Mar

31

Rushkoff

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Thanks to Andrew Dean Nystrom for sending this thought-provoking but only tangentially travel-related quotation:

We’re moving into an era when we will define ourselves more by the technologies we refuse than the ones we accept.

– Douglas Rushkoff

Mar

31

Holmes

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

To travel is to possess the world.

– Burton Holmes

Mar

31

Jan Friedman

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

How have I missed linking to Jan Friedman’s award-winning Eccentric America, “a celebration of America’s more eccentric places, happenings and people, as you travel the U.S.A. That it takes 314 jam packed pages to chronicle, is reflective of an author who takes her fun seriously, and of a culture that celebrates the unusual and the wacky.”

Read the full post . . .

Mar

31

Trends in Publishing

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Thanks to Jacqueline Harmon Butler for sending the link to articles in US News & World Report (week of March 13th) that cover:

- New “book” technologies: “devices are being readied for U.S. markets for 2007: The Readius…features a 5-inch diagonal screen that unfurls from a much smaller, cellphone-size container. ‘It’s the first time the screen will be larger than the device.’”

- Copyright issues resulting from new technologies: “It’s great to preview a page or two on-line, for instance. But who owns those pages and therefore has the right to potential profit from posting longer selections or even the complete book–the site proposing to post the digital file (Google, Amazon, Yahoo! or Microsoft, among others) or the author and publisher?

Read the full post . . .

Mar

31

Symmes

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Thanks to Brad Newsham for another insightful quotation about travel:

“Darya Maoz…teaches a class at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University called Sociological and Antrhopological Aspects of Tourism and Backpacking… Many societies, she notes, encourage their youth to drop out for a period of self-discovery. (This is called a “gap year” in Britain, “walkabout” in Australia, and “wasting your life” in America.)”

– Patrick Symmes
“The Book” Outside Magazine, August 2005

Mar

31

Minimus

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Minimus “for all your travel size item needs” offers travel-sized packages of food, snacks, condiments, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, laundry supplies, and interesting specialty items like the “bug button” (pin-on insect repellant that lasts up to 60 hours), no-rinse shampoo, “pre-contact” poison ivy protection, a military field kit, hand warmer packets, and (don’t leave home without it) got2b Spiked Up hair gel. On sale when I checked: Smuckers Diet Concord Grape Spread and Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce Green.

Mar

31

Smarter Travel

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Smarter Travel.com provides a newsletter “get cheap airfare deals by email for FREE,” a specialty travel section (for seniors, students, family travel), “travel advice,” and, this week, a review of online travel community sites.

Mar

31

Booking Buddy

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Booking Buddy offers an airfare comparison tool, free Top Travel Deals newsletter.

Mar

31

Tangodiva

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

No, it’s not a tan Godiva (I was disappointed to learn); rather Tango Diva is “an online travel magazine for women travelers” offering a “worldwide community” as well as blogs, travel diaries, polls, an advice column, links to lots of travel resources (travel insurance, currency converter, airport listings, etc.), a photo gallery, a calendar of “networking events,” and lots more.

Mar

31

You Tube

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

Here’s a place you can post your travel (or other) videos, and view others’ — the Travel and Places channel of “You Tube — Broadcast Yourself.” You can find videos there of everything from the Pillow Fight Club in San Francisco to Iguassu Falls. Good way to get in the mood for travel writing…?

Mar

31

Travel Radio

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

I haven’t quite figured the Travel Radio site out yet, but it appears to be a place you can listen to (and post?) audio clips of your travels. You can currently access an audio clip of an elephant trainer from Salinas, California. Let me know if you post something there, so I can go listen.

Mar

31

In the Know Traveler

March 31, 2006 | Comments Off

In the Know Traveler is “dedicated to international travel and cultural exchange. We publish original work, travel tips, tour information, international headline news, and press releases. We are always on the lookout for good descriptive writing and storytelling.” They don’t pay, but are a smart way for talented new writers to get a good-looking clip and a link to your website.

