I went to the supermarket early this morning. On the way, I stopped by my cafe, and met a fellow business owner strolling down the sidewalk. “Come on in for a coffee,” I offered, but he didn’t break his stride. I spied him later carrying a to-go cup from the […]

I read the obituaries regularly. Some times one sticks out, like this one I saw today on Boston.com, titled “the Ultimate Mensch.” Sam Allis wrote about James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth, who died of cancer recently. “I first him met over a decade ago, when I covered education […]

I hit another WiFi coffeehouse today in Northampton, MA. I sat at a big table with five others, three of whom also typed into their laptops. But I couldn’t get a signal, so I had to write this and post it later. There was a story in the NY Times […]

What Eduardo Porter writes in today’s NY Times will disappoint many readers my age. He says that there will be much less money from our parents to inherit than we think. “While some forecasters still hope that the vast pool of wealth accumulated by the generations born in the first […]

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m typing at Rao’s Coffee a big coffeehouse in Amherst. I am seeing how these guys do it, so I can bring back some wisdom to my own little cafe. Last night I spoke cordially with an old nemesis: it felt great to be back in […]

Wendy Boswell is a genius who knows all about web stuff. Below is her advice on finding the “Deep Web,” with 500 times the amount of web pages catalogued by Google. “That’s one of the tricks you can use to find Invisible Web content – just put the word “database” […]

At the cafe, we buy all of the local papers, so today I browsed the Greenfield Recorder, and found a significant story about Wal-Mart. The headline ‘Wal-Mart Goes Organic,’ meant a tipping point will soon be reached. The stores are throwing their massive weight behind purchasing only wild-caught fish that […]

From the archives of Zinester, I found this interesting item about a new subscriber gift from a French magazine. Good Vibrations: When the December issue of Jalouse hit Paris newsstands Friday, it came polybagged with a gift that the publisher believes is a first in the industry: a silver-plated vibrator. […]

The interns who work with us a GoNOMAD are often quite successful when they leave us and move out of Amherst and into the real world. A few years ago, we had Amanda Denz as an intern. She was the best writer I’d seen of all the interns over the […]

Random musings: Woke up early today, again, and padded downstairs to bake the quickbreads for the cafe. It feels great to offer banana bread and other homemade treats at the GoNOMAD Cafe. Since I arrive there at about 7 and stay until at least 7, I am pretty much working […]

Believe it or not, the news anchors and reporters at the Fox-owned station WFLD Channel 32 were ordered by their boss to wear flashy clothes — preferably “red white and blue.” Robert Feder writes in today’s Chicago Sun Times. In an internal memo obtained by this column, Andrew Finlayson, the […]

Today’s NY Post screamed a headline that was irresistable: “The Pot Hottie Breathes Freedom.” “Prosecutors said Julia Diaco, 20,dealt to undercover officers eight times, with her biggest deal $650 worth of cocaine, and would ply her wares on and around the NYU campus, including Washington Square Park. When she was […]