Travel Blog: News and Briefs
R.I.P. Jack Byron Fields, Photo Essayist
by Jim Benning | 12.19.07 | 2:08 PM ET
Reports the San Francisco Chronicle: Fields’s “photographic essays from far-flung places appeared in magazines such as Life, Look and National Geographic and helped to transform photojournalism.” He was 87.
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Yahoo! BuzzAnd the No. 2 Most Memorable Quote of 2007 is…
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.07 | 1:43 PM ET
According to the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, it’s Miss Teen South Carolina’s “tortuous” and now-infamous answer to a question about Americans being unable to locate the U.S. on a map:
Love Letter to a Joni Mitchell Road Song
by Jim Benning | 12.19.07 | 11:46 AM ET
In Slate, Ron Rosenbaum celebrates binge-listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia,” from her “Hejira” album. “It’s not just a love song: It’s a road song, it’s a motel song, it’s a Southwestern desert song, it’s a disappearance and death song,” he writes. It’s a lovely piece. I go through Joni Mitchell “Blue” jags from time to time—the song and the album of the same name—so I can relate. Lately, on runs in my neighborhood, I’ve been binge-listening to “Hard Sun” from Eddie Vedder’s “Into the Wild” soundtrack. I expect that to pass soon. Here’s a great YouTube video of Mitchell playing “Amelia” circa 1983:
‘Beatles’ Ashram’ in India to Become Eco-Hotel, School
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.07 | 10:32 AM ET
Travelers have been making pilgrimages to Rishikesh, India to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram, aka the “Beatles’ ashram,” ever since the Fab Four landed there in the late ‘60s to study Transcendental Meditation and write some songs, including “Revolution” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Soon, though, the rundown 15-acre campus may become a home and school for street children, as well as a 10-room “eco hotel” where visitors “could volunteer to work with the children or simply relax in the same ashram where John Lennon searched for the meaning of life and George Harrison worked to perfect his sitar playing,” according to the Washington Post.
The Art of the Holiday Jingles Road Trip
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.18.07 | 4:27 PM ET
NPR’s Stephen Thompson recently drove 1,000 miles to see his family for Thanksgiving and, en route, listened to hours and hours of Christmas music, both cool and corny. Think Eileen Ivers and Carnie Wilson, Josh Groban and Michael Bolton, and even “A Twismas Story” by the late country crooner Conway Twitty. Would I be a loser if the idea of Mr. Thompson’s roadtrip soundtrack made me weepy with jealousy?
R.I.P. 64 Journalists
by Jim Benning | 12.18.07 | 4:00 PM ET
That’s the number of journalists killed around the globe this year—the most in over a decade. Not surprisingly, Iraq claimed more lives than any other country, 31, nearly all of them Iraqi. “Somalia was ranked the second deadliest country with seven journalists deaths in 2007,” Reuters reports. “Sri Lanka and Pakistan each recorded five journalists deaths, and Afghanistan and Eritrea each had two deaths.” One positive note: For the first time in more than a decade, there wasn’t a single reporter murdered in Colombia. Could it be further evidence of this?
World Hum on Travel Channel’s Pilot Week
by Michael Yessis | 12.17.07 | 6:39 PM ET
See how a traveling band of World Hum contributors cleans up for television this Thursday at 8 p.m. during the Travel Channel’s debut of 25 Mind Blowing Escapes. Terry Ward, Tony Perrottet, Wendy Knight, Rolf Potts, Matt Gross and your humble editors, Jim Benning and I, are among the travelers revealing our thoughts on some provocative spots around the world. It’s one of 10 new Travel Channel shows airing this week, beginning tonight at 8 p.m. with the first episode of The Feasty Boys Eat America.
