We met a driver during our June trip to Medellin Colombia, who told us he used to have a construction company. They built many of the roads we traveled on. But he lost it all when he had to ransom his brother from the hands of FARC guerillas. This week […]
Last night I went to bed with the WSJ, astounded by the rich volume of fascinating content from which to draw conclusions and some of which I thought, would make good blogs. One piece by Mary Anastasia O’Grady pointed out what’s good about NAFTA, and why Mexico’s belligerent unions are […]
Glad to be back in Deerfield after a wonderful and busy weekend in the Big Apple. Got a chance to read Neal Peirce’s column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette over lunch. As he has written previously, Peirce is a bicycling evangelist. He takes any opportunity to write about developments in […]
Last night I alternated between tossing, turning, shivering and wondering what I should not forget when leave the next morning for New York. It was a difficult night, unsettling, and it reminded me of back when I first opened the cafe and had so many things on my mind. I […]
Today we went up to Northampton for the Really Big Show, a 17-year tradition that involves dozens of acts, from circus aerialists to jugglers and a Don Ho impersonation. After the intermission, the Northampton Center for the arts gave an award for community activism and dynamic leadership to my old […]
I never knew this until I read it in today’s New York Times, but golf is losing popularity. The story said there has been a serious decline since 2000, and that people who used to play frequently are playing less and less. Golf courses are trying new schemes to battle […]
America’s military brass are surely on cloud nine tonight, as they gear up to use a $69 million toy to do something useful: blow up a spy satellite the size of a city bus. CBS news had a story on their website. The eye in the sky is named US […]
I’m nervous. I’m nervous because on Friday I am going to stand up in front of dozens of people in the travel business and make a speech. It won’t be a real speech, not like a politician speech, it will be a presentation. It will be about search engines and […]
I read a story in today’s Gazette about a massacre of cedar waxwings. It was a sad day at a local school when a flock of dozens of the songbirds crashed into large windows after being pursued by a hawk. Bill Danielson, who writes a column called “Speaking of Nature” […]
It’s waiting time at Quebec City Airport, and the taxi ride here from the center city was, well you can call it ‘white knuckle.’ We sped over a snowy highway at 100 kph, the only solace is that this is just 70 mph, but the driver was cool as I […]
Last night after some down time in my room at the Hilton, we ventured back out into the cold to the famous Chateau Frontenac, now a Fairmont property, that is a one of Quebec City’s most famous landmarks. As we sipped Kir Frontenac, a signature drink created for the carnivale, […]
The winds were blowing and outside from my 15th floor Hilton hotel room, the flags strained, flapping wildly on their poles. Yet outside, long lines of schoolchildren wound their way past five-foot snowdrifts into tunnels that take them to a park where a huge house has been built of ice. […]