Travel Blog: News and Briefs
On Ethical Travelers and Meatheads
by Jim Benning | 01.17.08 | 1:10 PM ET
Rolf Potts has a “slight rant.”
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Yahoo! BuzzNine Independent Bookstores Worth a Trip
by Jim Benning | 01.17.08 | 12:58 PM ET
The AP offers up a list with all the usual U.S. suspects: City Lights, Books & Books, Politics and Prose, etc.
Tom Petty’s Los Angeles, from a Travelodge to a Long Day in Reseda
by Jim Benning | 01.17.08 | 11:59 AM ET
Photo by SykoSam via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Living in Southern California, which features prominently in so many pop songs, it’s hard not to develop a soundtrack that reverberates through your head. For me, sweet and melancholy Tom Petty songs are a big part of that. I can’t drive along Mullholland, or on the 101 through the Valley, for example, without hearing “Free Fallin” (“I wanna glide down over Mulholland”) or those lines about the “long day living in Reseda,” with the “freeway running through the yard.” In fact, passing through Reseda, against my better judgment, I always find myself keeping my eye out for that sad house by the freeway.
Fortune Cookies Exposed: Turns Out, They’re Japanese
by Julia Ross | 01.16.08 | 4:33 PM ET
I’ve always considered fortune cookies to be a prime example of Chinese-American entrepreneurship, developed by early 20th century immigrants to draw Americans into chop suey houses in the San Francisco area. Or so went popular history. Now a fascinating New York Times article has blown the fortune cookie’s cover: A Japanese graduate student has traced the tradition to several family bakeries outside Kyoto, Japan, where they have been tucking paper fortunes into crimped brown wafers since the 1870s.
R.I.P. Transitions Abroad (Print Edition)
by Jim Benning | 01.16.08 | 3:55 PM ET
Sad news from the world of independent travel publishing: Transitions Abroad, the magazine that has promoted independent and responsible travel for 30 years, will no longer be published in printed form. The January/February issue is the last. Transitions Abroad contributor Kelly Amabile noted the decision on her Web site, and today, I dialed up outgoing editor Sherry Schwarz to ask her about it. “I’m very saddened by it,” she said. “It feels like the end of an era.” Schwarz said the death of founder and publisher Clay Hubbs last year contributed to the Hubbs family’s decision, but that the move was also based on publishing economics.
787 Dreamliner Delayed Until Early 2009
by Michael Yessis | 01.16.08 | 11:43 AM ET
Boeing announced the news today about the revolutionary jet, blaming trouble in the factory and the “extended global supply chain” for the push back.
Dengue Fever, Revisited
by Jim Benning | 01.16.08 | 10:56 AM ET
The Los Angeles Times revisits the rise of dengue fever in Mexico and beyond, casting travel as a primary culprit in its spread: “Thus far, cases of dengue fever in North America have tended to be scattered and affect relatively few people. But increased travel to and from South America, where a resurgence has made dengue widespread, is thought to be boosting the disease’s spread northward. And some experts suspect climate change is aggravating the problem.” Meanwhile, Dengue Fever—the band—continues its ascent, spreading infectious “Cambodian pop rock psychedelic dance party” music throughout the globe.
National Geographic on North Dakota: A ‘Giant Skeleton of Abandoned Human Desire’
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.15.08 | 2:33 PM ET
And not surprisingly, North Dakotans are livid. Charles Bowden’s beautifully written but wholly depressing The Emptied Prairie about the flat, wind-whipped, lonely state has so disturbed residents that they are writing to the magazine in protest, calling the article, among other things, “the babbling of a delusional mind.”
‘Too Many Innocents Abroad’ in the Peace Corps?
by Michael Yessis | 01.15.08 | 2:19 PM ET
Former Peace Corps volunteer Robert L. Strauss argues so in a recent New York Times opinion piece, writing that the “overwhelming majority” of people who join are recent college graduates who too often “lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.”
Jackson on my Mind
by Eva Holland | 01.15.08 | 11:06 AM ET
Photo by dbking via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Speaking of how confusing geography can be, I’ve been planning a big road trip in the South in March, and I’m hoping to hit some major music history landmarks along the way. Memphis is a no-brainer, but I’d like to see some lesser-known sites too, and even places where there may not be anything concrete to see, but where the name still means something to me. I thought Jackson could be one of those places—you know, the Jackson town that Johnny Cash and June Carter sing about?
14-Year-Old Hacks, Derails Polish Tram System
by Michael Yessis | 01.15.08 | 9:23 AM ET
The teen adapted a TV remote to take control of the trams in Lodz, Poland, causing “chaos and derailing four vehicles” last week, according to the Telegraph UK. Nobody was killed, but at least 12 people were injured. Scary, particularly in light of this news.
Stephen Colbert on His Sandals Resort Foreign Policy Experience
by Jim Benning | 01.15.08 | 9:21 AM ET
Stephen Colbert has generously promised Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that he’ll be his running mate, and on a recent episode of The Colbert Report, as Huckabee listened on, Colbert further explained his strengths: “There’s criticism of you that you do not have foreign policy experience. That’s how I can balance the ticket for you. Because I’ve been overseas. I’ve been to…Sandals resort in Jamaica. I’ve been to Sandals resort in the Bahamas. I’ve been to Sandals resort in Barbados. I’ve been to Epcot.” Huckabees’s response: “That ought to take care of it.” Last year, of course, we noted Colbert’s seven-day investigation into the Royal St. Barts Golf Club and Resort.
Awakening the Primal Chef Within at Greece’s Open-Air Markets
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.14.08 | 5:04 PM ET
Photo by Daquella Manera via Flickr (Creative Commons).
This Smithsonian story on the Athens Central Market got me thinking about food (again), but not for the usual escapist reasons. For one thing, Athens Central isn’t a food porn kind of place, since it has all those bloody carcasses, intestines and glassy-eyed fish that inevitably come with creepy sales pitches (i.e. “baby lambs fed only on mother’s milk!”). When I first visited the market in 2004, the full-on raucousness of the place unnerved me. But it also awoke something primal in my palate—something these old but enduring agoras usually do to the sheltered supermarket set.
Big Waves Roll Through Mavericks
by Jim Benning | 01.14.08 | 10:47 AM ET
Saturday was a good time to be in northern California. Pro surfers from around the globe and thousands of spectators converged on the legendary surf spot near Half Moon Bay for the sixth edition of the Mavericks big-wave contest. The wave breaks a good distance offshore, and spectators who didn’t want to peer through binoculars had an interesting option.
Surfing the Eisbach: California Culture in Bavaria
by Jim Benning | 01.14.08 | 10:33 AM ET
You don’t have to be near Mavericks, or even an ocean, to enjoy some wild surfing action. Surfers have been riding waves in rivers for years—the Amazon’s Pororoca in Brazil just might be the most dramatic example. But there are options in Europe, too. The Atlantic magazine recently covered surfing Munich’s Eisbach, a tributary of the Isar River where a standing wave has “created an enclave of borrowed California culture in the heart of Bavaria.”
