Apr
29
SRO Seating
April 29, 2006 | Comments Off
Thanks to April Orcutt for sending the link to an April 25, 2006, NYT article by Christopher Elliott. “The airlines have come up with a new answer to an old question: How many passengers can be squeezed into economy class? A lot more, it turns out, especially if an idea still in the early stage should catch on: standing-room-only “seats.” . . . With a typical configuration, the A380 will accommodate about 500 passengers. But with standing-room-only seats, the same plane could conceivably fit in 853 passengers.”
My favorite excerpts from the article:
Apr
29
Line by Line Editing
April 29, 2006 | Comments Off
Janis Cooke Newman and Constance Matthiessen are offering an editing service called Line by Line. “Line by Line is a literary editing service that can help you take your work from good to great. Whether you want to know how to write a magazine query that sells, hone your travel story, or find out if your memoir slows in the middle, we can help. Line by line was founded by two writers with years of experience and publishing success: Janis Cooke Newman, author of a memoir, a novel, and frequent contributor to the LA Times and SF Chronicle travel sections; and Connie Matthiessen, journalist and essayist, contributor to Mother Jones, San Francisco magazine, and the latest Mothers Who Think anthology.”
Apr
29
Amanda Jones
April 29, 2006 | Comments Off
Wondering what Amanda Jones has been up to? Check out Potentia Media, “educating the public about global issues that affect us all.” Worth the wait. Be sure your sound is on.
Apr
29
Travelgirl
April 29, 2006 | Comments Off
Thanks to Toni Weingarten for sending the link to travelgirl, “The Lifestyle & Travel Magazine for Women…Savvy, Sexy & Sophisticated.” I sent them a note asking whether they accept freelance work; will let you know.
Apr
23
Annette’s Intrepid Travel
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
From Annette Terkaly (4/2/06): Greetings from Switzerland!! I know I have not been in touch very much with you all . . . I guess since I wasn’t traveling I didn’t want to bore you all with my mundane life in Italy. But that will all change very soon, as you will hear later. But first let me bring you up to date . . .
[read more in extended entry]
So, I have to be in Beijing in the beginning of June for training and then I’ll start leading trips. I hope all of you will check out their website and please, if you can come on one of my trips. They have a bunch of wonderful itineraries and it would be great to have you!
Apr
23
WRITING TIPS: Mind your metaphors
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
Sometimes writers stretching for the lyrical founder on infelicities. They may come up with combinations that just don’t jibe, like a description of a cybergang member whose eyes were ‘black as blueberries.’ (Since when are blueberries black?) David Mamet, in Make Believe Town, mocks screenwriters who gush, ‘She has a pair of eyes that makes you think of olives in a plate of milk.’ Bet you wouldn’t want to taste a combo of olives and milk. Who would want to behold it?
Apr
23
Dispatch from Nepal – Back safely in US
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
From Li Miao Lovett (4/16/04): My husband and I arrived safely back in San Francisco on Friday, after two weeks in Nepal, the last few days of which were spent in suspended animation, as the entire city of Kathmandu was held under house arrest during the government-ordered curfews. I did not have everyone’s email when I sent the first dispatch from Nepal (below) last Tuesday, and for those interested, this is a link to a fairly objective website with news updates. Another news site, with more of a homegrown liberal sway, comes from the International Nepal Solidarity Network for Democratic Peace.
Apr
23
Dispatch from Nepal (4/11/06, 1 of 2)
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
From Li Miao Lovett: The magic of the internet allows me to write to you from Nepal, where a curfew has been imposed by the government for the past two days in the Kathmandu Valley, following a strike by opposition parties demanding a modicum of democracy from the king. If this sounds like the headlines of a newspaper article, it is a strange experience to be in this country, surrounded by this kind of unrest.
more…
Apr
23
If the world were a village
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
If the world were a village of 100 people, how many would have access to safe drinking water? To electricity? How many people of the 100 would have AIDS? How many would have a college education? This site isn’t all that well designed, but I applaud the author’s efforts to provide some context to those of us who have so much.
And here’s another. If the world were a village of 1,000 people,
· 165 people would speak Mandarin
· 86 English
· 83 Hindi/Urdu
· 64 Spanish
· 58 Russian
· 37 Arabic
That list accounts for the mother tongues of only half the villagers. The other half speak (in descending order of frequency) Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French and 200 other languages.
