My Mantra Can Come In Handy
I have begun to truly appreciate the creature comforts, enjoying the spaciousness of my bathroom, and the thick comfortable piles of my hotel style bath towels. I like that things are sturdy and well made, I am in my house so much because of work here, that I’ve come to […]
Anxiety Chased Away by Good Fortune
Learned a little lesson today, one in which it’s up to me to rid myself of anxiety and bear better witness to where it comes from. As I was leaving the house today to do an errand in the car, I look a quick glance into my mailbox, to […]
Walks of New York Brings Out My Batali
I joined a group of foodies on Saturday morning for a tour of some of the culinary highlights of New York’s Greenwich Village. We set out on a cold blustery morning with one of Walks of New York’s founders, Jason Spiehler, who set a brisk pace ahead of us as […]
Heading Down to NYC for the New York Times Travel Show
I’m heading to the family homestead today–a journey I’ve made so many times I think I could drive the four hours in my sleep. Yet even now, after so many decades of doing this very same drive, there are always questions about which route to take? If I Google it, […]
Where There’s a Will…
There is nothing that makes you feel more mortal than writing a will. It’s one of those things that you want to get right, and you put off doing. I remember back in 2007 I was going to hold a meeting for people in the cafe who wanted to have […]
Writing Isn’t Hard. You Just Cut Open a Vein and Bleed…
I”m sitting in the Cushman Cafe surrounded by young men and women on laptops. I can imagine that the wifi connection is strained with all of the open laptops–practically every table has someone who is connected to the web and they’re all doing this as they drink coffee and take […]
A Snowy January Day
It’s a new year and I’m finally FINALLY getting back to this groove. It’s funny because I’ve approached this screen half a dozen times and yet I haven’t posted. I start thinking about posting and then never do. I understand why so many blogs are abandoned, but fear not, […]
My Goals for 2015
Here are my goals for 2015 Stay alive. With a health scare in October I was and am most concerned about being here. I don’t have a life threatening illness, thank God but as with all of you, I just want to survive here for as long as I […]
You Don’t Find McDonald’s in the Search
What is the future of America’s largest restaurant chain? Times are bleak at McDonald’s, people are confused by the long menus and not inspired by the food. In a story in the WSJ, Julie Jargon interviewed several experts and a millenial about what it would take to get them to […]
Pallets: The History of An Essential Part of Moving Everything Anywhere
We don’t give much thought to the lowly pallet, that piece of southern yellow pine that sits beneath every shipment in every truck and is what everything in every warehouse in the world is sitting on. But today I read a long story about this important part of manufacturing, and […]
A New Bicycle Highway System Around the US
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials today announced that their Special Committee on U.S. Route Numbering has approved 1,253 miles of new U.S. Bicycle Routes (USBRs): USBR 1 in Massachusetts and Florida, USBR 10 in Michigan, USBR 11 in Maryland, and USBR 90 in Florida. Realignments were also […]
Navigating the Massachusetts Health Care Maze for 2015
I spent four and a half hours in the hospital on Friday, but I wasn’t sick at all. No, it was because I needed their assistance to navigate and figure out my options for health insurance in 2015. You no doubt have seen the ads and heard the many news […]
Interstate 91 Changed the Valley Like Nothing Else Ever Has
In 1919, after World War I, the army wanted to test out its fleet of vehicles to see what they needed to improve. They created a three-mile long caravan of trucks, jeeps and soldiers, plus a marching band, and set off across the US. The roads were ridiculously bed, and […]
Where We GOES? To Meet the Customs and Border Patrol
The alarm on my phone began chirping after I was already out of bed, it was set for 5:20 am, but I always get up earlier when duty forces me to rise with the birds. Today I have a mission, to complete a process started nine months ago. I am […]
MeetUps Bring People Together for All Sorts of Great Reasons
Serendipity brought me something on Facebook that turned into something by email that lead me last night to a group of musicians who play jazz in a Northampton apartment every Monday night. It was a Meet Up ,and I now realize that I have former Vermont Governor Howard Dean to […]
Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff
I picked up a book at Horizon Books in Traverse City. I was amazed to see that this bookstore cafe is open from 7 am til 11 pm Seven Days a Week. Wow! The book is about a city four and a half hours south, Detroit. And it’s clear from […]
Sarah Landry Ryder: Keeping It Moving At The Redheads
We were touring up the Leelanau peninsula and looking for a place for lunch. Mike Norton, my local guide, said he had heard about a place with good food and a good reputation. When we got to Lake Leelanau, we swung into The Redheads, a cafe and food emporium run […]