Robert Young Pelton on Dangerous Places

Drowning NOT Waving

Always some great fun at the website of Robert Pelton Young, which he cheerfully calls Come Back Alive.

I first met Robert at the Book Expo in Los Angeles many years ago while I was promoting the first edition of my Southeast Asia Handbook for Moon Publications. Robert had purchased venerable yet deathbed ridden Fielding's guides and was cranking out new editions and updates at a furious pace.

I picked up a copy of Robert's guide to Borneo, sensibly called Fielding Borneo with a pub date of 1995. Fielding guides later folded, but Bob went on to interviews in Iraq and hooking up with kids in Marin for adventures in Panama and beyond.

He lives in a world of trouble.

My kinda guy.

The Airplane House in Ventura County

Airplane House Overview



Airplane House Side View



Airplane House Meditation Cone

A lady in Ventura County, near Los Angeles, intends to construct her new home from one of those abandoned airplanes that lay in suspended animation out in the Mojave Desert. I congratulate the ingenuity of her architect, who studied her passions and came up with this highly original idea.

If it doesn't work out, she could always move elsewhere and turn this museum house into yet another quirky California tourist attraction and collect $20 a pop per visit, or several hundred bucks to overnight. Wouldn't you pay this to experience something this outlandish?

God bless California.

West Coast Woman To Build Crash Pad Out of an Old 747
By ALEX FRANGOS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 5, 2005

VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. -- Francie Rehwald wanted her mountainside house to be environmentally friendly and to be "feminine," to have curves. "I'm a gal," says the 60-year-old retiree.

Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch.

"When I showed it to her in the office, she just started screaming," recalls the architect, David Hertz of Santa Monica. Ms. Rehwald, whose passions include yoga, organic gardening, meditation, folk art and the Cuban cocktails called mojitos, loved the adventurousness of the design, the feminine shapes and especially the environmental aspect.

"It's 100% post-consumer waste," she says. "Isn't that the coolest?"

A meditation chamber will be one of the buildings assembled from an old jet.

Unusual homes are nothing new along the coast of Southern California, long a magnet for eccentrics and free spirits. The "cyclotron house" in Malibu is shaped like an atom smasher. The "eyeball house" in Woodland Hills is a wooden silo with four giant glass eyes affixed to it. The "Chemosphere" looks like a flying saucer perched on a toothpick at the edge of a cliff in the Hollywood Hills.

Ms. Rehwald, whose family founded the first Mercedes-Benz dealership in southern California, is intent on adding to the genre. She has reserved a junked jet to purchase, charmed local planning officials and spent $200,000 on consultants.

"I am as much a part of this world as a bird, the frog in the creek," says Ms. Rehwald, who used to work at the family dealership, of her environmental motives. She wears a white sailor's hat perched atop her tossled blond hair, and her gold and silver bracelets jangle as she speaks. "This is my antidote to the malling of America."

Mr. Hertz has designed homes for such boldface Hollywood names as Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame. He says his aeronautical inspiration struck after a long flight from Los Angeles to Scotland. The 747, he says, "though designed in the 1960s, is still an absolutely beautiful contemporary object. It was derived from pure function."

Mr. Hertz isn't the first architect to find inspiration in aeronautics, and people have turned grounded airplanes -- small ones at least -- into makeshift homes before. But Mr. Hertz may well be the first to propose building a high-end home with pieces of a 747.

First, Mr. Hertz had to find a plane. New 747s start at more than $200 million. He called Mark Thompson of Aviation Warehouse, who runs an airplane junkyard in the California desert that resembles the futuristic wasteland of "Mad Max." Mr. Thompson told him that $70,000 to $100,000 would buy Ms. Rehwald a decommissioned Boeing 747-200 that still carries the faded logo of defunct Tower Air. Half the value was in the ailerons, the moveable parts of the wing. Mr. Hertz figured he could use them to control the awning on the patio by Ms. Rehwald's swimming pool.

Mr. Thompson met with county engineering officials to persuade them that the jet parts could withstand the strong winds that sometimes buffet Ms. Rehwald's property. "It's difficult to get a city engineer who is used to working with 2-by-4s and plaster to realize that an airplane that flies 500 miles per hour can stand up to 40-mph winds."

The salvaged wings and tail flaps of a Boeing 747 will serve as the roof for this multilevel country home in California, as seen in an architect's renderings from the front (above) and the side.

Nancy Francis, supervisor of the residential permits section at the Ventura County Planning Division, says she's excited such an unusual dwelling is going up in her jurisdiction. "Everyone in the department wants to go on the site visit when it's done," she says.

A winding one-lane road leads to the sunny hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains where Ms. Rehwald intends to create her architectural oddity. The 55-acre plot with views of the Pacific, now covered in aloe, agave cactus and white oleander flowers, is one hour north of L.A. It once housed dozens of buildings erected by Hollywood designer Tony Duquette, who built with found objects and industrial garbage such as old tires and radiators. A fire in 1993 destroyed most of his strange handiwork. Ms. Rehwald bought the land last year.

Mr. Hertz and his assistants have been spending time in the desert with the derelict jet, measuring it with long pieces of string and contemplating its shapes. Eventually, he and Mr. Thompson will cut it into pieces and truck it to a valley near his client's property. He figures it will take a helicopter 10 hours -- at $8,000 an hour -- to ferry the metal chunks up the hillside.

There he intends to assemble a compound of buildings connected by narrow dirt paths. The jet's wings will rest on thick concrete walls, forming the roof of a multilevel main house. The nose will point to the sky, becoming a meditation chamber, with the cockpit window a skylight. The first-class cabin will be an art studio. The signature bulge on the top of the 747 will become a loft. A barn will house rare domestic animals such as the poitou donkey. A yoga studio, guest house and caretaker's cottage will round out the compound.

"We are trying to use every piece of this aircraft, much like an Indian would use a buffalo," says Mr. Hertz.

He says the eight buildings will be scattered across the terraced hillside as if it were a "crash site." As it happens, the site lies under a jet flight path into Los Angeles International Airport. That concerns the Federal Aviation Administration, which has asked Mr. Hertz to paint special numbers on the wing pieces to alert pilots that Ms. Rehwald's retreat is not a crashed jumbo jet.

In deference to neighbors such as Dick Clark and the former spouses of Bob Dylan and Olivia Newton-John, the structures will keep a low profile, blending into the land, says Mr. Hertz. He intends to "bioblast" the metal with walnut shells to remove the Tower Air paint and dull the sheen.

Ms. Rehwald says she has given Mr. Hertz a $1.5 million budget. She promptly adds: "I'll be real fortunate if it's less than $2 million."

He has already spent money on an archeologist to look for Chumash Indian artifacts and a biologist to tell her how best to manage the coyotes, mountain lions and rattlesnakes that traverse her land. She hopes to start construction within nine months, and to move in by 2007. Until then, when Ms. Rehwald visits the site, she stays in a Winnebago trailer borrowed from a friend.

The Wall Street Journal Link

Boeing 777 Sets New World Record

My first long airplane ride dates from 1959 when my family took an Air Force cargo junker from Travis A.F.B. to Yokota, Japan, with stops in Honolulu and Wake Island. The propeller plane shaked the entire 36 hours and nobody enjoyed the steel seats bolted to the steel floor, but that was Air Force transport in the day.

I also didn't appreciate the fact that candy bars cost 10 cents on Wake Island, and only five cents back home.

Boeing has just set another record for the longest continual, direct, non-stop commercial flight in the world with their 777 blazing across the skies from Hong Kong to London. Longer flights with additional fuel tanks bolted are anticipated.

But will they pass out valiums to the passengers?

Boeing plane takes off on 23-hour nonstop flight
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
Nov 9, 2005

Aiming for a new distance record for a commercial jet, Capt. Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann took off in a twin-engine Boeing 777-200LR from Hong Kong this morning on a nonstop flight to London — the long way around. The eastbound, 23-hour flight across the Pacific, the continental United States and the Atlantic will cover at least 12,500 nautical miles.

The airplane was slated to carry about 35 passengers and crew, including Boeing executives, journalists, pilots from Pakistan International Airlines and Singapore Airlines, and representatives from the General Electric division that makes the engines. Three other senior Boeing test pilots — Frank Santoni, John Cashman and Randy Austin — will also take turns at the controls.

The airplane is a standard version of the new ultra-long-range jet, which will enter service with Pakistan International early next year. Boeing also offers the airplane with auxiliary fuel tanks that would expand its range even further, though no airlines have yet ordered the model with extra tanks.

Australian carrier Qantas is considering a version with six extra tanks that could fly a regular service nonstop between London and Sydney.

For now, Airbus can still boast of flying the longest nonstop regular commercial air service. Singapore Airlines operates the four-engine A340-500 daily between Singapore and New York, an 18-hour flight covering 9,000 nautical miles. But the airline is also weighing an order for the Boeing jet.

Seattle Times Link

Tokyo on $2 Per Day

Geisha with Cell

This stuff happens sometimes even with the big boys of travel bookings such as Expedia or Travelocity, or major airlines such as United or Icelandic, which last year offered round-trip tickets to Iceland for just $39. Mistakes. Some tired programmer or data underling late at night just puts the wrong prices on the website.

