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Am I digging too big a hole? Too ambitious? Am I really going to take care of and weed this big a garden? Today I set out to start my garden. Last year I was pretty cautious, planting just five or six short rows, but as so often happens, now […]
Bart LaRocca had a problem. It started when he decided to marry his high school sweetheart, Gina, who he was crazy about. But she had a family who was connected to the New York mob. In F.X. Biasi Jr’s book, The Brother In Law, a complex story is retold through […]
How do you say goodbye to a friend who has passed away? Even at age 54, I feel inexperienced and naive about how to properly pay respects as my friends start the long march to heaven. In the past five months, two of my closest associates are gone. I have […]
For the past four days we’ve traveled around eastern Tennessee and I found the menus to be remarkably similar. Perhaps it was because we wanted to take in the locally owned restaurants, and for the most part didn’t visit chains. But at these family style restaurants, there were some things […]
“A knife is what you make it, ” said Michael Zavasky, brandishing a gigantic English fighting sword. “It’s universal. Women and children used to carry knives….everyone had one.” We stood on the top floor of Smoky Mountain Knife Works, a giant edifice dedicated to anything with a blade and […]
Mountain biking is a sport that to the uninitiated, might seem to be made for the young. It’s sometimes an extreme sport, with bruised knees, wild turns, and stomach wrenching dips. But there is a place on the seat of a mountain bike for someone who was born in the […]
I’m settling into a comfortable Hampton Inn in Kodak, Tennessee, where from my window I can see the green field of the home of the Tennessee Smokies, an AA affiliate of baseball’s Chicago Cubs. We got to enjoy a game tonight when the home team trounced the visiting Montgomery Biscuits. […]
Ever since 1990, when I first moved to South Deerfield, I’ve been going to the dump. Never hired anyone to take out my papers and my trash. No, I’d go, loading up for many years my tired old Toyota Avalon, or, after 2006, my trusty trash day pick-up truck. It […]
Whenever I think about moving, I always think about the Seinfeld episode where Jerry befriends Keith Hernandez of the Mets, and is confronted with that age old dilemma…what’s the line about helping friends move? Jerry’s so flattered by being befriended by the famous athlete that he almost says yes. Then […]
It was a whirlwind of a trip down to New York city to meet a large group of tourism officials from Canada. Their goal was to network with journalists like me to pitch story ideas about the vast country. Our job was to visit as many as we could in […]
I am surrounded by friendly Canadians. Everywhere there is that familiar flat accent, that wonderfully sincere way of approaching writers like me. Today I’ll meet dozens of tourism board people who will regale me with story ideas…stories that they want us to publish on GoNOMAD Travel. It’s a great opportunity […]
I got a call from a telemarketer just after I’d washed my hands. He wanted to sell me a chimney sweep, but I’d just finished cleaning my chimney using a clever gadget I saw on TV. Really. We were watching the PBS show “This Old House,” and at the […]