I’m becoming all too familiar with the vernacular of today’s amazingly dire economic realities, as written in the pages of the WSJ. Many businesses seem to be ‘stung’ by the tough retail climate, and ‘struggling to cope’ or deciding to ‘unwind or unravel’ the deals they made in the ‘good […]
I sat this morning in my kitchen while we waited for the men to arrive to work on the new bathroom. I had a chance to see a positive story in the WSJ, about how voters said yes across the US to Mass Transit projects of all stripes. That’s good […]
Caribbean round grains, favored in creating smooth surfaces for plastering and finishing, are being hauled away by the truckload late at night. On some islands, towns and ecologically sensitive areas get exposed to tidal surges and rough seas.Among the hardest hit is Grenada, where officials are building a $1.2 million […]
Score one for the good guys: I read today on Times Online about the Royal Navy’s first shootout on the high seas in living memory. Pirates off the coast of Somalia were trying to hijack a cargo ship, and made a bonehead move. They opened fire on one of her […]
Whenever I read the WSJ, it’s so full of terrible news, it’s almost hard to continue on with my life. How bad can it get? Bad, really bad. A few days ago I read dire reports about radio networks. One analyst said it was the perfect storm…highly leveraged companies in […]
The cafe requires such a range of different talents. Like last night when I had to empty out the grease trap, and saw six month’s worth of gunk there waiting for me to remove it. Egads that’s awful! That’s one job I don’t want to do from now on. I […]
It’s going to be a tough week, with my bathroom being renovated, but happily, it was a great weekend. We were out all three nights, first to the Voo in Turners Falls, then to pal Shelley Rotner’s get together at her spacious studio in Florence’s Arts and Industry Building. The […]
These signs have been an objective of mine since November 2007. That’s when we had our first meeting and I pitched the pair of politicians Rosenberg and Kulik that we needed something to direct people to our little town center. I am happy to see them up and installed today, […]
Last night while we were waiting for Cindy to arrive to go up to the Voo in resurgent Turners Falls, a television program on the Travel Channel caught our attention. Francisco and I looked aghast as the show, called “Extreme Terror Rides,” described North America’s most fearsome ‘fun’ rides and […]
At the VEMEX meeting of European tourism boards, it was a pleasure to meet the tourism officials and also to get their gifts of USB drives.
A sad note this morning, in an eloquent email sent out by my pal Joe O’Rourke. My cousin Paul’s beloved black lab Bennie was struck and killed by a car last night, and later buried in Paul’s yard, with the help of Paul’s friends Bill and Joe. Bennie has been […]
Ahm-ma-dina-jad. Ahm-ma-dine-ijad. I used to say this over and over again, walking through Cindy’s house. Ahm-ma-dina-jad, I wanted to learn how to say it. I better get it right, because I just got invited to visit Iran later this month. I have always wanted to see Persia, see the famous […]