Travel Blog: Shameless Self-Promotion
What We Loved This Week: Turkish Coffee, Tinariwen and ‘Goin’ Places’
by World Hum | 07.02.09 | 2:45 PM ET
Photo by Cory Eldridge Ben Keene
Since seeing Youssou N’Dour with his band at the “Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas” celebration last month, I’ve been unable to stop listening to West African music. Currently in heavy rotation on my iPod: the austere yet entrancing guitar tones of the Touareg collective Tinariwen.
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Yahoo! BuzzMy Deep-Sea Orbit Into a Love of Place
by Joanna Kakissis | 07.01.09 | 1:41 PM ET
Photo by Joanna Kakissis The deep, clean dive into the sea off Southwestern Greece probably sealed my lifelong attachment to the pristine in places. I was 9 years old and, until then, had only swam in chlorinated swimming pools and muddy river water in landlocked North Dakota. My father had grown up swimming in a secluded beach near the village of Kyparissia as a young orphan and had associated its salty breath and blue-green water with a wanderlust that would turn him dreamy-eyed even as a middle-aged man. To him, travel at its most elemental was about the unadorned land, enlivened by tides and breeze and hulking mountains. He described his childhood beach so lovingly that it almost sounded human.
More Changes to the Blog
by Michael Yessis | 06.29.09 | 11:44 AM ET
The changes to the World Hum blog continue this week. As a result of the challenging publishing climate, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to phase out our individual topic blogs and rededicate ourselves to publishing more shorter posts on a wider variety of subjects throughout the day.
The authors of our topic blogs are not going away entirely, however. We’ll continue to publish great features on the site, and we’ll be turning to Julia, Joanna, Alex, David, Sophia, Jenna, Rob and Pam for more longer contributions in the future. As you know, they bring a wealth of passion and insight and experience to their travel writing, and we’ve been fortunate to feature their voices on the site.
In the meantime, they’ll be blogging, tweeting and writing elsewhere. Look for their final posts on the blog this week, and they’ll let you know where else to find them.
As for the World Hum blog, you’ll still find coverage on everything from air travel to pop culture. Jim, Eva and I will be the primary writers.
If you’ve got tips or suggestions, as usual, please .
What We Loved This Week: Michael Jackson, Soccer in South Africa and a Taco Smackdown
by World Hum | 06.26.09 | 4:34 PM ET
Photo by Eva Holland Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Pam Mandel
I loved (re-) watching Michael Jackson’s Cecil B. DeMille meets Bollywood meets John Hughes video for Black or White. The exotic dancers, the magic morphing from one ethnic group to another, the ridiculous introduction (is that Macaulay Culkin?!) and the ’round-the-world tour with an unmistakable beat ... Oh, Michael, you were a really weird character, but I loved your music. Rest in peace, Michael, rest in peace.
What We Loved This Week: Ja Rule, Baltic Sunsets and a Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video
by World Hum | 06.19.09 | 3:29 PM ET
Photo by Terry Ward Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Eva Holland
I loved touching down in Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s Yukon territory, and being surprised by some of its more “worldly” touches—pho, sushi, Starbucks—and the way they sit comfortably alongside a definite frontier vibe in this onetime Gold Rush boomtown.
Iran: Through the Eyes of Travelers
by Eva Holland | 06.15.09 | 6:07 PM ET
I’ve spent the last couple days transfixed by events in Iran, where widespread protests and bursts of violence have followed a contested election result. The country’s hardly an American tourism hot spot (and this latest unrest won’t help on that front) but over the years, we’ve covered some travel-related Iranian ground. Here’s a look back:
Hey, Where’d the Morning Links Go?
by Jim Benning | 06.15.09 | 10:18 AM ET
You’ll notice some changes to the World Hum blog in the coming weeks. For starters, beginning today, we won’t be publishing a daily morning links post. Instead, we’re going to publish more shorter posts throughout each day. All the news and stories you’ve been getting in the morning links won’t disappear from the site—they’ll just be presented a little differently. You’ll also see more of me and Michael in the blog—for better or worse.
As always, we welcome your news tips and suggestions, so don’t hesitate to .
What We Loved This Week: Airworld, ‘Planet China’ and ‘The Great Outdoors’
by World Hum | 06.12.09 | 4:54 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Pam Mandel
I could not put down J. Maarten Troost’s Lost on Planet China. I’ve never been talked out of wanting to go somewhere quite like this. Troost’s book is funny, disarming, candid, and totally unromantic. While Troost is pretty much game for anything, including live squid for dinner, he never once pretends to understand the sprawling, inscrutable mess that is modern China. The book would make a terrific airplane read, but not on that flight to Shanghai—you might never leave the airport.
