TODAY'S RAMBLINGS One of my many passions is urban development and transportation. I've read a number of books on the subject (I just posted the list at my website), and I've arrived at this conclusion: The development of our built environment around cars and not people, which began right around the end of World War II, is central to o...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Facebook. Instagram. WhatsApp. That's what I wanted for the title of today's post, but I can't use the strikethrough formatting in the subject line. Whatever today's post is called, I hope you'll consider deleting these apps from your phones and your lives. Dramatic? I don't think so. I believe Facebook has uniquely e...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Last time, Heather Cox Richardson (kudos again to Primo Harvey, PhD for introducing me to this brilliant scholar). This time, the inestimable George Packer. You can't say I'm not trying. Mr. Packer has a new book, and there's an essay based upon it in this month's Atlantic. For those of you without a subscription, the...

This was unexpected and it turned out to be a very fun, and also educational, trip. Armed with the musically challenged Hunter Deuce and little else, yours truly decamped for downtown Sonoma in Mr. Deuce's swish new ride. This was an impromptu visit, and about the krijillionith time visiting for both of us. We've shredded it up here to...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Mercifully short! Due to the seemingly nefarious behavior of a famous Silicon Valley microchip executive who shall go completely nameless, the SF residential real estate shaman Hunter Deuce (shown here sadly missing a sunset on a recent vacation) and I had an unexpected Gentlemen's Day (and night) in Sonoma on Sunday....

Tupper Lake is in The Adirondack State Park of New York State, specifically in its famed High Peaks region. It is a superlative amalgam of mountains, forest, lakes, rivers and wildlife, that surround the nice-but-struggling village of Tupper Lake proper. Let me summarize it this way: Julie and I have been fortunate enough to travel to ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Later today, we head to Albany for a quick night in a place so similar to Paris that they're often confused. I meant Paris, TX. But Tupper Lake is a place apart - as you can see by the photos and videos summarizing the trip here. Please don't miss Julie's videos of the beautiful loon that visited us Wednesday night du...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS The party season here started slowly, but moved to light speed on Sunday. Try to keep up or at least don't doze off. The Martha Stewart fetish-holder Dr. Shelly Murphy outdid herself with a stylish rager that drew 20+ to The Manor on Sunday, including some well-to-do neighbors (more on these folks below) from a few ma...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS This post is in honor of my late mother, Jeanne Anne LaBarge Clough. My mother was born and raised here in Tupper Lake, and today would have been her 94th birthday. With my family that lives here and those that are visiting, we are sprinkling her ashes today at the gravesites of two of her favorite people, the late an...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS First, a few housekeeping items. These would normally go in the "From the Unwashed Masses" section, but they seem important enough to lead with. The networking gear journeyman Byron Browne IV asked if I could provide a link to my voluminous if not precise rating system. He had understandably forgotten whether Killer i...

If you've ever wanted to get out of the real life racket and step into a Norman Rockwell painting, I have your destination. "Arcadian" is one word that comes to mind in trying to describe Woodstock, here in central Vermont. "Gorgeous" and "bucolic" are others. Woodstock is set in a mountainous (for here) region, and it really ticks eve...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS We departed Woodstock, Vermont yesterday. I took a final morning hike in the leafy and serene Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park before we hit the road for The Adirondacks. A brief Travel Guide will be forthcoming, but here's a link to some selected photos from our visit there. A beautiful and certainly...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS If you've ever wanted to get out of the real life racket and step into a Norman Rockwell painting, I have your destination. "Arcadian" is one word that comes to mind in trying to describe Woodstock, here in central Vermont. "Gorgeous" and "bucolic" are others. Woodstock is set in a mountainous (for here) region, and i...

