As Americans we’re serious about our pursuit of happiness. We may not be happier than citizens of other nations, but we are willing to spend an awful lot of time and money in trying to be happy or to prove to others that we are. Maura Sweeney, in her new series of chapter-size 99-cent ebooks, wants us to stop trying so hard and to get back to the essentials of the pursuit by being more in tune with our mental and emotional states of contentment and joy. Under the umbrella title “The… Read more

Whether you live near or far from the home where you grew up, there comes a time when you go down into the old family basement to haul remnants of your past to the dumpster. That time came for me on my most recent visit to New Jersey when my brother and I and some hired arms hauled several decades worth of half-buried memories up from the basement of the house where we grew up. Emptying a basement is often associated with mourning or natural disaster, but in this case our reason for… Read more

July 4, 2011 – Since I’m a few thousand miles away from the United States today I thought I’d celebrate the Fourth of July with a photo reportage of the major Statues of Liberty in Paris. Here below is the original 1/16th plaster execution model of Auguste Bartholdi’s statue La Liberté éclairant le monde (Liberty Enlightening the World) better known as The Statue of Liberty. It’s presented at the far end of a former chapel built in the 12th-century within the complex of the… Read more