A goose egg often honored by major websites, even though everybody recognizes that it was just an honest mistake. Still, it's great fun and the publicity is probably worth honoring some of these outrageous deals.

Recently, Expedia screwed up on their hotel listings in Japan and offered rooms in first-class Hiltons for just a few bucks. They intend to honor all reservations made for the month of November, but the guy who reserved a room for an entire year is just out of luck.

The story is then followed by a snippet about an ingenious way to save money on accommodations in China including Shanghai: spend the night on a cot in a bathhouse with plenty of available extras. That actually sounds excellent to me.

Asia for $10 a night (and less)
USA Today
Hotel Hotsheet
Megg Schulte
Nov 9, 2005

Sleeping on the super-cheap just became a wacky reality. From China's bathhouse hotels that offer the barest definition of sleeping accommodations to a snafu on Expedia for hotels in Japan, this week is all about scoring a deal in Asia.

If you had excellent timing last weekend, you might be one of the incredibly lucky folks who booked rooms at the Hilton Osaka and Hilton Tokyo hotels. A number of readers wrote to say they were alerted to a mistake on Expedia that allowed rooms to be booked at those two properties for between $2 and $4 a night.

Charles Bu, a math professor at Wellesley College in Mass., scored a week in Osaka in April and two weeks in an executive floor king room in August at the bargain rate of $3.55 a night, plus tax. Including free breakfast and Internet access, his one-week stay tops out at $33.52. I just tried to book this same room, same days, and the total? About $2,443.00, Bu notes the trouble seems to be Expedia's currency conversion rate, and it doesn't take a mathematician to see they definitely had a problem.

Flyertalk.com's message boards are filled with reader postings on the "sale." One man even claims to have booked rooms for an entire year at the Hilton Tokyo; now he's trying to find a job to go along with his new "home."

Alas, when things sound too good to be true, they often are. We asked Expedia whether they would honor these reservations. According to spokesman David Dennis:

"A pricing error occurred on Friday night, and rooms at two Hilton International hotels in Japan were advertised at the wrong price due to an isolated processing incident. As soon as the error, which was obvious to consumers, was noticed, it was immediately rectified.

"Expedia and Hilton stand behind consumers. And to resolve this episode in a fair and equitable way, the following solution has been reached:

"If a booking was made for the month of November, Hilton will honor the reservation at the quoted price. But if a booking was made for December or beyond, it will be cancelled – unless it is part of a package, which Expedia.com will honor."

Now it's your turn: Do you think Expedia and Hilton are acting in 'a fair and equitable way' by honoring part of the bookings made? Or do you think all bookings should be honored? I'd like to hear your thoughts, so e-mail me at travel@usatoday.com and I'll post a follow up in next week's column.

Sleep on a chair, save a bundle

The Japanese capsule hotels have been around a while now, but now we have Chinese bathhouses getting into the lodging business. For about $10 a night, you get a hot shower, a recliner to sleep in, breakfast and a massage, The Wall Street Journal (free story) reports. One female marketing executive, after balking at the super-high hotel prices in Shanghai, chose the recliner route on a recent trip. "It gets noisy, but it is still a bargain," she said.

Once the bastion of business men in need of a soak, bathhouses are morphing into cheap accommodations, with some even offering entertainment options (think arcades Â… this is a family publication) and even swimming pools.

I'm not sure how this would go over in the U.S. where personal space is almost a requirement, but I bet there could be a market for it in NYC, where hotel rates are once again astronomical.

USA Today Link

RU Turisto or Earth Lovin' Traveler?

Travel is a Waste of Time

One of the travel world's most quaffed talking points has again resurfaced after decades buried under the concrete of tired and trite travel industry cliches. Frankly, I thought this discussion was dead, but last weekend, John Flinn at the San Francisco Chronicle goes over that eternally fascinating question: are you a tourist or a traveler? I guess John was bored gazing out the window of his plush office in the 69th floor of the Chron, or perhaps the editors decided that the "new generation" hadn't gone through this hoop.

Or is it a loop?

Whatever. Here it is again.

I'm a Tourist
You're a Tourist
Let's All be OK with That
John Flinn
San Francisco Chronicle
Oct 16, 2005

"Tours for travelers, not tourists" is the slogan of a tour company whose brochure landed on my desk a while back. This stuck me as a pretty nifty little Zen koan. Tours that aren't for tourists, I gather, are roughly equivalent to bicycles that aren't for bicyclists and flutes that aren't for flutists.

I hate to shatter anyone's cherished prejudice, but here's the definition of "tourist" in Webster's New World Dictionary: "a person who makes a tour, esp. for pleasure." Which means that if you go on a tour -- even one operated by this particular company -- you are, by definition, a tourist.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But among the status-conscious, the word "tourist" has come to mean "anyone who travels in a style I consider inferior to the way I like to think I do it."

You can't open a glossy travel magazine or click on a Web page these days without tripping over one of those tiresome aphorisms: A tourist travels to get away from home; a traveler feels at home when he travels. A traveler sees what he sees; the tourist sees what he has come to see. A traveler makes his own way; a tourist has another make his way for him. A tourist takes his prejudices with him; a traveler is transformed by his journeys. A tourist comes home with photos; a traveler comes home with memories.

In other words: A traveler like me is cool; a tourist like you is a dork.

The travel media loves to promote this bogus dichotomy. "Be a traveler, not a tourist," is the slogan on ads for "Without Reservations," a new show on the Travel Channel, as writer Rolf Potts pointed out recently on his blog. The very same tagline is on the cover of a guidebook series published by Open Road and was, for a while, the name of a column in National Geographic Traveler magazine.

If there really is that big a gap between travelers and tourists, I truly doubt you're going to bridge it by choosing one mass-market guidebook over another or watching a half-hour show wedged between Texas Hold 'Em tournaments on the Travel Channel.

The problem, I think, is that it's gotten so much harder for status-conscious travelers to feel superior. A generation or two ago, merely stepping onto an airplane or a train or a ship and going somewhere -- anywhere -- was all it took to give you the backyard-barbecue standing of a sophisticated man of the world. But these days everyone travels -- on the trail to Everest I once ran into a vacationing San Francisco stripper -- so what can be done to elevate yourself over your fellow travelers? Deride them as "tourists."

The thing is, as Potts noted, we're all tourists (in the "unsophisticated traveler" sense of the world). We all spend a brief time in a foreign place and then leave. Some might work harder than others to get off the main tourism grid, and some put more effort into chatting up the locals. Riding on the chicken bus or sleeping with the pigs on the floor of a village headman's house are memorable things to do, but if you think this gives you any significant insight into another culture you're kidding yourself.

Travel for me is humbling, and the more I do it, the more I realize it's impossible to come home after a few weeks with any more than a surface-skimming understanding of other people, no matter how many chicken buses I ride. I try to make a few friends and absorb as much as I can, but I've come to appreciate that the world is an impossibly vast and complicated place.

Sometimes when I travel abroad I do feel at home, and sometimes I feel (as "tourists" are accused of feeling) like a stranger in an extraordinarily strange land. I like that feeling much better. Sometimes I make my own way, and sometimes I'm happy to have my way made for me. Sometimes I'm transformed by my journeys, and sometimes, to be honest, I'm not. Let the traveler-not-a-tourist without sin cast the first stone (or flaming e-mail).

As far as I'm concerned, whatever anyone wants to do on his vacation -- walk barefoot across the Hindu Kush or sip Bahama Mama cocktails on the Lido deck -- is his own business, as long as he adheres to a couple of basic rules: Treat the people and places you visit with respect. Act in a way that reflects well on your fellow Americans. That's pretty much it.

Last year in Venice, I found myself dining next to a rather voluble family from Dallas. They spent most of their meal speculating about the upcoming high school football season, and at one point the father raised his glass and declared that they'd traveled the length and width of Italy and never once had a meal that couldn't be bettered in Dallas.

Now Venice is hardly the culinary capital of Italy, but this guy almost made me choke on my pasta e fagioli. Still, he was entitled to his opinion. I fault him only for broadcasting it to the entire restaurant. Oh, and I also fault his wife for standing up and yelling at the waiter who still hadn't brought her glass of wine after five whole minutes. I just prayed they wouldn't recognize me as a fellow American and try to strike up a conversation.

San Francisco Chronicle Link

*******************************

The subject of "tourist versus traveler" was so bung that even Rolf Potts chimed in with his insight and opinions about the holy grail question of international travel and tourism. He livens it up with some tales from Kata during the filming of The Beach, but did he ever stay in Leo's room out at Cape Panwa? I didn't think so....

Been there, done that.

Guess I'm a tourist!

Flinn goes on to make a good argument for dropping the tourist-traveler debate altogether -- but somehow I doubt the travel milieu will ever lose its snarky obsession with "tourists". An illustrative case in point would be that of travel writer Daisann McLane, who made a well-stated case for why we're all "tourists" in a 2002 interview with World Hum. "We think a 'traveler' is cool, the 'tourist' is not," she said, "and there's a lot of snobbery attached to identifying oneself as the former. But I think we should let that go. We are all tourists. If you can afford a round trip ticket to Laos, and you go there for personal stimulation, not for a job, even if you end up staying for six months on the floor of a Hmong hut in a remote village, you're still a tourist."

