Destination: United States
The Endless Road Trip
by Michael Yessis | 07.28.05 | 11:40 PM ET
It’s not easy being a member of the Samurai Bears. The Golden Baseball League team, which consists solely of Japanese players and has no home field, is in the midst of a 90-game, 96-day road trip around the American southwest. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing it,” pitcher Takaaki Igarashi said through an interpreter during a postgame interview with Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times. “It’s not that it’s really hard. I just get sick of eating hamburgers all the time.” Bolch caught up with the Bears during a recent stop in Southern California, and he chronicles a journey “fraught with comical misadventures and lost-in-translation moments.”
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzPublic Radio’s “Bookworm”
by Jim Benning | 07.27.05 | 4:51 PM ET
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.
Across the U.S. in 200 Days
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.05 | 9:57 AM ET
It’s taking Steve Vaught that long because he’s walking from San Diego to New York City. And because he’s carrying an 85-pound backpack. And because he weighs 400 pounds. It’s part of a plan to lose the weight he gained after a tragic accident. His story is both inspirational and heartbreaking.
Podcast Features James O’Reilly
by Jim Benning | 03.28.05 | 4:01 PM ET
The new travel blog Gadling featured a thoughtful audio interview last week with Travelers’ Tales Publisher James O’Reilly, who discusses travel writing and life at the California-based publishing company. Note: We added Gadling to our list of travel blogs on the front page.
R.I.P Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Traveler
by Jim Benning | 02.22.05 | 12:49 AM ET
The counterculture legend and self-proclaimed “gonzo” journalist who died by his own hand Sunday is being remembered for all sorts of contributions. I’ve yet to hear anyone describe him as a travel writer, but Thompson often wrote about travel in his unique style.
So Long, Easy Going
by Michael Yessis | 01.24.05 | 10:05 PM ET
Easy Going, the famed Berkeley, California, travel shop and bookstore, will be shutting its storefront Tuesday, February 15. Easy Going will remain in business on the Web, but it’s still a loss for the community of travel writers and Bay Area readers. Owner Thelma Elkins will be throwing a farewell/celebration at the old storefront February 14 from 1 to 6 p.m.
Crossing Divides: The Bering Strait
by Jim Benning | 01.06.05 | 10:17 PM ET
The final story in Tom Haines’ four-part Boston Globe series, “Crossing Divides,” was published during our winter break. It was an eloquent end to an ambitious project. The article looked at the remote world of the Bering Strait and the people who live there. “After the ice age thaw,” Haines writes, “Chukchis, Inupiat, and other indigenous peoples crossed the strait freely in skin boats in summer. But in the 20th century, distant capitals, Moscow and Washington, split the Arctic into communist and capitalist lands, making a barrier of the border through the middle of the strait and changing forever how natives and newcomers on both sides live.” The installment also featured a fascinating look at how Haines and photographer Essdras Suarez navigated the region. “The strait crossing was made aboard a 9-seat propeller plane chartered for a flight from the coastal port town of Provideniya, Russia, to Nome,” he writes. “Passengers on board included an elderly Siberian Yupik couple traveling to visit relatives on St. Lawrence Island, in the Bering Sea, and a Russianborn anthropologist returning to Alaska after months of research on the traditional use of mushrooms in native culture.” Finally, the Globe created a handsome Web page for the entire series.
An Apology To the World
by Jim Benning | 11.15.04 | 9:13 PM ET
University of Southern California neuroscience student James Zetlen wasn’t happy with the outcome of the U.S. election. So the 20-year-old snapped a photo of himself holding up a handwritten sign on a piece of notebook paper. It featured a crude drawing of the globe and a simple message: “Sorry world. We tried.” He signed it, “Half of America.” Then he posted the photo on a basic Web site he created: sorryeverybody.com. What happened since has been amazing, the BBC reports. The site has received more than 27 million hits—so many that the university asked him to move it to another server because it was using more than 80 percent of its server’s bandwidth. Zetlen’s site is now loaded with photos from other citizens offering their own snapshot apologies. And it has inspired a number of other sites, including several insisting the U.S. has nothing to apologize for. Whatever your politics, you have to appreciate the power of the Internet here: One student posted his thoughts and millions around the world took notice. As Zetlen says in the BBC story: “The internet was supposed to make communication between cultures, countries and peoples painless and easy. It was supposed to build bridges. But it doesn’t do this automatically; somebody has to reach out. Also, come on, it’s kind of amusing.”
