All in Current Events

Is It Safe To Visit Mexico?

Aysha Griffin
Current Events, cultural musings, travel, travel essay

words and photography by Aysha Griffin

 

“Aren’t you afraid?” and “Isn’t it dangerous?” These were the consistent questions posed by friends and family upon hearing I had booked a trip to Mexico. From my standpoint, it was a matter of avoiding winter’s cold, pursuing Spanish language studies and visiting American friends in San Miguel de Allende, a picturesque colonial city located in Mexico’s central state of Guanajuato.

San Miguel de Allende, MexicoWithout any fear I flew from Albuquerque to Leon-Guanajuato Airport, via Houston, avoiding any border violence issues, and a 90-minute shuttle bus ride delivered me to this established and renowned cultural enclave of ex-pats and snowbirds. But the question of danger and safety in Mexico is not an easy or simple one to answer.

There is violence in Mexico, as everywhere. I recall an Australian friend who, landing in L.A. for his first trip to the U.S., called to ask if he should buy a gun – a reasonable question given the FBI estimate of over 200 million privately-owned firearms.

Americans – with our recent history of internal terrorism (Oklahoma City), external terrorism (September 11th), intentional public shootings (Tucson supermarket), serial murderers, drive-by shootings, rapes and other domestic violence; with handgun murders a daily occurrence in U.S. cities, and the largest prison population in the world – are hardly in a position to point fingers at the dangers abroad.

However, there is something different happening in Mexico. At the core are not just anger, political intolerance, insanity and psychopathic behavior, but money and turf war power, with illegal drugs (primarily marijuana) as the medium.

Thirty years ago, when I lived and traveled in Mexico for six months, handguns were illegal and even the police were gunless. At that time, Mexico was an extremely safe place in regard to violent crime. Corruption, usually in the form of bribes to officials, was a known, accepted and non-violent interaction. That was two generations ago and the world has changed in countless ways.

The Egyptian Revolution: What Does It Mean for the Jews?

Carolyn Handler Miller
Current Events, Family Travel, Historic Travel, Personal essay, cultural musings

words + photos by Carolyn Handler Miller

 

Jews and Egypt. Two words that rarely meet in the same sentence. Unless you happen to be talking Bible talk and are retelling the story of Exodus, as we Jews do every spring during Passover. Or unless you are talking politics, and are discussing Egypt’s relationship with Israel.  Or unless you possess a torn old photo like the one I have, plus a burning curiosity and the chance to travel to Egypt.

You see, the relationship between Jews and Egypt is a highly personal one for me, and one that the revolution in Egypt brought into sharp focus.           

A large branch of my family once lived and thrived in Egypt until the 1950’s, when another Egyptian revolution, one barely remembered today, ultimately pushed Egyptian Jews into exile. In 1952, during that earlier revolution, King Farouk was forced to abdicate and soon after, Gamal Nasser took over the reins of government. Unlike the laid-back playboy king, Nasser was unfriendly to Jews. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, he declared them enemies of the state and Jews were no longer welcome in the country.

So the entire Egyptian branch of family fled to Paris. At that point, we, the American branch of the family, lost track of them. As far as we all knew, the story ended there.

And we might have forgotten all about them, except for this old black and white photo set in a broken wooden frame. It had been passed down from family member to family member and had finally fallen into my hands when none of my cousins showed any interest in it. Though they mocked the old-fashioned looking group, I found them fascinating. I longed to know more about them and their exotic life in Egypt.

The photo captures my Great Grandmother at a family reunion in Alexandria.

TUNISIA: How I Dipped A Toe In The Revolution

Judith Fein
Current Events, Travel Opinion, Uncensored Travel, cultural musings, north africa, travel essay, tunisia

by Judith Fein

 

The last time Americans were riveted to a foreign square, it was Tiananmen, and the year was 1989. Anti-government demonstrators –mostly students and intellectuals--wanting more democracy and less autocracy filled the square in Bejing.  Other protests erupted around the People’s Republic of China. In a show of force the T.V. audience will never forget, government tanks rolled into the square and gunned down thousands of demonstrators. Tiananmen Square went silent, and the subject of the massacre is still taboo in China.

