My apologies to the reader who said my last post was too depressing. As a remedy, I’d like to share the exuberance of two world champions, and the very special liquid that they chose to indulge in to celebrate. A story by Jason Gay in the WSJ described two team’s […]
In Los Angeles Magazine last night, a ghoulish yet compelling story held my rapt attention. It was about what happens to you when you die. With a pre-amble that waxed philosophic on the inevitability of death despite all of our preoccupations with trying to stay healthy and put off the […]
I”m reading a book called Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer’s Memoir of Venezuela by a young English writer named Jamie Maslin. The facts he presents by visiting so many people there have completely changed my opinion of a man who I once thought of as a force for […]
In normal human reproduction, there is a natural tendency to have more boys than girls…the ratio is about 104 to 100. But a new book by Mara Hvistendahl has come out about how much this has changed over the past fifty years and the dramatic repercussions that changing this ratio […]
I took off my watch and left my cellphone at home yesterday. After all, I was traveling back in time, to the Middle ages, where a festival was taking place in a clearing in the woods of Turner’s Falls. It was the Mutton and Mead Medieval Festival, and more than […]
Sitting around a dinner table with a group of close friends, wine flowing freely, someone throws out that Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, must be intending to use WMDs. It’s 2003, and the US is just about to launch the Shock and Awe campaign of missiles based on intelligence that proved […]
I”m riding a Greyhound bus heading north out of New York City. I must give the bus line and Peter Pan a little credit, since I think bus travel has markedly improved over the past few years. I wrote in this space about Megabus, so I’m giving the other more […]
A column by Richard Clarke in the WSJ posed a challenging question: What would the US do if the Chinese government planted explosives along our electricity grid? Most of us would be alarmed, and we would expect that a military response would be the next step. Wouldn’t we? Today, the […]
Tomorrow I’ll join photographer and fellow GoNOMAD staffer Paul Shoul and take an early train into New York City. We will get there early enough to scout out our Brooklyn digs for the night and then proceed to a luncheon hosted by Maine and New Brunswick Tourism in Manhattan. The […]
I posted a note on Facebook about new opportunities to travel to Cuba, at least if you can claim to be a part of an educational tour or study group. A bunch of friends commented on how much they too want to go there. Tonight I read a column about […]
As the ten members of Bella’s Bartok milled around the back of the Rendezvous, getting ready for their Saturday night gig, I thought about how hard it must be to keep all of them on the same musical page. What a diverse ensemble, so many instruments–trumpet, trombone, violin, accordion, guitars, […]
The battleship USS Iowa, mothballed off the coast of California. Now LA and Long Beach are battling to be the city where it will be turned into a museum. photo by Scott Haeffner.[/caption] Scott Haeffner is a daring man who could not resist exploring a forbidden part of the California […]