I’m back from a different market, this one located just east of the train station, a quick walk from Madame Barnard’s apartment. She had a family joining us last night, and at breakfast they sat in the sunny porch and had their coffee while their two young sons chattered in […]
At Les Halles, the indoor and outdoor market in Tours, I asked this friendly produce vendor why her strawberries were so much redder and juicier than the ones across the aisle, which barely looked red, let alone ripe. “It’s because they are, vendres, and we are the growers,” she explained. […]
All over France, a new tradition is bringing citizens and visitors into the streets at night. It’s called Les Nuits Lumiere, or Illuminated Nights, and combines classical music and large images projected on buildings, bridges and other surfaces. Using the lines of the ancient buildings in the city, like the […]
We walked through the city of Bourges, in the center of the region of Cher, not expecting such a lovely and compact old city. I just never knew how nice this town was, and it surprised me. But it’s been a center of history and the cathedral is as dramatic […]
This is Stephanie Le Donne’s last week of working at her day job. She met our van at the Hotel de Ville in Orleans, where she took us on a city tour that included the city’s famous cathedral, which is a monument to the heroin of this city, Joan of […]
It’s hammer time in Amherst. Larry Kelley is merciless on anyone who has the temerity to be elected to town government. His latest victim are a couple who serve on the selectboard but who have bought a house in, gasp, South Hadley. Anne Awad and Robbie Hubley also own a […]
Nicolas Berggruen doesn’t have a home anymore. But don’t pity him–he still owns a Gulfstream IV jet. He’s a reclusive billionaire who has decided that he doesn’t want to own a house any more. Or a car. So he lives in hotel rooms and does most of his work running […]
I knew I was mad about this farm bill that was just passed over President Bush’s veto. I knew it because it is a perfect example of waste…huge, bloated government waste, and subsidies for rich farmers who are now making more money than they ever have. Both parties love farm […]
Distracted by your loud radio, jangling cellphone or that lovely scone you’re munching on? The Boston Police Department has a new way to rouse you out of your drivers seat stupor–it’s called The Rumbler. Today’s Boston Globe showed a police officer with the initials RJS on his sleeve holding what […]
Here’s my lovely daughter Kate at Elms College’s pinning ceremony, where she joined 35 other hardworking nurses who got their bachelor’s degrees last Monday. It was a wonderfully personal ceremony, with the speaker announcing each nurse’s background and ambitions for the future. While they said that Kate wanted to be […]
I first met this guy in 1978, when both of our daughters were in the womb and we took a birthing class together with our wives. At that time, and for the following three decades, he sported a big logger’s beard. Many times we’ve joked about whether he’d ever cut […]
I remember trying to rent Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Colombine” at a video store here in Holyoke, and the clerk told us that they wouldn’t carry the movie. It was censorship, and too bad for them, since they’ve gone out of business, like many other video stores. Tonight through the […]