Mar

24

Matthiessen

March 24, 2006 | Comments Off

Thanks to Brad Newsham for sending along this quotation from The Snow Leopard:

Yesterday, in the spirit of discarding, I threw away my cache of marijuana; today I want it . . . And this thought of Cannabis has scarcely occurred when a small withered specimen turns up, just off the trail. I chew up a mouthful on the spot, and thus fortified, march ahead. An hour later . . . I am . . . not to be trifled with by man or beast . . . (A village) inhabitant . . . persuades me to buy a brass cup of his alcohol, which looks and smells like a pink gasoline . . . I lie back in near-spiritual bliss: why in hell do I work so hard at meditation? Someone once said that God offers man the choice between repose and truth: he cannot have both.

Read the full post . . .

Mar

24

Churchill

March 24, 2006 | Comments Off

The empires of the future
are empires of the mind.

– Sir Winston Churchill

Mar

19

Pico’s Process

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

“This may be discouraging for people who are normal human beings.”

Following is an excerpt from an interview Pico Iyer gave to Larry Habegger’s Master Class in Travel Writing. Both Larry and Pico have generously given their permission to publish this material:

Larry Habegger: I have a number of questions that deal with process. A lot of people want to know how you do what you do. I’ll read some of their comments.

Ethel says, “I know from his previous reports at workshops that at Santa Barbara he wrote every morning until about 2:OO and then stopped and went for a walk. Is your routine still the same? The question is nitty gritty: Do you keep a journal? Do you write on a laptop and jot down the dialogue and details of the day’s events and re-write at the time, or wait until you return to home base and re-cap, recollecting in tranquility, and transforming notes into the beautiful prose and dialogue?”

More follows. (Click on the link if you’re not already on my website.)

Read the full post . . .

Mar

19

Amazon blogs

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

Now you can stalk your favorite authors using Amazon Connect, which provides blogs to authors and editors. “…new program that allows readers to receive messages directly from their favorite authors. It opens an entirely new channel of communication between authors and their readers. Participating authors can post messages on their book detail pages and to the home page of readers who have bought their books on Amazon.com.”

Here are ones for Larry Habegger and Andrew Dean Nystrom.

From here, you can “Invite as an Amazon Friend,” reply to the author, “Add to Favorite People,” or even create your own Plog(TM)! It’s a brave new world.

Mar

19

Of Lemurs and Leeches

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

Now I can indulge in shameless self-promotion. I had the date wrong before, but today the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine printed my article about tracking lemurs in Madagascar; here it is! Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Jeff Greenwald, and Bill Fink are also contributors to this issue, themed around volunteer vacations. (Could I possibly be in better company?)

If you read and enjoy the articles (and if you read them, you surely will enjoy them), please consider sending an e-mail to magazine@sfchronicle.com, telling them how very much you appreciate travel issues in general and these articles in particular.

Read the full post . . .

Mar

19

Susan Katz

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

I recently stumbled upon SF-based Susan Katz Travel Photography — beautiful work; check it out.

Mar

19

Wilson on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

A vacation is what you take
when you can no longer take
what you’ve been taking.

– Early Wilson

Mar

19

Seneca on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

Through travel we learn to know not only our own world,
but ourselves in a new relationship.

– Seneca

Mar

19

Twain on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

Travel is fatal
to prejudice, bigotry,
and narrow-mindedness.

– Mark Twain

Mar

19

The Bible on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

Many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased.

– Bible, Daniel 12:4

Mar

19

Thoreau on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

A traveler. I love his title.
A traveler is to be reverenced as such.
His profession is the best symbol of our life.
Going from — toward;
it is the history of every one of us.

– Henry David Thoreau

Mar

19

Stevenson on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world
And the best we can find in our travels
Is an honest friend.

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Mar

19

Bayly on travel

March 19, 2006 | Comments Off

Oh, I have roamed o’er many lands,
And many friends I’ve met;
Not one fair scene or kindly smile
Can this fond heart forget.

– Thomas Haynes Bayly

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