Destination: Florida
Welcome Guest Blogger Thomas Swick
by Tom Swick | 01.09.06 | 6:53 AM ET
Regular World Hum readers will be familiar with South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick. We often link to his columns and stories; we’ve interviewed him; and we’ve enjoyed his two books, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler and Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland. His 2001 essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, Roads Not Taken, about the dismal state of travel writing in American newspapers, is a must-read for travel writers and editors alike. So when we decided to begin inviting some of our favorite travel writers to be guest bloggers in 2006, Swick’s name immediately came to mind. We’re delighted that he accepted our invitation to contribute all this week.
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Yahoo! BuzzPico Iyer, Tom Arnold and the Key West Literary Seminar
by Tom Swick | 01.09.06 | 5:57 AM ET
I’m in Key West; drove down Thursday from Fort Lauderdale for the Key West Literary Seminar on the Literature of Adventure, Travel and Discovery. In the evening Pico Iyer gave the opening address, speaking for 80 minutes without notes and almost without pauses to a packed and dazzled crowd of mostly older citizens. Sketched his story—born in England to Indian parents who then moved to California, currently living in rural Japan—and the themes of his writing—interchange of cultures, traveling for contradictions, travel as a dialogue between a person and a place, an interest in the romance rather than the clash of cultures, etc. Leaving I heard an elderly woman ask her friend, “Did he say he lives in royal Japan?”
We’re Back, and So is Farris Hassan
by Michael Yessis | 01.02.06 | 12:44 PM ET
Welcome back, Farris. The 16-year-old high school student, who had taken $1,800 his parents gave him to invest in the stock market and embarked on a solo trip to Iraq, returned home to Fort Lauderdale, Florida last night. It ended one of the most fascinating odysseys of 2005. Hassan took off for the Middle East on December 11, reportedly to research a school journalism project.
Hemingway Was a Regular on Chalk’s Ocean Airways
by Jim Benning | 12.22.05 | 1:23 AM ET
I hadn’t heard of Chalk’s Ocean Airways until this week, with the news that a twin-engine Mallard seaplane it operated crashed off Miami on Monday, killing at least 19 people on board. It turns out the company and its planes have a long, storied history. The Florida carrier claims to be the world’s oldest surviving airline, and according to a fine story in the Palm Beach Post, Ernest Hemingway was once a regular passenger on flights to the island of Bimini. The Post story opens with a description of a Mallard taking off.
Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” Manuscript Moves to Florida
by Jim Benning | 12.01.05 | 1:29 PM ET
Jack Kerouac is most famous for his novel “On the Road,” but I’ve always been partial to “The Dharma Bums,” with its train-hoping, Zen-musing, haiku-writing, Sierra-tramping protagonists. I’d put it on my Top 10 Desert Island Novels List any day. So I was happy to see a recent story in the Orlando Sentinel noting that the Kerouac Project of Orlando just acquired the final 197-page draft manuscript of the novel for preservation. Kerouac apparently found inspiration for the book’s ending while star-gazing in Florida.
Mullet in the Treetops
by Bill Belleville | 08.15.05 | 10:16 PM ET
Photo by Bill Belleville In a land studded with theme parks promising manufactured thrills, Bill Belleville discovers a different kind of Florida Fantasyland
Roadside Religion
by Michael Yessis | 07.18.05 | 12:54 AM ET
Travel and spirituality have long been intertwined, but rarely with the “spectacular absurdity” witnessed by Timothy K. Beal. In 2002, he set out with his wife and two children to explore America’s religious roadside attractions, public spectacles like the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Florida, and a rebuilt Noah’s Ark in Frostburg, Maryland.
