Solid Sound is back! Two years ago we enjoyed a whole day of arts and music in the expansive Mass MOCA complex. There was endless art, from artists making art during the fest, to a comedy show with John Hodgman and other Daily Show cast members, and it all capped off with a concert by Wilco. Here is what I wrote about the 2011 Solid Sound Festival.
I like the fact that Wilco took a year's break so now the 2013 version of this big
It’s been so wet. Getting close to sniff the fragrance of a white rose on State Street, as I bent forward—there was enough light despite the rain—my maroon umbrella turned the white rose pink. Summer has had a slow start. I don’t regret that (the peas are doing so well). After the rain, before the next rain, came a windy, lovely afternoon. On the Smith College rugby/Ultimate field, two people flew a kite while the swifts rode the wind low across the field. At the
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Last night everyone who was out and about was in a good mood because it wasn't raining over the Taste of Amherst. Mary recalled how in its earliest days, Amherst's food festival took place outside each restaurant's store front....people stopped by for small tastes of each place, with tables set up on sidewalks. Fast forward twenty years and we have restaurants like Nancy Jane's, which went out of business years ago, doing a brisk business with a
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Taiwan became one of the first countries in the world to offer free wifi on a mass scale to its citizens, and now it is extending that to any foreign tourist, also for free, in a move that will gain it a lot of goodwill. As someone who is constantly searching for a wifi signal in foreign countries I think this is fantastic news. The Taiwan government-backed free “iTaiwan” wireless network launched in 2011, and now has about 4,400
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Here are some of the things I have noticed in France: Random observations from my ten-day trip in Burgundy, Champagne and Nord-Pas-de-Calais in June 2013. I only saw one old man in a beret. Benoit, the 34-year-old guide from Pas-de-Calais, laughed when he said, 'There, a Frenchman in a beret!" as we passed the old codger. There are very, very few Americans who ever come to this northern part of France. And very few Germans, they prefer
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne No visit to Champagne would be complete without spending some time in a cave, and there are hundreds to choose from in Reims, the region's largest city. After touring the spectacular Palace next to the Cathedral, where we saw the original life-size statues created in the 1500s of kings, popes and dukes, we headed to Champagne Taittinger to take the subterranean tour. They produce a good quantity of named year vintages--there are millions and millions of
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne The first thing we saw when we arrived in Lens, France were two huge mountains that look like pyramids with grass growing on them. They were coal heaps, giant piles of tailings left over from some of the many coal mines in this part of northern France that all closed up in the late '80s. We drove up a hill to view one of them up close, along with a series of former mine buildings that now
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne I met an ambitious, smart and bold young woman tonight who took me to dinner in Reims. She owns her own house in a small village, she's the assistant to the director of the city's important tourism board, and she's traveled by herself to far flung places like Bulgaria, Egypt, Iceland and Sweden. Oh, and she's all of 24. She's Camille Roberrini, and she's got her eyes on rising up higher and higher in this key part
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne In front of a crackling fireplace sat an 87-year-old Champagne maker and his son. We were at Champagne Drappier, in the country village of Urville, where this family has been making fine champagne and other wines since 1808, seven generations of family business. They're one of the biggest family-owned producers in the region, but their size is dwarfed by the Moets and the other corporate producers who make many thousands more bottles. They are still small enough
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Mustard is a big deal here in Dijon. I met a women today who makes mustard every day, showing tourists and locals how to combine the seeds, some salt, and verjus, the juice of green grapes to make the perfect blend. At La Cuisine de Madeleine, Valerie Grandet showed us how to do it using wooden mortar and pestles. While we furiously ground the seeds, turning them brown to yellow, she told us all about this fabulous
