We took a different route this week for our accommodations in Pittsburgh to visit Mary’s family. Instead of the Holiday Inn, where room prices were about $189 a night, we choose to rent an apartment for far less. The service is called Airbnb.com, and it matches up people with spare […]
We spent the day in this city of three rivers, in the Shadyside neighborhood where Mary spent her childhood. In our rented one-bedroom apartment, it was nice to decamp and be able to visit Mary’s family and have a place to come home to afterward. Shadyside’s Walnut Street is one […]
We’re en route to faraway Pittsburgh this morning, and I’m up early in Kyle and Maggie’s apartment in Park Slope Brooklyn. The busy street, Fifth Avenue, has hundreds of restaurants, shops and cafes, and last night we had to pop into three different places to find one that would seat […]
It’s a Saturday morning, I’ve already been to the gym, and I’m in that good mood that comes with a view of nothing but vacation ahead. We’re going on a road trip: first to Park Slope, Brooklyn to visit Mary’s son and daughter in law, and then Sunday, a long […]
It was a world premier, and the tears of joy on Linda McInerney’s face as she stood introducing the show in the corner of the Academy stage showed how much this show must mean to her. It was, as she wrote in the program, the culmination of a big effort […]
This week in an an op-ed about Sunday’s riots in Greece by Brian M Carney a particular sentence stood out and made me uneasy. “Almost every traffic light in the vicinity was out, smashed during the overnight vandalism.” This reminds of me of the eery feeling I got when I […]
The story was titled, ‘living very large,’ and the photo was an aerial shot of one of Los Angeles’ most massive single family homes. It looked more like a hotel, but it indeed was Hyatt hotel heir Anthony Pritzker’s newest house, tipping the scales at 49,300 square feet. Apparently these […]
When we went to Mexico last month, more than a few people voiced concerns about safety. Again and again, some Americans say they are worried about visiting a country ‘where there is so much drug war violence.’ The stats are scary—more than 40,000 deaths since the conflict began, yet in […]
Roger Salloom is an easy-going fellow. The last time I saw him was at Greenfield’s Arts Block, surrounded by friends, where he looked serene and like he was exactly where he wanted to be: About to enjoy local music at a fun local venue. He sent out an email about […]
Every day we say goodbye to another member of the Greatest Generation, those men and women who were born in the 1920s and now are passing away. I am sad to think that some of what they accomplished and the ways they built their fortunes could never happen again–things are […]
Once again I took the Megabus down to NYC, this time it cost me just $25.50 roundtrip. My reason for a Big Apple visit was a presentation by French Tourism about what’s new in France for 2012. France has a lot to crow about in the tourism world, even while […]
Where can you possibly find such joy as gliding across a frozen pond, with what feels like a mile of open ice ahead of you, and nothing but skate marks to guide your way? The ominous growl of the ice creaking, the dangerous looking holes that are now coated over […]