Tom Swick
I loved that this week saw Roger Federer move effortlessly from colloquial French to fluent English and back again—neither one his native language—while accepting his first French Open trophy. Tennis players tend to be good linguists (with the exception of the Americans), or at least good at learning English (with the exception of Nadal) but in speaking as in playing, Federer excels.
What We Loved This Week: La Vela Puerca in Hamburg, Tavern on the Green and More
by World Hum | 06.05.09 | 4:34 PM ET
Photo by Rob Verger Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Michael Yessis
I loved reading Gary Shteyngart’s views on travel and travel writing, courtesy of his interview with Rob Verger. Makes me want to go back and reread his excellent book, Absurdistan.
What We Loved This Week: Ellis Island, Dining in Bogota and More
by World Hum | 05.29.09 | 4:13 PM ET
Photo by Joanna Kakissis Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Sophia Dembling
My husband and I, feeling like huddled masses yearning to breathe free, waited for 90 minutes to board the ferry to Ellis Island. I worried that the museum wouldn’t be as spectacular as I remembered since visiting it in the early 1990s. Whew—it was indeed worth the tedious wait, even worth suffering through the piercing tones of competing steel drums played by overenthusiastic buskers. Ellis Island remains among my required sights for Americans. Next time, I’ll buy a ticket in advance, though.
What We Loved This Week: Bequia, Bon Iver, ‘Ask the Dust’ and More
by World Hum | 05.22.09 | 1:02 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Rob Verger
I loved seeing penguins, sea turtles, and oodles of fish and jellyfish at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Mass.
Terry Ward
Hearing Justin Vernon’s Wisconsin accent in Hamburg. I caught Bon Iver live at Grosse Freiheit 36, one of the city’s best live music venues, located on the same street (Grosse Freiheit) where the Beatles played their first gig in 1960. There’s already some YouTube coverage up from Wednesday night’s show, but I like this intimate footage shot in a Paris apartment even better.
What We Loved This Week: Eldorado Canyon, Kerouac the Fantasy Baseball Player and More
by World Hum | 05.15.09 | 5:45 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Joanna Kakissis
A friend and I hiked through Eldorado Canyon State Park, passing golden cliffs, the rapids of South Boulder Creek and the ruins of the once-grand Crags Hotel. But my favorite moment was sitting on the rocks and taking in this view of the Continental Divide from a rocky perch on the Rattlesnake Gulch trail (where, thankfully, we saw no actual rattlesnakes.)
What We Loved This Week: Rick Steves, Italian Pop, Vienna Teng and More
by World Hum | 05.08.09 | 6:57 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Jim Benning
I loved Rick Steves’s new book, Travel as a Political Act, a fine distillation of the travel-with-your-eyes-and-heart-and-mind-wide-open philosophy that Steves has espoused for decades—and that we embrace at World Hum. We’ll have more on the book soon.
Joanna Kakissis
I was thrilled to see and hear the chamber-folk singer and pianist Vienna Teng in concert at the Boulder Theater earlier this week as part of a taping of the Etown radio show. Vienna is Taiwanese-American, and she’s explored the internal travel of biculturalism in her albums, including her latest, “Inland Territory.” Here’s an old clip of her singing “Green Island” (Lüdao Xiaoyequ), an old Taiwanese song composed by Yao Di and Chen Chang-shou.
What We Loved This Week: Waikiki Food Courts, Pho, Springsteen and More
by World Hum | 05.01.09 | 8:39 PM ET
Photo by Terry Ward Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days:
Frank Bures
I loved looking at Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Not sure why, but I did.
Terry Ward
Touring Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus highlights, I got a kick out of this modern-day Romeo and Juliet vignette, which I spied from the rooftop of the Cinema Hotel. It’s called the White City, but Tel Aviv’s colors run deep, and I found the diversity of its residents even more interesting than the UNESCO-recognized architecture.
Goodbye, Valerie Conners. Welcome, Eva Holland.
by World Hum | 05.01.09 | 5:32 PM ET
Our anniversary-celebration week ends with some mixed emotions. Senior editor and producer Valerie Conners leaves us today for a spell back at the TravelChannel.com mother ship. It’s tough to see her go. She brought a keen editorial eye, production wizardry and a love of pirates and 80s music to World Hum. It would be hard to overstate her work on the site redesign. We couldn’t have done it, and so much more, without her. Thank you, Valerie! We’ll miss you.
On the upside, Valerie—until now, World Hum’s lead tweeter—will still be tweeting for us every now and then at @worldhum. So will our interim senior editor, Eva Holland. You likely already know Eva. She’s been a sharp, prolific contributor to the World Hum blog since September 2007. She’ll still be writing about everything from pop culture to travel literature for the blog. But she’ll also be editing the blog and feature stories for the site. Her passion for travel and travel writing is infectious, and her talents are immense. We’re looking forward to more of her contributions to the site. Welcome, Eva!
—Jim and Mike
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