Rolf Potts Link

*************************************

The following quotes were taken from various sources and included in my travel guidebooks from Moon Publications, including Southeast Asia Handbook, Thailand Handbook, Philippines Handbook, and Singapore Handbook.

I would rather be ashes than dust
I would rather my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze
Than it should be stifled in dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
Every atom of me in magnificent glow,
Than a sleepy and permanent planet.
Man's chief purpose is to live, not to exist:
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

--Jack London



The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

--Samuel Johnson



If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

--William Blake



Either I am a traveller in ancient times, and faced with a prodigious spectacle which would be almost entirely unintelligible to me and might indeed, provoke me to mockery or disgust; or I am a traveller of our own day, hastening in search of a vanished reality.

In either case I am the loser.

--Claude LΘvi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques



"Are you a god?" they asked. "No."
"An angel?" "No."
"A saint?" "No."
"Then, what are you?"

Buddha answered,

"I am awake."



Between the Idea and the Reality
. . . Falls the Shadow.

--T.S. Eliot



If you go only once around the room, you are wiser than he who stands still.

--Estonian proverb



I travel light; as light,
That is, as a man can travel who will
Still carry his body around because
Of its sentimental value.

--Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning



I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

--Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Tony Wheeler on the Road

Bangkok Train Station by Tony Wheeler

Tony Wheeler may be the world's most successful publisher of travel guidebooks, but he (sometimes) travels like every other poor schmuck in the world, by train, bus, and songtao across the border from Thailand into Cambodia. His recent travel story at the link.

Tony Wheeler: Singapore to Shanghai

Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler is on his way to a travel conference in Macau. He could just fly there, but where's the adventure in that? He's decided to don his backpack and travel overland from Singapore to Macau, and then head on to Shanghai after the conference.

This trip will be not too fast, not too slow, not too cheap, not too expensive. He's not doing much preplanning: he's got a visa for China already, but he'll sort out travel, hotels and other visas as he goes. He'll try and stop somewhere interesting every night, and schedule in enough time to look around - and to eat well, of course!

Tony Wheeler Travels Singapore to Shanghai

100 Words Per Day

Animusic

This is a very clever site that encourages you to write exactly 100 words per day. Click on the text to move to the next page.

100 Words Link

The Fund for Investigative Journalism

Storm over Kansas

You may have been reading the series of stories at Slate about the ongoing problems in southern Thailand as reported by a freelance journalist from New York named Eliza Griswold. Eliza is also the current recipient of the Robert Friedman award to help support independent investigative journalists who are not sponsored by the usual media outlets. Eliza has been published by the New Yorker and covers a great deal of Asia, including reports on political insurgencies in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and now southern Thailand.

This is one damn award I would love to win.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism gives grants, ranging from $500 to $10,000, to reporters working outside the protection and backing of major news organizations.

Grants are limited to journalists seeking pre-publication help for investigative pieces involving corruption, malfeasance, incompetence and societal ills in general as well as for investigative media criticism. The Fund does not award educational scholarships or grants for professional training.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism was founded in 1969 by the late Philip M. Stern, a public-spirited philanthropist who devoted his life "to balancing the scales of justice," in the words of a friend. Stern was convinced small amounts of money invested in the work of determined journalists would yield enormous results in the fight against racism, poverty, corporate greed and governmental corruption.

Stern's theory proved true in the Fund's first year, when a tiny grant of $250 enabled reporter Seymour Hersh to begin investigating a tip concerning a U.S. Army massacre at the Vietnamese village of My Lai. A subsequent Fund grant of $2,000 allowed Hersh to finish reporting the story.

"Think of it," Stern later wrote, "a mere $2,250 in Fund grants enabled Seymour Hersh to leverage a whiff into a colossal stink and contribute mightily to the change in how Americans viewed the war in Vietnam."

Over three decades, the Fund has awarded more than $1.5 million in grants to freelance reporters, authors and small publications, enabling the publication of more than 700 stories and broadcasts and some 50 books. "Without support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, The Progressive would simply not have been able to publish many of the stories that we are most proud of," wrote Matthew Rothschild, the magazine's editor. "?Democracy depends on the circulation of this information; the Fund makes that circulation possible."

Fund-supported projects have won a wide array of journalistic honors. They include two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Magazine Awards, the Raymond Clapper Award, the George Polk Award, the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, the New York Newspaper Guild's Front Page Award and many others. Authors working with the help of a Fund grant have won the Frank Luther Mott Award for the best media book, as well as the MacArthur Foundation's coveted "genius" award. Recent books written with assistance from the Fund include Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill's Black Mass: The Irish Mob, The FBI and A Devil's Deal; Robert Friedman's Red Mafiya - How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America; Ted Anton's Eros, Magic and the Murder of Professor Culianu; Dan Baum's Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure; and Joseph Rodriguez' photodocumentary book East Side Stories - Gang Life in East LA.

Reporter Morton Mintz, past chairman of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, summed up its mission this way: "For more than 30 years, the Fund for Investigative Journalism has helped to finance exposes of harmful and wrongful conduct, such as corruption at all levels of government; corporate, governmental and press nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance; abuses of civil and human rights and of the environment; unsafe medical technologies; and improper donor influence on research in academe."

The Fund for Investigative Journalism

Directory of Travel Columnists

Global Traveler

Joe Sent Me has posted a listing of some two dozen leading travel columnists (some with photos!), and an expanded list of several dozen more in the sidebar to the left. Good listing, plus hot links to everyone.

DON GEORGE is the "global travel editor" of LonelyPlanet.com, the Web site of the respected travel guides for intrepid travelers. Thankfully, he wears the sobriquet lightly. His columns have always sparkled with truly original thinking, a burning passion for travel as a constructive force in the world and many lovely and creative turns of phrase. You should read George even if you never leave your own abode. The current iteration of the column, now called What Would Don George Do?, focuses on Don's attempts to bring guidance and sanity to traveler queries.

JOHN FLINN of the San Francisco Chronicle loves to travel off the tourist grid and he writes with verve, style and a lot of other admirable adjectives. When Flinn is on the road, he's a compelling read. When he's writing from his desk about being on the road, he's a compelling read. Flinn, travel editor of the Chronicle, posts his column each Sunday.

Joe Sent Me Link

Google Print Sued by Authors Guild

Thailand Handbook by Carl Parkes

The debate continues about the lawsuit, with several opposing opinions today from Boing Boing.

Authors Guild sues Google -- Xeni on NPR (UPDATE)
UPDATED: Cory Doctorow weighs in on the debate, at bottom of post.

This morning on the NPR News program Day to Day, I spoke with host Noah Adams about the legal battle Google has on its hands -- from some angry writers.

As blogged here on Boing Boing yesterday, the Authors Guild lawsuit claims that Google's effort to make books searchable and findable on the Internet violates copyright law.

Link to NPR "Writers Sue Google.com over Book Search" segment (airs nationwide, and audio will be archived online after 12PM Pacific / 3PM Eastern)
Previously on Boing Boing:

Authors Guild sues Google over print program

Reader comment: Tony Sanfilippo says,

I don't think you're telling the whole story here. I'm the Tony Sanfilippo quoted in the AP story and who also appears in Google Print's FAQ here.
I have fully embraced Google Print for publishers, even wrote a study delivered at BEA and AAUP about using the Long Tail and Google Print to find new markets for scholarship, but this is entirely different.

Boing Boing Link

North American Travel Journalists Association NATJA

The Original Mickey Mouse

A bit of discussion surfaced a few months ago from members of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) about the origins and ownership of the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA). Somebody rather innocently inquired as to the ownership of the organization, only to find that barriers and more questions were raised. I've blogged about this before, so do a search with the above Google engine and read all about it.

Today, somebody sent me details about NATJA which seem only appropriate to pass along to other readers of this blog. Hopefully, the folks at NATJA will contact me with any correction as I can't guarantee accuracy with the notes below.

I don't belong to NATJA but the group has received both positive and negative reports over the last few years. They send me an invitation to their annual convention, which seems to be subsidized but certainly not free, and also an invitation to their annual travel writers contest, which offers many decent prizes such as hotel rooms and whatever but generally lack airfare to the destination. I could post about that one in detail.

So here's some background on NATJA:

What is NATJA

NATJA (North American Travel Journalists Association) is a fictitious business name for Apollo Interactive LLC. of Culver City California 90232. According to the FBN filed with LA County the type of business is listed as Professional Association, Marketing and Promotions. Apollo Interactive LLC is a California Limited Liability Corporation

According to the Articles of Incorporation filed with the California Secretary of State the owners are David Bohline, Justin Woo and Richard Balue. The type of business is listed as Marketing along with Internet Services and Web Site Design.

