coulson, Randy Tatano, Hazel Atkins, Anna Mason, Eric Lucas, Kevin Revolinski, Sally Humphries, Brian D’Ambrosio, Andrew Benson Brown, Dustin Bass, Deena Bouknight, Thomas Craig, Darrell P. White
American Essence (USPS 24810) is published bimonthly by Bright Magazine Group at 5 Penn Plz. Fl.8, New York, NY 10001. Periodicals postage is paid at New York, NY.
Postmaster: Send address changes to American Essence, 5 Penn Plz. Fl.8, New York, NY 10001. General Inquiries: AmericanEssence.net/help Advertisement Inquiries: ad@americanessencemag.com Submissions: editor@americanessencemag.com www.AmericanEssence.com
Dear Readers,
July is a special month for us. On Independence Day, we celebrate the birth of our nation and its unique history. We also count our blessings.
In this issue, we speak with Gary Sinise, whose career as an actor and director made it possible for him to establish a platform to improve the lives of our service members and veterans. He’s faced difficult times himself, most notably after his son, Mac, passed away. But he found a path to healing—through remembrance and music. Through it all, he continues his impactful, compassionate work (page 16)
We also learn about philanthropist Chris Meek, whose life was irrevocably changed by 9/11. Over the years, his small acts of kindness have grown into the mission and work of SoldierStrong, a nonprofit that tackles issues affecting our nation’s heroes, often in innovative ways (page 24).
Read about Darnell Epps, who was formerly incarcerated and who now connects jobs in the skilled trades with the people who need them (page 44); Karen Olson, the founder of the nonprofit organization Family Promise, which helps homeless families nationwide (page 46); and Sarah Masarik, who created a library full of wonderful, wholesome books that spark children’s love of learning and reading (page 32).
These stories all remind me of the kindness and resilience of the American spirit and of Americans.
May you have a blessed summer,
Editor-In-Chief Editor@AmericanEssenceMag.com
Indulge in the finest at DAYES Coffee Roasters.
We’re proud to introduce our specialty, enzyme fermented coffee. This innovative coffee is low in caffeine, low in acidity, gentle on digestion, mycotoxin free, and deliciously smooth - with notes of dark chocolate, butterscotch, brown sugar, and nuttiness. Fermented with 50 enzymes, each premium quality bean is specially crafted and roasted at our own coffee shop in Middletown, New York.
MARLBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL
Marlboro, Vt.
July 19–Aug. 17
Since 1951, young musicians and master artists have gathered in the tiny town of Marlboro, Vermont, to share ideas and rehearse in a uniquely collaborative learning environment. Devoted to nurturing new generations of chamber music artists, the Marlboro Music Center caps off three weeks of daily rehearsals with five weekends of public performances.
MarlboroMusic.org
Newbury, N.H.
Aug. 2–10
Since 1933, the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen has been cultivating and celebrating excellence in handcrafted arts, including woodworking, pottery, basketry, quilting, jewelry, and more. As the oldest craft fair in the United States, it’s viewed as the industry standard. The nine-day event draws more than 20,000 visitors and more than 700 crafts experts vying for coveted honors.
NHCrafts.org
Only the Best LAKE TAHOE CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE
Homewood, Calif.
Aug. 8–9
Every summer, the waters of Lake Tahoe are churned by some of the world’s finest vintage wooden boats. Founded in 1972 by a handful of Tahoe Yacht Club members, this event has since evolved into America’s premier wooden boat show, where entries are judged on appearance and faithfulness to their original condition.
LakeTahoeConcours.com
Up and Away! GREAT RENO BALLOON RACE
Reno, Nev.
Sept. 5–7
America’s “Biggest Little City” hosts the world’s largest hot air balloon event. Festivities begin with the 5 a.m. launch of the Super Glow Show, followed by the Dawn Patrol 30 minutes later. The 7 a.m. Mass Ascension Launch features over 100 balloons rising into the sky. Spectators can enjoy balloon rides, plus crafts and food on Balloon Boulevard. RenoBalloon.com
Two Centuries of Watercolors AMERICAN LANDSCAPES IN WATERCOLOR FROM THE CORCORAN COLLECTION
Washington, D.C.
Aug. 2, 2025–Feb. 1, 2026
The National Gallery of Art has curated a unique sampling of watercolors displaying the diverse landscapes of the United States. Spanning the years 1800 to 1991, the works cover views from several geographic areas: Washington, D.C., New England, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, and the California coast.
NGA.gov
Hot Times HATCH CHILE FESTIVAL
Hatch, N.M.
Aug. 30–31
This exciting annual event in Hatch, New Mexico—which bills itself as the chile capital of the world—celebrates the famous chile pepper varietals grown in the state’s Hatch Valley. In addition to chefs serving up dishes featuring the beloved ingredient, the Labor Day weekend event includes musical performances, a parade, the crowning of the Red Chile Queen, and a carnival.
HatchChileFestival.org
VISIT
‘Prix de West Art Exhibition’
Since 1973, the world’s finest Western painters and sculptors have captured cowboy culture for the “Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale,” preserving Western traditions and way of life far beyond the plains, prairies, and mountains—and hopefully for generations to come. Exhibition visitors can glance across vast Western vistas, safely get close to wild animals, and enjoy a day on the ranch or at a festival, to name a few experiences. The art sale weekend is June 20–21, and the 53rd exhibition is open at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City until August 3
WATCH
‘The Blue Angels’
Capt. Brian Kesselring and the rest of the Navy’s Blue Angel squadron train a new right wingman as they prepare for their next season of exhibition air shows. Their skill and dedication shine throughout the amazing aerial photography, filmed by the first civilian camera planes allowed inside their performance “box.”
DIRECTOR Paul Crowder
DOCUMENTARY
RELEASED 2024
STREAMING
Prime Video
These pages are in the preview.
READ READ
‘Rebel With a Cause’
Franklin Graham was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but as he states in his autobiography, he was born with “big footprints to fill”—those of his globally famous and admired evangelist father, Billy Graham. Although the self-effacing author sheds light on his mischievous childhood and rebellious teenage years, he also honors and shows great love for his father whose chivalry, faith, attention, and grace ultimately modeled a way of life and servitude that Franklin eventually adopted.
Thomas Nelson, 1995 Paperback, 354 pages
‘Washington: The Indispensable Man’
George Washington was indispensable; without him, the American Revolution and the United States would have foundered. This work, written by James Thomas Flexner, one of the 20th century’s foremost authorities on American history, is a one-volume abridgment of his comprehensive four-volume biography. It’s a forthright and fascinating account of America’s greatest president. It offers an unvarnished portrait of a man who put duty first and achieved great things.
Back Bay Books, 1994 Paperback, 448 pages
Zhuan Falun is the main text of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong. With millions of practitioners in over 100 countries, Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that teaches meditation exercises and the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
“
Falun Gong is an entirely peaceful belief system which encourages the highest standards of moral behavior.
— Lord Avebury, House of Lords, UK
“
Falun Gong is, in my judgment, the single greatest spiritual movement in Asia today. There’s nothing that begins to compare with it in courage and importance.
— Mark Palmer, former U.S. ambassador
Falun Dafa has brought a totally new perspective to my life. In a world where everyone teaches you to fight back, Falun Dafa has taught me to take a step back and think of others first, which has made me a better person inside out.
SCAN TO ORDER
— Pooja Mor, international fashion model
Hosting doesn’t need to be a fancy affair to touch the hearts of others
By Annie Holmquist
Ah, summer! The smell of hot dogs roasting, the sight of smiles as people greet each other, and the sound of laughter drifting over the fence all evoke classic Americana: community and connection in action. It’s easy to be intimidated by the idea that we must pull out all the stops to host others. But entertaining doesn’t have to be a grand affair. Etiquette instructor Bethany Friske wants to “encourage people to open up their homes, and not be scared of it,” she said. She advises a mindset switch: Our main motive in exercising hospitality should be “to bless others.” She shared her best advice for making it happen.
We shouldn’t apologize for the wear and tear of our homes, Friske says, but we should tidy them up out of respect for our guests. Little touches like pretty napkins or plates and cups sitting out in advance show guests you were thinking of them. She’s also seen how impromptu invites—such as making a Crock-Pot meal and then asking someone at church to a last-minute Sunday dinner—touch people with kindness.
