Readuponit: Travel and voracious reading

Screens, Screens, Now There are Screens at the Table

Max Hartshorne — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 14:25:31 +0000

Screens, screens, never have their been so many screens all around us. Last week a story in the WSJ explained a new use for screens, to order food and keep kids entertained while their parents wait for food at restaurants.

Now at some Chili’s Grill and Bar and Applebee’s locations you can order your food on a screen about the size of a Kindle. Patrons view color photos of what’s on the menu and poke a touch screen to order. Then for a fee, you can call up videogames for the little ones. Though it seems a bit 1984, the truth is, most patrons in restaurants nowadays are already staring at their own personal screens, often needing to be reminded to look up at the server to actually interact.

The best part of this is that you can pay your tab without having to wait for the server to notice you want it. It’s that delay that makes most people, especially ones with kids, annoyed.

A variation on this order-on-screen trend is TGI Friday’s, where an app can be downloaded with the full menu and the ability to pay the check from one’s smartphone. But diners still have to order the food from the waitstaff. The best part of using phones to pay? Suggested tips of 20% mean that most people tip more than they would without it.

In Ashfield, We Took a Trip Back to the 1930s

Max Hartshorne — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:36:53 +0000

Ashfield Community Theater's An American Clock

I took a trip back in time last night–it was the 1930s and the huge cast of Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” sang and spoke in the manner of this faraway decade when the country faced the Great Depression. The show continues Saturday night June 2 at the Ashfield Town Hall. ACTH.org

Based on the work of Studs Terkel, who was famous for chronicling the lives and words of the American worker, the story followed the ups and downs of a series of characters and families who have all seen their fortunes fall with the plunge of the market. There was rich family named Baum, who suddenly weren’t any more, a down and out prostitute looking to barter for dental work, and a man who dreamed of success on Tin Pan Alley.

With a cast of 19 actors, they were able to gather up crowds of police officers, and sing rousing versions of old familiar songs, corny songs like Pennies from Heaven, from long ago. Notable was the quality of the piano playing and the singing, remarkable for a community theater.

It was an entertaining show that was just a bit longer than I would have liked…and the addition of a recitation of recent wars that America has been involved with was certainly not written by Miller in 1980. This awkward addition marred the time travel effect–who is thinking about Iraq when there’s a depression going on?

Franti and Spearhead Spread the Love, All the Way Up to the Balcony

Max Hartshorne — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:33:45 +0000

Michael Franti plays in the Calvin's balcony, leaving no one out: everyone deserves music!

While the world may be going to hell, last night inside the warm confines of the packed Calvin Theater, all was well–not just well, but jumping up and down fantastic. Michael Franti brought a love for his audience right down front, up into the balcony, and dragged dozens of his faithful followers up on stage for hugs and dancing. He even gave two fans guitars to ‘play’ while his solid axeman Dave Shul cranked out a fierce solo.

Many artists sing about love; love they’ve lost, or love of women or men we never know. Franti’s love is for the world, for the causes he supports, and most of all, for the audience before him. He reaches out and touches as many as he can, he gives hugs like he means it. His songs express a revelation about what’s meaningful in his life, and the groove goes on as long as he feels it. As a survivor of a near death hospital experience, he cherishes each day, and it all felt inspiring as we moved to the infectious reggae beats.

It was a two-hour nonstop set. He starts out on a solo guitar and inevitably it morphs into a bass and drum driven dance beat. Nobody could count the number of times Franti exhorted the crowd to get up, jump, and put your hands together. Up in front of the seats people claimed their dancing spots early, one man held his young daughter on his shoulders for the whole two-hour show. Ouch!

Then Franti did something I’ve never seen before, he began polling the audience about how many years they’d been married. First one year, then five, ten, and finally, a tiny senior citizen in a red dress who claimed the prize with 40 plus years. “I think everyone, no matter who and no matter what, should be able to get married,” the singer said, to a roar of applause.

After the encore that brought some of Franti’s youngest fans up on stage, and after the show was over, you could see him hugging his bandmates. He’s got a lot of love for the world, for his mates, and last night everyone at the Calvin felt that love from the passionate Franti.

