Remember the big SoCal sports story of January 12? NFL owners voted 30-2 to allow the Rams to move back to Los Angeles, after 21 seasons in St. Louis. Over the next few days came stories about the reaction in Los Angeles, where the team might be headquartered, where it might train, what sort of […]

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After the hike of two days ago brought us to the edge of a pair of fairly large bodies of … something liquid-y … we have an explanation on what we were looking at. It comes from a 30-year resident of the town where we are staying, and one of the community’s most prominent members? […]

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President Barack Obama travels to Saudi Arabia this week for talks with the most powerful nation on the Arabian Peninsula, the hosts, but the American president also plans to meet with other regional officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council. The GCC includes the UAE, and Obama may for a moment wonder why the Emirati president […]

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It can be jarring or amusing to do a bit of investigation on the “flavor” of potato chips, while traveling the world. In the U.S., “original”, barbecue and sour cream-and-onion flavors probably cover about 90 percent of the chips sold. Not so in the rest of the world. In Hong Kong, shrimp-flavored potato chips are […]

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The little towns in this part of southern France are usually separated by a valley and a ridge. The former is generally given over to agriculture. Vines, mostly, with a few olive groves and the occasional wheat field mixed in. Then comes the ridge, which inevitably is crowned by trees and bushes. You climb up […]

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When you live in Smalltown Anywhere, the notion of a bunch of people showing up, just a short drive down the road, ready and willing to play live classical music for you … well, that’s exciting. Not to be missed. So we gladly made the 20-minute drive to a not-quite-as-small French town, and paid 20 […]

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This never was going to be easy but until the Asian Football Confederation draw for the final round of qualifying earlier this week … it didn’t seem quite so daunting. Two groups of six with the top two in each group — following a 10-match home-and-away, round-robin competition — securing a place at Russia 2018. […]

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Well, that was an NBA regular season that ended with a bang. The Golden State Warriors recorded an unprecedented 73rd victory, but somehow it seemed less astonishing than Kobe Bryant ending his 20-year Lakers career by scoring 60. 60! Kobe spent much of the season struggling to be something more than a subpar player who […]

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Some stories I have read in the past few days, stories you also might like. Let’s start with this one: In late 2001, Major League Soccer was essentially dead for several hours, after only six seasons and lots of red ink. Who saved it? The story suggests Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs […]

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  It seems only a few weeks ago that the Languedoc was mostly brown. A fecund brown, it looked, but one paused while it waited for more light and warmth. The thousands and thousands of vines were still dormant, in their rows and rows, earthy furrows dug out between many of them. Naked and slumbering […]

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