1 2 3 4 5
When it comes to the menu, “don’t stress,” Friske said. “Pick something simple. It can be easy: popcorn and nuts, or just coffee and tea.” Inviting guests to bring a food item based on a fun theme—try blueberry, lemon, or red-white-and-blue—can also ease the host’s prep time, while creating a memorable connection point for guests.
For some, conversing with guests is more of a hurdle than actually hosting them. “If you’re not a good conversationalist and you’re having one person over, invite a second person, because that will often make things a little easier,” Friske suggested. She likes to keep a pack of conversation cards nearby for topic ideas, a gesture that can also help set more introverted guests at ease.
An overlooked benefit of hospitality is its ability to help your guests expand their own social circles. Friske happily recalled a gathering she hosted during which two neighbors met and became very good friends, becoming “way closer than I was with either of them,” she said. Make the effort to introduce your guests to each other, and tell them about their commonalities—such as a shared interest in gardening, or even having the same number of children—to kick-start a conversation.
While hosting in your home is ideal, Friske says that entertaining elsewhere is a perfectly reasonable option if your home can’t accommodate many people. She suggests finding a nice park, a room at a library, or a space at a coffee shop. Don’t worry about such a move being a cop-out, she said: “You’re the one who’s heading it up; you’re taking the initiative.”
Chris Meek, philanthropist and CEO of SoldierStrong, stands in front of Ladder Co. 10, across from the 9/11 Memorial grounds, in downtown Manhattan.
After 9/11, Chris Meek set out to change the life of veterans for the better.
A private lending library lets children of all ages discover the joy of reading.
Through his foundation, Gary Sinise has given hope to countless veterans. Their resilience and spirit have in turn sustained him, as he shares his son’s musical legacy with the world
By Kenneth LaFave
Gary Sinise, known to millions of fans as Lieutenant Dan in “Forrest Gump” and Mac Taylor in television’s “CSI: NY,” has a favorite word: “Blessing.”
He uses it often and with meaning:
“I’ve had a lot of blessings in my life with my acting career.”
“We’ve always had a strong faith in our family. That’s a blessing.”
“The Gary Sinise Foundation has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for veterans, thanks to the American people. It’s a blessing.”
It’s all a blessing, he seems to say. Even the painful things.
Maybe especially the painful things.“I am so blessed, fortunate, and proud to be his dad,” Sinise said on the death of his son, McCanna Anthony “Mac” Sinise, who passed at age 33 on January 5, 2024, from chordoma, a rare spine cancer. He is survived by his parents and his sisters Sophie and Ella.
Mac was diagnosed in 2018 and consequently endured six years of radiation plus “25 different drugs” for a disease that lacks any known cures. It affects fewer than 100 people per year in the United States.
In the same year of Mac’s diagnosis, his mother, Gary’s wife Moira, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
But Sinise is not a complainer. “It was a tough six years” is as much as you will get from him. As of 2024, Moira was pronounced cancer-free. She and Gary lost Mac, but not before discovering two things about him: his courage and his music.
We talked by phone with Gary Sinise from his home in Nashville in January of this year. Mac was very much on his mind: “It’s a year ago now that we lost him. It’s been a strange time. I miss him so much.”
Sinise spent much of 2023 and 2024—the year leading up to Mac’s death and the year following it—memorializing Mac in a very special way.
Mac Sinise worked as Assistant Manager of Education & Outreach at the Gary Sinise Foundation, the philanthropic organization for veterans that Gary established after his success in “Forrest Gump” in 1994. He was also a drummer, and he frequently toured with the Lieutenant Dan Band, a group fronted by his bass-playing father in performances at military bases and hospitals.
Benefit performances by the Lieutenant Dan Band and the construction of smart homes for wounded veterans are two of the foundation’s main missions.
The chordoma robbed Mac of his ability to play
the drums once he became paralyzed from the chest down. Yet neither he nor his family gave up.
“Mac couldn’t play drums anymore. It was his mother who suggested he get a harmonica. He’d never played harmonica before, but he learned to play it. It was good for his soul, and also good for his lungs. He had cancer in his lungs and it was good exercise for him to be sucking in and out on the harmonica,” Sinise recalled.
A video of Mac playing “Shenandoah” on the harmonica can be found at his YouTube channel, @macsinise7489.
That was only the beginning. Mac’s musicianship wasn’t limited to drumming. He studied composition and songwriting at the University of Southern California, where he composed a number of pieces ranging from classical to pop. He put those pieces aside when he took on his responsibilities at the foundation.
They came to light only in the last year of his life, when he reached back into the past for the
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Though paralyzed from the chest down, Mac Sinise was still able to compose music and play the harmonica. His faith sustained him greatly during his battle with chordoma, a rare cancer.
pieces he’d written at USC. He felt that one particular work, an unfinished piano piece called “Arctic Circles,” held promise. Mac wrote about the process he used to finish it:
I found a way to write music again in my hospital bed. In addition to getting back in touch with a producer friend from college, Oliver Schnee, I recovered my old piece and I decided to go for it! Time is precious and I want to take advantage of the times that I feel strong. The result has been incredible collaborations with members of the Lt. Dan Band and my buddy Oliver Schnee to finally finish writing and recording “Arctic Circles.”
The result is a glowing piece of symphonic writing, available in performance on his YouTube channel.
Mac found other pieces from the USC days and produced them as well, resulting in the album “Resurrection & Revival,” available on vinyl at Store.GarySiniseFoundation.org. Mac passed away shortly after it was released.
There was more music to be discovered. Sinise recalled:
“I started going through Mac’s Dropbox, his iPad and his iPhone, and found more music. There were cues he’d written for a documentary called ‘Always Do a Little More.’ There were rock pieces, classical, and jazz.
“I saw this tremendous variety of musical states
Mac Sinise was passionate about the foundation’s mission and served as the assistant manager of education and outreach. He was an excellent drummer and would sometimes substitute for the Lt. Dan Band’s regular drummer.
Chris Meek didn’t set out to become a philanthropist. But as small initiatives grew, so did the impact of his organization, SoldierStrong, which helps military veterans overcome challenges after service.
After 9/11, Chris Meek endeavored to perform small acts of kindness. It started with socks and other essentials. Over time, through innovation and tenacity, he’s made a tremendous impact on the lives of others
SBy Walker Larson
omething that looked like confetti was falling outside the window of Chris Meek’s office building at 111 Broadway in downtown Manhattan.
“I didn’t know we were having a ticker tape today,” one of Meek’s companions commented.
But the fluttering, gray strands and specks weren’t confetti: They were embers from the impact of a passenger plane hitting the World Trade Center’s North Tower. The bang from a few minutes before wasn’t just a garbage truck hitting a pothole in the street below, as Meek had assumed. It was a blast that marked the beginning of the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. And Meek was about to live through it, right at Ground Zero.
Meek and the others in the meeting now knew that something wasn’t right. When the second plane struck the second tower, they felt the tremors run through the building and heard the thunder of the explosion. They turned on the news to try to grasp what was happening and saw the famous footage that is now forever fixed in American history and the American mind.
After seeing the nightmarish images of the impact he had felt in his own body, Meek dialed his team at the New York Board of Trade, located at Four World Trade Center, and told them to evacuate immediately. He was relieved to learn they already had.
Meek managed floor trading operations for Hull Trading on the New York stock exchange. His position made him responsible for 27 people, located in four different exchanges—people whose lives might now be in danger. His next task was to locate a group of 14 colleagues working at the American Stock Exchange, in a separate building. Meek had to get them out, and quickly.
He tried the elevators—no luck. Fortunately, Meek and three others found a fire escape and descended 19 floors to the open street below. Outside, Meek caught his first glimpse of the fiery wounds in the Twin Towers that poured forth smoke. He watched, stunned, as a woman leapt to her death from one of the towers. Firefighters rushed past him toward the inferno. Meek hurried on to the American Stock Exchange.
The Face of Philanthropy Meek got all of his team safely out that day. But there were some things he couldn’t salvage from the chaos, fire, and debris at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. Life would never be the same. He couldn’t salvage the peace he’d once known. Restlessness overtook his life after that unthinkable experience.
