New Year’s in Old Havana
Note: On June 5, 2019, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on travel to Cuba that are going to make life a lot harder for the Cuban people. However, U.S. […]
Art
Ten tips from 12 days of Spain
Bargain airfares, a favorable exchange rate, and a niece studying abroad pulled me to Spain this spring, my first trip to Europe in many years. Here’s my general spin on 12 […]
Inventing Nature at Acadia National Park
I love the barren open summits of Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, Maine. On Memorial Day, we set out from the Jordan Pond House and completed the 6-mile-ish […]
Tiny travel, big world at the Peabody Essex Museum
I call this blog The Maniacal Traveler because I have a mania for travel in all its forms. Visiting museums, wherever they are, is a sort of super-condensed travel, or […]
Art amidst the mills of North Adams
A decaying mill town on a gray November weekend in an isolated corner of Massachusetts might seem an unlikely destination, but North Adams had been on my radar for a […]
The Ghost of a Pepperrell Lady
Elizabeth Royall was a royal – a member of New England’s informal royalty. When she was a tween girl, she and her older sister Mary sat for a young John […]
Nathaniel Sparhawk and the art of swagger
“A wealthy merchant of Kittery, Maine”. So reads the caption, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, beneath this John Singleton Copley portrait of Nathaniel Sparhawk, one of Kittery’s […]