Yesterday in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I read a column by editor Jim Foudy about the newly revamped Gazettenet, the paper’s website. Since the beginning of time Steve and I have told the folks over there that they are crazy to keep charging people to view the site, since they […]
Gino Piccin has passed away. I got an email yesterday from his daughter Nancy, she had seen my 2005 blog post about him. When I wrote it, I thought it was the final end of a long battle. Though he was very sick back then, he rallied, and came back […]
Today we went up to Northampton for the Really Big Show, a 17-year tradition that involves dozens of acts, from circus aerialists to jugglers and a Don Ho impersonation. After the intermission, the Northampton Center for the arts gave an award for community activism and dynamic leadership to my old […]
I never knew this until I read it in today’s New York Times, but golf is losing popularity. The story said there has been a serious decline since 2000, and that people who used to play frequently are playing less and less. Golf courses are trying new schemes to battle […]
Today’s a quiet day at the cafe, and I got some time to read the WSJ, and find out about a heir who has made nearly everyone he knows very mad. That would be Jamie Johnson, great grandson of the founder of J&J, who as we like to say in […]
I’m still up on the podium, after all of the people left the room. I breathed a sigh of relief this morning at about 11:30 am, after my successful presentation at the Boston Globe Travel Show. I was nervous, yet prepared. It all went well and it was a thrill […]
Sometimes I am amazed at how much cool stuff I learn one day’s newspaper. Below are random musings from a night flipping my eyes between Simon Cowell and Idol and the Wall St. Journal. In NYC’s Cooper Union college a new nine-story building is being built–with elevators that only stop […]
America’s military brass are surely on cloud nine tonight, as they gear up to use a $69 million toy to do something useful: blow up a spy satellite the size of a city bus. CBS news had a story on their website. The eye in the sky is named US […]
I’m nervous. I’m nervous because on Friday I am going to stand up in front of dozens of people in the travel business and make a speech. It won’t be a real speech, not like a politician speech, it will be a presentation. It will be about search engines and […]
Eric Felton writes about drinking, cocktails and ritual in the WSJ on the weekends. Today he taught me about Roman Punch. The tale is long, and goes way back to Dolly Hayes, the famous teet0talling first lady, who would serve no booze in the White House. “The water flowed like […]
I read a story in today’s Gazette about a massacre of cedar waxwings. It was a sad day at a local school when a flock of dozens of the songbirds crashed into large windows after being pursued by a hawk. Bill Danielson, who writes a column called “Speaking of Nature” […]
People continue to fascinate me, as I meet them on my travels and while going about our town spreading the word about the new Deerfield Attractions website. I met a man the other day over a beer who told me was in the security business. “What kind of security,” I […]