This Month’s Featured Articles…
Sketchy Real Estate Scams
I decided to investigate real estate scammers after preventing a potential renter from wiring money to an imposter in South Carolina posing as the owner of the property on a missionary assignment. Scammers are out there on the internet or the telephone waiting to steal your money, your credit rating, or even your property. For the Main Street “Learning issue,” here are some of the most common schemes and how to avoid them. Real estate is an enticing target for scammers because the sums are [...]
Raising your child’s CQ
We live and work in a global society where interactions with other cultures happen more frequently. Trade, working abroad, decreasing costs of international travel, increased technology and connectivity, immigration, and social media are all making the world smaller. These factors make it imperative to increase our CQ or Cultural Intelligence. Culture smarts Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is the ability to adapt and thrive in different cultural settings. CQ goes further than Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which is the ability of an individual to detect the emotional state [...]
A Grey Matter
Here is something I know: there is a statue of Roger Sherman located in the rotunda of the National Capitol in Washington, DC. There is a likeness of a notable person from every state located there, and when one takes a tour of the Capitol building, the tour guides make a point of trying to find the one from your state. I don’t think I will ever forget this fact. Because, while I was on that tour, I heard a gunshot report around the rotunda. [...]
Luxury on the Green
Curious about the newcomers to Sharon on the Green? So was Main Street Magazine when the distinctive name, Lambertson Truex, appeared on the window at the stop sign across from JP Gifford. What was this high-end brand from the turn of the last century doing in Sharon, CT? I sat down with the two designers and business partners on a Friday morning and talked about the iconic leather accessories brand they built – and are now relaunching. You started your business in New York in [...]
Amy Clampitt in the Berkshires
In 1992, American poet Amy Clampitt purchased a modest house near Lenox, MA, with part of the money she had received that year in a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation makes six-figure, so-called “genius grants” to “individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future.” The award has been given to literary luminaries such as John Ashbery and Cormac McCarthy in the past, among many others. These grants are precious to mid-career artists and [...]
