Dec
6
Writing With Alan Kaufman
December 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment
| March 24, 2007 | ||
| 5:00 pm |
Thursdays, January 24 – March 27, 2008
7 – 9:30 p.m., 10 sessions for $475″Was it a coincidence that I was published for the very first time the same year that I took Alan Kaufman’s workshop? I think not! Alan helped me find a way through my resistance and fear by providing direction and feedback, community, and a safe environment where I could find my voice, reveal my truth, and develop my material. I would highly recommend this class to anyone!”
– WENDY MERRILL, former student
Mar
22
Writer’s website
March 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Thanks to Connie Hale for forwarding this link to Barry Eisler’s website. “A colleague pointed out this Web site as an example of a writer’s site that gets lots of traffic.” This guy is a serious marketer!
Mar
22
Congratulations to Diane LeBow
March 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Diane LeBow won the Traveler Tales’ Solas Gold Certificate for Best Story about Romance or Love on the Road, for “The Trout Baron,” which appears in the Seal Press anthology, France: A Love Story. The full story is on Diane’s website.
Her story “Dancing on the Wine Dark Sea,” will be out at the end of March in the latest Seal Press anthology in this series, Greece: A Love Story: Women Write about the Greek Experience. There will be a number of readings scheduled throughout the Bay Area.
Mar
21
Mayan priests purified their sacred land after Shrub scurried off. Can we do the same?
March 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Can George W. Bush Be Purged?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sage is always good. Or maybe lavender. Pine is nice, too. Dried, bundled, tied with string, burned with hot, divine intent. Would it work? Do we have enough to go around? This is the question.
I speak, of course, of ritual. Purging and cleansing and purifying and, truly, burning a nicely dried, blessed smudge stick can be a terrific slice of personal magic, to rid a space (or perhaps even your own body) of negative juju or vicious spirits or just to make way for the new and the moist and the good. You can smudge a room. You can create a divine smoldering cloud and then move through the smoke, invoke change, purge the negative, invite hot licks of yes. It is a thing to do.
But here’s the thing: Can you smudge an entire nation? Do we have enough lavender for 300 million?
Mar
21
Where Neo-Nomads’ Ideas Percolate
March 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Check out this article by Dan Fost, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer (published Sunday, March 11, 2007) about working remotely.
- Â ”New ‘bedouins’ transform a laptop, cell phone and coffeehouse into their office”
- “The San Francisco coffeehouse is the new Palo Alto garage,” declares Kevin Burton, 30, who runs his Internet startup Tailrank without renting offices. “It’s where all the innovation is happening.”
- “… estimates that one-fifth of the workforce, or 30 million out of 150 million people, are working on their own”
Mar
19
Mental Feng Shui
March 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Here’s one of those missives you see from time to time making the rounds on the www. I liked it.
- Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
- Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
- Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
Mar
19
Global Climate Change
March 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This show aired on Blogtalkradio on March 14, 2007.
Our show will focuses on hauntingly beautiful Wrangel Island, where the last known woolly mammoths roamed, and where the first impacts of global warming can already be seen.
Tom Brokaw and a team of four world-class scientists will travel to Wrangel Island in July, 2007, aboard the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, to see the effects of global warming firsthand. There are a few spaces available for passengers who want to participate in this historic adventure.
Mar
19
Exploring Ireland’s County Cork
March 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This show aired on blogtalkradio on March 14, 2007.
Popuar travel writing teachers Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar are off to County Cork to enjoy the countryside, whale and dolphin watching, and excursions to castles and gardens in southwestern Ireland. (The Kinsale ghost tour sounds fascinating!) Find out more about the writers’ workshops they offer and about the upcoming ten-day intensive in County Cork, from June 25 through July 4, 2007. Workshop participants will be asked to submit stories about Ireland for possible publication in an anthology.
Mar
18
Michael Shapiro receives Bedford Pace
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Congratulations to Michael Shapiro, who won the grand prize in the Bedford Pace awards for travel journalism about Great Britain. “The award, a trip to Scotland, is for a story called Land Beyond Time about the renowned writer Jan Morris and her corner of Wales. It was the cover story of the May – June 2006 issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine.”Quite an accomplishment! “There were 117 entries including articles from Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, The New York Times, Islands, and the Miami Herald … Previous winners of the Pace award include Bill Bryson, R.W. Apple and John Flinn. The story also garnered a silver certificate for Best Destination Story in Travelers’ Tales Solas Awards.”