The same three people, Bohline, Woo and Balue, are listed as the the owners of Apollo Interactive Inc, a privately held California corporation on the company website. They are all graduates of USC and members of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and reportedly founded the company in 1995 first working from their chapter house at USC. Apollo Interactive Inc. lists its services as Internet Advertising, Web Development and E-Business Integration

Apollo Interactive's clients include retail, manufacturing and finance clients like Jack in the Box, Reliant Energy and WB Televison. All of their listed travel industry clients are casinos, including:

Luxor Las Vegas
Cache Creek Casino
Circus Circus, Las Vegas and Reno
Excalibur Resort and Casino
Gold Strike Hotel and Casino
Hard Rock Hotel and Casino
Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Monte Carlo Casino
Motor Cisty Casino, Detroit
Pala Casino
Silver Legacy Resort and Casino

Apollo Interactive inc. is credited as the web designer for the NATJA website and is listed as its domain owner.

The Executive Director of NATJA is Elizabeth Beshear, formerly Elizabeth Barnes. Elizabeth is the wife of Matt Beshear Matt is the president of Apollo Interactive Inc. He is also a USC graduate and member of the TKE fraternity along with Bohline, Woo and Balue.

If you want to contact the owners, they can be reached at:

bohline@apollointeractive.com
balue@apollointeractive.com
woo@apollointeractive.com

NATJA is not organized as a 501(c)(6) business trade association under Federal tax code.

According to the California Law Revision Commission "A trade association is generally a membership organization of persons engaging in a similar or related line of commerce, organized to promote and improve business conditions in that line of commerce and not to engage in a regular business for profit, and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any member.

*****************************

Additional Data:

Apollo Interactive LLC.
8556 Hayden Place,
Culver City California 90232

The Articles of Organization, file number 101998002167 filed 1/1/1998
Agent: David Bohline, 650 W. Mariposa Avenue, El Segundo CA 90245
Type of Business: Internet Services and Web Site Design

copy available

The Statement of Information Renewal number 199800210167 filed 12/3/2001 lists
Address: 531 Main Street #902, El Segundo CA 90245
Records kept at: 8556 Hayden Place, Culver City CA 90232
Type of Business: Marketing
Manager and Agent: David Bohline
David Bohline, 443 Loma Vista Street, El Segundo CA 90245
Justin Woo, 4243 Mary Ellen Avenue, Apt 12, Studio City CA 91604
Richard Balue, 642 8th Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254

copy available

Apollo InteractiveOwner/Founders:
Justin Woo, Chief Executive Officer
David Bohline, Chief Operating Officer
Richard Balue, Chief Technology Officer

contact info:
bohline@apollointeractive.com
balue@apollointeractive.com
woo@apollointeractive.com

References:

LOS ANGELES COUNTY REGISTRAR

http://lavote.net/fbn/Default.cfm enter search "north american travel journalists"

Fictitious Business Name Statement document 2248832 obtained from
Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
Business Filings and Registration Section, Room 2001
12400 Imperial Highway
Norwalk, CA 90650

CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF STATE

http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowLpllcAllList?
QueryLpllcNumber=199800210167

The Articles of Organization, file number 101998002167 filed 1/1/1998
obtained from California Secretary of State

The Statement of Information Renewal number 199800210167 filed 12/3/2001
obtained from California Secretary of State

http://tinyurl.com/e3at2

APOLLO INTERACTIVE INC.

http://www.apollointeractive.com/aboutus/aboutus.php
http://www.apollointeractive.com/services/services.php
http://www.apollointeractive.com/clients/clients.php
http://www.apollointeractive.com/clients/industry.php

TKE The Magazine of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, Fall 2004

http://tinyurl.com/b24oh
http://www.tkeusc.org/alumni/aug2000.php
http://www.tkeusc.org/alumni/index.php

OWNERS

http://www.google.com/search?q=+bohline+site:
apollointeractive.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=+woo+site:
apollointeractive.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=+bohline+site:
apollointeractive.com

NATJA

http://natja.org
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=natja.org&server=whois.publicinterestregistry.
net&email=on
http://alexa.com/data/details/?url=natja.org

ELIZABETH BESHEAR

elizabeth@natja.org
http://www.natja.org/member/elizabethbarnes
http://www.thebeshears.com/
http://www.travelworldmagazine.com/photography/
articles.php?MemberID=343

MATT BESHEAR

beshear@apollointeractive.com
http://www.thebeshears.com/
http://www.thebeshears.com/aboutus.html
http://www.natja.org/member/matthewjbeshear
http://www.travelworldmagazine.com/photography/
articles.php?MemberID=421

DAVID BOHLINE

http://www.college-prep.org/alumni/paw/fall04/fall04.htm
http://www.zoominfo.com/PeopleSearch/PersonDetail.asp?PersonID=34850463&pc=

Burning Man and Word Verification

Burning Man by John Curley



Another Surreal Moment by John Curley



Lust at Black Rock



More Burning Photos from Curley Soon!!

Hope you all had a Happy Burning Man. I know I did, as I entertained both my sister Claudia and my mother Marice here in San Francisco with wine-and-cheese reception at their hotel The Savoy on Geary, then a tour of the lobbies and restaurants of the boutique hotels around the Theater District, then a rocking dinner down at Original Joe's accompanied by my sisters' husband Stan from Ione, and their daughter Heather and her boyfriend Payam, and their curly haired little kid. Also said hello to Maria, the daughter of the original owner of the famous restaurant, and we talked about old times. I once worked there.

Today I drove the standard tour of bayside and oceanside San Francisco for my Mom and Sister, then it was a fine lunch at the newly renovated Cliff House, in the bar section with superb fried calamari, decent cheese plate, and standard pot stickers.

Also, unfortunately, but not so sadly or unfortunately, I just had to turn on Word Verification for my blog at Blogger. It's fairly easy for you to make blurbs at this site and at my other blogs. To make a comment, you must first read a random set of letters and numbers, then type those letters into a filtering system before you make your comment. End of comment spam.

P.S. My first Burning Man was here in San Francisco when I went down to Baker Beach with Terra and we watched Harvey and the Burners erect a 60 foot wooden statue in Japanese style, which they intended to burn soon after sunset. Unfortunately, SF and the Bay Area had been going through a very severe drought for several years, and it was very dangerous to be setting off such a large fire, no matter that it was on the beach (moved from Ocean Beach near the Cliff House, where I had lunch today).

A few fire anarchists tried to ignite the fuel soaked wooden man, but most people were understanding and cooperative and realized the danger. The final Burning Man in San Francisco was never ignited, but put into storage for the coming years.

The next year the event moved seven hours northeast to Black Rock in the Nevada desert.

Tourist or Traveler?

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

When you leave your home, are you a tourist of a traveler? When I was a young buck traveling around the world, it seemed important that I consider myself a traveler rather than one of those mindless tourists who do little but ruin the landscape. As I grew up (somewhat) and continued to travel, I realized that there are few distinctions, and that all souls who wander the earth are both tourists and travelers, and that one species is in no way superior to the other type of explorer.

And those pretentious young kids with their backpacks, expert bargaining skills, and identical guidebooks -- who consider themselves somehow superior to tourists -- really need to grow up. Or grow older, for today's backpackers will soon be tomorrow's tourists on the escorted tour of Bangkok and beyond. Independent travel is in most ways a superior experience to escorted tours, but time takes its toll, and I certainly don't expect my elderly parents to crash in some $3 dive on Khao San Road.

Rolf Potts has more observations on the superficial difference between travelers and tourists. I'd say about 40 years.

Anthony Bourdain is a tourist dork
Rolf Potts
Sept 5, 2005

OK, I'm sure Anthony Bourdain isn't really a tourist dork, but I do take issue with the magazine advertisement for his new Travel Channel show, Without Reservations, which features the tagline "Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist".

For starters, the traveler/tourist dichotomy has long been one of the most insipid obsessions of the travel world (since, as peripatetic guests in foreign places, we are all tourists, regardless of what we wear, where we eat, and which guidebook we use) -- and to imply that one can shed the "tourist" mantle by watching a television show is positively idiotic.

Moreover, in the ad, Bourdain is shown clutching a red magic-marker in front of an aerial photograph of Paris, presumably having just scribbled little morsels of wisdom into the margins, such as: "Hungry? The Royal, a typical Parisian café, is a mandatory staple in the daily routine of the Parisian. No tourists here!"

Though there is much to ponder in such a reductive statement ("the daily routine of the Parisian" -- what is this, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom?), the "no tourists" part is what gets me, since the surest way to send "tourists" stampeding into any café or restaurant is to declare it untouristed. Ernest Hemingway knew as much 80 years ago, when he was a part of the Paris expat scene. "We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island," he wrote in The Sun Also Rises. "It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women's Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table."

Rolf Potts Link

Travel Narratives via London

Slimmer Days

Are you a celebrity? Then you can probably indulge yourself and make a journey, then return home and have some ghostwriter pen some drivel about your adventures. Oh. You're not a movie star or TV game show host? In most cases, you are just out of luck, as the following article in The Book Standard makes painfully obvious.

