At the big cocktail party opening for Travel Mart Latin America here in Frutillar, Chile, I met a man named Jose Koechlin Von Stein. We recognized him from when we saw him last night at the Cliffs Preserve, they were the only guests besides our large contingent of grumpy journalists. […]
I’m digesting a fancy dinner at a fantastic place. It’s called The Cliffs Preserve, and it’s on Chile’s Pacific coast, an 8000-acre property that caters to the ultra rich. The rate for the villas here is $1200 per person per night, with a three-night minimum. The jaded travel trade writers […]
We drove out of the small lakeside town of Puerto Varas to an elegant boutique hotel called Casa Molino. We were greeted warmly by Angela, who owns the property with her husband Albert. We walked through the glass fronted back wall which looks over the lake, and in the distance […]
Last night I breathed a sigh of relief after an uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation. I was seated way, way back in row 37 of the Boeing 737, tucked into a window seat. The flight was about two hours old, and the movies were long over. Beside me a Chilean woman […]
I’m crouching down and looking out the window at a plane that’s pushing back from the jetway at Bradley Airport. I’m off on another adventure, leaving behind the hussle and bustle of the businesses for a faraway place in South America. This will be a long day of flying, and […]
Here’s something interesting….more than half of all prescriptions that are handed out to patients are never filled. I read a story in the WSJ this week that contained several ideas about how to remedy this problem, that makes drug companies and doctors unhappy. It’s behavioral economics. The story by Michael […]
I don’t vote in the city of Holyoke, yet tonight I spent time listening to a candidate for city councilor in this fine city. His name is Aaron Vega, and I think he got Cindy and Leona’s vote. We were invited to our friend John Lachappelle’s house and mingled with […]
Shelley Rotner, a New Yorker and Northamptonite, is a woman with a million projects percolating in her head. I met her while I was traveling in the Alps last year, and she told me about an upcoming children’s book–her 32nd–that she was working on. It’s just one of the many […]
Once again the star of our evening’s show was the firepit, that I transported in the back of the truck down to Cindy’s for our little dinner party. En route in the black of night, the screen top blew out of the back of the truck, so when I arrived […]
There’s a hum in the air, that distinct buzzing of the late summer early fall insects. The sunlight is clear, and direct, punishing at some points of the day, then turning to a softer glow in the late afternoon. I’m passing out flyers, one by one, one in the hand […]
You don’t hear much about Frank Sinatra Jr. Nat Hentoff wrote a piece praising the son of the famous singer in last night’s WSJ. I learned that the younger Frank as become as beloved to his musicians as his dad did, and about an honor that was bestowed upon him […]
I often say that television is better now than it ever was. That’s because reality TV is just more fun than anything scripted. Last night was a perfect case in point, I watched a new ABC show called “The Shark Tank” and I loved it. Six savvy multimillionaires sit in […]