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
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne For the past four days we’ve traveled around eastern Tennessee and I found the menus to be remarkably similar. Perhaps it was because we wanted to take in the locally owned restaurants, and for the most part didn’t visit chains. But at these family-style restaurants, there were some things that stayed exactly the same, unlike in Massachusetts where every restaurant seems to want to do it their own independent New England way. Here is what is
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne “A knife is what you make it,” said Michael Zavasky, brandishing a gigantic English fighting sword. “It’s universal. Women and children used to carry knives … .everyone had one.” We stood on the top floor of Smoky Mountain Knife Works, a giant edifice dedicated to anything with a blade and a store that’s hard to leave once you start examining the Hessian soldier buttons, dinosaur eggs and the display of homemade prison shanks. Zavasky is clearly at home
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Mountain biking is a sport that to the uninitiated, might seem to be made for the young. It's sometimes an extreme sport, with bruised knees, wild turns, and stomach-wrenching dips. But there is a place on the seat of a mountain bike for someone who was born in the 1950s. You just have to use your brakes and find the right place to ride. Tuesday I joined a few of my peers to zoom down a fantastic new
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne I’m settling into a comfortable Hampton Inn in Kodak, Tenn., where from my window I can see the green field of the home of the Tennessee Smokies, a AA affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. We got to enjoy a game Monday night when the home team trounced the visiting Montgomery Biscuits. Sitting right down front, it was baseball at its best, with the typical minor league shenanigans like the twisted bat race where youngsters spin around
Readuponit: Travel and Voracious Reading By Max Hartshorne Ever since 1990, when I first moved to South Deerfield, I’ve been going to the dump. Never hired anyone to take out my papers and my trash. No, I’d go, loading up for many years my tired old Toyota Avalon, or, after 2006, my trusty trash day pickup truck. It seems there is something every week that requires the use of a truck, so I am always glad that I kept the truck after the cafe closed
