Dogged by boredom: What is it that makes a person interesting?

"We had just explored the Olympic Sculpture Park at the edge of Puget Sound, with works by Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, and Louise Nevelson, including an amazing giant cedar log inside a climate-controlled greenhouse, covered with plants and mosses to reproduce the process of forest decay, in which the viewers are said to be part of the art. Freight trains rumble through and under the site, while across the sound to the west, the Olympic Mountains create a monumental counterpoint."

To find out how one man looks at this thorny question, click here.

Back to Reality: Watching Others' Lives, and Watching Our Own

"What’s on TV tonight? Other people’s private lives, often in excruciating, appalling, and grubby detail.

On The Learning Channel, you can watch total strangers try on their wedding gowns while the salon staff makes catty comments about the bride and her family behind their backs. Or watch the Duggars raising their 'Eighteen Kids and Counting,' Jon and Kate and their brood of eight, or the 10 offspring in 'Table for Twelve.'”

Click here for more from Anne Morse.

A lot of kick in them yet: Supporters answer call from Waltham’s Reagle Players

"A stack of donations sits on Robert J. Eagle’s desk, each with a hand-written note from its sender.

'We don’t want to see Reagle Players close,’ says one. Please don’t go away!’ says the next. 'These are very difficult times for most of us, especially the arts. We pray that your financial troubles ease and that ‘the show goes on,’’ reads another."

For more on the effort to save this troupe, click here.

75 great moments (and guys) in men's underwear

"Men's underwear turns 75 this month, assuming you consider the dawn of undergarments the invention of the Jockey brief.

Call us old school. We consider King Tut and his loincloth, not Jim Palmer in his tighty whities, as the first high-profile male underwear model. But in the interest of finding an excuse to celebrate, we're still going to mark this moment by declaring 75 great moments and guys in men's underwear."

Click here for more about this historic event.

New Orleanians can walk in a winter wonderland once again at the Roosevelt

"Kathleen Graythen's childhood memories of Christmas at The Roosevelt in the '50s are vivid, as vivid as that of any youngster growing up in New Orleans who saw the majestic hotel lobby transformed into a winter wonderland every holiday."

Read more about this restored tradition. To visit New Orleans history, click here.

Veterans wall in Schaumburg honors Indians' service

"In his youth, Joe Yazzie wanted to be an artist. But his mother knew he would be a warrior in the proud tradition of his Navajo forebears. He was named for G.I. Joe and was made to run and chop wood in his native New Mexico to keep fit and prepare for war.

'There will be another one,' his mother warned.

She was right. Yazzie was drafted shortly after high school and served a tour in 1964 as an Army machine gunner in Vietnam, joining his brother Harold, a Marine."


Click here to read more of this moving story.

Duckmaster and other odd hotel jobs

"There's more to providing hotel services than sometimes meets the eye. Here are some of the more unusual behind-the-scenes hotel jobs."

Click here for more on unusual hotel jobs.