Mar
18
The Anti-Ugly American
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“Who do you call if you’re working for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and are tasked with improving foreign relations? It had better be someone experienced at working in culturally ambiguous situations, someone who is diplomatic, persuasive, and adept at navigating bureaucratic channels. It should be someone who is well connected and effective at brokering new relationships. Ideally, it would be someone who is passionate about increasing cross-cultural understanding, someone people are willing to follow to the ends of the earth.” Check out my article about the amazing Mr. Voll in today’s San Francisco Chronicle Magazine.
Mar
18
Pedaling My Way Back Home
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“I was trapped inside a kiln, scalding winds roaring against me. Thick smoke scorched the Boston air. Above me, shimmering with heat, a fireball blazed across the dark sky. While booming noises cannonaded around me, a blast crashed, thundering above my head. It growled. It rumbled. It smacked me against the sidewalk. ‘Help me,’ I yelled. My legs were open cuts with sand poured in.” Congratulations to Eva Schlesinger for her moving essay, Pedaling My Way Back Home last month in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine.
Mar
18
Carla King’s American Borders
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“Carla King will read from her new book, American Borders: A solo circumnavigation of the United States on a Russian sidecar motorcycle. The story begins as a journalist’s intention to study the borders between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but quickly deteriorates into a four-month, ten-thousand mile comedy of mechanical, social, and natural disasters. More info and complete calendar here.”
April 5, 2007
Capitola Book Café, Capitola
831-462-4415
April 19, 2007
Get Lost Travel Books, San Francisco
415-437-0529
May 6, 2007
Book Passage, Corte Madera
(415) 927-0960
Mar
18
Passing Through but Leaving a Lasting Impression
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“Travel often turns my expectations upside down. In 1999, I visited Iran with a small group of Americans to watch a total eclipse of the sun. On the afternoon of the event, I found myself alone in Esfahan’s vast Khomeini Square: one American among 50,000 Iranians…” Read the rest of this article about Jeff Greenwald in the March 13 New York Times. If you haven’t visited Jeff’s Ethical Traveler website in a while, check it out here.
Mar
18
Tales from Earth
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Broadcast Wednesdays 7:30 pm KUSF 90.3 FM San Francisco
webcast at www.live365.com/stations/kusf and iTunes
“Tales from Earth explores the many flavors of life on the planet through music and literature. Tune in for travel stories, poetry, and fiction read by the authors, evoking the sense of place.
Kathy Ketman, producer and host, has provided this list of upcoming programs:
- March 21: Botswana: Big Cats, No Guns – Guest author Laurie McAndish King — An eventful stroll through lion country
- March 28: Off World with Ursula Leguin — imaginary worlds as real as this one
Mar
18
100 Places Every Woman Should Go
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“Seeking the tranquility of a Buddhist meditation center? The raucousness of a rumba club? Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s new book, 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, will not only inspire but compel you to hit the road — in a group, with a friend, or sola.
“Discover the world’s best places to:
- Commune with the feisty spirits of heroines like Hatshepsut, Sappho, Catherine the Great, and Frida Kahlo
- Race a camel, yak, or pony across the Mongolian steppe
- Dive for pearls in Bahrain
- Take a mud bath in a volcano off the coast of Colombia
Mar
18
Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
| March 22, 2007 | ||
| 7:15 pm | to | 9:15 pm |
Friends of the Larkspur Library
Presents:
A Reception and Slideshow with
Lea Aschkenas
Author of Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island
Thursday, March 22, 7:15 p.m.
Larkspur Library
400 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur (415) 927-5005
About the book and author:
“Es Cuba is a poignant and passionate travel memoir about falling in love with a country and with one of its compatriots. Aschkenas never strays from her acute awareness that there is no way to separate her foreignness from the complex mix of emotions – devotion and rejection, enrapture and apprehension — that she develops toward the country.
Mar
18
Gold Rush Writers Workshop
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
| May 4, 2007 | ||
| 12:00 am |
From Antoinette May: “The time’s come to stake your claim on this year’s Gold Rush Writers Workshop, slated for May 4-6, 2007 in Mokelumne Hill — the very center of the 49er gold rush. This event offers a unique venue, a unique agenda, and it brings together unique (and fun!) personalities! There’s really nothing to compare with it.