This time, all eyes were on Egypt and Tahrir Square. Once again, young protestors defiantly showed their opposition to the government and demanded that Hosni Mubarak pack up his toys of dictatorship and leave Egypt. But Mubarak played by his own rules, and when his trifling concessions were rejected, when even his offer not to run again was scorned, he pulled a Tiananmen—sending in his heavy guns to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd.

photo by Peta-de-Aztlan via flickr common license

The protestors refused to buckle, and the Egyptian nation mourned its innocent dead who were assassinated for demanding freedom. The world watched and wept and then rejoiced with them.

The ignition key to revolution was turned on by tiny Tunisia, in North Africa. The protestors upended the 23-year reign of autocrat Ben Ali, drove him into exile and exacted the dissolution of his corrupt RCD party. In a rapid move toward democracy, Ben Ali’s minions were fired or resigned, and the young people exulted in what, for many, was the first freedom they had known in their lives.

The cost of this revolution was high: as many as two hundred young lives were snuffed out. And, in a country of 10 million, everyone was affected by this horrible loss of life. There is mass mourning for the deaths, and the victims are considered martyrs to the cause of freedom.

Tunisia is one of my favorite countries in the world. I have been there seven times, lived there for 6 months when I was making two films with my husband, and have a deep and abiding affection for the gentle, kind, extremely generous Tunisians.

TUCSON AFTER THE SHOOTING: To go or not to go?

TUCSON AFTER THE SHOOTING: To go or not to go?

Eric Lucas
Current Events, Travel Opinion, Uncensored Travel, cultural musings

It was just an ordinary neighborhood Safeway until a heavily armed lunatic showed up with a pistol. What happened next was disastrous.

I’m speaking, of course, of our local Safeway in Ballard, Washington, where I live—but you thought I was talking about the store in the Tucson foothills where an unbalanced young American gunned down six people and tried to assassinate a U.S. congresswoman. What happened at the Ballard Safeway was “milder” but in its own way illuminating, and the irony struck me because both places are well known to me. I visit Tucson a half-dozen times a year and wrote a guide to the city for a major global internet site. I am very fond of both places. I buy great heaps of toilet paper at the Ballard Safeway; at the Tucson Safeway, I help out my dad by loading up sacks of salt for his water softener.

First-Person Report From Egypt

First-Person Report From Egypt

W.M. Wiggins
Current Events, Uncensored Travel

words and photography by W.M. Wiggins

On arrival at the Cairo airport from JFK, we (the passengers) were taken by the standard jet-to-terminal bus. I noticed on the tarmac a "Special" aircraft parked all by itself on the ramp and heavily guarded. I am fairly sure who operates this jet. Lots of pilots call them Caspers. A Casper is a jet or aircraft with NO tail numbers or markings whatsoever. It shows up, and then it disappears......like the ghost. In this case, Casper was white.

The following day, we were road-blocked as three heavily armed SUVs sped down the street. Please note...there are NO OTHER SUV's like this in Cairo...at least I have not seen them. But you might find these same S.U.V.'s being used by folks who are "visiting" Iraq.  I also noticed a C-130 Hercules taking off later...either from Cairo or Luxor. And I thought: now, isn't that special? 

TUNISIA AFTER THE REVOLUTION: Why you will want to go

Judith Fein
Current Events, Uncensored Travel, cultural musings, tunisia

words by Judith Fein; photography by Paul Ross

 

I am  in love...with Tunisia. When I close my eyes and think about the kindness, hospitality and open-heartedness of the Tunisian people, I want to jump on a plane and go back. I've been to Tunisia seven times, lived there for six months, made two films about the country. But I hardly expected what has happened over the last week: there has been a grass-roots revolution.  The Tunisian people have risen up against their tyrannical leader, and said no to repression. They have risked their lives in their fight for freedom. 

