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The best way to get to know people is over a meal–and it’s even better when you’re dining in someone’s home, not in a restaurant.  That’s what VizEat is all about. Last night I joined a group of six travel writers at a dinner with Christiane and Renaud Lestage in […]

In a few days I’ll get on a plane to Paris and then spend a week touring through many of the famous vineyards of the Loire Valley.  As with all of my trips, as the day comes nearer I get more and more excited, anticipating that wonderful feeling of walking […]

We went to the French King Restaurant in Erving on Friday night, where a band was playing that Mary and her friends used to enjoy listening to at Deja Bru a few years ago. I ran into Les, a guy who helps organize a basketball game at the Greenfield Middle […]

Hadley is indeed the world’s asparagus capital. We drove past this truck while passing through the town of Hadley right across from where the annual WGBY Asparagus Festival will take place in about three weeks. Last year we enjoyed walking through the many arts and crafts booths right here, and […]

Life has evolved, we move along and we follow the highs and the lows. Sadly, a pattern from my younger days is repeated as my daughter got separated from her husband, and now another set of kids gets used to living with one parent, and visiting the other.  Into this […]

Last week we were in Finland, and this week has been a good one…getting back into the groove, keeping up with responsibilities, doing what needs to be done. Last night I had to fire someone. It was surreal, because it was done over Skype. If a person you hire just […]

Many of us have experienced that moment, that terrible moment, when we get the worst news in our lives.  We have an illlness, and it may well be incurable, or terminal.  What’s it like to be a oncology doctor and have to fill in your patients and their families about […]

We had lunch with Antti Tuomola on an island in the Baltic sea, in a yacht club restaurant called Paven.  In 2011, Antti got together with his friends and they formed a Facebook group to create Restaurant Day, when anyone in the country could open their own pop-up restaurant, without […]

After just an hour of visiting with the dynamic people at the Innovation Alley and the Startup Sauna in the city of Espoo, Finland, we were both exhilarated and slightly overwhelmed. There are so many impressive young entrepreneurs and agile thinkers packed into these Aalto university buildings, it felt like […]

There is one word in the Finnish language that’s known throughout the world–sauna. It’s the word that’s associated the closest with this northern nation, and an experience that is shared by all Finnish people. No apartment is complete without a common sauna, nor is any house complete without the built […]