Destination: United States
Gilmore v. Gonzales: Should U.S. Airline Passengers Have to Show ID?
by Michael Yessis | 12.14.05 | 1:08 AM ET
Last week the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments in the Gilmore v. Gonzales case, in which San Francisco resident John Gilmore is challenging the requirement for air passengers to show identification before boarding a flight within the United States.
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Yahoo! BuzzShameless Plug: Intro to Travel Writing in San Diego
by Jim Benning | 12.07.05 | 10:42 PM ET
I’ll be teaching an introductory course on travel writing at UC San Diego Extension beginning Jan. 11. It’s a nine-week hybrid course that includes five classroom meetings. Students will post their work online.
I’ve taught a number of travel writing courses at UCSD and they’re always a lot of fun. Travel writing is a tough way to make money, much less a living, so I make no promises of fame and fortune. But I do promise a solid introduction to the business and craft of travel writing, some great discussions and critical feedback on writing.
For those interested in the business of travel writing, as well as the pleasure of the work, I think Lonely Planet global travel editor Don George got it about right when he spoke with me earlier this year. His book is recommended reading in the course.
R.I.P. Los Angeles Times Outdoors
by Jim Benning | 12.06.05 | 12:08 PM ET
The Los Angeles Times published its ambitious Outdoors section for the last time today. The paper launched the weekly section in September 2003 as a sort of Outside magazine for Southern California. It was a grand idea, and I was happy to contribute occasionally to its pages. Unfortunately, Tribune Co. has been making lots of cuts lately, and Outdoors was one of them. Editor Thomas Curwen offers a fond fairwell.
MTV’s “Laguna Beach” Spawns Reality Show Tourism
by Jim Benning | 12.01.05 | 6:19 PM ET
The Southern California town of Laguna Beach has always attracted its share of tourists, but it’s getting plenty more now, thanks to the MTV reality show Laguna Beach. The interest is so great, in fact, that the Laguna Beach Visitors & Conference Bureau has issued a guide to the show’s key spots (not available online).
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.
Attack of the Bedbugs!
by Jim Benning | 11.28.05 | 12:36 PM ET
Bedbugs are “spreading through New York like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat,” according to Sunday’s New York Times, and one exterminator told the paper, “Some of the best hotels in New York have them.” The rise of affordable global travel, among other factors, is being blamed for the pests’ resurgence.
We’re Back, and So is Tor Martin Johansen
by Michael Yessis | 11.27.05 | 9:43 PM ET
The 21-year-old Norwegian’s unlikely tale takes our prize for the oddest travel story to emerge during our brief Thanksgiving break. According to an Associated Press report, Johansen dozed off on a short flight from the central Norway city of Trondheim to his hometown of Namsos via Roervik. When he woke up, he was back in Trondheim.
Is Simon Winchester Inadvertently Creating Natural Disasters?
by Jim Benning | 11.18.05 | 12:54 PM ET
You be the judge. He wrote “Krakatoa,” which involved a tsunami, and shortly thereafter, tsunamis struck South Asia. Then he wrote “A Crack in the Edge of the World” about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and a horrific quake hit Kashmir. Winchester himself told an amused audience in Menlo Park, California last month that his publicist is concerned: “She said, ‘Simon, have you ever thought people are going to start to say, whenever Simon Winchester writes a book, Stay indoors?’”
Las Vegas by Monorail
by Jim Benning | 11.17.05 | 8:07 AM ET
I’ve been a fan of Wayne Curtis ever since I read his terrific 2002 Atlantic Monthly story The Iceberg Wars, so I was happy to crack open the December 2005 Atlantic and find another piece by him. “Back to the Future,” whose first two paragraphs are available online, is about the new, problem-plagued Las Vegas Monorail, and it includes a brief survey of monorail history to boot.
Henry Rollins Hits the Road—With the U.S.O.
by Michael Yessis | 11.16.05 | 5:08 AM ET
How did anti-war punk-rock legend Henry Rollins end up on tour with the U.S.O., supporting United States military troops in hot spots around the world like a latter-day Betty Grable? “[T]here are reasons beyond sheer love of country that influence a performer’s decision to tour with the U.S.O.,” Susan Dominus writes in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. “For Rollins, the travel provides creative fodder, but it also gives him access to places he wouldn’t ordinarily visit, among them Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Honduras.”
Fighting Pirates With a ‘Nonlethal Acoustic Weapon’
by Jim Benning | 11.09.05 | 12:30 PM ET
You no doubt heard about the cruise ship that fought off a pirate attack Saturday. Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune has an interesting story about the “nonlethal acoustic weapon” the cruise ship employed to fend off the pirates. It’s called the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) and was developed by a San Diego-area company for military use.
Ranan Lurie Unveils a Painting Designed to Travel
by Michael Yessis | 11.03.05 | 5:30 AM ET
It’s called the Uniting Painting, and it debuted Tuesday in the lobby of U.N. headquarters in New York. But the man behind the painting, political cartoonist Ranan Lurie, envisions an ever-changing work of art that will extend out the U.N.‘s doors, across the East River and througout the world. “I do not have one single country where it was offered that has turned it down,” Lurie told the Voice of America’s Barbara Schoetzau. “Right now we have South Africa’s Ministry of Culture. We have South Korea wanting to do it with the purpose of spreading the painting to North Korea. And that will be the tendency, to spread it around and in different phases, slowly but surely bringing a uniting painting that lives up to its title.”
Simon Winchester on Public Radio
by Jim Benning | 11.01.05 | 12:36 PM ET
Occasional travel writer and raconteur extraordinaire Simon Winchester is making the rounds to promote his new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. He is scheduled to appear today on two Los Angeles public radio shows that broadcast or podast online: Talk of the City at 89.3 FM at 2 p.m., and Politics of Culture on 89.9 FM at 2:30. Winchester is one of the most articulate and compelling storytellers around, and whether he is talking about travel, the Oxford English Dictionary or geology, he’s always a pleasure to listen to.
NYPD Hearts Rachael Ray
by Michael Yessis | 10.25.05 | 9:24 AM ET
Everyone seems to have an opinion about travel-show host, celebrity chef and future magazine mogul Rachael Ray. I know this because ever since I posted a note a few weeks ago about the love-hate relationship viewers have with Ray, people have been sharing a lot of love and a lot of hate on World Hum. Now it looks like Ray’s fans have some burly new support: the NYPD. World Hum reader Cincy points out this gossip item (scroll to bottom) in Monday’s New York Daily News:
Into Thin Air (While Sitting at a Desk in New York City)
by Jim Benning | 10.23.05 | 8:40 PM ET
The latest issue of The New Yorker has an amusing article about the approach one New York City climber took to prepare for a trip. To begin adjusting to the high altitudes he would reach climbing a pair of Mexican volcanoes, Explorers Club President Richard Wiese installed a Hypoxico altitude chamber in his office on the Upper East Side. Then he stuck his desk inside, cranked up the machine and began working at the oxygen equivalent of 13,000 feet.