I’m lying in a bunk in the wheelhouse of the Isis, 42′ trawler yacht anchored off of Chappy on a balmy night. The lights atop several large sailboats look like Venus and laughter can be heard from a distant boat. Today we biked the length of Chappy and toured the […]
I’m a little bit nervous as I wait for my friend Jack to arrive. We head down the Pike to Quonset Point Rhode Island and at 1 pm, we set sail on the Vineyard Fast Ferry bound for the honky tonk town of Oak Bluffs Mass. Nervous? Well, maybe a […]
The blogosphere is abuzz with the actions and the comments (and the reactions) from a man in Virginia who went into a hip coffee cafe and tried to order a triple espresso over ice. He was refused by the barista who claimed that this violated the shop’s policy. Then the […]
Tonight a column by Fouad Ajami caught my eye in the WSJ. “Autocracy and the Decline of the Arabs” told the sad tale of a society that’s been in the ditch out of action since the early 1980s. He speaks of “the Arab Rip Abu Winkle, awakening from a slumber […]
Alessandra Stanley was once the ít girl of journalism. So cool and so facile, able to mix in anecdotes about Neapolitan traditions, esoteric literary references, and other word tricks. But she is on a copy desk now, no longer the top TV writer for the NY Times.It’s all because of […]
We went to two parties last night. Boy what a contrast. At the first, most people didn’t know who we were and nobody really had any interest in us. It was like we were shopping, wandering anonymously through the aisles. Then we drove up to John and Andrea’s in Florence […]
Don’t you hate it when that happens? I, like many citizens, was so proud when I read about the Obama’s White House vegetable garden. Encouraged by uber chef Alice Waters, Michelle and her kids dutifully planted a huge victory garden at the White House. I was so encouraged by their […]
I got an email from a reader named Janet. She asked me ‘how many euros does dinner in France cost? What ‘gotchas’ should I be aware of? I answered her with some of the info below. Janet i was just in France a few weeks ago in Normandy. Looking over […]
Here are two devices that I am sure are game changers. I’ve had my iPhone for a few weeks now, and beside it here is the new Palm Pre. During my trip to New Jersey, while on the beach and on Safari, I was able to keep in touch, and […]
I have been carrying two issues of Wired around in ‘the Abyss’ as my backpack is known, and last night finally got a chance to read the July issue. Among a bunch of fascinating stories was a provocative piece about how Facebook intends to dominate the web and keep Google […]
What is it that pulls us to the shore? What is that feeling we seek, which makes us willing to endure traffic jams, exorbitant parking rates, being ordered around by beach attendants and sand in our sandwiches? This. It’s that hard to explain, yet totally real experience of twilight by […]
This morning we watched giraffes lick the hood of our minivan as we drove through the Safari Park at Six Flags, about 40 minutes north of our beach pad in Seaside Heights. The giraffes like the pollen that sticks to car roofs and hoods, and the people inside the cars […]