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For most of my life, I’ve strolled down North and South Water Streets in Edgartown, Mass with the confidence and pride that comes with being a landowner.  Our family house once stood on Cummings Way, just off North Water.  My grandmother Essie bought the house just after the war, and […]

It’s July again in the Valley and the best punctuation mark in this glorious vacation month is the annual Green River Festival at GCC.  The weather yesterday was perfect–not too hot, but still worth bringing an umbrella to sit under, and the legions of old friends and acquaintances who I […]

What can you tell me about your business in two minutes? That was the challenge tonight when Valley Venture Mentors met for the first time in Franklin County, bringing 10 entrepreneurs nursing their own small businesses and hoping for attention and funding to the John Olver Transit Center for some […]

Every two years Wilco gathers the faithful at a fantastic venue for a festival…instead of a mountain slope ski area or a farmer’s alfalfa fields, they choose the run-down small city of North Adams where the biggest museum in the US is improbably located.  Then they turn this former factory […]

I know a lot of the people in the Valley who are eagerly waiting for a chance to again relax on the green lawns at GCC for the Green River Festival.  And some of the more than 9000 fans who are coming will inevitably end up doing some shopping too. […]

I always enjoy going down to the Taste of Amherst, though I usually manage to steer clear when rains threaten.  This year we went over on Sunday and I got a chance to see some of the friends who I always seem to see just at this event.  Tony Maroulis, […]

The drive in the summer sunshine from Tours to Rochecorbon provided me with one of those transcendent moments that make my travels so fulfulling. I had a zippy new car, a Volvo hatchback, I had music streaming from my phone to the well-tuned speakers, and I had an exciting destination, […]

There is something I love about early mornings, and experiencing the first few hours of the world as it is waking up.  I remember the days when I’d be the cafe opener, and arrive ready for work at 5:45 am, getting everything ready for the customers who would begin streaming […]

The Loire Valley is full of magnificent towns, and hundreds of vineyards strung along the sides of its rivers, the Loire, Cher and Vienne.  We asked the folks who promote wine travel here to tell us what they thought was the most beautiful town to represent the region in the […]

Where better to learn new cooking techniques than in Paris? Yesterday I learned quite a few new tricks when I spent the better part of a whole day cooking an elaborate meal with chef Fred Poulliot, at Le Foodist, a cooking school in Paris’ left bank. There were quite a […]