The “whole fan damily” — well, almost! Think back to your school days and a typical assignment on the first day back in the classroom — being asked to write that dreaded essay, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” Here’s mine. Sandra and I went traveling. No. Not to an exotic “garden spot” like […]
Pierogi On Thursday evening (Aug. 8), Sandra and I celebrated our 32nd anniversary* at one of our favorite restaurants, Tisza Bistro, just two miles from our home. Yesterday, after getting a request to comment on our dining experience, I wrote a glowing review. I’m supplying a link to it here because I want to demonstrate […]
A DC-3 With the 50th anniversary of mankind’s first landing on the moon just days away, I’m reminded of a somewhat more down-to-earth flight that I experienced only a year or so after Apollo 11. It was on my trip home to the United States from India, where I’d been serving in the Peace Corps. […]
1965: The author of this blog in Zurich, after learning what could go wrong Have you ever looked at one of those ubiquitous signs in public places that display a laundry list of prohibited activities … NO Swimming NO Running NO Fingernail Biting NO Playing 3D Chess […]
Sonoma County Wine Country (photo by Howard E. Daniel) The following column (op-ed), which I wrote, is scheduled to appear in tomorrow’s (May 6, 2019) North Bay Business Journal. Because subscribers to the publication generally receive their copies in the mail on the preceding Saturday, I am taking the liberty of republishing it here, on […]
Have you ever wondered about fish sauce, the all-but-ubiquitous ingredient in so much of Vietnamese, Thai and several other Southeast Asian cuisines? The one that, when sitting innocently on the table in an unlabeled bottle, looks almost identical to soy sauce but which has a peculiar fragrance and flavor that seem quite unlike anything you […]
Our tiny Fiat The experiences I recounted in last week’s post about driving in Brazil were hardly the only adventures I’ve had behind the wheel. My first encounter with “crazy foreign drivers” took place in Europe in 1965, on the same trip when my friend Arlee and I drove our car — a Fiat so tiny […]
Here I am with my Corcel, a Brazilian-made Ford, relaxing in Brasilia in 1972 or thereabouts. I got my bachelor’s degree in Connecticut and my master’s in Massachusetts, but I had to cross the equator and fly all the way to Brazil for my Ph.D. I hasten to add that this doctorate was not in […]
This is me, age 21 in 1965, standing atop the silo at Kibbutz Dvir in the Negev Desert. The orchards in which we worked can be seen below. In the background, the arid hills of what was then the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Last week, in writing about a couple of […]
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on an article reporting that “Americans like sweet wines, but nobody talks about it.” The article piqued my interest because my first encounters with wine came as a child, when I’d be offered1 Manischewitz Concord grape wine at traditional Jewish Friday evening meals at my grandparents’ home and, of […]