Stop the Presses: Miss Belgium Doesn’t Speak Dutch
by Jim Benning | 12.17.07 | 4:27 PM ET
No, she speaks French, and that’s why she was booed by some of the 3,400 people in attendance at the Miss Belgium contest in Antwerp. Turns out, 20-year-old Alizee Poulicek has spent half her life in in Czech Republic, so I’m guessing she speaks Czech, too. Is not speaking Dutch really such a problem, Belgium? I know you have your language issues, but come on, at least she doesn’t think Europe is a country.
And You Thought Getting a New U.S. Passport Was a Pain Now?
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.17.07 | 4:02 PM ET
Imagine if you were born without a birth certificate, as some Native Americans were. Some are concerned that new U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requirements will bar them from crossing back and forth into Mexico as they’ve done for years. Apparently a tribal enrollment card decorated with eagle feathers does not a valid passport make.
‘Which Middle East Capital Was Once Known as Philadelphia?’
by Jim Benning | 12.17.07 | 11:50 AM ET
That and other intriguing questions (and answers) can be found in the San Francisco Chronicle travel section’s new geography quiz. Presumably, Hot Americans on Television Botching Geography Questions need not apply—if they do, please send us the video.
Around the World in 557 Front Pages
by Michael Yessis | 12.17.07 | 10:07 AM ET
This could become the first page I visit every morning: Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages mashup. Roll your cursor over any of the hundreds of cities and regions of the world, and up pops the front page of the corresponding newspaper, such as this morning’s El Mundo (pictured) from Medellin, Colombia. This morning the site features 557 front pages from 58 different countries. Hard to think of a better way to get a quick glance at what’s going on in the world.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Air Time
by Michael Yessis | 12.14.07 | 3:37 PM ET
There’s a lot of love in the air. And anger. And curiosity about the 64-year-old German man who chugged his Vodka instead of giving it up at an airport security checkpoint. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
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Iloho (current)
Number of Air Rage Incidents Triples in 3 Years
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Buzz Tracker
Man Chugs Liter of Vodka in Airport Security Line
* Among the lingering questions about the incident: What does he want for Christmas?
Best Airport for Forming a Relationship With a Fellow Traveler
Sperling’s BestPlaces/AXE study
Philadelphia International Airport
* The study was “based on amenities per traveler, on-time performance and inclement weather,” USA Today reports.
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Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
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World Hum (posted this week)
Borat: Touristic Guidings to Kazakhstan and U.S. and A.
New Travel Book: ‘Transit Maps of the World’
by Julia Ross | 12.14.07 | 10:57 AM ET
Full title: “Transit Maps of the World: The World’s First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth”
Author: Mark Ovenden, former MTV and BBC broadcaster
Released: Oct. 30, 2007
Travel genre: Subterranean guide
Man Downs Liter of Vodka to Avoid Giving it up at Airport Security Checkpoint
by Michael Yessis | 12.13.07 | 11:03 AM ET
A 64-year-old man was given two choices by security at the Nuremberg, Germany airport: Dump his liter of vodka or pay to have it checked as luggage. He went with a third option: Chug it like a Sig Ep pledge. “The passenger was unable to stand or function and a doctor was called to the scene,” according to Spiegel Online. The not-too-surprising diagnosis: alcohol poisoning. The unnamed passenger was admitted to a Nuremberg hospital and is expected to be home in time for Christmas. I think I know what gift he’d like to find under his tree this year.
Related on World Hum:
* Airport Security to Lourdes Pilgrim: Your Holy Water is a Security Threat
* Russia: ‘Cold, Dark, Drowning in Vodka, and Ruled by the KGB’
Photo by inda.ca via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
R.I.P. Ike Turner
by Eva Holland | 12.13.07 | 10:37 AM ET
Whatever you may think of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Ike Turner, who died yesterday at age 76, his contributions to music—and specifically to road music—were enormous. Ike and Tina’s cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary, which Ike arranged along with drummer Soko Richardson, has got to be one of the greatest road songs (okay, river songs) of all time.
Related on World Hum:
* Rock Stars in Hotels: ‘Whatever Happened to the Good Old Days?’
* Manu Chao: Catching up With the ‘Traveling Man’
Photo: AP
