One thing I remember from Spanish class back in high school had nothing to do with learning to speak Spanish. It had to do with tapas. It wasn’t something I’d ever heard of before. Specifically, what I remember wasn’t the type of food tapas was as much as how it got its name.
The teacher taught us that the Spanish verb “tapar” meant “to cover.” She said in Spain, when you ordered a drink at the bar or café, that it would come with a small bite of food, on a plate. That plate was placed on the top of the glass as the drink was being served, and from that came the name “tapas.”
As a high school student back in the 1980s, I wouldn’t have known about tapas restaurants even if they existed. Since that time, I’ve gone to tapas restaurants with friends. What I find strange is the tradition of sharing these little bites family-style, like they are large Asian or Italian food dishes. While I feel like I leave those places a little hungry, the bright side is that I got to try a lot of different things.
This issue of Bay State REALTOR® magazine is our legal issue and we’re treating it almost like going out for tapas. Instead of there being one main legal feature, we’ve decided to provide you “small bites” on a bunch of legal topics. You’ll get a few of your old favorites like “Legal REALTOR®,” by Stephen Perry on page 10, and From the Bench on page 16. But, you’ll also get to try some new things, like how to best work with closing attorneys on page 18 by the well-known instructor and closing attorney Michael Krone, and what your responsibility is when dealing with clients and potential clients who have emotional support animals on page 17 by Attorney Ken Kerms. And, if you’re like me, still a little hungry after tapas, we’re giving you a double helping of the popular “Notes from the Legal Hotline” to round out your meal.
New Stuff:
We’ve decided to add a new column to this edition of the magazine. The title of the column is “Five Questions With” or as we like to refer to it “5QW” In each issue, we’ll ask an expert five questions about an important topic you should know. To make room for 5QW, we’ll be replacing the “Insider” column. In this first installment, we ask George Demopulos, 2019 vice president of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Chapter of the Appraisal Institute and president & chief valuations officer of Lincoln Appraisal &Settlement Services, five questions about working with appraisers. In fact, we ended up with more than five questions and those additional questions and answers are available as an online exclusive.
We have also changed the name of “Ask a Millennial” to “Trending Topics.” While this issue’s column does look at millennials and how they’re dealing with buyer’s remorse, it gives us more flexibility moving forward on the types of topics and angles we can talk about. We hope you enjoy both.
Good Luck Leslie! I wanted to say goodbye and good luck to our managing editor Leslie Fowle. Over the past three years at MAR, Leslie was working on her master’s degree in public health. As luck would have it, she found the perfect opportunity in the public health field. We’ll miss her great writing and pleasant personality.