Long Way to a Bestseller
The Book Standard
August 25, 2005
By Giles Elliott

The prevalence of fiction in booksellers' summer-reading promotions means that one of the traditional mainstays of the suitcase or backpack book—the travelogue—now has to fight hard to make itself heard. Paperback editions of Christmas bestsellers have the easiest task, featuring, as they do, celebrities with maximum exposure on television.

Long Way Round (Time Warner), the account of a motorbike trip around the world taken by actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, is one such title and it tops the travel chart. The broadcast on which the book is based was shown only on Sky One—cable and satellite subscriptions in the U.K. are still relatively small—but McGregor's high profile and the popularity of motorcycling books in general has helped sales stay steady and high. The No. 1 TV travel presenter is former Monty Python star Michael Palin, and Himalaya (Phoenix), which chronicles his latest travels—and last, for a while, so the story goes—is going along nicely still in fourth place.

Lower down the celebrity scale, but with a prodigious output of ideas for shows and books, is Danny Wallace. Warner Bros. recently bought film rights to his latest book, Yes Man (Ebury), along with those of its predecessor, Join Me, and he has kept busy in the meantime with a BBC show, How to Start Your Own Country. Wallace's old flatmate, co-author and travel and comedy sparring partner Dave Gorman, meanwhile, has been relatively quiet since his bestselling Googlewhack Adventure was published.

Time Warner and Ebury also provide the two more traditional travel literature titles in the Top Five, both with a distinctly British air about them. Charlie Connelly traveled around all the areas mentioned on radio's nautical weather forecast for his Attention All Shipping (Abacus), while a late-in-life debut comes from Don Shaw, whose The Hike details the adventures of three retired friends walking across northern England.

Lower down the chart, among the multiple Bill Bryson books, lies another couple of new names on the travel-writing map. Another pensioner, Terry Darlington, took his canal boat across the English Channel for Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (Bantam), while Joe Bennett opted to hitch-hike around New Zealand for A Land of Two Halves (Scribner). The status of the genre may have dropped from previous heights, but it still continues to produce excellent and popular books.

The market as a whole is going nowhere fast, though, with mid-August revenue stagnant. It seems that everyone is on holiday.

Top Five Travel Books

1. LONG WAY ROUND, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman (Time Warner, 0751536806)
2. YES MAN, Danny Wallace (Ebury, 0091896738)
3. ATTENTION ALL SHIPPING, Charlie Connelly (Abacus, 0349116032)
4. HIMALAYA, Michael Palin (Phoenix, 0753819902)
5. THE HIKE, Don Shaw (Ebury, 0091906075)

* Based on sales in Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market in the week to 20th August.

The Book Standard Link

The End of Freelance Writing

Unemployed Freelance Travel Writer

Slate has just published a fine story about a freelance writer of 30 years who is throwing in the towel. God, how I know the story.

My Life as a Hack
It was glorious. Now it's over.
By Ben Yagoda
Aug. 26, 2005

I can recall seeing only one movie about a freelance writer: Woody Allen's Celebrity. In an early scene, a movie star (played by Melanie Griffith) takes the hack (Kenneth Branagh) on a tour of her childhood home then seduces him in her old bedroom.

That struck me as unrealistic. It's been my experience as a freelancer that film stars almost never invite you to their houses.

It did happen to me once, however. About 15 years ago, Rolling Stone asked me to profile the teenage Uma Thurman. We had lunch at the Russian Tea Room (where Rolling Stone bought Uma a caviar-blini combination so expensive it had an unlisted price) then took a pit stop at her family's apartment on the Upper West Side. There was no seduction, the least of many reasons being that her little brother was due home from school any minute. Even so, the whole thing was a highlight of my freelancing career to that date.

Shortly after I submitted the piece, my editor phoned to say she was so sorry, but they couldn't use it: It wouldn't do to run two profiles of oddly-first-named starlets in one issue, and another editor had inadvertently assigned an article about Winona Ryder. Moving swiftly to Plan B, I mailed (no e-mail yet) the story to American Film magazine, which accepted it. Out of courtesy, I informed my Rolling Stone editor. The next day she phoned: On second thought, Rolling Stone did want to run my piece, only I would have to cut 3,000 words to 900. I was embarrassed to have to withdraw it from American Film, but the connection led to three rewarding assignments from that magazine. Then it folded.

That was nothing new. The majority of magazines I've written for no longer exist. A moment of silence: American Stage, Atlantic City Magazine, Business Month, Channels of Communication, Connoisseur, Fame, Horizon, In Health, Lingua Franca, Memories, New England Monthly, Next, the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Phillysport, Politicks, Push, Saturday Review, Ultrasport, and Working at Home.

We freelancers have always had to put up with magazines that die on us, along with butchered copy, chuckleheaded editors, rights-grabbing contracts, isolation, lost manuscripts, whacks to the ego, changed quotes, the absence of security or benefits, and—unkindest of all—the kill fee (i.e., paying authors a third or a quarter of the agreed-upon rate if an assigned piece is not used for virtually any reason, up to and including the fact that someone else wrote about Winona Ryder). Usually, though, these indignities are outweighed by the good stuff about freelancing: freedom, no commute, funny war stories, the periodic ego boost of appearing in print, and the chance to eat caviar with Uma Thurman.

But something has changed. These days, when the pros and cons are put on the scale, the minus side sinks every time. I've spent 29 years as a freelancer—some of it full time, most of it on the side—but it may finally be time to take down my shingle.

Perhaps this is just the Lion King factor—the circle of life. Freelancing, with all its scrambling and uncertainty, is like rock climbing or white-water kayaking: one of those things that comes fairly easily in your 20s and 30s but requires some mulling over as you enter your 50s.

But I'm convinced that the nature of the game has changed as well. For one thing, the economics of the freelance life seem worse than ever. And they were never good. Just take a look at George Gissing's 1891 novel, New Grub Street, about London hacks barely breaking even. In the cosmos of skilled tradespeople, freelance journalists have always been bottom-dwellers. Plumbers don't do kill fees. Screenwriters have negotiated an ironbound fee schedule: currently, a minimum of $53,256 (I said minimum) for two drafts of an original script, plus $17,474 more for a rewrite and $8,742 for a "polish." But for magazine hacks, an unlimited number of rewrites and polishes have always been gratis.

As far as freelancing rates go, they were modest when I started out and are about the same now. I don't mean the same adjusted for inflation. I mean the same. I became a full-time freelancer in 1978, and the first piece I published in a prominent national magazine was a "My Turn" essay in Newsweek. I was paid $500. Just a couple of years ago, I had a slightly longer essay in a popular online magazine that will go nameless. $500 again. I received the check 97 days after publication, which broke a personal record.

Of course, online publishers are notorious skinflints, but their print counterparts aren't paying much better. According to Writers Market, the freelancer's bible, New York magazine paid $1 a word in 1996 and pays the same rate in 2005. Catholic Digest's fees were $200 to $400 in 1989 and are the same today. The Village Voice was in the news this month for planning to slash its already low fees: Short pieces that used to go for $130 will now fetch $75. There are a few glossy exceptions, but stagnant rates are the rule. That's even worse than it seems. Magazines commonly pay by the word and have been assigning ever shorter articles—which means that writers are virtually certain to get less for a typical piece.

Freelancers are treated this way not because they're schlimazels or because editors are jerks, but because of the law of supply and demand. The Harvard Business School could use freelance journalism as a case study of a buyers' market. Leaving aside a handful of periodicals that value distinctive writing, extensively reported dispatches, and unusual or challenging perspectives, what magazines want is clean and inoffensive copy that fits their magazine's format and fills the space between pictures and ads. There has always been an overabundance of people eager and able to provide this, even if they are treated lousy. Therefore, they are usually treated lousy. Various attempts to form writers unions have failed because everyone knows that if any such organization called a job action against a publication or, God forbid, the entire magazine industry, other adequate writers would immediately step forward to fill the void.

The culture of magazines also seemed different in '78, when I hung out my shingle for the first time. I'm fairly certain I'm not mythologizing when I say that some of the Olympian moments in magazine journalism—the moments when Gay Talese freelanced "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," when Tom Wolfe wrote his profile of Junior Johnson and Michael Herr the pieces that became Dispatches—still retrospectively glowed. The understanding was that good writing was actually a marketable commodity. More: By publishing the right piece at the right time in the right magazine, you could initiate a cultural event.

Today, most freelancers I know aren't even looking to make that kind of splash: They'd just like to pursue stories that are interesting for their own sakes and that allow for distinctive writing. This is a fairly modest wish, but in today's magazine world, it's not a realistic one. Modern titles, formatted to within an inch of their lives, require freelancers to shape experience into small, breezy portions that extol the lifestyle or consumer culture the magazine and its advertisers are looking to promote. The ultimate upside isn't the creation of a cultural event, but the creation of buzz.

Finally, there's the dignity factor. A friend of mine, who never got published in The New Yorker, still treasures the bunch of hand-typed and personal rejection letters he got in the late '70s and early '80s from William Shawn. That's so 20th century. These days, you're lucky to get a form letter. The pocket veto—that is, the unreturned e-mail, letter, or phone call—has become an accepted way of turning down ideas and submissions, even from longtime contributors. A couple of months ago, I sent, through my literary agent, a detailed query letter to a magazine editor he had worked with before. We followed it up a couple of times. No yes, no no, no nothing.