In my lifetime, the Solidarity movement in Poland catapulted to power. The Berlin wall fell. The Soviet Union fell apart. And now, in a small Arab Muslim nation in North Africa, a despot has been deposed and the people are demanding democracy. 

READ why I think the revolution and the country should be on your radar in my RECENT ARTICLE FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST

And maybe, this year, if the stars are aligned correctly, you'll JOIN ME FOR A TRIP to the new Tunisia.  If you're game, drop me an email. 

 

Pledge of Peace

Judith Fein
Current Events, Personal essay, Travel Opinion, Uncensored Travel, cultural musings, life

by Judith Fein

 

There’s this organ in the middle of my chest that obliges me every second of every day by beating. It can be wounded, disarmed and stunned, but it keeps on doing its job. And it only asks me for one thing in return: “stay open,” it whispers. “Just stay open.”

photo by wiccked via flickr common licenseMaybe at one point in time it was a real effort. I think I recall suspicions I harbored and some swirling fears. But, over the years, my heart does its job and I do mine. It beats, I stay open. Not all the time—because there are hurts that catch me off guard and cause me to recoil—but, as a rule, I stay exposed in life.

The risk, as you can imagine, is pain. The reward is pleasure, connection, and the ability to feel freely. I have weighed risk and reward and come down on the side of the latter.

My heart and I have traveled widely, and when someone asks me what my favorite country is I generally answer, “the last one I visited.” I am moved by the generosity, quirkiness and depth of the people I meet on the road. I love their cultures and customs and the unique way they navigate life.

Islam Controversy Heats Up Dinner in Normandy

Vera Marie Badertscher
Current Events

 

Inside the old stone farmhouse in Normandy, a small Buddha statue sits on the sideboard in the dining room. Photographs depict people from various cultures--Cambodian, Malaysian, Thai. The host and hostess of this chambre d'hôte, have traveled widely. She is fluent in English and he, the photographer, slightly less confident in the 2nd language.

My husband Ken knows only a few words of French and I remember a bit from college.  We are seated at the dinner table with eight French guests, only one of whom can communicate at all in English.  I think of him as Monsieur Traveler, because he lists all the places he has visited in the United States.

After serving a hand-made paté and the bread whose homey aroma has been teasing me since we arrived after our tour of World War II sites, our hostess introduces the guests. Ken and I eat the entreé of local Camembert cheese baked in a flaky crust as the enthusiastic conversation in French flows around us.  I can catch a word here and there, but am frustrated not to understand--particularly the obviously entertaining tales of Monsieur One-Arm who is seated three people away from me on my right.

Madam Traveler watches Monsieur One-Arm, her eyes open wide. From time to time, as he speaks with gusto, she gasps or puts her thin hand to her mouth and says “Oh-h-h” as he tells his tale, which has to do with his being in Vietnam in 1960.  Monsieur Traveler synopsizes the long story. “He lost his arm in Vietnam.” It is a reminder that the “American War” was first the “French War.”

At some point after the serving of the delicately cooked fish, Monsieur One-Arm looks at me and speaks to Monsieur Traveler, who replies to him and then turns to me. “He asked if you could understand.  I said I speak slowly to you and you understand.”

Mustering my courage, I say, nodding toward the right end of the table, “Monsieur parle tres vite, mais j'ecoute lentement.”  The French vacationers laugh at my “speaks very fast/listen slowly,” and Monsieur is off to the races again. But this time, it is a question for me.

“He wants to know,” says Monsieur Traveler, ”what you think of the mosque in New York City.”

Break a Taboo, Save the Water

Break a Taboo, Save the Water

Jules Older
Current Events, Environmental Commentary

by Jules Older

 

Here's a fact: this summer, we’re gonna run short of water.

And here's a probability: water shortages will only get worse.

You don’t need a Ph.D. or a crystal ball to know that. Or to know the standard advice on what you can do about it.

