Destination: United States
Man Loses Job, Survives on Hotel Points and Frequent Flier Miles
by Michael Yessis | 03.11.10 | 4:42 PM ET
This week Jim Kennedy is at the Holiday Inn Express in San Clemente using United miles. The Orange County Register has a great package about his plight, including this audio slideshow:
(via Slatest)
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Ghosts
by Larry Clark | 03.11.10 | 10:21 AM ET
Larry Clark contemplates the power of monuments and memorials -- and the fleeting moments we spend with them
See the full audio slideshow: »
The Accidental Tsunami Rider
by Jill K. Robinson | 03.10.10 | 11:50 AM ET
iStockPhoto After Chile's earthquake, Jill K. Robinson paddled her kayak into California's Half Moon Bay and felt the energy from a hemisphere away
Boing Boing Does the Road Trip
by Eva Holland | 03.09.10 | 1:58 PM ET
Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder is cruising Southern California in a Buick, making an eclectic series of roadside stops. His latest? The very quirky Museum of Jurassic Technology.
On Becoming a Tour Guide
by Wayne Curtis | 03.08.10 | 12:00 PM ET
Photo by Wayne Curtis Not just any tour guide. Wayne Curtis passed the drug test and is now officially licensed in New Orleans. You are now required to believe everything he says -- even that bit about Brad Pitt.
Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home
by Michael Yessis | 03.08.10 | 11:23 AM ET
The prolific author explores the meaning of place and home in a piece for Smithsonian magazine.
Writers, particularly novelists, are linked to place. It’s impossible to think of Charles Dickens and not to think of Dickens’ London; impossible to think of James Joyce and not to think of Joyce’s Dublin; and so with Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor—each is inextricably linked to a region, as to a language-dialect of particular sharpness, vividness, idiosyncrasy. We are all regionalists in our origins, however “universal” our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root—almost literally.
She divulges more in a companion Q&A.
Another Casualty of the Down Economy: Rest Stops
by Michael Yessis | 03.05.10 | 4:47 PM ET
And the people of Arizona are pissed off. From the New York Times:
Arizona has the largest budget gap in the country when measured as a percentage of its overall budget, and the state Department of Transportation was $100 million in the red last fall when it decided to close 13 of the state’s 18 highway rest stops.
But the move has unleashed a torrent of telephone calls and e-mail messages to state lawmakers, newspapers and the Department of Transportation deploring the lost toilets—one of the scores of small indignities among larger hardships that residents of embattled states face as governments scramble to shore up their finances.
Other states have closed rest stops, too, including Colorado, Georgia, Vermont and Virginia.
LAX ‘Can’t Hide the Wrinkles Anymore’
by Jim Benning | 03.04.10 | 11:52 AM ET
Call me crazy, but I never tire of Thomas Friedman’s shots at the sad state of America’s airports. This week: LAX. Zing!
It’s worth noting (and Friedman doesn’t) that a major upgrade of the airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal is underway. That’s at least some good news.
Paying Respect to Buddha in Boston
by Shelley Miller | 03.03.10 | 10:11 AM ET
iStockPhoto At a Boston park, Shelley Miller learned that a little Cantonese will go a long way
Video: After-Hours at the Pittsburgh Airport
by Eva Holland | 02.23.10 | 3:51 PM ET
(Via Boing Boing)
New National Monuments in the Works
by Eva Holland | 02.22.10 | 11:53 AM ET
The federal government has drawn up a list of potential new national monuments, mostly in the southwestern states—and this New York Times story explains why some local politicians see the move as “a land-grab device for East Coast politicians.” Regional politics aside, shouldn’t “Lesser Prairie Chicken National Monument” be something we can all get behind?
76-Second Travel Show: A Very Presidential Sandwich
by Robert Reid | 02.17.10 | 5:24 PM ET
Robert Reid celebrates President's Day by chowing down in Chester A. Arthur's one-time bedroom
New Orleans: It’s About to Get Weirder
by Adam Karlin | 02.16.10 | 5:13 PM ET
REUTERS/Sean Gardner After a landmark mayoral election and the Saints' Super Bowl win, Adam Karlin believes the spirit of NOLA is undergoing a tectonic shift.
Forests to Burn
by Joshua Berman | 02.12.10 | 10:56 AM ET
Photo by Joshua Berman Joshua Berman spent a glorious summer exploring some of America's most beautiful wilderness areas -- with a drip torch in hand
Facebook and America’s Social Geography
by Eva Holland | 02.09.10 | 12:45 PM ET
Here’s a fascinating map put together by PeteSearch, showing the regional connections between America’s Facebook users. The data creates some unexpected clusters and movement patterns: For instance, users in the northeastern states—dubbed “Stayathomia”—tend to have more local and fewer long-range connections, while users in the “Nomadic West” generally have more far-flung friendship networks. (Via Kottke)