Cape Cod! Who knew? Well, I guess just about everyone else, but we'd never been there. Wow, were we impressed. Let me say right off the bat, the entire place is Diamond Certified. But first, an important note. We went in the middle of May of 2021. Pre-season, and also kinda sorta post-COVID, but of course, not really. Yada yada the vir...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Today we depart Cape Cod, for Woodstock, Vermont; the eagerly anticipated Cape Cod Travel Guide will be published soon. Overall, this sojourn to the Cape joins our pantheon of Diamond Certified vacations. We are a lucky and fortunate couple, and not lazy: our last day was spent on Nantucket. You can see our photo high...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS As our stay continues here on idyllic Cape Cod, and specifically, in the perfectly located Town of Eastham, a recurring theme is that there is hardly anyone here. The many restaurants, that seemingly appear around every turn, are empty or not open at all on some days (yet every one has been Killer, including the very-...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Following my rough pattern previously established, I'll be putting the grave details of our Cape Cod, New England, and Adirondack adventures in separate and proper Travel Guides. But I'll certainly hit the highlights here in my normal posts (if one could ever call these thrice-weekly ego explosions "normal", right Mig...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Tomorrow, Saturday, we're departing for our single longest trip of the year. This one will take us to a great Airbnb in Eastham on Cape Cod for 6 nights, a Bill and Jeanne Clough-looking kind of resort in Woodstock, VT for 4 nights, 11 nights at the storied Murphy Manor in The Adirondacks, and then a night in Albany, ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Please sit down - a couple of things are about to surprise you. 1: Today's Rambling will be short. 2: I will make a point quickly. As my anger at the ignorance moves to rage, I'll make an observation about those who refuse to get a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. To understand their sheer lunacy, please consider: 1. These folks t...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Before I pontificate about living in cities post-Covid, I'd like to share with you a link to the School part of my website. There, you'll see I've added a list of 8 books I hope you'll take the time to read, as I have. Together, they provide a better understanding of the state of America today, and why things are as t...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Our recently concluded sojourn to the Anderson Valley wine region of Northern California made me want to reminisce about the other regions Julie and I have been fortunate enough to visit over the years. (Editor's Note: only places we've visited within the last year make it into a Travel Guide and get ratings. So that'...

Have you ever heard about Imelda Marcos and her shoes? Truth be told, I'm a bit like that with audio headphones. OK, not a bit: more like eerily similar. While I don't have 3,000, I do have - um - more than most. I don't care: I must be able to reproduce music, on my own terms, in every circumstance, at all times. Obsessive? YOU BETCHA...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS (Editor's Note: as always when I write posts like this, I note important points with links that will take you to an objective arbiter of truth. Like AP Fact Check, Snopes, Politifact, and Factcheck.org. I sincerely challenge anyone that reads this to cite different, equally reputable sources if you disagree with my fa...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS As I listen to my new obsession, Santana’s “Waves Within “ I'm also marveling at the same without on our last morning here in the only-in-California-Mendocino. It was quite a party at the Killer Glendeven Inn: Husky trainer George Valiant Walker and his drastically better half, Sherry Pace. Sherry's sister, the gifted...

You may not know this, but a scant 3 hours north of SF, there is actually an answer to my question about where else you might point someone to explain California in one shot, other than Montecito and Santa Barbara. That somewhere is the not-quite-real little coastal town of Mendocino, and just to its south, the verdant, unspoiled, and ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Lucky you, because today's post is mercifully shorter than many, because lucky us, we're driving to Mendocino today. I've put together a new website that is an extension of sorts from this blog. There, you'll see some of the same material, but also some new/different stuff. For example, at my website, I have a number ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Time to hightail it out of here before I grow too weary of the gratitude I'm receiving from most here at The Villa regarding the work Dr. Murphy and I did. Since last Friday, we: • Completely replaced the Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi system I had installed in 2013 (!) with 4 Eero Pro 6 access points. These are great and the Wi...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I can assure you this blog won't devolve into just another partisan piss-up. In fact, I hope you've noticed in my posts that I've tried to present reasoned, fact-based positions. But today, I'd like to share something I witnessed personally and directly - right here at The Villa. This past Monday, the good Dr. Shelly ...

Like my Travel Guides, I will occasionally be doing special posts on Gear. Topics might be headphones, clothes, shoes, networking equipment, whatever. And like the Travel Guides, there is no Unwashed Masses nor KLUF sections (normally). I'm going to (naturally) kick it off with music and specifically, vinyl records. But a warning: This...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I'm sure everyone is just dying for more photos of the Murphy Villa. You're welcome and yesterday my weather mojo returned in force: mid 70's with crystal clear skies and perfectly cloudy weissbier. Yep, it tastes as good poolside here as it does in the desert. So please - please - don't worry about me. I had the plac...