I'm done.

Yo, Uma! Next time the blini's on me.

Slate Link

Bill Bryson Interview

Bill Bryson

The Washington Post has published an interview with Bill Bryson, one of the world's most highly regarded travel writers.

You traffic in British-American cultural differences. Has the humor of it all become strained, with the tension over the war in Iraq?

No, although it's very easy when you live abroad to get that impression, because the British press portrays America as this kind of mad country that is war-mongering. And you have to stop and say, wait a minute, I know lots of [Americans] who are not completely pro-war and are, from my point of view, a lot more rational. Not everybody [in the United States] is as crazy as they come across in the British press sometimes.

I read that you'd like to get out of the travel-writing biz.

I never really tried to get into it. I stumbled into it by accident. The first book I did -- the first successful book -- was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more. And I still enjoy traveling a lot. I mean, it amazes me that I still get excited in hotel rooms just to see what kind of shampoo they've left me.

I still want to go places, but don't want to just write travel. . . . I've mined those veins. I sometimes think I cannot write another passage about a disappointing meal ever again, because I've done it so many times.

What are you working on now?

I'm doing a book which is a kind of travel book, except that it's a memoir about growing up in the '50s in Iowa. My feeling is that it was quite a magical time to grow up. The pattern of life was a lot more sensible and more appealing. And if we'd built on that, if we'd kept the downtowns vibrant places, instead of the way we did go . . .

What's Des Moines like now?

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city. The population of the city is the same as when I was growing up, but its footprint is at least five or six times what it was. The downtown is completely dead.

Who are your favorite travel writers?

I really admire the writing of Jonathan Raban. He wrote a book called "Old Glory," which is about traveling down the Mississippi, and he just described the texture of the water, over and over again. God, I wish I could do that. Paul Theroux I like a lot. I also really like an English writer called Redmond O'Hanlon.

Me too. He reminds me of you.

That's a huge compliment. I wish I could be more like him, because he's very funny, but he's also just so knowledgeable. And he's comfortably knowledgeable, he's not showing off.

I also very much like Tim Cahill. He does the brave stuff, which I admire because I couldn't do that. I'd much rather read about it than try and do it myself.

Any advice for all the would-be Bill Brysons and Paul Therouxes out there?

I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.

Washington Post Interview with Bill Bryson

Rory MacLean Remembers Paris

Alice and the Mad Hatter

Rory MacLean is one of those exceptionally talented travel writers who lives in England but has traveled widely across the Continent during his entire adult life. A few weeks ago he was in Paris to give a lecture at a writers conference, and then returned home to pen this remembrance of his time in Paris, and reveal some of the inner workings of Shakespeare and Co.

Rory MacLean
Newsletter No. 15
Summer 2005

I'm just home from France. I was invited to Paris to give a reading at Shakespeare and Company, the tumbledown American bookshop on the Left Bank. I say 'at' Shakespeare and Company. 'Outside' would be more accurate. On rue de la Bucherie, surrounded by about sixty book lovers and bemused tourists, between the peels of Notre Dame's bells and the heckling of passing down-and-outs, I read aloud from Falling for Icarus.

Shakespeare and Company opened its doors in 1921. From here Europe first heard of new American writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and ­ after the war ­ Ginsberg and the Beats. Its owner Sylvia Beach published Joyce's Ulysses when no one else would take the risk. Fifty-five years ago George Whitman, an east coast vagabond-cum-bibliophile, bought this 'little rag-and-bone shop of the heart'. Since then, as well as selling millions of English-language books, he has given home to some 50,000 poets, novelists and students.

Over the last twenty years I've dropped by the shop dozens of times. But it wasn't until I started researching my new book Magic Bus and met George that I was invited to spend the night.

Every midnight after the shop closes, sleeping platforms fold down from behind the stacks. Beds are made up between the shelves. Twenty or thirty young ­ or young-at-heart -- travellers tuck themselves in for the night. In return for their accommodation student residents are required to stand in for an hour or two behind the till. Writers and painters get to stay for free, their work cluttering the writers' cubicles and spare wall space.

George has put me up three or four times now, usually in a top floor bunk under a clothing rail, next to a filing cabinet stuffed with letters from Ezra Pound and Graham Greene. Ginsberg may have slept in the same bed, perhaps even under the same blanket. He certainly read from his work on the same esplanade outside the shop.

Henry Miller called Shakespeare and Company 'a wonderland of books'. Lawrence Durrell said it's 'a unique institution with an exceptional bookman at the helm'. Anais Nin wrote that Whitman 'created a house of gentle warmth with walls of books, tea ceremonies, a hearth of humour and friendship'. For me the value of this remarkable bookshop was summed up in the story of a young Scottish novelist who I met during my first sleep-over.

In 2003 Damien Macdonald was travelling around Europe 'desperate and scared, a disorientated cowboy without a horse'. He saw the shop, stopped in and within minutes Sylvia Whitman ­ George's 24-year-old daughter ­ invited him to stay. Damien told me, 'She gave me the keys and I came into this room. My room. I saw the mirror and saw myself reflected in it. At that moment I knew I had to pull myself together. So I sat down and started to write, with cockroaches running over my notebook..' He went on, 'Shakespeare and Company saved me. I found a place where I could write.'

On the wall of his bookshop George has painted the words, 'Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers Lest They be Angels in Disguise'. I feel privileged in having touched -- and been touched by -- a little of the history of the 'little rag-and-bone shop of the heart'.

yours ever

Rory

Hotel Chatter is a Hoot

Victoria's Secret China

I agree with you. Most, nearly all, travel websites having to do with airline reservations or hotel bookings are boring, boring, boring. Seems like the authors of these sites have had their brains removed and pickled in brine. Where is the humor guys? How can you possibly get serious about something as functional and mudane as hotel reservations or airline bookings?

But then a few weirdos sneak into the corporate pack and somehow both inform and entertain their readers. Hotel Chatter is one of them. A rather mundane title, but the somewhat deranged folks (Mark!) who pen this site have their priorities straight: entertain first, sell later. Anyone who quotes both Defamer and Page Six in the same story is OK with me. Good work. Look at their post today:

More from the Roosevelt Hotel Tropicana
Courtesy of Page Six via Defamer:

On Friday, Willis was at a cabana in the Tropicana at the Roosevelt Hotel in L.A. with 20 pals when the subject turned to pickup lines. Willis looked at a woman, a sophomore in college, and said, "What are your plans for sex tonight?" But Willis' lawyer, Marty Singer, said, "Bruce was joking around with some friends and talking about pickup lines. One remembered an old pickup line [Willis] used to use. The friend said the line and Bruce may have repeated it, but he was not trying to pick up the woman." Still, the woman was "grossed out" and left the cabana.

We love how Bruce can't even drop a lame-ass pick up line without his lawyer in tote to clear the air. Nice move old man.

Hotel Chatter is a Hoot

Do see today's post about a place in New Zealand where you can sleep in either an airplane or a cave. Brilliant.

World Hum Updated Website

Trivandrum by Carl Parkes

WorldHum is one of the better travel websites on the net, due to the hard work of Jim Benning and his co-conspirator Mike who have been producing and publishing the best travelogues for almost 5 years -- ancient in contemporary internet terms. And after years of struggling under an outdated website model, they have dumped the old model and gone modern with a new look and added features. RSS! Wow! Search! Wow!

All this is good news, plus they have enticed major travel writers to their fold, such as Rolfie and others to pen special sidebars. The new format is way, way better than their old layout that left the monthly feature dead center and pretty much killed the energy. Now it's divided into three parts. On the left is a monthly update with stuff from all your old friends, including Rolf and other guys about responsible travel and the plight of elephants, not to mention book reviews.

The middle section on the revised blog will certainly be the most interesting and the most challenging for Jim and Crew, since they are going to try and maintain a daily blog with news about travel and the travel writing industry. Good luck, guys. This is a difficult endeavor and the pay is pretty low when calculated on a per-hour basis. I was going to say shit, but changed my mind. Nobody sticks to a volunteer program with no rewards. Doesn't happen. But then perhaps Jim and company can figure out a solution. I certainly can't.

Finally, the right column is the advertising page, where the hopes and dreams of Jim and Friends will ultimately lie. Will they make enough money to keep them inspired and keep them updating this website? God knows. They now have the enthusiasm and energy to crank out great stories and great links for perhaps the next 6 months, but after that, anyone's guess. In the meantime, it's a wonderful event and everyone should be checking World Hum for insight, humor, and revelations.

World Hum version 2.0 has launched, and if you haven't taken a look in a few days, we've just posted several new stories.

First, the new design: As many of you know, we started the site in May 2001 with four stories, no photos and no long-term plan beyond publishing travel narratives that we liked. In the last four years the site has grown tremendously, but its antiquated design and mechanics were hindering its growth -- we couldn't even manage our growing list of newsletter subscribers. World Hum needed a makeover.

With the redesign, we've combined the best of the old site with a host of new features. The dispatches, interviews and weblog that have long been the heart and soul of the site remain. To these, we've added five new sections: Ask Rolf, Books, Speaker's Corner, How To and Greetings From.

