I set out for the Y this morning without the book I’m reading. So I found another book on my shelf and dove in…it’s called Devils and the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams and Schemes and Showdowns that built America’s Cruise-ship Empires. It begins by recounting the last day on […]
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Mike Kirby writes a blog called On the Loose. A few days ago he mused about downsizing into a new condo. Granite counters, shiny this and that, but what would he be missing? He hits it squarely on the head. “Perfection is okay, but it leaves the old man with […]
As I’ve gotten older I’m less and less willing to go out on New Year’s Eve. Yet last year I broke with tradition and ventured out to the Wisteriahurst Museum, to join about a hundred other proud Holyokers to bring in the new year. It was a lot of fun […]
A front page story by Scott Patterson in Saturday’s WSJ detailed the scary times last fall when it seemed the economy was collapsing right in front of our eyes. Warren Buffett says ‘he looked into the abyss’ when confronted with the scene–the government bailing out big banks, and most of […]
I was up early this morning, reading and reading on my little iphone while lying in bed. So many interesting stories on such a tiny device, Lord what did I ever do before I got my mitts on this thing? I read Obama’s speech that he gave to the Nobel […]
It’s a brilliant cold Saturday, and I learned quite a bit as I read last night’s WSJ while looking out at the chickadees and finches flitting over the feeder. One was about a German company called SkySails that installs parachute-like sails above commercial freighters and says that in the right […]
In San Francisco, they published a one-off that impressed everybody and they all lined up to buy it. Print newspapers aren’t dead, the story asserts, we just want them to be much better. This paper was called the San Francisco Panorama. It’s a big broadsheet in color with features about […]
Reading a story in the WSJ tonight I came across an excellent word that prompted me to delve into its meaning. That is, Potemkin Village. As in, ‘they planted a potemkin forest to block the highway.’ It goes back to Catherine the Great’s tour of Crimea in 1787, when a […]
I am looking out at a serene backyard, dappled with sun. Yet in my part of the woods, the winds rage, the rain pours down on top of the big snowfall. Happily plugged in, I manage to ‘kill time’ a bit here in NJ while rides home are sorted out […]
My parents get two newspapers every day at their New Jersey home. One of them is the Trenton Times, which publishes Thomas Friedman’s column, as does the NY Times, their second newspaper. I read him today and as usual, agree with what he has to say. It’s about the Narrative…a […]
We staggered out of the theater in Davis Square this afternoon after seeing Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze’s brilliant adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s classic. The emotion that he’s able to squeeze out of 20-foot-high characters in elaborate costumes and CGI faces took our breath away. Those […]