Regrettably, even I have yet to visit Monticello, the estate of third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, who spent more than forty years designing, dismantling, and reimagining this "essay in architecture," as he called it.  The property is regarded a national treasure -- both for its historical significance and beauty. It's perched atop a lofty hill in Albemarle County, Virginia, not far from Jefferson's birthplace of Shadwell.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt once wrote, "Monticello speaks to me as an expression of the personality of its builder."  Indeed, if you were to pick the president with the widest range of hobbies and abilities, Jefferson would have to be in the Top 3. He was a writer, inventor, philosopher, architect, scientist, scholar, gardener, statesman, founder of the University of Virginia, viticulturalist, and the list goes on. Unlike any of the other 43 men to take office, Jefferson was a polymath -- a true intellectual and Renaissanc...

If you're looking for a place to add to your bucket list, The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut merits consideration. Samuel Longhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, wrote such famous works as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . The house -- which Twain lived in between 1874 and 1903 -- recently opened up his library for use by writers, who have the chance to write in the library for three-hour stretches. The price tag? A not-so-cheap $50, and that's as long as they reserve in advance. The house already offers a wide array of classes and workshops, but the chance to write uninterrupted in Samuel Clemens’ study is an exceptionally rare one. The resplendent, Victorian-era library was one of the crowning gems of Clemens’ home. Inside, members of the family would recite poetry and Clemens would regale guests with excerpts from his new works. Interestingly, though it’s imbued with literary s...

When we were younger, we were often asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Some of the careers we had in mind at the time were real doozies, from baseball player to fireman to world-renowned singer. Needless to say, many of us went on to pursue careers that aren't remotely related to those we aspired to as children. Perhaps our interests changed as we got older, or we decided to venture into an area we found more practical. I guess you can say what I do now doesn't stray too much from what I envisioned as a kid. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and that I became -- just in a different area. When I was 10, I thought I'd end up becoming a sports columnist. Instead, I wound up as a copywriter in the travel industry. It is my hope that even if you don't work in the field you set your sights on in your childhood, you love -- or at least can tolerate -- whatever it is you do now. We work too damn hard not to derive some enjoyment from our ...