Some familiar names will pop up more often. We can't do this alone, so we've asked a few of our favorite writers to become contributing editors.

Here's a rundown of the new features as well as the latest stories:

Dispatches

Just posted: Porter Shreve, whose novel "The Obituary Writer" was a New York Times Notable Book, evokes a harrowing bus journey in the Middle East. Previously, Jason Wilson, series editor of "The Best American Travel Writing" anthologies, whistled at the aurora borealis in Iceland.

Q&A

The latest: An interview with Joel Henry, the dean of "Experimental Travel." Previously, Andrew Steves, son of travel writer Rick Steves, fielded questions before embarking on his first solo trip to Europe.

Ask Rolf

Vagabond travel writer Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel, doling out hard-won wisdom from more than a decade on the road in Asia and beyond. Potts is a former Salon.com travel columnist who wrote, "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel."

Books

Travel books don't get enough press, so we've created the Books section to feature original reviews and other book-related features. Frank Bures, whose World Hum story, "Test Day," was featured in "The Best American Travel Writing 2004," will oversee the section. In the first installment, he reviews Emma Larkin's "Finding George Orwell in Burma." Coming soon: a look at Paul Theroux's new novel.

Speaker's Corner

Speaker's Corner gives writers a chance to rant or rave about a topic close to their hearts. Just posted: Michael Yessis celebrates the 25th anniversary of the classic travel film, "Airplane!" In the first installment, travel writer and Ethical Traveler Executive Director Jeff Greenwald lamented what has become of Burma, the Southeast Asian nation Western adventurers once dubbed the "Golden Land."

How To

Learn how to dive deep into another culture. Just posted: Contributing editor Terry Ward, whose travel stories have appeared in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, explains just how to clean up at a Moroccan hammam. Last time, she parsed the subtleties of kissing hello in France -- not an easy feat.

Greetings From

Postcards and hand-written letters home have given way in the Internet Age to mass e-mails. The best of them convey powerful raw emotion and vivid impressions. In Greetings From, we'll feature some of the most compelling e-mails in their original uncensored form. Now up: a letter from London, pounded out shortly after the recent bombings.

In addition, we've brought World Hum's electronic guts into the 21st century. You'll find a search engine, a feature some of you have been requesting for years; RSS Feed; weblog categories for special interests; and the World Hum Store, where you can find books written and edited by World Hum contributors.

To those of you who helped make this possible with your financial contributions to the site, thank you once again for your support. It has meant a lot to us.

Finally, we're accepting advertisements for the first time. We want to build World Hum into a site that can survive for years to come. Please support the sponsors. They're helping to support us.

We hope you like the new site. Please drop us a note and let us know what you think.

The world is humming. Are you listening?

The Editors,
Jim and Mike
worldhum.com

WorldHum

Another Travel Writers Resource

Underemployed Travel Writer and Trained Cat

DMOZ is another one of those contributor-based websites sort of like Wikipedia, but really not in the same league. Their site on travel writing apparently hasn't been updated in ages, and many of the 19 listings are self serving promotions for writers who either write books for prospective travel writers or provide seminars for the same. Proceed with caution.

A few lines of the main page, then the link:

00AandEsTravelWriter - How to make a living as a travel writer. Writing discussions and tips. Finding markets that pay. Small email list.

Adventure Travel Writer - Editorial advice and how to break into travel writing. Learn about the travel writer's lifestyle.

Australian Society of Travel Writers - Information and member details of the Australian Society of Travel Writers

Freelance Travel Writing - Learn how to create compelling travel writing features. Free newsletter with tips and travel markets.

Media Kitty - Online information exchange uniting top working journalists and PR professionals in travel and tourism worldwide.

Offbeatrips - Online freelance travel writing course providing tuition in key aspects of freelance travel journalism, encompassing writing, photography, sponsorship and marketing. Australia.

Philip Greenspun's Travel Writing Career - "How I got started as a Travel Writer", article by Philip Greenspun.

Restless Me Forum - An online forum for travelers and travel writers.

Travel Info Exchange - All about travel information: how to get it, judge its quality, price it, write it, picture it, design it, update it, and communicate it to travelers. How to write a travel guide, resources and an email discussion.

Travel Media Association of Canada - A professional, membership-based, non-profit organization of travel writers, broadcasters and industry personnel.

Travel Writing for Fun and Profit - Travel Writing for Fun and Profit, an article by Phil Philcox.

Travel Writing Tips - Freelance travel writer Flo Conner provides step-by-step tips and articles to turn your 'Treks into Checks'.

Travellady Magazine - "Everything you Ever Wanted to Know about Travel Writing" article by Madelyn Miller.

Travelwriter Marketletter - Monthly newsletter for those in the competitive field of travel writing

DMOZ Open Directory Project on Travel Writing

Transitions Abroad Travel Writing Site

Papua New Guinea by Carl Parkes

I've been searching out travel writing websites and blogs for over a decade, and have witnessed dozens of decent efforts to help out prospective travel writers possibly make a living in this perilous craft. I'm not just talking about general writing sites, but those specifically oriented to the craft of travel writing. The results have not been very pretty, to tell the truth. Too much of a scattershot approach or, quite often, an obvious conflict of interest where the author of the travel writing website or blog is also in the business of promoting their books or lectures about the profession. And the whole industry is surprisingly incestuous.

A few days ago, Tim Leffel launched a travel writers resource website for Transitions Abroad that finally puts together nearly every possible helpful angle any travel writer could hope for, and provides enough links to keep everyone busy for months and months. This website is a work of art, and all it needs now is an ongoing blog to keep everyone coming back on a daily basis.

Tim?

P.S. And did I mention that Transitions Abroad is the world's most useful publication for world travelers, volunteers, and anyone who wishes to work overseas?

Transitions Abroad Travel Writers Website

Eugene Fodor -- C.I.A. Spook?

Concorde Final Flight

There has long been a rumor that guidebook publisher Eugene Fodor worked for the C.I.A. as an undercover spook, and that his early series of guidebooks to Europe were actually used by other agents are covers for information collection. While the whole idea sounds absurd to me, Gridskipper recently picked up the thread with some new observations. I'll post the short article below, but you'll need to visit the website to click the active links, some of which are very intriguing.

The Fodor Supremacy

Everyone’s familiar with the legendary Fodor’s travel guides. Founder Eugene Fodor, who died in 1991, published his first guidebook (1936 … On the Continent) just in time for a healthy increase in war-related European travel. He was also dogged by a rather weird accusation: that he worked for the CIA. As indicated by this clipping from Fodor’s obituary in the New York Times, the dirt apparently originated with Watergate scoundrel E. Howard Hunt.

Though it seems unlikely that Fodor himself worked directly for the CIA, he was very well educated, spoke five languages, and had served five years in the U.S. Army’s intelligence branch. The undenied possibility that CIA agents abroad pretended to be guidebook researchers seems pretty plausible. Of course, how do you explain that none other than E. Howard Hunt wrote guidebooks to Cozumel and Guadalajara and other exotic destinations! Oh wait, those are spy novels. Or are they? Also consider this pivotal document signaling the souring of Fodor’s-CIA relations as late as 2004. Someone’s off the reservation, if you know what I mean.

About Us [Fodor’s]
E. Howard Hunt [Wikipedia]
CIA or State: Whose Advice Most Up to Date? [Fodor’s

]

Gridskipper on the Fodor Conspiracy

Ditch the Guidebook?

Some Cats Need Guidebooks

The Australian recently published a somewhat interesting and thought provoking article about the merits of taking a guidebook along with you on your next vacation. One author argues that your journey will be far more rewarding and adventurous without a guidebook, while publisher Tony Wheeler counters that guidebooks are, in most cases, an essential tool for all travelers.

I'd split this argument down the middle. Very few travelers would even consider a long journey across Indonesia or even a more accessible country such as Thailand without the aid of a guidebook. The countries are just too damn complicated for first-time travelers. However, if you've previously made an extended trip around Southeast Asia, and are in a more adventurous mood, then travel with a guidebook will almost certainly provide more adventure and unique experiences than yet again relying on the advice from guidebook writers.

Readers of the pack

Franz Wisner says guidebooks are no longer necessary. Lonely Planet's Tony Wheeler begs to differ

The Australian
July 09, 2005

GO ahead. Do it. I know the thought has crossed your mind ... probably the last time you walked into a tourist trap packed with fellow travellers holding the same copy of Fodor's or Lonely Planet.

Throw the guidebooks away. Or burn them in protest. Either way, your trips will improve dramatically. Think about it. When tourists come to Orange County, California, the guidebooks point them in the direction of Disneyland or the Newport Peninsula. Is this the best they have to offer? Do those places truly reflect Orange County today?

On the other hand, if the tourists spent a couple of minutes talking to Orange County residents, they'd learn about, say, a desolate beach in Laguna, a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Santa Ana or a pristine wilderness trail.

