Martin Luther King was assassinated on this day, April 4, 1968, spurring the passage of the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968.  I repeat two videos I took when we were in Memphis. Vicksburg is a small town of 20,000 in Mississippi, and a battle site of the Civil War. Vicksburg is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. Across the Mississippi River is Louisiana, Long occupied by the Natchez Native Americans. Built by French colonists in 1719. Incorporated as Vicksburg in 1825. Jefferson Davis, Confederate president, based his family plantation just south of the city. Was a key Confederate river-port, and in July of 1963 surrendered to General Ulysses Grant, marking a turning point in the war.  In 1876, a flood moved the Mississippi River away from Vicksburg, damaging the local economy, which only returned in 1903 when the U.S. Army Corpos of Engineers built a diversion canal to the city. Terrible Black-White problems affected this area from after the Civi...

For those regulars of this blog site, I will get to our American Melody cruise on the Mississippi River.  But first, my topic of the day: the  Cicada . This is not a travel site.  No city/town has that name. Not about those swarming insects from 13- or 17-year broods.   Anyway, this happens not to be one of those springs when they emerge .  Although there will come a few stragglers, like this one shown.  Brood XXIII will strike in 2028.  In prime cicada years, you can more readily find chocolate chip cicada cookies. The Cicada I'm referring to today is the  new COVID variant . This will be an encore, for this variant first appeared in 2024. Cicada is nickname for BA.3.2, which first infected people in South Africa. Cicada is responsible for 30% of Europe's COVID ailments. More: Scientists say that Cicada carries   70 to 75 new mutations   in the spike protein, the portion that the human immune system recognizes and targets. That's m...

Our cruise continues.  Today, one of our tours.  It can be confusing, because there are various kinds of blues museums.   Go across the country, and the majority of Blues museums is in the Mississippi Delta. There was the Blues Hall of Fame Museum in Memphis. The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Mississippi. Plack Prairie Blue Museum, West Point, Mississippi. Ole Miss Blues Archive, Oxford, Mississippi. Knee Deep Blues Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. National Blues Museum, St. Louis, Missouri....but this one permanently closed just this month. One more, and maybe the best, is the Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica County, Mississippi. Located in a rustic train depot going back to 1895. Tells how the Blues was born, and role Tunica played. Some photos. Lots of guitars. Starts with videos.  There are two steel guitars you can try to play.  The exhibition links life in the age of slaver...