Some Things You Didn’t Know About Valerie Plame
Christopher Goffard of the St. Petersburg Times did some digging about the most famous CIA employee in the U.S. Outed CIA spy She married and soon divorced her college boyfriend. As a new recruit at the Farm, the CIA’s training facility, her skill with an AK-47 stunned classmates. She […]
Runaway Bride Mows the Lawn
Jennifer Wilbanks briefly spoke when the mower’s engine died in tall, wet grass. Daniel Yee of AP met her in Lawrenceville, GA. “I’m doing well,” said Wilbanks. “I need to get back to work. I don’t want to get into trouble,” she added. Her lawn mower then kept dying in […]
Jennings Death is Freakin’ Them Out
Naush Boghossian writes in the LA Daily News about the wake-up call of ABC’s anchor’s death from lung cancer. “John Wayne, Bob Marley, Steve McQueen and Peter Jennings. Each man was among the best in his profession, and each, in his own way, epitomized cool. But the mystique was shattered […]
Arthur Frommer’s GI Guide to Europe
Arthur Frommer was profiled in the Seattle Times by Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel. “We lived very close to the bone,” Frommer recalls. Still, to hear him tell it, life in Jefferson City was largely carefree. When he was 14, though, his father found a better job and the […]
Take Off Your Helmet–We Need Your Heart
A heart surgeon once told me that the best way to increase the number of available human hearts for transplant is to get rid of helmet laws. Suddenly there are many healthy hearts available from unwitting organ donors. CNN just published this similar story. “Motorcycle fatalities have risen sharply in […]
It Ain’t Easy Being Patagonia’s Biggest Landowner
Today’s Sunday NY Times included a story about a rich man who has become Chile’s largest landowner. Douglas Tompkins, founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing companies, first fell in love with Chile as a backpacking teenager. Now he has turned his land, about the size of Rhode Island, […]
Waiting for the AP Shoe to Drop
Cindy woke me up early today, at 7 am on a Sunday, asking “hey come on, it’s time to check to Google alerts!” We have been waiting anxiously for today, since a few weeks ago when we corresponded with Beth Harpaz, Travel Editor for the Associated Press. She wrote a […]
Ridin’ the Green Tortoise to Alaska
Sam Hartshorne, 20, has joined the roster of writers who contribute stories to GoNOMAD. Sam went out to San Francisco and joined the Green Tortoise bus for a 28-day trip up to Alaska. The trip took a long time, spending it all together on a converted bus. His story is […]
Hef and His Three Girlfriends on TV
Hugh Hefner has a new reality show on E!. Comcast had this to say…”More than anything, the program is a bittersweet take on how one man’s dream might be an imperfect fantasy for his women. “I think there’s two main adjectives people think when they see us: bimbo and slut,” […]
How Brazil Solved its Energy Crisis
Thomas Friedman‘s column is so logical and simple, it is almost hard to bear. Why can’t some of these ideas make it on the political agenda? “During the 1973 Arab oil embargo Brazil was importing almost 80 percent of its fuel supply,” notes Mr. Luft, director of the Institute for […]
Pondering Cellphone Reception on Vacation
During vacation, I still gravitate to my old habit of thinking about work. So I came back to the cool circular newspaper reading room of the Edgartown Public Library to indulge. Here they had the WIFI connection, the electric plug and even a comfy place for a mouse and pad, […]
Noises from the Sea
Lifeboats, coastguards and police turned out off of Hollicombe beach, near Devon, England, when screams were heard from a rubber dinghy – only to find a naked couple making love. A walker on nearby cliffs thought their shreaks of delight at 8 a.m. were calls for help and dialled 999 […]
King Fahd’s Wild and Crazy Days
On the ferry over to Martha’s Vineyard, I got a chance to read a long NY Times story about King Fahd, the just deceased leader of Saudi Arabia. The story included a glimpse into his younger, wilder days, when he was just a prince waiting for his chance. Fahd got […]
Kim Hartshorne–The Music Moved Him
Today we went to a funeral in New Jersey for my Uncle Kim. As we all age, and time marches on we notice that we go to more and more of these. Seeing family meet their ends brings me to think about Nathan and Greta and the other babies who […]
Why Dogs Would Never Blog
Sarah Boxer writes in today’s NY Times Sunday Arts section about dogs, cats and blogs. “This is her story. Last month a woman let her dog relieve itself on the subway in Seoul. She was caught, by a cellphone camera, doing nothing about it. Within days, her picture, her identity, […]