Meek wrote in his book “Next Steps Forward: Beyond Remembering. The Power of Action.”: Going back to that evening, and in the first few days that followed, I felt the beginning of an urge to move forward for others. I didn’t know what those steps would look like, or how I would take them, but I knew that my calling in life was about to shift. When Meek finally sat down at home at the end of the day, he stared down at his soot-covered shoes, and a thought struck him: The dust and ash that covered them wasn’t just rubble from buildings. Within that dust and ash were the remains of men, women, and children who had been murdered indiscriminately. … When I woke up on September 12, 2001, my shoes were right where I left them, still covered in the history I’d walked through the day before. … Days and days, weeks and weeks, finally more than 20 years later, I have not cleaned those shoes. I never will. I look at them every day and remember the people who died on 9/11, as well as those who have given their lives in defense of our country since. I do it to remind myself that the steps I take are for them. Chris Meek’s ashen shoes carried
“
Out of the fires and smoke of 9/11, Meek emerged as a man with a determination to give back, to snatch meaning and purpose from the tragedy’s burning embers.
him toward a life of innovation and philanthropic giving for the sake of others—especially those who sacrificed their own safety for the rest of us. Out of the fires and smoke of 9/11, Meek emerged as a man with a determination to give back, to snatch meaning and purpose from the tragedy’s burning embers.
In the years since 9/11, Meek has been so determined and successful at giving back, he’s earned the designation “Face of Philanthropy” from The Chronicle of Philanthropy. But Meek was never after this kind of recognition. He finds it almost amusing. “I think of the Rockefellers as philanthropists, not Chris Meek,” he told American Essence. “I had no intention of doing [philanthropic work.] It’s just sort of gone that path and grown over the years.”
Meek keeps the shoes he wore on 9/11 as a reminder of everyone who died that day, and also of the sacrifices made by those who serve our country.
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Like most good things, Meek’s journey to a life of philanthropy started small. Arguably, it started when he returned to Ground Zero in the days following 9/11 to rebuild his firm’s infrastructure. Each day, he passed security checkpoints run by the National Guard. Without thinking much of it, Meek brought them water and Gatorade each day as they stood in the noxious air. This small gesture foreshadowed what was to come; it was a portent of the shift in Meek’s life.
Meek started paying first responders’ bar tabs. “As long as I’m here, they’re not paying,” he told the bartender. Then, during the economic downturn of 2008, he launched a nonprofit called START Now! to teach people how to manage mortgages and keep their homes.
Following 9/11, something Meek’s mother told him years before came back to him, echoing with renewed intensity:
“I might not be able to change the world today, but I can change the world around me.” This became a guiding principle of Meek’s charitable work. Start small. Start local. Start simple. Trust that great good can come from it. Meek described his process: “Think globally, act locally. So you look at the big picture, and then you take it down to your ecosystem, and then solve it from there.”
Like the firefighters on 9/11 or the soldiers who deployed in its aftermath, Chris Meek wasn’t afraid to think creatively and do things others wouldn’t
or couldn’t—he was ready to solve problems headon. Like the military and emergency personnel he wanted to serve, Meek headed toward problems. His independent thinking and can-do attitude soon found expression in a campaign to directly help American troops fighting in Afghanistan. It started small—with socks. For all their next-generation technology and equipment, some troops deployed overseas were missing basic items like socks and baby wipes. When Meek heard about this, he began collecting donations of everyday essentials to ship to the troops. Meek and other volunteers gathered supplies and stored them in Meek’s garage until they could be transported to the battlefront via Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 49. This initiative grew rapidly, becoming Meek’s next nonprofit: SoldierSocks. By 2014, SoldierSocks had delivered 75,000 pounds of supplies to 73 different units deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Soon, however, it became clear that as much as American servicemembers needed support overseas, they were going to need even more support stateside as they dealt with the lifelong wounds— some tangible, some not—inflicted by war. In 2013, Meek met Sergeant Dan Rose, a veteran who was paralyzed from the chest down due to injuries from an IED. Hearing Rose’s story convinced Meek that SoldierSocks needed to adjust its mission.
Over the next few years, SoldierSocks transformed into SoldierStrong: a cutting-edge veteran nonprofit that brings revolutionary technologies to veterans around the country to heal the hurts of battle.
SoldierStrong’s first goal was ambitious: get injured veterans walking again. Meek hunted down a tech company that he thought might have the solution: Ekso Bionics, a firm that builds robotic exoskeleton suits that allow paralyzed
Mustangs run across a foothill-bordered meadow.
A
By David Coulson |
by Maria Coulson
We were bundled up against the crisp morning chill in the quiet solitude, gazing at the orange and lemon sherbet sunrise spreading across the mountain crests. As we huddled behind a waist-high pile of rocks about 20 feet from the wide-open pasture gate, distant muffled drumming broke the silence.
The drumbeat grew closer and closer and louder and louder. Then, in a blink of an eye, dozens of muscular mustangs with steaming nostrils and outstretched tails charged directly toward us, at the last instant streaming past without breaking stride. The ground trembled under their thundering hooves. Our hearts raced in time with their breakneck pace.
Before we could catch our breath, the wild horse sanctuary’s Jess Oldman rode up sporting a broad smile, anxious to learn our reaction to the stampede he choreographed for my wife Maria to capture with her camera. It was an unforgettable moment also imprinted on our memory.
About 10 minutes from Lander, Wyoming, en route to Yellowstone National Park, awaits an authentic Western experience for the entire family. It’s a unique opportunity to observe magnificent mustangs up close and to watch them gallop across the broad plain at the base of the majestic Wind River Range.
The Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary provides professional care and a permanent home for 250 largely unadoptable mustangs on a 1,400-acre working cattle ranch. Five hundred acres are dedicated to the country’s only Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved sanctuary located on tribal land.
The 2.2-million-acre Wind River Indian Reservation was created for Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. But the Oldham family, who operates the sanctuary, is of Navajo and Anglo-American ancestry.
Unlike most other BLM long-term facilities, the free-roaming eco-sanctuary is open to the public. “The BLM wants to provide education
These pages are in the preview.
A band of mustangs on the move at sunrise.
through public off-range pastures,” according to June Wendlandt, wild horse and burro lead for BLM Wyoming. “The Oldham family offers public tours by appointment and education on the importance of wild horses and their history.”
Odessa Oldham, 33, traveled to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington to research how horses changed Native American life and the vital role they played in their culture for the sanctuary’s visitor center. The center features curated interpretive panels and displays and a small gift shop. “Our family truly believes that taking care of the wild horses is part of the Native heritage,” she said.
A knowledgeable guide driving a utility terrain vehicle that resembles a “golf cart on steroids”
Suddenly, they gracefully gallop away, heads held high, across the sun-kissed meadow, their shimmering coats a cavalcade of equine colors. “ are not included preview.
takes visitors on a 45-minute sanctuary tour. It might be leading-man Jess himself who takes you. He knows all the horses’ names and histories.
“The black gelding walking confidently toward us is Old Man,” the 6-foot-2-inch sanctuary manager pointed out. “He is the oldest horse in the herd.”
The Oldham family—dad Dwayne, mom Denise, daughter Odessa, and sons Jess and Jared—opened the Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary in 2016. Dwayne is a former Wyoming state veterinarian whose frontier family settled in the area shortly after the Civil War. His wife Denise was raised on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. Jared is no longer involved in its day-to-day operations.
“It is a privilege to be able to help run the sanc-
tuary and the cattle ranch,” said 28-year-old Jess, a University of Wyoming graduate with a degree in microbiology and immunology. “It’s a lifestyle that is a little hard on the body at times, but it’s one that is really good on the soul.”
Horse Heritage
All the wild horses in the American West are called mustangs, from a Spanish word for “stray.” Yet they belonged in this country ages before us. The horse reportedly originated in North America some 55 million years ago. DNA evidence indicates that it remained on the continent until as recently as 5,000 years ago.
When Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519, he brought horses from Spain. Over many genera-
While in prison, Darnell Epps found a passion in advocating for others. Then, he discovered another way to open doors for people
By Randy Tatano
You might think that the only “trade” an inmate can master in prison is making license plates.
