Being Reminded of Your Flaws Always Stings
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. […]
“Limitless”: What a Little Pill Can Do
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 […]
Fall Means Two Things: Leaves and the Pats
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 […]
Soap Makers Conspire to Fix Prices, But Can’t Resist Deals
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’s Matakana Market Kitchen: Seven Days, All Meals
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 […]
The Kauri is the Symbol of New Zealand’s Northland
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 […]
Celebrating a 60th with a Rockin’ House Party in Coromandel Town
I drove and drove, up and around, past stunning vistas, past thousands of cows and hundreds of grazing white tailed deer, past mirrors that showed the other side, and around hairpin curves and long sweeping straight-aways…. I had set out from Matakana and drove right past the big metropolis of […]