On the Road to See the Kerouac House
by Jim Benning | 02.23.04 | 9:10 PM ET
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Thomas Swick visits the Orlando, Florida house where Jack Kerouac stayed just before the New York Times proclaimed him the voice of his generation. Kerouac may not often be associated with Florida, but a local author told Swick he thought it was important people knew Kerouac spent time in suburban Florida. “I want people, especially young people, to embrace the idea of history in the suburbs,” Bob Kealing said. “I call it suburban archaeology. This idea of him [Kerouac] as the precursor of the hippies. He was Catholic, he was conservative, and he lived with his mother in the suburbs.”
The South Florida Travel Editor Diet?
by Jim Benning | 01.29.04 | 10:07 PM ET
That’s right. Forget the ultra-trendy South Beach Diet. South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel Editor Thomas Swick has come up with a diet of his own sure to attract the masses: “The South Florida Travel Editor Diet.” Swick’s key piece of advice: travel. “Abroad, we all walk more than we do at home, and we do it painlessly, not worrying about calories burnt but concentrating on the architecture and the curious signs and the coy window displays,” he wrote in last week’s column. “Not to mention the crowds of people—slim and hardy—who are walking along with us.” How to explain the veteran travel editor’s sudden interest in diets? We have a theory. Swick, whose collection of travel stories, “A Way to See the World,” was recently published by The Lyons Press, no doubt saw “The South Beach Diet” book on the New York Times bestseller list and began brainstorming. Diet books, after all, always outsell travel books in the U.S. Which is why we suspect Swick has a lucrative travel-diet book deal in the works. Brilliant!
Disney World: Utopian Decontextualism or Magic Kingdom?
by Michael Yessis | 04.24.02 | 7:51 PM ET
Richard Todd and his wife recently visited Florida’s Disney World for the first time, and they found certain advantages to seeing the Magic Kingdom through virgin adult eyes. “You may come here just to notch your traveler’s belt. But this is not the Lincoln Memorial or the Louvre,” Todd writes in the Atlantic Monthly’s May issue. “Monuments and museums yield their meanings readily, but Disney World is complicated. You tend to Have Thoughts. Your inner voice begins to sound like one of those hectoring French critics who can find the soul of America in a Happy Meal.”
Update: Cross-Country Cab Rider Detained
by Michael Yessis | 01.25.02 | 1:29 AM ET
Patricia Agness, the Florida woman who hired a series of cabbies to drive her to Juneau, Alaska, has been taken into custody in Northern California (see Jan. 23 weblog item below). According to an Associated Press report, a hotel manager called the police after she insisted on spending the night in the lobby. The police plan to evaluate her mental condition.
What Kind of Tip Do the Drivers Get for This?
by Michael Yessis | 01.24.02 | 1:42 AM ET
When Jacksonville, Florida resident Patricia Agness decided that she wanted to see America she made an unorthodox transportation choice: She hired a taxi. David C.L. Bauer of the Florida Times-Union writes that Agness secured the services of two local cabbies and set out for Juneau, Alaska. Less than halfway through the 10,000-mile round trip, however, the driving duo dropped out. Bauer reports that Agness hasn’t been fazed. She found a new cabbie in Santa Barbara and is currently making her way up the Pacific Coast. “I needed to get away,” says Agness, “and this is the best way to see the open road.” Maybe she has a point.
“Shalom, Y’all”
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.01 | 8:33 PM ET
The Holy Land Experience, which opened in February 2001, is the latest and, perhaps, most unlikely theme park to grace the sticky air of Orlando, Florida. While it has received ample visitors and a wave of press coverage, few writers have dissected the Experience like GQ‘s pop culture critic, Joe Queenan, who chronicles his visit in the magazine’s November 2001 issue (The story is not available online). Queenan, who is Catholic, hoped the ersatz Holy Land would “give off a sweet savor and settle me in green pastures beside still waters, where I would be delivered from the snare of the fowler.” Eventually, though, he finds many things to make fun of. And he’s very good at making fun of things. “Presumably, we were supposed to feel we were back in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when Titus laid waste to the Temple,” he writes. “But when push came to shove, it seemed more like A.D. 1972, when Foghat laid waste to Nassau Coliseum.”
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