Studying Gravestones and the Lives they Depict
The first gravestones in New England were simple rectangles. Then in the 1720s, death’s head began to be featured on the tops of the stones. The figures would usually be graced with lines, as if they were ascending up into heaven. Forty years later, the motif du jour was winged […]
There are Two Sports In Texas: Football and Spring Football
One of the first things I learned from my Texas-born host during my visit was that here in Texas, there are two sports that matter– Football, and spring football. The Dallas Cowboys are revered, and yet nobody expects anything less than a final Superbowl victory, every year. No second place, […]
Things You Can Find in Texas that We Don’t Have in Mass.
Texas is bigger and badder than my creaky little old state of Massachusetts. Here are just some of the things that I found down here in Plano that I’ve never seen in the Bay State. Well, at least not in the Happy Valley. * Mega churches: We passed a gigantic […]
Balloons in Plano Are Grounded by Winds, Yet the Glow Goes On
“One, Two, Three, Four, Five…BURN!” shouted the radio DJ, and all of sudden the skyline was illuminated with the fiery glow of a dozen hot air balloons aglow in the Texas sky. The crowd up on the hill crackled with camera flashes, cheers went up, and as each balloon randomly […]
Seasons 52 in Plano: Counting Calories Deliciously
I’m up at the crack of madness this morning, since the goal is to catch the sunrise from aloft in a hot air balloon. Yesterday I flew here to Plano, Texas, and saw that the ground was mostly brown from the window of the packed plane. After just a few […]
Croatia Shows the World How to Bring in Tourists
After a relaxing night of sleep in my own comfy bed, Croatia keeps bobbing back up in my mind. What it like there? One thing that again and again you think of is how old and how new the country is. There was no country of Croatia until 1991, when […]
John Bell: Managing Crises Around the Globe
At the end of the conference on tourism and the media, British travel writer and BBC TV host John Bell gave the closing speech. He ended it with good advice, paraphrasing JFK, when he said, ‘tourism boards, ask not what the media can do for you, ask what you can […]
Sitting with a Bevy of Beauties Hearing About Tourism’s Promise
Last night was the official opening dinner of the World Tourism Organization conference in Zagreb, and I found myself seated with a bevy of beauties representing the world. Next to me was Zivile Vaskyte, who is the one person who handles the media for the Republic of Lithuania’s state department […]