But if you had to spend 17 years behind bars, you may as well use all that time to learn something that can actually lead to a career—which is why Darnell Epps spent most of his time in prison reading and studying. He ended up with a law degree from Yale University and, in the process, also creating a platform promoting careers in the trades.
His unusual journey shows that paying a debt to society can sometimes end up benefiting many others.
Epps, 45, was incarcerated at the age of 20, after what he calls a misguided attempt to defend a family member with his brother went sideways. During the altercation, his brother struggled with another man for a firearm. It went off and resulted in the man’s death. Epps was charged as an accessory and sentenced to a New York state correctional facility. Ironically, being in the wrong place at the wrong time led Epps to be in the right place while behind bars: a job working in the prison’s law library.
With lots of time to read, Epps used the opportunity to learn the law. A
fellow inmate who was also a law clerk served as his mentor. As he became educated in the judicial system and learned to decipher legalese, Epps assisted other inmates with their appeals. Over the years, he even helped a few prisoners get convictions overturned. He sees that time as the major turning point in his life, when he decided to do something positive with his life. “It was that time where I took full responsibility for my actions, dedicated myself to education, found a new sense of purpose, [and] worked in the law library for so many years, helping others who didn’t know the law.”
Meanwhile, he earned his GED and took advantage of a college program that was offered in the prison. Later, when Cornell University started a program to provide their regular classes to prison inmates, he jumped at the chance. Upon his release in 2017, he was accepted at Cornell, and while there, a professor suggested he apply to Yale Law School.
His desire to become a lawyer wasn’t about the money. “At the end of the day, I still wanted to be able to advocate for folks. One of the things that motivated me to go to law school was the need to bring about positive social change.”
Epps had no idea that it would mean advocating for traditional trade professions that don’t require a college degree. Again, he was at the right place at the right time. He was at a dinner event promoting a nonprofit that provides financial support to children of incarcerated parents, and he learned that there were many unfilled jobs in the trades. Currently, there is a labor shortage in skilled manufacturing of about half a million, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Those jobs have an average annual salary of $85,000.
At the time, Epps had been working on building a community law library
Through the company, I’m able to have a similar net positive effect on my community. And a community that is in need of middle-class jobs that don’t require four years of college. “
Darnell
Epps
to provide free legal services to people in low-income neighborhoods throughout the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is based. “There were so many people I met that didn’t want to work in the retail or food service sector who would have liked better opportunities outside of the gig economy, where they could find jobs that would pay a living wage.” All of a sudden, Epps connected the dots: He would help those folks get good, high-paying jobs in the trades. While still in law school, Epps took a course at a vocational school to experience hands-on what a trade education was like. He received a diploma in manufacturing technology and CNC (computer numerical control) machining, which is a type of manufacturing process that uses pre-programmed computer software to control machine tools.
While still at Yale, in 2023, he launched Thurgood Industries, a platform that connects tradespeople with companies looking to hire. The platform also helps tradespeople look for educational opportunities and tuition assistance. “Through the company, I’m able to have a similar net positive effect on my community. And a community that is in need of middle-class jobs that don’t require four years of college.” The goal is to help connect or better align the needs of industry with communities where the hunger for economic opportunity was greatest.
On one memorable trip to Kentucky, he met with trade school students in advanced machining and robotics. “Coming from inner-city Brooklyn, New York, I wasn’t sure how I’d be
received by students from such a different background—many of whom were veterans, dislocated coal workers, or even college graduates seeking a fresh start.” It turned out that the people he helped were more than grateful, and they sent him a unique Bluegrass State thank-you. “When I returned home, I found two bottles of moonshine.” He also found on his doorstep around 40 handwritten thank-you letters from the students. Some of the letters were several pages long.
He keeps the letters in his office to this day. “These letters remind me of the shared struggles and hopes of people from all walks of life—whether from the inner city or rural America. They reaffirm the urgency and importance of the work we’re doing at Thurgood Industries and continue to motivate me every day.”
His company is now partnered with about two dozen trade schools. His platform allows job seekers to create a profile sharing their experience and goals, along with a “video cover letter”—which conveys much more than a resume. “Maybe you want to work as an automotive mechanic, because your dad worked as a mechanic for 20 years. So we created a platform where students and job seekers can even take photos and videos of some of the work they’ve done in their garage as a hobby. You can showcase … your skills, that mechanical aptitude, that tool knowledge.”
Epps, who graduated from Yale in 2024, is living proof that second chances can produce great results, and that redemption comes in many forms.
For Karen Olson, a life-changing encounter on the streets of New York City was the catalyst to help homeless families nationwide
By Jeff Minick
In November 1982, marketing executive Karen Olson was hurrying past Manhattan’s Grand Central Station when she spotted an old woman sitting on a crate, huddled over her belongings: two bags at her feet. She’d seen the woman before, but this time, seized by impulse, she dashed into a shop, bought a sandwich and an orange juice, and gave them to the woman, who soon identified herself as Millie, a widow without a home.
When Olson told her two young sons about meeting Millie that day, they wanted to bring sandwiches to the homeless as well. Over the next two years, the family made numerous sandwich runs to Manhattan, passing out food and drink to homeless people, whom they came to know by name.
After learning that large numbers of the homeless, including families, were living in her own New Jersey community, Olson stepped up her efforts to help them. From the start, she ran into preconceived notions about people living without an address. As she told American Essence:
“Homelessness is a stigma. Most people think the word is synonymous with the man lying on a subway train or a woman leaning into a trash can to find something to eat. But that’s only the visible people you see who are homeless. You don’t see the
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homeless families who are out of sight, because they’re going to be living in shelters or in their cars.”
In 1986, Olson began knocking on doors, looking for volunteers and resources, mostly from the local religious community, to serve these families. The 11 churches that stepped up comprised what Olson named the “Interfaith Hospitality Network.” Within a short time, a second Hospitality Network was born, and by 1988, the National Interfaith Hospitality Network was up and running. In 2003, given its focus on homeless families, the organization changed its name to Family Promise.
“A house is where it all begins, both for individuals and families,” Olson said. “You have a house, you have the starting point.” As an example, Olson mentioned Tim, a formerly homeless man whom she’s known for six years:
“He’s a changed man with an apartment. He
As a child, I experienced the terrible pain of loss, so I have always known what it’s like to truly suffer and feel terribly alone. “
Karen Olson
has a bed and TV, a kitchen and bathroom, and nobody’s so proud of his place. Now he’s shaved, and he’s begun to lose weight, and when we left him, he said, ‘Until next time.’ You never heard him say ‘Until next time’ when he was homeless in the park or sleeping in the post office.”
Olson spoke of 20 other people who had struggled and recently received housing. “They’re changed. They’re changed people. They hold their head up high with dignity, based around the way they dress, the way they look, the way they socialize—it’s a beautiful thing to see. So housing is really fundamental,” she said.
Olson emphatically credits volunteers as being the heart of Family Promise. Many go above and beyond to help others. She told a story:
“In Austin, Texas, a woman’s car broke down, and she needed it to go to work, so a volunteer, Chuck, agreed to pick her up every morning, and the time was 5 o’clock. He remembered she liked lattes, so he got a coffee for himself and a latte for her. When she saw him standing there with two cups, she said, ‘Chuck, you’re going to make me cry,’ and she did. These simple gestures meant so much to her.”
In her account of Family Promise and her own journey, “Meant for More: Following Your Heart and Finding Your Purpose,” Olson included the testimonies of some volunteers and those they’ve helped, all of which bear witness to the simple but profound power of human kindness. Of these men and women, young and old, who have given so much of themselves, Olson wrote: “It was our tireless volunteers—currently more than 200,000
nationwide—who contribute their time and energy to this noble cause. Collectively, we have helped more than a million individuals in need.”
In addition to tracing the origins and growth of Family Promise, Olson wrote in the introduction of “Meant for More” that she wanted to demonstrate “the profound personal healing that happens when we act on our innate kindness.”
She explained:
“My instinct to show compassion to a stranger I passed on the street was guided by my heart. As a child, I experienced the terrible pain of loss, so I have always known what it’s like to truly suffer and feel terribly alone. … So much of the pain that is experienced in our society is preventable if only we help one another.”
