Walking the beat By Ellie Cook On State Street, at the corner of Church Street, there’s a sweet little spot called Agnes Fox Playground. It has suffered of late from thoughtlessness — the usual litter and dog leavings. The neighborhood has stepped up. A small sign by the entrance reads: “Welcome to Agnes Fox Park. Please give us a hand.” There’s a photo of hands and another of a child playing on the grass. Then the sign lists how you can help: 1) Pack out
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Maybe it’s because we carry notebooks and write things down. We are not sure what it is that makes the people in Lewiston so open and friendly, but it’s striking. Friday night we realized that every person we’ve met during our time here over the past few days knows everyone else! It’s a small community of like-minded souls. We were diving into a mountain of lobster piled on top of crispy polenta and Karen Johnson, our waitress at
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Jack and I arrived in Auburn Thursday and checked into the Hilton Garden Inn. Then we set out to explore this city, which combined with Auburn across the river has about 84,000 residents. The first thing we noticed were some of the biggest old mill buildings we'd ever seen. These massive structures dwarfed the big mills in Easthampton and were even larger than some that have been rehabbed in Holyoke. We walked past the Bates Mill that's now
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne I don't know about you, but my cable bill both annoys and worries me. It seems like the better the TVs get, and even though they keep going down in price AND getting bigger, there are little strings attached and they make the bill creep up month after month. Having to pay $10 more a month for a box capable of showing HDTV sucks ... and so does this monthly charge for a land line. I can't
Walking the beat By Ellie Cook On May 8, a Wednesday, Smith College Facilities Management chief Chuck Dougherty was on the bike path, guiding a giant truck carrying a huge generator to its eventual home. He had placed a bunch of no parking signs in the Felt Building lot. The huge truck backed in, carrying its monster machine. According to Dougherty, it’s intended to start up the college’s power plant if there’s another weather event like the Halloween snowstorm of 2011. That wreaked havoc for Smith.
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Sometimes the most compelling and visited sites on the Internet are lacking in any kind of design sense, and simply provide the basic information that people are looking for. Two examples: Craigslist and Reddit.com. Once I read a story about how all of these designers were pulling their hair out because Craig Newmark's site is so 1990. Even the choice of fonts is old, old school, Times Roman? But people never have asked or expected to see
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne E-books, schmee books. That's what Benedict Taschen, a Cologne, Germany, publisher, must be thinking. Thinking Big. The latest publishing endeavor for Taschen's company involves a gigantic two-volume behemoth series that will chronicle a Big Adventure into the wilds of the world. Sebastiao Salgado is a Brazilian photojournalist who for the past eight years has traveled to the most remote places on earth. In fact the name of his 704-page, two-volume collection is called Genesis, and contains striking
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne 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 the eyes of a man who is writing a book about how one of the biggest mobsters on the East coast was finally taken down. He was
Walking the beat By Ellie Cook All over town catkins drip from trees, like spring tinsel. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on the Smith campus—beauty everywhere, and all labeled. All is not spring glory, though. Japanese knotweed is continuing its inexorable march along the bike path, by the dog-walking area and elsewhere. Fallopia japonica, which looks a bit like bamboo and rhubarb, has pretty flowers, which is probably how it got here, as an ornamental. According to Wikipedia and other sources, it likes “temperate riparian
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne 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 to be ready and want them to be sent off well. Saturday we had the memorial service for Joe Obeng, my company webmaster and close friend, who died
