Napa Valley
Auberge du Soleil is one of the nation's most sought-after small luxury hotels, for good reason. Claude Rouas and Robert Harmon somehow managed to capture the ambiance of Provence in the Rutherford H...
Central California Dreaming
The Central Coast has been crisp, sunny, and blue-skied, even in winter...this is why I love living in California. Crystalline views of the great Morro Rock, with the sun glinting diamond facets on t..
Buckhead: Just Peachy
The Buckhead section of Atlanta is the jewel of the city, an area of gracious homes, elegant hotels and shopping centers, as well as some of the best restaurants. The shopping mecca of the Southeast,....
My home town, where we invent ourselves
Ever since the show-business pioneers DeMille and Lasky were drawn to climate-blessed Los Angeles just after the turn of the century, Hollywood ceased being a real place and became a concept, a glitte.
Sawadee
Bangkok is bizarrely contradictory...it blends modern and ancient, with tall skyscrapers towering over centuries-old Buddhist temples. Imposing wats are adjacent to horridly impoverished narrow stree..
The intimi-dater
People always say, "Be careful what you wish for." I have the same reaction to that sentiment as I do to "Don’t get your hopes up." Both admonitions are clearly impossible to o....
Five people
One of my favorite recent books is "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," by Mitch Albom. It gets one to thinking about the five people. It’s a game we play all the time, and [...]
On standby for heaven
I have this recurring dream: I am at LAX and I have a reservation to go to heaven. I go into the terminal and look at the list of flights...heaven is at the last gate. [...]
It’s what’s inside that makes me feel at home
What makes a house a home? Not size, of course. I’ve been in some of the grandest houses in America, and it’s readily apparent no one lives there. They’re just empty shells in sea...
A dream come true
Many people become grouchy if they don’t get enough sleep. Recent experiments indicate, however, that it might not be sleep deprivation that makes a person tense the next morning. The real roo...
Sexual Starvation and Erotic Banquets
One of the traits that characterizes a mature person is the ability to delay gratification. An infant empties its bowels whenever it feels the urge. A lion begins feasting as soon as it has killed. [...]
The Top of Maslov’s is Fame?
Los Angeles confirms my hunch that we are in the grip of an insidious entitlement epidemic in this country. Even in this age of globalization, what a person is entitled to seems largely a function [...]
