Every day on my way to and from school, I treat myself to the distinct pleasure of strolling through Lafayette Square and past the front gates of the White House. Picking my way through crowds of people clad in Bermuda shorts and fanny packs reminds me not only of where I am, but how I got there…

The Johnsonville Press Daily Edition
Today’s Submission: Alex Giannattasio
1. Challenge of the Day: Teach someone something they don’t already know today. If you manage to do it without getting called an asshole, you probably have what it takes to reverse America’s declining status as the world’s leader in education. Or you could always teach English in South Korea, or even better, Thailand! You can buy a pet monkey with all the money you’ll make over there!
2.  Recommendation of the Day: the band Radio Moscow–Recently, a friend introduced me to this three …

There are many benefits to cooking your own food. For one, it’s cheaper, since you don’t have to worry about all the overhead that goes into managing a restaurant. For another, you’re directly responsible for how the food is prepared, meaning you know exactly what went into it, how it was prepared, and whether or not it fell on the floor before reaching your table. And for people like me, it’s a relaxing pastime; the real craftsmanship that goes into preparing food correctly lets me take my mind off complex, …

The Johnsonville Press Daily Edition
Today’s Submission by: Alex Giannattasio
1. Recommendation of the Day:
Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations – If you like images of beautiful countryside, snarky New Jersey hosts and eating, why aren’t you watching this show right now? The most grounded and authentic travel series yet to hit the idiot box, No Reservations is a must watch for any lover of foreign food and travel. A new episode airs on the Travel Channel every Monday night at 10. The show willingly embraces travel to off the grid places often …

My girlfriend recently sent me an article not -so-subtly entitled “Why You Need a Life Plan”.  In the kind of playfully boyish tones girlfriends struggle to adopt while unconsciously nagging their chosen “life partners”, the author enumerates a few of the advantages of setting long term “life goals” for oneself.  

These past few months have been rough in New Brunswick, New Jersey and the North East in general. First, there was the snow, possibly the most profuse in more than a century. Dr. David A. Robinson of Rutgers University [1] says it all:
“Unfortunately, snow records are not lengthy or complete at most locations around the state, but I am confident in stating that most locations established new monthly snowfall records for any winter month in at least the past 130 years.” [2]
Then there was the rain. The …

Today’s Submission By: Alex Giannattasio
1.  Recommendation of the Day – The Pizza Tapes; Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and Tony Rice. In certain circles, the infrequent and erratic collaborations of bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman and Grateful Dead founder Jerry Garcia have become the stuff of legend; theirs was truly a match made in heaven. Nowhere else is this more evident than in their album The Pizza Tapes (2000). The jam CD was recorded over the course of two nights in Grisman’s personal recording studio. It features such classic folk, blues and …

There are two kinds of men in the world: those that associate their own personal happiness with the success of a football team and those who consider sports in general an unnecessarily hedonistic half of the Roman “bread and circus” approach to government. No amount of measured and reasoned consideration will convince the former that yelling at their televisions will not affect the outcome of the game. No amount of cheap beer, good food and friends will convince the latter that there might be more value in the pursuit of …

“It is impossible to make a mistake.” When a friend first handed me Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, I wasn’t sure that this was going to be the book for me, or even that I’d find the time to read the whole thing. After I had read it (in a matter of four or five hours) I knew it couldn’t have happened any other way…

I read an interesting article[1] the other day by Tom Swick, a veteran travel writer.[2] In it, Tom made mention of the precarious state of travel writing today. Staff writers are becoming more and more scarce, even as their freelance counterparts are finding it harder and harder to sell their work, and all at a time when travel writing is just coming into its own. On the one hand magazines and newspapers, almost universally afflicted with substandard advertisement income and faltering readership bases, are less and less ready, willing or …