Last night we dined outside in a balmy evening, a relief after the day’s temps were in the upper 90s here in Southwestern France. This weather is unexpected and in most of France, there is a drought parching crops. But in this district, Lot-en-Garonne, golden wheat is being harvested, the […]
Today I walked the streets of Bordeaux with Stephane Thierry, who for 35 years has run the press marketing for the large region of Aquitaine, that covers five distinct parts, from Perigeaux and the Dordogne in the north all the way down to glitzy Biaritz in the South, and west […]
I am in Terminal E at Logan, awaiting a night flight that will bring me to Bordeaux on Monday morning. There are few things I can compare to the giddiness and sense of anticipation that I still feel, after hundreds of trips, about a departure. That’s why I’m a traveler, […]
For the second year in a row, the band Wilco has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars, excitement, energy and creative people into the dreary worn-down mill town of North Adams at the end of June. The three-day event, Solid Sound Music and Arts festival curated by Wilco, was a […]
Lenny singing Sinatra at the Voo. Lenny Zarcone loves to sing. Right in front of you, right at you, he swoops in with his microphone in one hand, the other arm stretched out, and he sings, sweetly, in tune, right into the faces of his audience. He meets your eye, […]
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 […]