Many of the Family Promise volunteers agree, having told Olson how much helping others has helped them as well. Though she retired in 2016 from her post as president of Family Promise, Olson herself remains active as a volunteer. “I do quite a bit of speaking,” she said, “which I enjoy, and I do podcasts.”
An accident in February 2019 left Olson struggling with paralysis, yet her spirit remains unbroken. “My happiness is not dependent on my walking. I’m just happy because I’m doing many of the same things, helping people, speaking, hopefully inspiring people. And I can do all that in a wheelchair.”
It’s this same indomitable grit and energy that 40 years ago led Olson to create Family Promise, a nationwide network of volunteers daily helping thousands of America’s homeless families.
Smithey Ironware, in Charleston, South Carolina, makes cookware inspired by the past and meant to last forever
By Anna Mason
After Matthew Griswold and the Selden brothers began making cast iron pans in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1865, they went on to enjoy decades of soaring success. Stovetops became a standard fixture in kitchens across the United States, and the flat-bottomed cast iron skillet was an essential.
But with the arrival of aluminum and stainless steel in the early 20th century, the writing was on the wall. The golden age of cast iron cookware came to an end, and original Griswold pans and their like became coveted collectors’ items. Only in recent years have modern cooks embraced cast iron once again—with one Charleston, South Carolina, company at the forefront of the movement.
If Matthew Griswold were alive now, he might’ve taken his hat off to Isaac Morton. In 2015, Morton founded Smithey Ironware, now one of a handful of American companies helping to spearhead a cast iron cookware revival.
Morton, a former real estate investor, became obsessed with hunting down and restoring old cast iron pans after a family member gifted him a vintage Griswold. He began dreaming of building his own line. Instead of the often rough, cheaply made pans of today, his would bring back the qualities of vintage cast iron he so admired: smooth as glass and made to last forever.
What started as a backyard operation evolved into an heirloom-worthy American brand. And in homage to Morton’s first love of reclaiming old, rusty pans, Smithey also offers a restoration service.
Smithey’s foundry partner in the Midwest pours the cast iron cookware before sending the pieces to Charleston HQ to be polished and seasoned. The raw castings are sanded down and smoothed, a pneumatic brush is used for further polish, and finally, the skillet is given a sandpaper bath in a machine before layers of seasoning are added.
In 2018, the company introduced a line of carbon steel cookware that is hand-forged, pressed, and hammered into shape entirely on site in Charleston.
Smithey’s best-seller is the No. 12 Skillet ($220), a hefty cast iron skillet with a 10.5-inch cooking surface and 2.2-inch depth. It’s the family-size version of their original No. 10 ($180). Both feature a buttery smooth cooking surface and thoughtful pour spouts—especially useful given the pans’ heavy-duty nature. Our tester appreciated the No. 12’s sleek, deep copper-colored beauty; its ability to heat evenly and retain heat; and the ease of cooking on and cleaning the polished interior.
Once upon a time, your grandmother had to oil her cast iron, heat it, and let it cool repeatedly before use, baking layers of seasoning into the pan to create a nonstick surface. Smithey’s skillets come pre-seasoned with grape-seed oil, making them effectively nonstick out of the box. The seasoning may lift during the first uses, but regular use will rebuild it into a unique patina over time.
Smithey also makes a curved Chef Skillet for fried eggs and stir-fries, flat-top griddles for pancakes and pizzas, and weighty Dutch ovens for chilis and casseroles. Every piece is guaranteed for life.
There’s no point arguing with a 1,400-pound retired eventing horse —unless you learn to speak its language
By Eric Lucas
It’s easy to converse with your horse. Watch his ears; listen to his nickers, grumbles, and sighs; pay attention to how he tosses his head; notice the side glances when he’s not looking at you. Stroke his neck, brush his mane, and see what happens.
People and horses have had this ongoing conversation for millennia, right here in the equine homeland of North America. Talking with our horses—we have two—is a coffee-and-doughnuts episode in a day on our farm. Bring a couple bis-
cuits and it’s paradise all around. Cue hugs, kisses, and mutual compliments: “You’re such a big handsome boy!” “It’s all that great hay you bring me.”
But this morning, Cereus and I are having a more serious discussion. He’s grazing the fresh green grass that grows beside our house in winter, pretending to be oblivious, but his ears are cocked my way.
“What, exactly, are you doing here?”
The front of the house is not Horse Land. Horse Land is his large, 5-acre meadow down below, an
appropriate size for a 17-hand, 1,400-pound Polish Warmblood. If you’re not privy to horse lingo, that’s the size of a tall rhino, minus horns.
“What?” he answers. “I don’t get your point.” He raises his head briefly to look at me. “It’s a really nice morning, isn’t it?” Head back down. Extra lush green orchard grass.
“Yeah, lovely. How about we go back to your stall now?”
“Nah. Uh-uh.” He wriggles his ears like fuzzy fingers. He doesn’t look up. Sweet, juicy, sunwarmed, high-sugar grass.
I cross my arms and frown. I hold out a cookie. He rolls his eyes. Seriously? Insulting.
You think all this is silly, you horse-free people out there? There are many of us—approximately 2.5 million horse “owners,” a term I’ll get to in a minute, and 8 million horses in the United States and Canada. We millions are having these conversations constantly, for various reasons.
The chief one being: You can’t grab your horse, hoist him up, and put him to rights like Sissy the Siamese or Polly the parrot.
Cereus knows this. He’s gentle, kind, cooperative—and occasionally obstreperous. If you believe, as many indigenous peoples do, that everything has a spirit, then free will is the most powerful force in the universe. Cereus’s free will is sometimes the most powerful force at Owl Feather Farm. No doubt the original equine conversationalists of North America discovered this.
include long-ago tales about the time they shared the intermountain West with horses. The horses disappeared 10,000 years ago, the Paiutes stayed, and the horses returned 400 years ago. Now, there are millions of domestic equines in the West, plus tens of thousands of wild horses.
There’s no point arguing with Mr. Big. We don’t “own” Cereus in the fashion we own a wheelbarrow. So I head inside to work with the Pollyanna belief he will voluntarily head back to the barn, from where he freed himself an hour ago.
I look up an hour later. No progress toward the barn.
Cereus isn’t actually going to go anywhere. He’s a retired eventing horse, a very fancy Europeanborn gelding who spent his first 12 years in shiny million-dollar barns and arenas in Poland and Florida. Sounds swell, but he spent over half his time cooped up in a small stall. When we brought him to our farm, we told him this is his forever home, and he galloped around the meadow five times in delirious glee.
IF THE UNIVERSE EVER OFFERS YOU THE OPPORTUNITY AT SUCH A BOND WITH ANOTHER BEING, TAKE
When his little brother, Cocoa the Shetland pony, came to keep him company, his happiness was total. He likes to roll every day in the big sand pit my wife Nicole made for him—an indescribable spectacle.
Anthropologists believe people and horses have been together for more than 10,000 years. In the long history of humankind, at least 2 billion 10-year-old girls have asked their father, “Can we get a horse?” It’s possible even Og the Caveman had to give this due consideration.
Years ago, I took part in an archeological dig in the mountains of Eastern Oregon, on a Forest Service crew joined by an observer from the local Paiute band. That evening, around the aromatic pine fire, I wondered aloud how long it took for horses to reach the High Desert of Oregon after the Spanish brought them to the Western Hemisphere 500 years ago.
“You mean,” our patient Paiute patron declared, “after the Spanish brought horses back.”
Her people’s oral histories, she explained,
It’s wonderful to be the caretaker of a being whose every cell tells him he belongs with our farm family. I came late in life to horses, and it constantly amazes me that I can soothe Cereus’s rare meltdowns just by spreading my arms wide and asking him to calm down. If the universe ever offers you the opportunity at such a bond with another being, take it. Our horses offer us love and protection just as we do for them.
Now though, enough is enough. Inspiration strikes and I mix up a quart of the oat and alfalfa mash that Cereus loves, in the old white bucket he recognizes a half-mile away. Off we go back to his stall. It’s such a dandy plan that Mr. Big trots ahead and blocks me to grab the bucket on the way.