Bush Won the General Vote, But Who Won the Traveler Vote?
by Jim Benning | 11.03.04 | 9:33 PM ET
You won’t hear any inside-the-beltway pundits talking about the “traveler vote” the way they talk about the “youth vote.” But it’s too bad exit poll workers don’t ask voters whether they had spent time abroad. Travel can change one’s perspective on a range of issues, and particularly America’s role in the world. I suspect the American-who-has-traveled-internationally vote went easily to Kerry. The majority of passport holders live on the coasts, and coastal states like New York and California were solid Kerry states. But the majority of American voters—as many as 80 percent—don’t hold passports. They’ve never had the visceral experience of seeing the U.S. through another’s eyes. So, regrettably, the traveler vote isn’t big enough to make a difference.
The Politics of Travel
by World Hum | 10.27.04 | 9:35 PM ET
Travel writers on the 2004 U.S. presidential election
‘Best American Travel Writing’ Launches with New York Event
by Jim Benning | 10.07.04 | 7:36 PM ET
Editor Pico Iyer hosts the launch event for the 2004 Best American Travel Writing anthology Tuesday, October 12, at The Explorers Club in New York City. The reception begins at 6:30 p.m. Readings from Tad Friend, George Packer and Elizabeth Rubin follow at 7 p.m. The cost is $15 for nonmembers and $5 for students. This year’s edition features two World Hum stories, Test Day by Frank Bures and Sandbags in the Archipelago by Heather Eliot.
Note to American Travelers Pretending to Be Canadians: Stop It!
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.04 | 7:22 PM ET
Joseph Cohen writes in Sunday’s Seattle Times that he “could have held a full (and very poorly played) hockey game with all the fake Canadians [he] ran into while traveling in Western Europe.” They were, of course, Americans trying to avoid being outed. Cohen believes pretending to hail from Canada is a silly practice. “The plethora of Canadian flags on American backpacks this summer obviously has roots in current events dealing with Iraq and President George W. Bush,” he writes. “Yet Europeans do not translate their dislike of our president into animosity toward American travelers. You have a better chance of being pickpocketed in Switzerland than accosted for being an American anywhere in Western Europe.”
Airports Get Their Pop Culture Close-Up
by Michael Yessis | 07.15.04 | 12:57 AM ET
U.S. television shows and movies are increasingly being set in airports. See: “The Terminal,” “Airport,” and the upcoming series, “LAX.” In a post-9/11 world, the question is: Why? John Leland explored the phenomenon in Sunday’s New York Times, quoting the usual suspects, like Pico Iyer, and getting some keen cultural insight from the likes of Karal Ann Marling, a professor of popular culture at the University of Minnesota. “[Steven] Spielberg did something very smart in ‘The Terminal’ to emphasize that the airport is one giant shopping mall,” Professor Marling tells Leland. “It’s a dodge game we play with ourselves to pretend airports aren’t airports. In that shopping world, it’s obvious that the management is going to take great care of you and nothing evil can happen to you. It distracts travelers from the possibility that they will meet bin Laden on the next flight. How can you be afraid when there’s a Gap next to you?”
Thank You, Department of Homeland Security, For Protecting Americans from British Novelists
by Jim Benning | 07.12.04 | 9:18 PM ET
The author of “Amsterdam” and other acclaimed novels made the tongue-in-cheek remark in front of a Seattle audience after he was initially refused entry into the United States. Officials told him the $5,000 speaking honorarium he was to be paid disqualified him from a visa-waiver program. Unfortunately, he is but one of many writers who have been harassed by U.S. officials since the Department of Homeland Security took over border and immigration control last year, writes British journalist Elena Lappin in the New York Times. Lappin was handcuffed and detained for 36 hours after she arrived in the United States without a special journalist visa. Understandably, she wasn’t pleased. “American journalists working abroad, especially in free countries, are not accustomed to monitoring of this kind,” she writes. “By requiring foreign journalists to obtain special visas, the United States has aligned itself with the likes of Iran, North Korea and Cuba, places where reporters are treated as dangerous subversives and disseminators of uncomfortable truths.”