In 1982, I read Blue Highways, a bestseller written by William Least Heat-Moon. It chronicled a journey by car taken entirely on the small roads—the mapmakers’ blue highways. An English instructor as a small Missouri college, Least Heat-Moon, disoriented by a fracturing marriage, chose to look for himself by choosing, as Paul Simon put it, […]
Category Archives: Travel
Midnight Fantasy in Sevilla
June 11, 2015 – 5:59 am
In the summer of 2002, on a vacation in Spain, Ann and I were in Sevilla, walking back to our lodging after a typically late dinner. It was midnight, but the twisty, cobbled lanes were not entirely deserted. As we entered a three-way street junction, lit only by a few faraway home lights, two young […]
Father’s Day in Australia
September 7, 2014 – 3:26 am
It’s Sunday, Father’s Day in Australia. Looking for lunch on the South Coast of NSW, we see a sign for a bistro. It appears to be housed at the Coledale RSL, so we pull over. Many cars. Many people. What’s an RSL? We have no idea, but we vote unanimously to give it a look-see. […]
On Balance
July 21, 2014 – 11:25 am
There is very little to recommend California’s Interstate 5 except straightness and speed. In a midsummer’s sunset somewhere south of Buttonwillow, I am rolling at 80, glazed by oncoming lights and nearly listening to bad luck and worse love on a Country FM out of Visalia. I lift, drink, and am down to an inch in […]
Gas(p) Prices!
July 17, 2014 – 9:27 pm
After a terrific cioppino lunch at Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero (the huge quantity of crab paired extremely well with the wallet-slimming price), my wife and I motivated south on California’s Highway 1. She was driving. I was marveling at guano-encrusted rocks jumping up from the seabed. It was a bright blue day, and we were in our Prius, […]
Dixville Notch: The First Voters
October 21, 2012 – 9:49 am
New Hampshire has held the first-in-the-nation presidential primaries since 1920. With the first presidential “beauty contest” in 1952, our citizens have personally met the candidates and by popular ballot have declared their preference for their party’s nominee. Since 1960, Dixville has been the first community in the state and country to cast its handful of […]
Steve Cotler in Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin
September 26, 2011 – 9:26 pm
For fairly obvious reasons, Harvard Business School keeps very good track of and contact with its alumni. One of the best things they do is their magazine, HBS Alumni Bulletin. Some of the articles are interesting, okay, uh-huh, but the real reason alumni turn this mag’s pages is the Class Notes. Every class that still […]
Cheesie Mack: Back Home in Massachusetts
September 22, 2011 – 3:43 pm
Cheesie returns to his home state in a couple of days for a two-week whirlwind of book events. The lad “lives” in Gloucester, so of course I’ll be speaking at two elementary schools there, as well as schools, both public and private, in Cambridge, Arlington, Newton, Sutton, Millbury, and Auburn. Plus libraries in Easton, and […]
The Market Falls–Then and Now
August 5, 2011 – 4:13 pm
I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO. “Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937). The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years. Yesterday the Dow fell […]
Subway Cave
July 30, 2011 – 6:56 am
Some 20,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption sent gouts of lava into what is now Northern California’s Hat Creek Valley. This molten rock, like any liquid, flowed downhill, gravity pulling it into the lowest channels. These rivers moved slowly, the sides and top cooling as they touched ground and air. A hardened skin slowly formed […]