I duck, he dances ahead, I dodge, he trots beside nudging me, and in mere seconds, we’re all back where we belong. After he snarfs up the mash, he leans his head down, nuzzles my hand, and gives me a kiss.
“Just another lovely morning, Dad. I can’t wait to play this game again!”
With a scientist’s curiosity and a grillmaster’s finesse, Meathead Goldwyn busts the myths holding home cooks back from backyard greatness
By Kevin Revolinski
ccidents happen. You forgot to set a timer. You could’ve sworn there was a full bag of charcoal in the garage.
Your overzealous burger-flipping led to one served on a bed of lawn clippings.
But then there’s the mistake of thinking you knew the right way to grill when you didn’t.
To be fair, some outdoor cooking advice that gets around just isn’t right. You need a seasoned expert, a barbecue whisperer, a myth-buster. The person you need is Meathead.
Man of Myth-tery
Meathead Goldwyn is an inductee in the Barbecue Hall of Fame and the founder of AmazingRibs. com, a resource for all things barbecue and grilling—from methods, products, and recipes to the science behind it all. While he has a reputation as a myth-buster, Meathead says it was never a planned effort.
“As a cook with a scientific, inquisitive mind, I have always asked, ‘Why do we do this?’ and ‘What happens if we don’t?’ and ‘Is this really
Meathead Goldwyn
true?’” he said. When he was writing his first cookbook, “Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling,” he found himself repeatedly tearing down misinformation, and it became an overarching theme. The book’s follow-up, “The Meathead Method: A BBQ Hall of Famer’s Secrets and Science on BBQ, Grilling, and Outdoor Cooking,” was published in May 2025.
Some of Meathead’s cooking adventures start when he’s out for a meal. “I’ll taste something, I’ll say, ‘God, this is good. I’ll bet I can make it better on the grill,’” he said. Then he “fiddles with a concept” and writes a recipe, which he tests. Repeatedly.
“My poor wife has gone through quite a few mistakes and failures,” he said. His wife, Mary Tortorello, has a Ph.D. in microbiology and worked in food safety for years. His father was a food scientist from Cornell University.
While many home cooks appreciate the truth and proof of things, Meathead’s work occasionally has detractors. The busted myth that gets him the most antagonism is beer-can chicken. “It’s cute— but the beer actually hampers the cooking of the chicken,” he said. It still tastes great, but “roast chicken always tastes great. The beer has nothing to do with it.”
good at explaining it,” he said—yet “people still come after me with ridiculous logic.” He shared five stubborn myths every backyard cook should stop believing.
MYTH 1 Thermometers are for wimps.
A digital thermometer takes away the guesswork. “Good barbecue is all about temperature control,” Meathead said. The thermometer gets it right. “If Grandma wants hers medium, Grandpa wants his well done, and you want yours rare, you can do it all with a digital thermometer.”
Don’t cut the meat to look, because the color changes as soon as the meat is exposed to oxygen. The effects of different kinds of lighting or lack thereof make color appearance unreliable. Also, forget about the “thumb test”—texture isn’t a reliable indicator of doneness.
Plus, new wireless thermometers with Bluetooth can be left in place. “You can cut the lawn and keep an eye on the temperature,” Meathead said.
Has Meathead ever been wrong? Not exactly—he doesn’t go to print with anything he hasn’t tested. He started some investigations with a theory that proved to be wrong, but testing it prevented him from making a false claim.
Most of his other myth-busting is well accepted. “I’m pretty
Temperature helps you dial in tenderness. “We know a steak is most tender and most juicy at 130 to 135°F, medium-rare,” he said, citing the WarnerBratzler test done in a lab. This test revealed the level of pressure required to cut through a piece of meat.
Don’t be concerned with losing juices to the puncture of a thermometer. “If steak is 75 percent water,” Meathead said, “sticking it with a thermometer isn’t going to deflate it like a balloon.” In an eight-ounce filet, that’s six ounces of water, so losing a teaspoon of juice isn’t significant.
MYTH 2 You can boil ribs to good effect. If you boil your ribs, “the terrorists have won,” said Meathead. Boiling or simmering any food item leaches out flavors and juices from the meat, resulting in dry, bland ribs even after you barbecue them. This is acceptable if you’re making a soup with rib meat, but when it’s an entrée, you’re diminishing the flavor.
MYTH 3 Always crank the heat.
Muscle cells in meat contain water—the juiciness of a good steak—yet high heat shrinks those proteins. It causes the cells to squeeze out the water, drying out the meat and making it tough. For barbecue, “225 [°F] is my magic number,” Meathead said. He makes an exception for poultry, recom-
mending 325°F to render the fat in the skin to give it a nice crispiness.
MYTH 4 Charring is good. Grill marks are desirable.
You can and should darken the surface of meat. It’s an effect called the Maillard reaction, a result of heating amino acids and sugars in food to get a dark brown color and develop flavor. “But when the meat starts to char or blacken, you are creating carbon,” Meathead said. That’s a flavor generally considered unpalatable. “I won’t eat at a restaurant called the Char House.”
He also noted that we have a “Pavlovian response to grill marks,” which look nice in menu photos, and are indeed created by that desirable Maillard reaction. But you actually want the entire surface of the meat to be the same dark shade for maximum flavor. The temperature of the grill grates and the air inside the grill might be the same, but the metal conducts the heat faster than the air, causing uneven coloring or charred marks. How to avoid this relates to the next myth.
MYTH 5 Only flip the meat once.
Some grilling instructions recommend cooking a piece of meat for X minutes on one side, then flipping it once and leaving it for X more minutes. Meathead warns this can lead to the “rainbow effect”: what you see when you cut the meat and find a dark, seared outer edge, and then gradually lightening colors until a narrow red line in the middle. “Almost all cookbooks are recipes for the rainbow,” he said. What you really want is a thin dark edge, and a homogenous red or pink all the way through the middle. To avoid the rainbow, Meathead advises flipping the meat repeatedly, which will help it cook more evenly—and faster, too.
Better still, try the reverse sear. Set up two zones on your grill: one side hot, directly over the coals; the other side cooler, taking indirect heat. Start the meat on the cool side with the lid down, at that low, consistent temperature, to get that uniform color in the middle.
When the meat reaches an internal heat of 120 to 125°F (use a thermometer!), move it to the hot side, crank up the heat, and leave the lid open. Now start flipping frequently. This builds a dark crust and allows the built-up surface energy to dissipate when it’s off direct heat.
A LIFE OF BARBECUE
Meathead Goldwyn’s interest in food and cooking came at a young age. He remembers his father as a dedicated backyard cook: “I loved the smell of the grilling steak.”
While studying at the University of Florida in Gainesville in the late 1960s, he often grilled food for his roommates. He even planned his class schedule so he could be home to watch Julia Child on TV. He worked at a liquor store with a bar, where every Thursday, a man brought in foil-wrapped ribs to sell to patrons. Meathead was smitten.
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One day, he ventured into a neighborhood “college kids didn’t normally go into,” he said, and stumbled upon YT Parker’s Bar-B-Q. Around an old cinder block pit in the back, Parker and his buddies were “sipping beers and flipping the ribs.” Parker took the college kid under his wing, and Meathead learned how to smoke meat. It became “a hobby and a habit,” he said.
Meathead worked as a wine critic before pivoting his career to all things barbecue. He started AmazingRibs.com in 2005.
AGE: 75
HOMETOWN: Chicago
FAVORITE REGIONAL AMERICAN BARBECUE STYLE:
Ribs with Kansas City-style barbecue sauce; and pastrami, a smoked brisket that’s been cured. “Nobody does it better than Katz’s Deli in New York.”
FAVORITE RECIPE: Smoked cherry tomatoes—poke holes in them and throw them on a smoker or the indirect zone of a grill at a low temperature (170 to 200°F) for several hours, until they become like smoky little raisins.
INGREDIENT HE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Vinegars—he has at least a dozen. “Most foods benefit from acidity.”
LAST MEAL OF CHOICE: “If you put me midway distance between a rib eye steak and a rack of lamb, I’ll die of starvation trying to decide which to eat.”
Here’s a fun version of the classic Kansas City sweet red barbecue sauce with an exotic undertone. You’ll know the raspberries are in there but can offer a prize to the guest who guesses the secret ingredient. And the best part of this sauce is that it’s quick and easy. Liquid smoke is optional here, but it adds a nice dimension.
