We’re getting to crunch time in the holiday marathon. This is the week of Christmas parties; today a woman on Facebook said she was putting on glitter, just a little, since an office party loomed at the end of the day. We look around the house and try to figure […]
When you walk into Elmer’s store in Ashfield and pick up a menu, you begin to get a sense of Nan Parati’s sense of fun. It’s her menu–filled with double entendre, puns and jokes that harken back to her New Orleans roots. Ashfield has never been as cool as it […]
Every few weeks, I drive to Amherst to have lunch with my old friend Ed. He suggested that we share some of our finds with our blog readers, so herewith is the first installment of a new feature on Readuponit: Lunch reviews of local eateries. Today’s lunch was at Miss […]
We met on the Gill Common with good intentions. Songbooks were passed out, a few practice numbers were run through. Then it was time to share the season’s good cheer with the citizens of the village. In a group, including youngsters and a dog on a leash, we made our […]
Last night I flicked on Netflix and found a program called “Two Weeks of Hell.” It was about the test that potential Green Berets have to go through to simply be admitted into the even more rigorous training program that only a handful of them will be able to pass. […]
There are times when I have to abandon my usual excess of joyfullness and realize that some days just suck. I had a bummer day yesterday and it got worse…I was relieved by sleep and to wake up with a new slate full of less grim prospects for the day. […]
Eddie is down on his luck. He’s a struggling writer with an advance to make good on. But people who run into him on the street think he’s homeless when they see his tangled hair and scraggly beard. His apartment is a dump, his girlfriend has flown the coop…then he […]
In New England leaves are as much as a part of life as the Patriots. Of course they came along a few years earlier, but who among us here in the Great Northeast doesn’t have their own struggle with what falls from above? Of course some of us live in […]
It’s a soapy sudsy world of deceit: In France, a conspiracy was uncovered recently that saw the major makers of laundry detergent including agreeing on not lowering prices and barring Buy-one-Get-one specials between 1997 and 2004. There was even a cartel with codenames, according to a story in today’s WSJ. […]
Bob Pollitt made a big move about eighteen months ago. He sold his five cafes in and around Bristol, England and moved with his teenagers and his wife all the way down to Matakana New Zealand. Today he’s enjoying running the biggest and busiest restaurant in this town that’s a […]
If there is one symbol of all of the North Island New Zealand places I’ve been on this trip, it would be the Kauri tree. This tree shaped the country and made the economy and determined what people did when they first arrived here. It’s a sad story of timber […]
