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Reading a story in the WSJ tonight I came across an excellent word that prompted me to delve into its meaning. That is, Potemkin Village. As in, ‘they planted a potemkin forest to block the highway.’ It goes back to Catherine the Great’s tour of Crimea in 1787, when a […]
I am looking out at a serene backyard, dappled with sun. Yet in my part of the woods, the winds rage, the rain pours down on top of the big snowfall. Happily plugged in, I manage to ‘kill time’ a bit here in NJ while rides home are sorted out […]
My parents get two newspapers every day at their New Jersey home. One of them is the Trenton Times, which publishes Thomas Friedman’s column, as does the NY Times, their second newspaper. I read him today and as usual, agree with what he has to say. It’s about the Narrative…a […]
We staggered out of the theater in Davis Square this afternoon after seeing Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze’s brilliant adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s classic. The emotion that he’s able to squeeze out of 20-foot-high characters in elaborate costumes and CGI faces took our breath away. Those […]
Just last week we were enjoying long, long days as the southern hemisphere moved into its summer. More than once we would be having dinner at 8 or 9 o’clock and the striking light outside made us swear that it was about 5. Today as I sit in Holyoke and […]
It’s great to be back and reading the local paper the Recorder: I heard about Mik Muller’s idea to have fun…by racing homemade carts down a steep hill in Turner’s Falls. It’s named, ‘gravity-power’ but the truth is what male can ever resist something that involves rolling fast carts down […]
When I reviewed our itinerary for this trip, I didn’t realize that we had saved the best part of the trip for last. Nine years ago I did what nearly every visitor to NZ’s South Island does; I took a bus trip down to Milford Sound and went on an […]
Mount Aspiring is up there in the clouds, this is the glacier as seen from down on the river. Unlike the glaciers up north, this is not actually in danger of melting away, we were told that every year it gets bigger in the winter and smaller in the summer, […]
We love New Zealand like an adopted son, but there is one little thing that we also love and miss terribly during our time here. That would be our seamless, fast, cheap and always reliable web connections in the US. People here actually pay for bandwidth…yes, that’s right nobody knows […]
We took a stunningly scenic drive down to Manapouri from Queenstown and en route bought the Otago Daily Times, ‘the voice of the south.’ A front page story was about an Auckland woman whose 14-month-old son mistakenly locked her in a closet and she had to endure seven hours while […]
Queenstown is the big Kahuna when it comes to New Zealand tourism. Nearly everyone who comes to the big wide open South Island spends some time here in this adrenaline filled rockin’ little town. We got a chance to see some of the spectacular scenery here from the water, zipping […]
Last night we were picked up by a friendly English gent and taken to Arthur’s Point to one of the newer and nicer attractions of this adrenaline-fueled town by the lake. Instead of bungy jumping or skydiving, we opted for soaking at Onsen Hot Pools, which provide wooden tubs, total […]