David “Honeyboy” Edwards, 1915-2011

I heard the news this morning that blueser David “Honeyboy” Edwards has died at age 96. I first interviewed Edwards in 1991 in Atlanta. Like all music writers who interviewed (over-interviewed) Edwards, I asked him about the night Robert Johnson died. Continue reading

Clandestine Cold War Presidential Emergency Site: Fort Reno Redux

Last year I wrote an article for the Recent Past Preservation Network’s newsletter documenting presidential emergency facilities. These were subterranean bunkers with above-ground radio towers. Follow-up articles appeared in this blog.

Recent Internet posts have revealed the existence of photographs taken by the John F. Kennedy administration during the construction of the site in Washington, D.C., code-named “Cartwheel.” The site, with its masonry communications tower, is “hidden” among water towers in the capital’s Tenleytown neighborhood. The photos have been digitized and are available at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Website.

According to the information included with the digitized images, the Fort Reno facility was constructed in the summer of 1961 and it was sponsored by the White House Army Signal Agency (WHASA). The images below are a few of the nearly 100 images from the JFK library’s collection.