Past Articles

I joined what felt like everyone else in the Valley who has ever had children today at WRSI’s annual family fest, called The Meltdown.  As I listened to a mom talking into her cell, I agreed…the word to describe the whole extravaganza is…overwhelming. But in a good way.  The throngs […]

If you pulled back the curtain on rock and roll over the past four decades, there, hiding, would be Hal Blaine. I read a portrait of this man behind the famous “Wrecking Crew,” in the WSJ yesterday, and discovered that much of the music people think was performed by famous […]

At age 76, Donald Sutherland has earned all the cred he needs. He’s been in so many movies, he’s one of the icons; we would use his image if we were making a backdrop of what Hollywood looks like in 2011. He answered questions posed by Cal Fussman in this […]

I have a mixed and sometimes turbulent relationship with travel.  Some times, there is nothing more delicious than having an upcoming trip loom closer and closer, and getting ready by making plans, phone calls and reservations for exotic new places to stay and things to see.  Or poring over an […]

This week an effort is commencing to help the economy of a country devasted by an earthquake. No, not Japan–New Zealand–which was hit by a huge quake in Christchurch a few weeks before and now their tourism-driven economy is taking a big hit. #Blog4NZ is the name of this effort, […]

Last night I extracted a promise from my sweetie after agreeing to go to an event of her choosing. “You owe me two Patriots games for this,” I told her. It was a talk at the Serius Community by noted sexologist Sheri Winston, whose book is entitled “The Anatomy of […]

Last night I joined a bunch of local business people and sipped wine at Magic Wings in Deerfield. There were members of both the Amherst and Franklin County Chambers of Commerce there, plus a bunch of people whom I have known for years. It was fun to see people like […]

Imagine, if you can, a warm late June night. It’s the Taste of Deerfield, and all the way down Sugarloaf St., you can smell the grills cooking and hear the music. It sounds like a good time. In the cold damp March night I met with the Deerfield selectboard to […]

Credit cards got a lot of people I know into great trouble.  So is it a relief, then that according to industry experts, a new generation of phones coming out in 2011 will allow people to pay for things with their phone, not just their cards.  Once people get used […]

Ruba Nadda’s 2005 film Sabah told the story of a family of Syrian immigrants living in Canada, who through the course of the film learn how to blend the old and the new despite tough challenges mixing distinctly different cultures entails. It was one of the sweetest films I’ve seen […]

I heard a story while we were in the lodge at Powder Mountain about our host who was in a gondola with five young boys. Rich was surprised that all five of them were toting skis, and not snowboards. “Our dads like to snowboard, so that’s why we prefer to […]

Tonight we are lodging at Sundance, once the home of the famous film festival and today an upscale resort, conference center and ski area that’s owned by the famous actor.  Everybody knows who he is, and of course, the first thing I asked our host Lucy Ridolphi was, ‘where is […]

The city of Ogden Utah is abuzz with the sound of its boosters, many of whom came here to ski and just stayed. Again and again in this city of 240,000, I heard stories about transplants who now make Utah their permanent home. Rick, our host here who sells the […]

I stepped out of the Salt Lake City airport terminal and met my host, Jessica, who arrived in a big van. Perfect, I thought, for carrying skis, since I was here for just that reason. After a stop at a ski shop, I asked her what people were talking about […]

Jerry Seinfeld is still kinda funny. I saw him on Leno last week and while he does have this new smugness, this omnipresent knowing smile, he still can come out with some good lines that make me chuckle. He just wears really expensive suits and shoes now. He did a […]

In my continuing research into the story of Massachusett’s most notorious mobster, I picked up Brutal, a memoir written by Kevin Weeks, who for many years was the muscle behind Whitey Bulger. Week’s book is a picture of delusion….he talks abou being forced to box in his living room as […]

Every day there is another story about the ramifications of Google’s new algorithm, designed to lower the rankings of so called “content farms’ in the search engine’s results. Google’s goal was to penalize lower quality websites, but they have hurt many legitimate sites in their quest. In today’s Wall St. […]

In the Arkansas Ozarks, there is a medieval fortress being built. I am going to see it in late June. It’s called the Ozarks Medieval Fortess and is being built by a team of American builders, being guided by experts in Medieval building to keep it all authentic. In fact […]