Tag: R.I.P.
R.I.P. Susan Sontag
by Jim Benning | 01.06.05 | 9:18 PM ET
Everyone who cares knows by now that the novelist and essayist Susan Sontag died Dec. 28 at the age of 71. I’d read a number of her essays. In reading many of the reflections on her life over the last week, I was most surprised to learn that, in her early years, she had been moved by the travel writing of Richard Halliburton. Sontag never went on to do much in the way of conventional travel writing herself. I’d never heard of her talking much about the genre. But I imagine she had read The Royal Road to Romance, a Halliburton classic first published in 1925. In it, he writes of being inspired to travel by lines from Stony Brook’s “Dorian Gray.” Among them: “Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you. Be afraid of nothing.” Sontag was, it seemed, afraid of nothing. Her writing was fearless. It inspired and enraged. She will be sorely missed.
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Yahoo! BuzzR.I.P. The Savvy Traveler
by Jim Benning | 04.08.04 | 8:40 PM ET
I was saddened to return from a couple of weeks of travel to learn that the public radio show The Savvy Traveler recently aired its final show. The show often featured thoughtful reports and essays from travelers around the world—something all too rare on radio. The Savvy Traveler’s Web site offers this explanation: “Despite the sincere and constant effort of our committed production staff, after nearly seven years of trying, The Savvy Traveler failed to attract sufficient underwriting support to continue. This was due to the economy in general, and the travel economy in particular—especially in the post 9/11 period.” That’s a shame.
R.I.P. Bob Hope
by Michael Yessis | 07.30.03 | 1:05 AM ET
The man who paired with Bing Crosby in some of the most famous road movies ever made passed away yesterday. He was 100.
R.I.P. Bali Bomb Victims, Bali Tourism
by Jim Benning | 10.17.02 | 7:48 PM ET
The terrorist bomb that killed hundreds in Bali has touched travelers the world over. Jason Gaspero, for one, knew he’d never be the same when he heard about
the explosion from his home in Hawaii. Gaspero spent years teaching English in Bali, and he was a regular at the Sari Club, the site of the explosion.
“The Sari Club was, in my opinion the finest international vortex of hedonism and decadence in the whole wide world, and I say that after much consideration,” he writes on Lonely Planet Online. “I mean, you could find people from everywhere in this place: Australia; Canada; Sweden; New Zealand; South Africa; Denmark; Norway; England; Argentina; South Korea; France; Germany and dozens and dozens of other countries. It was the United Nations of drunken, sweaty, sex-crazed glory, and it was all in fantastic fun.” Gaspero insists that his will to travel will not be diminished.
Meanwhile, shaken British tourists are returning home. Australians are trying to make sense of the devastation in their backyard. And Southern California surfers, at least a few of them, say they won’t be deterred from visiting Bali, where great waves promise to be less crowded than ever.
R.I.P. Aral Sea
by Michael Yessis | 04.10.02 | 5:09 PM ET
Because of a variety of misguided economic and environmental actions during the past 150 years, scientists estimate that the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world, will cease to exist by 2010. The sea’s once-thriving fish trade is already dead because all of the native fish species have been killed off, and the little water that remains in the sea basin flows at a trickle down the Aum Darya river, only to be diverted to feed the desert’s unlikely cotton crops. It’s an ecological disaster of an unprecedented scale—one that, sadly, has received very little media attention here in the United States.
R.I.P. “Old Man” Gregorio Fuentes
by Jim Benning | 01.16.02 | 1:23 AM ET
Travelers to Cuba have long made pilgrimages to the home of Gregorio Fuentes, Ernest Hemingway’s boat captain and the inspiration for “The Old Man and the Sea.”
For a small fee, Fuentes welcomed any and all into his living room in Cojimar, a salty fishing village near Havana, and regaled them with tales of his time with the writer. But the visits have come to an end. On Sunday, the 104-year-old Fuentes died in his home. The Los Angeles Times reports.
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