“The faculty includes best-selling authors, award-winning writers, and university professors. They’ll lead small, interactive workshops in short story, poetry, novel, memoir, young adult fiction, nonfiction, flash fiction, biography… all in three days … whew! Not to mention our featured luncheon and dinner speakers!
Mar
18
Marc Gold and 100 Friends
March 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Michael McCarthy published a story about Marc Gold and 100 Friends in a recent Pacific Sun. You can read it here.
Mar
16
Digital Sales
March 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Here’s a link to Dr. Ralph Wilson’s Web Marketing Today article about how to sell downloadable digital products. The free Web Marketing Today newsletter has lots of well-thought-out and useful information about online marketing.
Mar
16
Word Press Newsletter
March 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Here’s a link to a helpful video Laura Schatzkin made about how to create a newsletter with Word Press. (Laura worked with Bradley Charbonneau at Likoma Design to move my newsletter into Word Press.)
Mar
15
The Practical Nomad on finding one’s way
March 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Edward Hasbrouck, the Practical Nomad, discusses orienteering in a foreign language; risk, trust, and humility; and the one question never to ask when you’re lost in a foreign country.
From the Practical Nomad Newsletter: Amazing Race 11, Episode 4
Petrohue (Chile) – Puerto Montt (Chile) – Punta Arenas (Chile) – Ushuaia
(Argentina) – Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego (Argentina)
Navigation is one of the few major challenges that real-world travel around the world and “The Amazing Race” consistently have in common. This week, the racers were given a compass, a map, and a destination (a building, although they didn’t know whether it was a well-known one), and had to find their way to that destination through the central business district of Punta Arenas. Independent travellers who aren’t being led everywhere by a tour guide face challenges like this every day. For the sake of reality the racers ought to have a major challenge like this at least once every season, although so far as I can recall this was only the second time in eleven seasons, and the first for any of these contestants.
This season’s cast of racers made the typical compass-reading mistakes I talked about in the first season, when the racers (including Team Guido) were in the desert in Tunisia. Once again, some of this group followed the wrong end of the compass needle, and started out in exactly the wrong direction.
Eventually, though, they all find their way to their goal. And therein lies a lesson.
Making your way through a city as a tourist isn’t like following a carefully planned wilderness orienteering course. Metal objects in your pack and on the street, and tall steel-framed buildings around you, can throw off even the best magnetic compass. Maps designed for tourists are among those most likely
Mar
15
Podcast Archives
March 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
We had great fun last night on a podcast about Ireland. If you’d like to hear Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Patricia Furlong, Joanna Biggar, and others talking about Ireland, click on in. In order to listen, you need to have Windows Media Player installed ahead of time. You can get it (free) here. There are both Mac and PC versions. For more info about the writing seminar in Ireland, from June 25 to July 4, 2007, click here.
Mar
10
The Color of Fear Turns Five
March 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!by Bill in Portland Maine
Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 05:52:33 AM PST
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Color of Fear Turns Five
Circle next Monday on your calendar, preferably with a yellow highlighter. As of March 12, we’ve spent five years cowering under the federal government’s color-coded Terror Alert System.
As regular readers of C&J know, every Friday I update the terror alert status in my “By the Numbers” section. The only thing I ever change, though, is the number of days the system has been in place (1,817 as of today). I never have to change the color because it’s always the same: yellow (“Elevated” risk). I believe the exact shade is called “Republican Blogger’s Underpants While Walking By Army Recruiting Station” yellow.
And what’s a patriotic citizen to do when the Fatherland is at Code Yellow? Not much, it turns out. Just continue to be alert for suspicious activity and report it to authorities. (“Hello, police? I think the neighbors are making brownies with enriched uranium again…”) Yellow is a cozy terror alert level. After five years it fits like
Mar
10
Bay Area Travel Writers
March 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Bay Area Travel Writers members meet the third Saturday of each month, in varying Bay Area locations, to hear speakers on topics such as writing, publishing, marketing, and new media; participate in guided tours of article-worthy venues; network and exchange ideas and information; and enjoy lunch together. Meetings begin at 10:00 a.m. Membership information is here.
Mar
10
Tales from Earth
March 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Tales from Earth World Stories Radio features world music plus travel, essays, fiction, and poetry in the author’s own voice. Broadcasts are every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at KUSF 90.3 FM in San Francisco.