Apr
23
Buenas tardes from Caracas
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
From Diane LeBow, 4/22/06: Here we are 18 days into our current adventure in Venezuela. The first 11 days we were with Global Exchange, a human rights organization from San Francisco. In Caracas, we had many extremely busy days, meeting, sometimes 4 meetings-day, with various governmental agencies, tv stations, barrio projects, educational groups, research data managers as well as museums, trying to figure out the “truth” about this very complicated “revolution” that is going on here.
Of course, it is impossible to really figure this out. It’s a bit like if you dropped in from outer space and interviewed Jerry Falwell and then Jesse Jackson in trying to learn about what the US government is up to and the state of the United States. What we can see is that Venezuela is a very rich country in resources: the largest oil reserves in the world, gold, minerals, precious stones, agriculture, high Andes, ancient rock plateaus called Tapuis that date back billions of years, gorgeous beaches and Caribbean coast and islands, very friendly people.
Also hundreds of years of colonial history, fighting to free themselves from Spain, England, France, Holland, and then decades of corrupt dictators where the rich got very rich and the majority of the people very poor. Most of the indigenous people were killed off. Much of the oil profits were shipped out to the United States and foreign companies who controlled the oil production and paid only a small percentage back to the Venezuelan people. Enormous illiteracy, poverty, etc.
more…
Apr
23
Expatriate Games
April 23, 2006 | Comments Off
Travelers Are Heading to Buenos Aires for the Culture — and Staying for the $250 Rent
By Allen Salkin
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Meghan Curry starts her day with a walk to the river. The former real estate agent from Denver, who is 26, holds hands with her fiance, Patricio de Vasconcellos, 31, a wavy-haired Argentine with dark eyes, as they gaze over the coffee-colored waters of the Rio de la Plata. Around midday, when de Vasconcellos heads to work at the wine shop where the two met a year ago, Curry settles into her two-bedroom apartment to work on her travel memoir and a collection of poetry. Then she might nap or head downtown for café con leche with friends at one of the city’s thousands of outdoor cafes. Later, much later, it’s time for a slow dinner on Buenos Aires time, where many restaurants don’t open until 10 p.m.
Apr
14
Floccinaucinihilipilification
April 14, 2006 | Comments Off
Thanks to Kathryn Abajian for elucidating floccinaucinihilipilification: My OED says…it means your second definition: The action or habit of estimating as worthless, as in the 1746 entry: “I loved him for nothing so much as his floccinaucinihilipilification of money.” Now if I could just figure out how to pronounce it.
Apr
14
Dolpo
April 14, 2006 | Comments Off
Speaking of Nepal, Michael McCarthy will be dodging Maoists and mountain sickness as he joins an expedition next month to Upper Dolpo, the highest inhabited place on the planet, on a rescue mission to save abandoned Tibetan children. Log on to himalayankids.org for trek details, to donate, or to join the organization. Fans of Peter Matthiessen’s travel classic The Snow Leopard will recognize the terrain, one of the most difficult regions in the world to visit. Look for the upcoming DVD documentary and travel narrative Journey to Dolpo coming next fall.
Apr
14
Radio resources
April 14, 2006 | Comments Off
I learned about two very cool sites at the Radio Magic workshop:
The Public Radio Exchange PRX.org, is a site that archives, provides searches and downloads, and allows “independent producers” (that’s us) to license their work, and even set the license terms. So if you have recorded work, you can publish it there, and public radio producers can search for and “rent” your content.
Also, check out Transom.org, “A Showcase and Workshop for New Public Radio.” I particularly appreciated Nancy Updike’s Better Writing Through Radio.
Apr
2
Lee Foster
April 2, 2006 | Comments Off
Sunday, April 2, 2:00 pm
Book Passage at the Ferry Building
Lee Foster talks about Travels in an American Imagination: The Spiritual Geography of Our Time. Foster explores his conviction that our time is both the most wondrous and also the most horrific time ever to be alive. Looking at his own life as a typical modern person, Foster considers the polar positive and negative aspects of modern life, both from a mundane and global perspective. He is the author of Northern California History Weekends. As a travel photographer, he has images in more than 225 Lonely Planet books.