Commuter Rail Boosts Property Values
Around the country, many transit agencies are becoming land developers because every time they build a commuter rail system, the houses along the route and especially at the terminus become way more valuable. In a WSJ story yesterday, I read a story by Chelsey Dulaney about how land development is […]
Railroad Progress Moves Along
I watched this giant logging machine chew small sticks and move big logs around by the railroad tracks. The current project adding continuous rail track includes lots of tree removal. This guy had just finished his work and he swung the big six-wheeler right up over the tracks, the 3′ […]
Chef: Watching a Man Grow Up With His Boy on a Food Truck
I’ve been looking forward to seeing the new movie Chef since it first came out. But the reasons I liked the film so much were different than I had expected them to be. I love the inner workings of a restaurant, the people who together, figure out how to get […]
Scenes from a Coastal Journey
We are still a little rolling and rocking after our seven-day voyage on the M/V Grande Caribe up the New England coast. We can’t say enough good things about the company, Blount Small Ship Adventures, or our wonderful cast of fellow cruisers. To a person they were fun, well-educated, eager […]
Blount Small Ships Pack a Whole Lot of Fun into a Week at Sea
On whaling ships in the 1800s, captain’s wives often accompanied their husbands on the years-long journeys around Cape Horn, and there was a special flag that was flown to indicate a woman was aboard the ship. When another whaling ship passed, if they too were flying this pennant, the ships […]
A Few Days at Sea, with New Friends in Familiar Places
We have been at sea since Friday afternoon, and as I sit here we are docked at Vineyard Haven. It’s just about four am, and as has become my shipboard custom, I’m awake and in the big salon of the Grand Caribe after a bout of insomnia. Sleeping on a […]
Watching the Honda Dealership Get Demolished in ‘Hamp
Today my travels brought me down to Northampton and as I drove down King St on my way home, I swung into Foster-Farrar so I could get a better look at the demolition taking place at the former Northampton Honda. There have been so many times we drove past this […]
The Thick of the Summer, Before the Sleeping Gets Terrible
We’re in the thick of summer, but thankfully, we haven’t gotten into the mugginess and terrible sleeping weather that lies ahead of all of us. I just watched my neighbors walking by, holding a leash and being pulled along by their black mongrel. One of the middle-aged men was shirtless, […]