Any good trip deserves a good book, and on my trip to New Haven I took My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, the Tony Hillerman of Iceland. It’s the second in a series about Thora Gudmundsdottir, the first being Last Rituals, which I am going to go buy. Thora […]
I guess everybody has their own idea about what makes a great college reunion. The ones I’ve been to haven’t been so great as reunions because so many people I’d like to see don’t show up. There are half a dozen people I would dearly love to see who live […]
It’s always great to get feedback about blog entries. Here’s a letter from Elissa OConnor, who read the entry about Mike Kittredge, Dear Mike K, Thanks for the Ride. Elissa was the one who thought of having it snow all year round, and that’s still an important feature of the […]
. I was going through old stuff the other day, deciding what to throw out, when I found some cards my mom sent me last spring when she was still living at Waterbrooks, her beautiful home in South Conway, New Hampshire. We moved her and my dad down to South […]
I have to add an addendum to my earlier post about how travel discombobulates my life. I already mentioned the benefits of discombobulation, but then I went on and on about how hard it is to write stories, and that’s really just half the story. When you’re putting something out […]
I think a good book is part of any good trip. It gives you a chance to turn off the data-gathering sensors and and enjoy someone else’s journey. On my trip to the Gulf Coast I took along Looking for Osman by Eric Lawlor, about his travels in Turkey. It’s […]
The Texas Gulf Coast just got clobbered by two hurricanes in a row, Rita and Ike. And then people remember the devastating storm in Galveston in 1900, which cost 6,000 lives and was on a scale with the San Francisco Earthquake and the Great Chicago Fire — Mrs. McGillcuddy’s cow, […]
I hate to travel, and I especially hate to travel outside New England. Why? It discombobulates my life. It takes a week to recover. I miss the yard sales on Saturday and church with my mom on Sunday. And then I have to sit down and write articles. But I […]
When we were students at Yale back in the 1970s, my friend VJ and I liked to climb around on the rooftops and find our way through windows into interesting places. We weren’t larcenous. We just wanted to see what we could see. VJ might have purloined the pipe of […]
Know where I was yesterday morning? Mission Control in Houston — during a Space Shuttle mission. It’s a really great story, but I’m saving it for last in my series on the Texas Gulf Coast. I think it’s going to be three stories: The Gulf Coast, featuring Beaumont and Orange, […]