Kate and Francisco are Homeowners in Deerfield!

Max Hartshorne — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:00:35 +0000

“What is a closing like?” my daughter asked me. Today she and Francisco have their momentous occasion, when they sign the papers to take over a new house from the bank. It’s a seminal moment in every young couple’s life; but it doesn’t seem as common as it once was. Is home ownership going a little out of fashion?

It’s true that no sector of the economy took a harder hit than the home market, and that many people have decided that they no longer feel compelled to save for a house. My sister commented to me that I was lucky to have a daughter who could make enough to get a mortgage. That’s not always the case, especially down in the Princeton New Jersey area where my family lives and the houses are still, even post recession, incredibly expensive.

I remembered back to the two closings I went to, first for a duplex in Greenfield around 1984, then the very liberating closing I had in 1992 when I bought my own house in South Deerfield. You sign a whole lotta papers, the attorney goes through things with a fine-tooth comb, you sign, you sign, they copy, acknowledge, do it again and again and then you shake hands. It’s time to go cross the threshold of your new house, and it’s a pretty darn exciting moment.

Congratulations, Kate and Francisco. You’ll never be the same as when you were renters, you’ll look around the house and you’ll say to yourself….”It’s our house. We bought it. Wow!”
Home sweet home.

Michael Franti and Spearhead Tonight at the Calvin!

Max Hartshorne — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:59:02 +0000

Related posts: Franti and Spearhead Spread the Love, All the Way Up to the Balcony Michael, Just What DO You Want Us to Do? Calvin Broadus Livin’ Large Related posts:

Kayaks Bring a Joyous Piece of Nothingness to Life

Max Hartshorne — Tue, 29 May 2012 02:47:49 +0000

If I were a sporting goods store that sold kayaks, I’d try to get as many people to borrow them and take them out for an afternoon as I could. I guarantee most people would return them and then want to own one for themselves. Today we borrowed a friend’s kayak to spend an afternoon on Willetts Pond in Wendell.

It wasn’t more than about 50 feet into the trip that Mary turned to me and said, ”I’ve gotta buy one!” How can we resist gliding silently across the reeds, listening to the birds and the buzz of the insects while we glide across an empty pond? It was a shallow body of water yet as we navigated with the small effort needed to propel our craft, again I thought about how popular these vessels have become.

When I was dating it was hard to find a personals ad that didn’t mention kayaking as a primary recreational diversion. Everyone, it seems wants to join their mate or potential mates, out on the water. I can understand. Today, drifting across the pond and letting the wind take us was a glorious session of nothingness. Another bonus of kayaking, you can’t bring your cellphone so you can’t look at it, or pay any attention to it, for as long as you’re out there.

And there is never enough nothingness in our world, is there?

Why Don’t You Go Outside and Play?

Max Hartshorne — Sun, 27 May 2012 15:31:45 +0000

Like many of us, your mother probably told you when you were young that you should go outside and get some fresh air. This wisdom was proven true recently with a study by psychologist Ruth Ann Atchley at the University of Kansas, as reported in Saturday’s WSJ. They studied the mental benefits of spending time in nature and found conclusive proof that being in the woods is good for your creativity.

She gave 60 backpackers a standard test of creativity before they set off on a hike. Then four days later she tested another group who had been out in the woods the whole time, and saw a nearly 50% increase in their performance.

Another test had participants outfitted with receivers, one group strolling the streets of Ann Arbor Michigan and another walking through an arboretum. The second group were in a better mood, and did much better on attention and short term memory tests. Even when they just glanced at a photo of a scene from nature they did better than ones without the exposure.

Finally the story cited a study in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, grim high rise projects which were once famous for gangs, drugs and crime. The residents whose windows faced asphalt and parking lots did much worse on tasks like tests of attention and surveys that revealed how they were generally handling life’s challenges. Yep, just like you’d expect: the ones with the green view did much better.

Why It Costs $3000 to Visit a Rustic Siberian Fishing Camp

Max Hartshorne — Sat, 26 May 2012 19:50:34 +0000

A big benefit of being able to return to the gym after my foot got better was once again spending time reading while working out. One book I’ve been enjoying is Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia.

