Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula: A Day by the Lakes
I love discovering new places and today’s excursion onto the Leelanau peninsula outside of Traverse City, Michigan was a fascinating series of discoveries. I never knew about the vast fishery of the Great Lakes and that only native Americans are allowed to fish for chub, whitefish, lake trout and salmon […]
Traverse City Michigan Is My Next Port of Call
As a polar vortex comes barreling out of Canada toward the Midwest, that’s exactly where I am flying tomorrow morning, when I visit Traverse City Michigan for a four-day press visit. Why am I going to this northern Michigan city on the cusp of winter? Because Mike Norton invited me. […]
A Sister’s Visit with a Georgian Feast
What a weekend! It was a nonstop fun fest from Friday until Sunday, when our three fantastic house guests my sisters Jenny Brown and Moo came for their annual visit. I have a hard time describing just what exactly it is–is it energy? Is it enthusiasm? Is it just this […]
Quotes from Notables in the Business World
I read a lot of news about business leaders and was quite surprised by these quotes that I read in the WSJ last week, from Rupert Murdoch and Hans Vestberg of Ericsson. Murdoch, the owner of the WSJ, was asked about mistakes the company has made, and they brought up […]
Firewood Ain’t Cheap Nor Plentiful Round these Parts
November first, now we’re really in the thick of the getting colder season. I have been spending as much time as I can sitting next to our woodstove, using the laptop instead of going downstairs to the cold basement office to the big computer. I’ve learned a bit about the […]
Visiting the Hometown of the World’s Most Evil Terrorist in Georgia
I love picking up local newspapers when I travel. Today I found a remarkable story in the Georgia Journal about meeting the father of the world’s most notorious terrorist, Omar al-Shishani, who was born Tarkhan Batirashvili in a small town of Birkiani in Pankisi, Georgia. Temur Batirashvili lamented in what […]
Dr Samuel Gladstone to Retire After Serving with Distinction
I’ve been lucky in life to have had a steady hand looking over my health since 1991. That’s when I began to visit Dr Samuel Gladstone as my personal physician. I can look at my chart every visit, much of it hand written in Sam’s unique style of penmanship. I […]
TRYP by Wyndham: A Giant Room in Crowded Manhattan, Wow!
I found my hotel last night after a long walk across town, and the friendly people in the lobby gave me a positive feeling. There is lots of wood here at TRYP by Wyndham, and screens in the lobby directing you to all sorts of information about the hotel and […]
Bath Bakhmaro: Scrubbing My Way to Bliss in Tbilisi
I’m still feeling relaxed and clean four hours after emerging from Tbilisi’s famous sulfur baths, called Bath Bakhmaro, located in the historic district and hard to miss by its distinctive brick domes. We had anticipated our visit since we first came to Tbilisi, and so we arranged to rent two […]
Georgia: Traveling from the 12th to the 21st Century
We woke up in Mestia, about 30 km from the Russian border, and at 8 am we hit the winding road for a marathon 11-hour journey all the way back to the capital, Tbilisi. The previous day we had ventured even further up north and visited a church with frescoes […]
Eating the Republic of Georgia: Some of the Country’s Favorites
Georgia is a fantastic food destination, it’s full of fresh locally grown vegetables and the chefs don’t feel the need to use a heavy hand with sauces or dunk everything in frying oil. Here are some of the highlights of Georgian cuisine that we tasted during our journey and some […]
Stalin Museum in Gori: An Awkward Remembrance of the Native Son
Even before we reached the grim industrial city of Gori, my friends on the bus were talking about how much they wanted to see the museum there dedicated to its most infamous son, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. When we got there, Joseph Stalin’s light green private rail car was what […]
Mtskheta’s Church from 603 ad, and Iago and Marina’s Feast
Our day of travel and exploring across western Georgia began at the home and winery of Iago and Marina Bitarishvili in rural Mtskheta. This consonant-heavy small town is also the home of one of the country’s oldest churches, which was built high on a hill around the year 603. Seeing […]
A Crossroads of the Caucasus, Georgia Was a Tempting Invasion Target for Centuries
We woke up in Sighnaghi and outside men were playing backgammon while a small dog sat majestically atop a stone step in the town square. Young men sat outside our hotel strumming on a four-stringed small guitar. I asked them if they could play any Rolling Stones, Dylan or Led Zeppelin […]
Georgia on My Mind
Georgia: some random thoughts as we drove from the center of the country, Tbilisi, to the west: Along the road, we came to a detour, with two policemen directing our bus shunting us off to a dusty rutted road. We were driving through the remains of an old Soviet factory, […]
Georgian Hospitality: “God Tests You By Sending You Guests”
“God tests how much you love him by sending you guests,” said John H. Wurdeman V. We were seated at a long table, shoe-horned into a narrow establishment in downtown Tbilisi called Azarphesha Restaurant, and before us was the first course of a long, long dinner of mezze plates. […]