Total time: 30 minutes
Makes 2 cups
1/2 cup bourbon
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup Smucker’s Seedless Red Raspberry Jam (see Note)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco Chipotle Sauce (see Note)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon Morton Coarse Kosher Salt
2 tablespoons liquid smoke
Cook off the alcohol: In a saucepan, bring the bourbon to a boil. Continue to boil until you have only 2 to 3 tablespoons left. The alcohol will be mostly gone so it is child-safe, but the elixir that remains will have a rich, woody, smoky flavor. If you don’t have bourbon or don’t want to do this step, use 2 more tablespoons liquid smoke.
Simmer the sauce: Add all the remaining ingredients to the saucepan and whisk until smooth. Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook for 15 minutes. Sample it and adjust the ingredients to your taste. Want more heat, reach for the hot sauce. Want it sweeter, add sugar or more jam. Simmer a few more minutes.
Store: Pour the finished sauce into a very clean bottle and store in the fridge for months.
Jam Note: I normally don’t specify brands lest someone think I’m on the take. I call for the Smucker’s because it has a great natural flavor and it should be easy to find. Use it to replicate my recipe, but feel free to use another jam of your choice (blueberry is nice). Go for something without skins and seeds. Beware that it may be sweeter or less sweet than my choice, so you may want to start with less and add more to taste.
Hot Sauce Note: Use whatever you like, but chipotle has an affinity for raspberry.
This recipe began as a pork rub back in 2001, and many competition teams have won big bucks with it on their ribs and pulled pork. Readers and I have been using it for everything from poultry to smoked salmon, with celery stuffed with cream cheese, on the rim of Bloody Marys, and even on popcorn. Therefore, I hereby christen it an all-purpose rub.
Total time: 15 minutes
Makes 2 1/2 cups
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/2 cup mild paprika
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons medium-grind black pepper
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 teaspoons ground rosemary (see Note)
Blend all the ingredients together in a bowl. Store in a dark place.
To Use: Dry brine your meat at least 1 hour in advance; more if it is thick. Pat the surface with wet hands or a wet paper towel to help the rub stick. Apply about 1 teaspoon per 4-by-6 inches of surface.
Rosemary Note: Several readers tell me they hate rosemary and leave it out. Trust me, it hides in the background and you will never know it is there. It is subtle and important in this blend. Substitute dried thyme or oregano if you must, but I think rosemary is the best choice. Just grind the rosemary leaves in a mortar and pestle or in a coffee grinder or a blender. It will take 2 to 3 tablespoons of leaves to make 2 teaspoons of powder.
Recipes excerpted from “The Meathead Method: A BBQ Hall of Famer’s Secrets and Science on BBQ, Grilling, and Outdoor Cooking with 114 Recipes” copyright 2025 by AmazingRibs.com. Photography copyright 2025 by AmazingRibs.com. Reproduced by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
President Washington broke new ground while officially resolving an insurgency
By Sally Humphries
In 1794, western farmers in the newly minted United States reacted strongly against the tax imposed on whiskey by Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton, for his part, was up against a shortage of funds. During the American Revolution, many of the Colonies had spent all that they had and more. When the war ended, Hamilton, as the new money man for the new country, pushed to take over the outstanding debts of the states to establish credit for the new nation. A worthy idea, but it didn’t solve the problem of the money shortage.
Searching for a solution, Hamilton had suggested an excise tax on whiskey in 1791. Washington journeyed to Virginia and Pennsylvania to sound out the citizens on the idea. Local government officials were enthusiastic, and Congress hastened to make Hamilton’s solution the law of the land.
farmers could more easily absorb the additional cost of the tax; the smaller farmers could not. Many fell into dire financial straits. Protests arose. Washington, as president, sought to resolve the problem in an official way by proclaiming that the farmers should respect the laws of the United States. The proclamation was ignored, regardless of the weight of the presidential name behind it.
The farmers of the area, however, saw it differently. Their chief crops were corn, rye, and grain. To earn a profit, they had to ship them east and risk losses due to storage problems and dangerous roads. Small farmers could be wiped out quickly by such conditions. Larger farmers could better absorb the losses. The solution for both was to distill their grains into whiskey for ease in shipping. Whiskey became the great equalizer. But the liquor tax was a game changer. Large
The protests continued and increased in seriousness. In July of 1794, the whiskey rebels set fire to the house of a regional tax collection supervisor named John Neville. It was time for the federal government, young and inexperienced as it was, to take action. Local law enforcement was no longer sufficient. Court orders had been defied.
A march on Pittsburgh was being planned. Washington reasoned that unless the new federal government held the line, chaos would reign. He personally took command.
According to historian William J. Bennett, writing in “America, The Last Best Hope,” Washington donned the uniform of a lieutenant general and led some 12,000 militiamen from four states to face down the rebels. In addition, he issued a warning to the locals that they would suffer the consequences if they gave any aid or comfort to the insurgents. Washington’s actions and words had the desired effect.
By the time the militia reached Pittsburgh, many of the locals had faded away. Although there
were arrests and shouts of “treason,” the Mount Vernon historians note that credible evidence and witnesses were in short supply. Only two men were found guilty, and both were pardoned by President Washington, who blamed the rebellion on fiery rhetoric.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a test of the stability of the new nation. Washington, to his great credit, had stood firm. And in the final analysis, an American precedent was set. The place to change
federal law would be at the ballot box, not in the streets. It also set a precedent for presidential pardons, these being the first; the federal authority’s response to lawbreakers; and the ability to organize militia from states to help protect federal laws. Washington undoubtedly knew that he was breaking new ground, and he acted with wisdom every step of the way.
President Thomas Jefferson repealed the excise tax on whiskey in 1802.
30 years after Wilma Rudolph’s death, the track and field star’s legacy still stands out as a symbol of inspiration
By Brian D’Ambrosio
When she was 5 years old, her left leg twisted inward, and she couldn’t move it back. Earlier, she had contracted scarlet fever, and now she was diagnosed with polio, which had no cure and left most children either permanently disabled or dead.
For many years, she wore a brace supporting her leg. Cheered on by her family, she exercised continuously, at home and at physical therapy at a nearby hospital, strengthening the paralyzed muscles. One Sunday, in the church where she and her family devoutly worshipped, she mustered the bravery to attempt to walk without her brace. The congregation witnessed a miracle as she moved through the aisle on her own strength.
At age 20, Wilma Rudolph arrived in Italy to represent the United States at the 1960 Olympics as a track and field competitor. According to her New York Times obituary, her legacy would be as “America’s greatest female sports hero since Babe Didrikson Zaharias a generation earlier.”
Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, on June 23, 1940, Wilma Glodean Rudolph arrived two months earlier than expected and significantly underweight—only 4 1/2 pounds. Her earliest days were marked by sickness, including bouts of chicken pox, mumps, and measles. Double pneumonia and scarlet fever nearly took the girl’s life at age 4. And then she was stricken with polio, also known as infantile paralysis. Doctors told her parents to expect and prepare for the worst: She would prob-
ably never be able to walk again.
“Before I realized I was a living person, I was in [leg] braces,” she once told a crowd of college students.
Kids singled her out for ridicule, or they ostracized her and excluded her from their games and activities. But Rudolph continued to keep her body—and mind—in motion however she could. Fitted with a leg brace and orthopedic shoe, the young girl would not be defeated by her shortcoming. She hopped on one foot in the house and street. She tossed a basketball into a makeshift hoop—a peach basket attached to a pole in the backyard. She helped her mother with the chores, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the many other children. Rudolph’s family took her to a hospital in Nashville, where the doctors tended to the girl’s compromised leg with massage and exercise.
Lonely and melancholy, she watched the other kids play games on the playground and field. She studied the games they played, especially basketball, worked hard at her leg exercises, and believed that she and her circumstances would improve. Bit by bit, she regained strength and power in her afflicted leg; then, one wondrous morning at church, she was able to walk unaided by any medical devices. At age 12, Rudolph and her mother packed the brace in a box and returned it to the hospital, both of them aware that the girl’s life was starting all over again.
