I’ve got the itinerary in front of me and a new composition book to fill up with notes. I have stocked up on business cards, printed out my Google Map, and remembered to charge my devices. I have nothing here to worry about, and I’m happy to report I’ll be […]

I chuckled as I read a very long account of how Goldman Sachs lost 98% of the money invested by Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, at the very start of the financial collapse in in 2008. A story in the WSJ revealed how the firm tried to compensate Ghaddafi and his […]

Who’s gonna beat Bill Dwight in the race for city councilor at large? Nobody! It was evident tonight as I joined a throng who gathered at the Florence Community Center to kick off his campaign to get back the office he once held, along with his regular gig working in […]

If I read as many books as I do book reviews, I’d never get anything done. In honor of Memorial Day yesterday I read an essay in the NY Times book review of a selection of books about the Big One, WWII, by Adam Kirsch. He opens with the sad […]

The blurb on my Facebook page took me aback. RIP Bob Paquette. What? Bob, as everyone in the Valley knows, was the voice of the morning. His familiar calm tone and steady delivery has graced our kitchen for decades. I cannot imagine turning on that familiar 88.5 fm signal and […]

I have been writing this blog, Readuponit, since November 2004. A friend quoted me from a February 2006 post the other day when I was on my way to Cyprus. It’s a slightly exotic place that few people visit, and when I read the quoted text, I thought about how […]

I’ve reached a milestone, and forgive me for blogging about this once already. But I thought I had a deal to keep the GoNOMAD Cafe open, and alas, like many things in life, it was not to be. With the combination of recalcitrant landlords and shaky finances, the deal went […]

“I think these burgers need to go back on the grill,” my daughter said, as we sat on the deck at the season’s inaugural barbecue.  I heard what she said but it was too late, I’d already taken a big bite. She was right. so she took the burgers, put […]

Imagine living to the ripe old age of 104….and spending eight decades of that long life in virtual seclusion. I read a column called Remembrances tonight in the WSJ about Huguette Clark, a society girl who made her debut at age 20, and then married at 22. Yet despite being […]

Of all the lovable and charming characters on The Office, Andy Bernard is to me the funniest of all. Is this because of my growing up in Ivy League Princeton, NJ, where there were families like Mr Bernard’s who brag about their Cornell roots yet are absolutely terrible at their […]

When I saw the eponymous title of a new book by a less-than-admired president, I knew I wanted to read more. Millard Filmore is a new book by Paul Finkelman that explains the background of how a barely-known comptroller of New York became President of the United States. His fortune […]