In a chapter where he visits Siberia via a quick flight from Nome, Alaska, he joins a group of Americans who visit a fish camp and some of the desolate cities like Provideniya, which has been nearly abandoned in the years after the cold war and the USSR ended. There are ramshackle buildings that once held foxes raised for fur, there are empty schools and desolate buildings in the town that once had triple the 5400 souls still living there.

Frazier visits a men’s room in the Omsk airport and nearly faints from the stench and filth. There were no troughs and stools but no partitians, stalls or doors. Everything was done in full view. Later a woman he is traveling with emerges from the women’s room, reeling from her own particular horror show.

It’s clearly not a place for America tourists, who complain to Frazier about what their $3000 fee actually paid for: they’re staying in people’s apartments, the cruise turns out to be a short day trip in an old fishing boat, the food is minimal and the tents are leaky. “Bribes,” he explains. “Most of what you paid for is bribes for the authorities to let you visit.”

Everywhere they go they see inexplicable junk lying around the tundra: the handlebars and front fork of a bike, a pile of heating system radiators, aluminum containers that once held Russian army rations. The all-wheel vehicles they travel in leave tracks that take 25 years to go away.

In the birch trees of the tundra Frazier found one thing in abundance–bolete mushrooms in profusion, some of the biggest edible mushrooms he’d ever seen. Later he presents them to his Russian hosts and is met with a scoff: “Starii!” they told him, which means ‘old.’

In Italy, It’s No Longer Cool To Be a Tax Cheat

Max Hartshorne — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:34:01 +0000

In Italy it’s no longer much fun to drive a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. That’s because the police are now regularly stopping these sleek cars and forcing their drivers to show if they’ve paid income taxes. Surprise, surprise, many of these cool cat drivers have been opting to sell the sports cars to avoid this scrutiny.

An ABC News story said that Italy’s tax strapped government is working hard on changing the country’s attitude about paying taxes. TV ads are running that depict tax cheats as parasites, people sucking the life out of the rest of the honest citizens.

There are so many used Ferraris on the market that prices have dropped about 20 percent!. But there has been a violent backlist, with more than 250 attacks on tax offices, including throwing molotov cocktails into the buildings. Many Italians, like a plumber in Pescara, try registering the cars in their mother’s names.

“The culture of Italians is changing,” Attilio Befera, the Italian tax agency’s director, told reporters recently. “Fiscal evasion is seen as a bad thing for everyone, not a cunning habit anymore.”

Change. It’s What Life is All About

Max Hartshorne — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:58:17 +0000

Our lives are made up of transitions and eras. The other day as I contemplated my new life here at my house without my housemate family of seven years, Mary and I discussed an idea of taking down a wall and opening up this 1920s house into a more modern open room arrangement. She was surprised I was enthusiastic about the idea. “I thought you hated that!” she said. But I explained that above all else, I am never reluctant to accept and create change.

I have had many different careers in my 53 years, each with arcs that parallel my relationships. I was once a newspaper paste-up artist, then a reporter, then a salesman, now a publisher. I know many people like me, who used to do this, or once did that, and now spend their time much differently. During a walk with my cousin we talked about a fellow who often talks with pride about how he “used to work there, and there, and there.” What happened? How come now he works in a low paying factory job, with only memories of great, higher paying jobs to brag about?

The arc rolls on….once my old friend and webmaster Joe Obeng used to live in this house, along with my son Sam. Now Joe is recovering in a hospital room and with a trach in his throat, can intently listen but can’t utter a word. He mouths the words as if I could understand, I hand him a clipboard and pen but he still tries to talk. Seven years ago, they moved out and the kids and family moved in. Seven years ago Joe was telling me over and over again how we had to modernize our website. While he was in the hospital this week, this work began, and I was excited to tell him, amazed that we actually did it.

Now in 2012, a new house has been purchased seven miles away in East Deerfield. It’s exciting for my daughter and son in law to have a place of their own. So gramps will wake up in this big house alone. That’s not so bad, really. Change. It’s what life is all about.