Still not convinced? Here are some more reasons. The whole concept of an up-to-date guidebook is impossible. Look at the date on yours. If you're lucky, it is only a year or two old. Or is it? Find a 10-year-old copy and you'll probably conclude the book hasn't been rewritten, just edited, tweaked and spruced up with fancy new photos.

How many people work for a guidebook? One hundred? Two hundred? Even if the number were 100,000, it wouldn't be adequate to scour every neighbourhood for the latest and greatest information. For example, I went to Rio and heard about a nightclub jammed with dance-crazy Brazilians. I saw no tourists the entire night. On a return trip, I saw no people the entire night. The Rio revellers had moved to another venue after declaring that one passe.

Of course none of this information was in the guidebooks. The only restaurants, clubs and bars they promote are the ones that have been around for years, the same types of establishments we avoid at home.

How about basic information concerning an area's main sights? The books do better here, I'll admit. The best ones throw in a decent history lesson or two along with detailed maps.

Still, they often miss things such as holiday schedules, hours that have been adjusted, discount days or the best times to view the must-see spots. Besides, all this information can be easily obtained with a quick stop at an information centre or through a chat with a concierge.

Another reason to ditch the guidebooks is the practice of paying for print. Though the reputable publishers prohibit payola practices, hotel, tour and restaurant owners across the world brag about buying favourable mentions.

In Vietnam, a cafe owner told me he sent money every year to a writer so his establishment would remain in a guidebook. He was angry with his cheap neighbour for refusing the bribe yet tacking up a sign that trumpeted a recommendation.

Think about having to get all your news from books, everything from weather reports to stock prices to headlines to sports scores. Impossible, right? Yet this is precisely the rationale of travellers who cling to guidebooks as their sole source of information.

Are you wavering yet? Here's what will happen if you do leave the guidebooks at home.

You'll talk to more people, many of them offering rides, meals or personal escorts in addition to recommendations. You'll feel as if you're experiencing something authentic as opposed to being led through another tourist trap. You'll travel far more spontaneously, taking advantage of gifts and opportunities when they arise. You'll realise you don't need to see everything on a trip. The churches and museums will still be there the next time. You'll probably make more friends with whom you'll stay in contact long after the journey is over. You'll feel like you know a location far better than you did with guidebook-dominated travel.

There are whole industries that exist solely by convincing travellers they cannot leave their homes without certain essential services: travel clothes, travel insurance, even travel agents in the age of the internet. The truth is you don't need any of them.



"I ALWAYS use your books," the letter said. "I take your list of hotels and when I arrive in town those are the places where I definitely don't stay. I don't want to bed down in a place where the only people I meet are fellow travellers. I never eat in a restaurant you recommend either. I certainly don't want to eat in a place where there's not a local in sight."

Well, that's an imaginative use of our Lonely Planet guidebooks, I thought. I could approve of that.

The cold reality is that many guidebook users rely on them far too much. For a spell we even put a warning in the front of our books: "This is not an instruction manual. Your warranty will not be voided if you decide to find your own restaurant; this is a guidebook, not a blueprint."

I'm in complete agreement with Franz Wisner that talking to the locals, putting an ear to the ground and wetting a finger to feel the breeze will all improve your trip. The best experiences on any visit are always the unexpected ones, the surprises that underline what travel is all about.

Many of those experiences are strictly ephemeral. Today's hot club is precisely that: hot today, gone tomorrow, and there's no way we're going to pretend that our guidebook can predict what will be the placewith the longest line-up at midnight this weekend.

But would I leave my guidebook behind when I'm travelling? Absolutely not. This week's cutting-edge nightclub may be worth chasing but there's usually a good reason a particular restaurant or bar has been around for years. It has become a long-term survivor because it does the job, it keeps the customers satisfied, it's reliable and honest. If we really avoided those places at home, they wouldn't stay in business. When we're in the mood for familiarity we'll go to the solid, time-worn place in our home town just as readily as on our travels.

Ditto for 10-year-old (or 1000-year-old) tourist attractions. We don't need to rewrite the history of the Taj Mahal with every edition of our India guidebook; we may worry a bit more about what pollution is doing to the marble, but essentially it's the same marvel it's always been and I'll still go back there every time I'm in Agra.

I'm happy to make repeat pilgrimages to the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower and a hundred other famous landmarks as well. I certainly don't want to miss the local tourist draw just because it's such a familiar part of the scenery that the locals don't even notice it any more.

As for places paying to get into our books, if we find a writer has been bribed, you can immediately add "ex" before the words "Lonely Planet writer". On the other hand, I'm not at all surprised that it was in Vietnam where Wisner encountered a cafe owner who had paid for a favourable mention. A few years ago in Vietnam, we discovered a cunning local had been following our writer around and dropping off an invoice at every establishment our researcher visited.

I don't like to point fingers but such sneaky deals are par for the course in the Vietnam tourist business.

Even the Government can't be trusted. A couple of editions earlier the Vietnamese Government had deported our writer, then set the presses rolling to print a pirated version of our guidebook, so this new variety of local enterprise is hardly surprising.

So experiment, go beyond your guidebook's limitations, but remember you can get bum advice from almost anywhere. The next time you arrive at a strange airport and that friendly taxi driver says, "Oh, I'm a local. Nobody uses the meter here. That's what everybody pays to get into town," don't complain to me if you've left your guidebook behind.

Franz Wisner's essay is an edited extract from his new book, Honeymoon with my Brother (Random House Australia, $32.95; www.honeymoonwithmybrother.com)

The Australian

Travel Writers and Subsidized Press Trips

Kalimantan by Carl Parkes

Here we go again, folks. Yet another self righteous and santimoneus article about the evils of travel writers accepting free or subsidized press trips. The author just can't seem to make up his mind about this common practice. Yes, large and wealthy publications such as The New York Times and Conde Nast Traveler can afford to pick up the costs of these trips, but very few small to medium newspapers or magazines can possible afford this luxury.

And freelance travel writers can rarely, rarely afford to actually pay full fare for press trips. The industry is dying (freelance travel writing) and if freelancers were required to pay for all expenses, that would be the death call. Anyway, do music reviewers pay for all their CDs? What about movie reviewers? Don't they have press previews for these people, or do they need to dig down into their pockets for $10? I doubt it. And they guy who does car reviews? And travel writers at big publishing houses? Has anyone heard about "press rates?"

Writers, Like Public Officials, Love Those Free Junkets
Public relations operatives for some vacation spots know that budget-crunched editors sometimes wink at the legal corruption. Editors hope their readers aren't angry after visiting so-so resorts praised by the travel writer.

Editor and Publisher
By Allan Wolper
July 07, 2005

This is a trip through what some cynics call the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" travel sections of newspapers, in which writers regale readers with tales paid for by the resorts they are covering. When politicians go on junkets to a tropical isle as guests of the corporations they're supposed to be monitoring, newspapers hound them with headlines charging them with selling out to special interests.

When a writer takes a free trip, his patron often gets the kind of positive coverage that's hard to buy even in a full-page ad. Hotels and cruise ships use this flattering copy in ads that run after the sub-sidized story is published.

This is hardly the way to win credibility. With travel costs rising almost as fast as real estate prices, newspapers owe their readers an independent appraisal of vacation spots. Some newspapers, sensitive to ethics violations in recent years, have instituted policies that forbid travel writers from accepting press or sponsored trips.

While editors can control the behavior of the full-time staff writers, it is difficult to catch the junketeering freelancers who dominate the newspaper travel sections at small and mid-sized dailies. Public relations operatives for some vacation spots know that budget-crunched travel editors wink at this legal corruption. Then they hope their readers aren't abused in some way while visiting the resorts praised by the travel writer.

"Our relationship with travel writers is like dealing with sausage," says Andrea Zani, travel editor of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison. "We don't know how the trips are put together. We know they go on press tours. We just hope we get a good story [out of] it."

That sausage process is exacerbated by the paltry fees newspapers pay their freelance travel writers — checks that sometimes don't even cover their airfare.

"The basic economics of travel writing where a writer takes a $5,000 trip and gets just $500 for it is ridiculous," says Catharine Hamm, travel editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Hamm's fees don't fit the bill, either. She pays $500 for a piece, $800 if it is a cover story. "Unless that person sells that story 10 or 15 times, he can't break even," said Hamm, noting that she allows her writers to resell their pieces. The L.A. Times freelance contract forbids writers from accepting any partial or full freebies, but the newspaper has a list of some three dozen people they caught doing just that.

When Hamm became travel editor in November 2003, she shut down a column that had run for 15 years called "Cruise Views" by the late Shirley Slater and her husband, Harry Basch. "It was about ethics," Hamm said.

No wonder: All the expenses for the traveling duo were covered by the ships on which they sailed. The paper disclosed the arrangement at the bottom of each column, but sticking a tag at the end of a story is nothing more than a plea bargain. It's saying, "we're on the take, but we're being up front about it."

It also skirts one of the most important rules of honest travel writing: going to a resort anonymously to experience the same conditions as an ordinary vacationer. Some papers don't understand that. New York's Daily News, claiming it was reforming its travel section, recently announced it will now let its readers know when the paper accepts a free trip. Until last month, it simply took them and didn't tell anyone.

Read the Rest