At age 15, she excelled at basketball, earning AllState honors and even notching a state record of 49
Her earliest days were marked by sickness, including bouts of chicken pox, mumps, and measles.
points in a single contest. But in track, she exhibited a toughness and determination that seemed almost divine; she was possessed with a unique ardor and intensity that perhaps only someone who had come so far so quickly, the way she had, could demonstrate.
“Serious running is like a war,” she said. “You sacrifice a lot of things if you are young and ambitious.”
As a junior at Burt High, she qualified for the 1956 United States Olympic track team and was awarded the bronze medal for the 4x100-meter relay at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Subsequently, Rudolph won a full athletic scholarship to Tennessee State University.
In the summer of 1960, Rudolph represented the United States at the Olympic Games in Italy, the first time ever that the Olympics would be broadcast internationally. Just after she arrived in Rome, Rudolph slipped and twisted her ankle. Despite the swelling and pain, she pushed on and plowed forward, similar to the way she had her entire life. The way forward once again depended on her own heart.
Rudolph won the 100-meter dash and 200meter dash. She tallied her third gold of the games anchoring the U.S. 4x100-meter relay team alongside Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams, and Barbara Jones. As the fourth and final runner on the team, Rudolph crossed the finish line half a second ahead of her nearest opponent. In a dramatically scripted turn of events, a once unimaginably sickly child in north Tennessee was now one of the fastest and most decorated athletes in the world.
“I love what the Olympics stand for,” she once said. “They’ll always be a part of me.”
There was a parade and banquet held in Rudolph’s honor in her hometown, and there was no doubt a great swell of enjoyment among the
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Rudolph family, who had experienced all of the hurt, drive, and struggle that marked their loved one’s journey.
Rudolph retired from her career as a runner in 1962, earned a college degree in education, and became a second-grade teacher and a high school basketball and track coach. She started an eponymous nonprofit foundation to inspire and teach young athletes to believe that they could also succeed in spite of any challenges or obstacles that might come their way.
Rudolph’s accomplishments earned her many honors and awards, including the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Award, and she was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974.
But there was a unique luminosity that she projected post-retirement that was just as dazzling and vital as the fire that guided her earlier ambitions. Community- and family-oriented, Rudolph kept a tight connection to home following her Olympiad days, and, whether training young athletes, restoring her parents’ home, or lending her name, time, and goodwill to youth sports programs, she appeared to do it with characteristic authenticity.
“My interest has always been at the grass-roots level because that’s how my career started,” Rudolph said in 1993. “I’d like to give kids that same opportunity because it doesn’t really exist anymore.”
A mother of four, Rudolph stayed heavily invested in the community and state where she was raised, working at a local bank, as a consultant to a tourism development board, and as vice president of Nashville’s Baptist Hospital.
As the New York Times said, she was “a handsome, regal woman, 6 feet tall, charming, graceful, and gracious.” Rudolph died at age 54 of a malignant brain tumor.
A life-size bronze statue of Rudolph adorns the Wilma Rudolph Event Center in Clarksville, a facility that hosts a large cross-section of events and activities, and the nonprofit Wilma Rudolph Foundation continues to train young athletes and promote youth athletic programs.
George Mason’s Gunston Hall is indicative of the Georgian style of architecture
CBy Deena Bouknight
onsidered one of the finest existing Colonial dwellings in America, Gunston Hall is more than just a house and manicured grounds. It was here that George Mason (1725–1792) lived for 33 years with his wife, Ann, and their nine surviving children. It was at Gunston Hall that Mason was faced with choosing patriotism for the burgeoning United States or loyalty to the British crown. He chose to become one of the foremost voices for liberty through his writings.
He frequently put pen to paper to help shape America’s foundation at his Gunston Hall plantation in Virginia—just 8 miles from the Potomac River and around 10 miles southwest of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. In fact, Washington
mentions their visits in diary entries preserved in the National Archives.
The House
Designed by English craftsmen William Buckland and William Bernard Sears, Gunston Hall follows Georgian architecture. The brick house’s first-floor layout connotes symmetry, with a central front-toback passageway and four rooms of similar dimensions stemming from that main hallway. A parlor, dining room, chamber, and Palladian formal room are situated on the ground floor. The upper level features a narrow passageway that provides access to seven bedchambers and a storage room.
After entering through the arched portico, adorned with dentil molding, and the front door,
illuminated by a fan-light, visitors walk into a large, open stair hall. Hanging from an intricate plasterwork double arch in the hall is a classic acorn pendant. It symbolizes fertility and the possibility of new life. Upstairs is a classical arch grand arcade, where the arches rest on fluted square columns.
Although many surviving Georgian architectural homes in the United States offer some elements of the style’s signature Greek and Roman design elements, Gunston Hall is unique for its dramatic expression of the style. For example, the Palladian formal room features ornate, Frenchinspired rococo woodwork. Some of the fireplace mantels present elaborate fretwork, meaning graceful, open patterns and designs achieved by
interlacing and connecting wooden strips.
In the dining room are inset windows theatrically apportioned with windows surrounded by columns and topped with intricately detailed pediments. Inset arched niches in the room feature flush, fluted columns with stacked capitals, broken pediments, and a centerpiece corbel.
Visitors to this historic site will find the rooms decorated with Colonial period furnishings, accessories, and utilitarian items, such as letter openers, inkwells, candlesticks, and mortar and pestle.
First, Mason penned a local thesis with George Washington, entitled the Fairfax Resolves. The rousing paper eventually motivated him, a member of the Fifth Virginia Convention, to write the Virginia Declaration of Rights in June 1776. In it are familiar statements, including: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights.”
However fervent Mason was about safeguarding Americans’ rights, he was one of only three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution of the United States. He insisted that without amendments to the newly ratified U.S. Constitution, liberties would be vulnerable for future generations. To his son, George Mason Jr., in May 1787, the year before the Constitution was ratified, Mason wrote: “God grant that we may be able to concert effectual means of preserving our country.”
Eventually, Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights informed and inspired another founding father, James Madison, to write 10 amendments to the Constitution. Referred to as the Bill of Rights, they were proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1791.
It turns out that Mason was forward-thinking and stalwart in ensuring the Bill of Rights was passed. The Bill of Rights is still regularly expressed, argued over, and protested—especially the first and second amendments: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; and freedom to bear arms.
A Mason quote, shared at Gunston Hall’s museum exhibit, sums up his delight in knowing a proposal had been put forth that communicated his ideas for the future of the country: “I have received much satisfaction from the Amendments to the federal Constitution. … I cou’d chearfully put my Hand & Heart to the new Government.”
George Mason said these words to Samuel
Griffin, fellow Virginia politician, on September 8, 1789, just a few months after Madison had introduced the amendments to the First Congress.
Perhaps, as Mason walked the vast grounds around the Gunston Hall plantation, he considered how he would formulate on paper his assessments of the country’s foundational principles.
The Grounds
The home was built on the Mason Neck Peninsula along the Pohick Creek, which eventually joins the Potomac River. Atop a hill, the vast grounds that originally encompassed 5,500 acres—reduced to 550 today—were established to offer “viewing mounts” for Mason, his family, and guests to take in the vistas of fields, woodlands, and waterway. Beneath the viewing mounts are green grass earthen terraces that “step down” to the paths and Deer Park below the house.
The outdoor spaces were just as important to Mason as were the home’s architecture and design. Vegetable, herb, and flower gardens are still plentiful from spring through early fall, and fruit trees abound. He made certain that the gardens offered a “spacious walk running eastwardly and westward,” as was written in “The Recollections of John Mason: George Mason’s Son Remembers His Father and Life at Gunston Hall.”
The grounds around the house are replete with English boxwoods, manicured to form large,
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natural frames around trees. Horticulturists and preservationists have painstakingly enhanced and maintained Gunston Hall’s exterior scenery, making sure the terraces were restored in 2023. They regularly add historic varieties of fruiting trees, shrubs, perennial flowers, and even medicinal plants.
Gunston Hall remained in the Mason family until 1867. After that, it changed owners until it was gifted to the Commonwealth of Virginia (COV) in 1949 and eventually became a National Historic Landmark. By offering public access to the house and grounds, COV aims to “stimulate the exploration and understanding of principles expressed by George Mason in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights.”
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