How About Putting a Sail on that Freighter?
It’s a brilliant cold Saturday, and I learned quite a bit as I read last night’s WSJ while looking out at the chickadees and finches flitting over the feeder. One was about a German company called SkySails that installs parachute-like sails above commercial freighters and says that in the right […]
A One-Time Newspaper that Turned Heads
In San Francisco, they published a one-off that impressed everybody and they all lined up to buy it. Print newspapers aren’t dead, the story asserts, we just want them to be much better. This paper was called the San Francisco Panorama. It’s a big broadsheet in color with features about […]
Potemkin Village: A Useful Term for Our Time
Reading a story in the WSJ tonight I came across an excellent word that prompted me to delve into its meaning. That is, Potemkin Village. As in, ‘they planted a potemkin forest to block the highway.’ It goes back to Catherine the Great’s tour of Crimea in 1787, when a […]
Captured by the Snowfall
I am looking out at a serene backyard, dappled with sun. Yet in my part of the woods, the winds rage, the rain pours down on top of the big snowfall. Happily plugged in, I manage to ‘kill time’ a bit here in NJ while rides home are sorted out […]
The Narrative Pollutes the Minds of Muslims
My parents get two newspapers every day at their New Jersey home. One of them is the Trenton Times, which publishes Thomas Friedman’s column, as does the NY Times, their second newspaper. I read him today and as usual, agree with what he has to say. It’s about the Narrative…a […]
Wild Things Are Captures Boyhood’s Emotions
We staggered out of the theater in Davis Square this afternoon after seeing Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze’s brilliant adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s classic. The emotion that he’s able to squeeze out of 20-foot-high characters in elaborate costumes and CGI faces took our breath away. Those […]
The Supercomputing Center in Holyoke Is Coming
Just last week we were enjoying long, long days as the southern hemisphere moved into its summer. More than once we would be having dinner at 8 or 9 o’clock and the striking light outside made us swear that it was about 5. Today as I sit in Holyoke and […]
He Wants to Race Cars Down a Steep Slope
It’s great to be back and reading the local paper the Recorder: I heard about Mik Muller’s idea to have fun…by racing homemade carts down a steep hill in Turner’s Falls. It’s named, ‘gravity-power’ but the truth is what male can ever resist something that involves rolling fast carts down […]
In the Seafinn’s Cozy Cabin, Enjoyment Inside and Out
When I reviewed our itinerary for this trip, I didn’t realize that we had saved the best part of the trip for last. Nine years ago I did what nearly every visitor to NZ’s South Island does; I took a bus trip down to Milford Sound and went on an […]
Will Mount Aspiring Park Be Mined?
Mount Aspiring is up there in the clouds, this is the glacier as seen from down on the river. Unlike the glaciers up north, this is not actually in danger of melting away, we were told that every year it gets bigger in the winter and smaller in the summer, […]
Getting Online in NZ: "Please Don’t Skype!"
We love New Zealand like an adopted son, but there is one little thing that we also love and miss terribly during our time here. That would be our seamless, fast, cheap and always reliable web connections in the US. People here actually pay for bandwidth…yes, that’s right nobody knows […]
Imagine Her Relief When Her Husband Came Home
We took a stunningly scenic drive down to Manapouri from Queenstown and en route bought the Otago Daily Times, ‘the voice of the south.’ A front page story was about an Auckland woman whose 14-month-old son mistakenly locked her in a closet and she had to endure seven hours while […]
The Kawarau Jet Skims the Beautiful Lake and Rivers
Queenstown is the big Kahuna when it comes to New Zealand tourism. Nearly everyone who comes to the big wide open South Island spends some time here in this adrenaline filled rockin’ little town. We got a chance to see some of the spectacular scenery here from the water, zipping […]
A Million Dollar View from a Wooden Hot Pool
Last night we were picked up by a friendly English gent and taken to Arthur’s Point to one of the newer and nicer attractions of this adrenaline-fueled town by the lake. Instead of bungy jumping or skydiving, we opted for soaking at Onsen Hot Pools, which provide wooden tubs, total […]
The Fuzzy Antlers of Caged Deer at Walter Peak Farm
We boarded the TSS Earnslaw, a vintage steamship built in the early 1900s, for a journey across sparkling Lake Wakatipu this morning, in the company of about 40 mostly German visitors. Despite the tendency for Germans to speak better English than Americans, the group still relied on their translator to […]
There Used To Be No Sign on the Bunker’s Door
The last time I was in Queenstown was back, my God, before 9/11. It was January 2000, and I passed the new year on board the Air New Zealand plane heading here for what would be only my second press trip of my career. Then I was traveling with a […]
Wine, Art & Wilderness….Kiwi Style
Yesterday I (Cindy) did something surprising ….I realized and admitted that New Zealand is surpassing Italy as my favorite place. It’s not just the beautiful, rugged scenery, the perfectly prepared and apportioned meals, nor is it the history or the art. Travel is about the people you meet. The shared […]
If You’ve Got a Problem, Just Do a Number 8
After an invigorating mountain bike ride down steep and grassy slopes, Dave Judson took me to his favorite Nelson pub, the House of Ales, for a refreshing beer with a citrus flavor. There he told me a story about when he came to Canada and did a number 8. Number […]