Part II There are some books you wish would never end (and in fact one reviewer of Bridge Across the Ocean wrote those same words) and some books you just can’t wait until they end. You finish reading them out of respect for the author but keep fanning the remaining pages, wishing they would hurry […]
I first heard about Facebook’s system-wide crash from my son who lives in New York. “Facebook’s crashed! Site’s down!” he texted me. I replied, “Couldn’t happen to a better [sic] company,” as I thought about the Jimmy Cliff song that lent me the title of this blog. Then, like the ronin in Kurusawa’s “Yojimbo,” Frances […]
My mother, Jacqueline Smith Rochester, was an exceptional artist in every aspect of her life. When she graduated high school, my grandfather sent her to art college in Washington, D.C. That was money well spent. She held a lifelong fascination for our Indigenous community with whom we lived in South Dakota (we called them Sioux […]
One of the nice things about owning your own library is collecting books in which you’re interested, then reading them at your leisure. And, I might add, when you’e in the proper frame of mind for a particular book. You may have experienced this, as I have: you begin a book and get 50, 60 […]
This has been the best September in New England I can remember. The weather has been nothing short of spectacular, and the cycling has been sheer joy. This Saturday, I’m hosting cycling two events simultarenously at the former train depot in Bedford, Mass, which is now the point of convergence for three bike trails. Two […]
September is National Bike Month, as well as for us in Massachusetts, Bay State Bike Month! It’s been a month of wonderful, diverse, dynamic cycling activities. For me, it also heralded the publication of my bicycling novel, Bridge Across the Ocean. I’m donating all my earnings from the book to MassBike’s bicycle safety programs, and […]
When I was a kid growing up in Rapid City, South Dakota, there was another kid who lived next door who, like me, had a bike. But while mine was powered by my legs, his was powered by a 2-cycle gasoline engine. He bought it from the mail order catalog company Montgomery Ward. In those […]