Coming Soon to the Sky Above Afghanistan
Have you heard about the giant blimp that will soon be deployed 20,000 feet above Afghanistan? It’s made by Northrop Grumman and it’s a seven-story, football-field sized blimp that can stay up for three weeks at a time. And it positively bristles with electronic survelliance antennae, sensors, and other intelligence […]
Colrain’s Green Emporium Warms Up with Zydeco
I was at the hardware store and asked my favorite clerk, Mike, what he was doing this weekend. It was the classic Friday question. “I am playing zydeco music up in Colrain,” he said. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was a very good time to […]
He Pilots a Giant Blue Mercury, or a Cool Orange Snowthrower
One of the joys of staying put for many years is how you get to know people, and recognize their cars and their mannerisms as you circulate through town. In our village, there is a short man who likes to wear funny looking hats and drives an enormous light blue […]
Up in Alaska, Men from Oregon Search Desperately for Gold
Tonight the TV was all about the Great North. First up Gold Rush Alaska, about a group of six men from Oregon who have assembled $250K worth of heavy machinery and have bought a claim in Porcupine Creek to mine gold. It’s one equipment failure after another and the miners […]
With the Alabama Story Done, Time for Ebooks and Podcasts
It’s another snow day in New England…everyone I know is getting weary of all of these days when everything closes down and the driving is terrible. I keep thinking, no, no, they can’t cancel school again, yet here they go, another day of no school, kids inside, and the cafe […]
Growing Hurts like Hell
Andréa Cabrita wrote a story today about volunteering in an orphanage in Zambia. At the very end, she perfectly sums up a life-changing experience like she went through. She did a beautiful job. It was like an insistent disruption that makes us want to disconnect, that makes us crave a […]
There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be a Bedbug
In a sure sign that the apocalypse is near, I read today in the WSJ that bedbugs are evolving several resistance techniques that makes them even harder to kill. Researchers at UMass have found NYC bedbugs are now 250 times more resistant to the standard pesticide than their brethren in […]
To Look Cool in Nairobi, Drive a Baby Boy
In Nigeria, a 2000 Honda Accord is widely known as a “Baby Boy.” The 2003 model, a step up, is called “End of Discussion.” And if you’re lucky and rich enough to drive the 2007 model, they call that “The Discussion Continues.” I read a story in yesterday’s WSJ about […]