Fix leaky faucets. Check.

Put a brick in your toilet tank. Check.

Buy a low-volume toilet. Check.

Stop watering the lawn. Check.

Tear up the lawn, and plant cactus. Check. 

All that’s well and good, but there are other solutions that somehow don’t get talked about. Sometimes it’s because they go against long-ingrained habits, sometimes because they break long-standing taboos. Yet they offer a far cheaper solution than low-volume toilets. They're free.

Recession Economics

Bethany Ball
Current Events, Life Lessons

by Bethany Ball

 

Since I took my first New York City job nearly fifteen years ago, I have always been on the wrong side of financial history. My first job was in publishing house twenty-five years old, making twenty two thousand dollars a year. This was at the time when an enterprising college grad could make one hundred and fifty thousand at a nebulous place called Anderson Consulting. Still it was a lot of money to me at the time. I’d just arrived to New York from Santa Fe where I’d been living off about half that.  Plus, in New York, I got health insurance. It wasn’t that it was such a small salary; it was just that my income wasn’t subsidized. No fiancé, no wealthy boyfriend slipping me thousand dollar checks, no parents helping me out. I was on my own. After I’d moved to another company for the princely sum of twenty six thousand, I was once again on the wrong side of things: a majority of the other companies agreed to pay their employees no lower than thirty thousand. All the other companies, that is, except mine.

Even once I found my way to the dot-com world, which bumped my salary up considerably (my managing editor laughed when I told her how much I stood to make once I left her company, “You’ll make that in ten years, here.”) I found out that one of my co-workers, younger than me and with less experience had negotiated a much larger salary then I had. She clearly knew what was what. What had seemed like so much money to me was nothing compared to what my co-workers brought home. Money was flush in those dot-com years. It was the Sex and the City years of ten-dollar Cosmos and four hundred dollar Manolo Blahniks. But I didn’t know that. I couldn’t afford cable.

And then I got married. “It’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man,” my mother had told me, as everyone’s mother does.  And my husband was rich. At least, he was rich to me. When we went out to dinner, he picked up the check. For the first time in my adult life I discovered the appetizer menu. We’d married right away so that he could stay in the States and now there was always money in my bank account. No more scrounging around in the floor of my closets for subway money. Things were going well. After a move to Miami and back, we got a sweet deal on the top floor of a friend’s townhouse in the West Village. Our friend rented it to us for almost half its market value. This was after my son was born and I spent every good weather day avoiding the Sex and the City tour bus lines and peering into Marc Jacobs’ window on Bleecker as I made my way to Magnolia Bakery before crossing the street to the park. I loved my sun-filled apartment, and pushing my son in his MacLaren all around the city.

The Ski Report from 2025

Jules Older
Current Events, Environmental Commentary

by Jules Older

 

Though most Alaskans, Vermonters and Minnesotans are enjoying the unprecedented winter warmth, skiers are not. Except in freak years, like 2014 and the epic 2015, there's precious little snow falling on mountains. Rain, yes; snow — not with any consistency and not ‘when it’s supposed to.’ Sir Albert Gore, as everyone except the most recalcitrant deniers now concede, was right — climate change proved to be all-too real.

Here's where we stand in February, 2025.

Europe’s lower slopes have reverted to pasture; in the foothills of the Alps, goats have replaced skiers. New Zealand’s already short season is, most years, down to three weeks. There's no more skiing in Australia except for water skiing.

But snow skiing has almost saved Dubai. Even with its current tourism woes, winter sport is thriving there; they now have sixteen indoor hills open 24/7 and three more under construction.

American skiers look at Dubai with open envy. In New England, the only ski resorts left are Killington and Jay Peak in Vermont, Sugarloaf and the newly important Saddleback in Maine. All four have pretty much given up opening before New Years; all four are spending big bucks promoting spring skiing. Slogan: “April is way cool!”

Except for Jiminy Peak, which had the foresight to install plastic bristles in 2118, and Wachusett, which covered itself with a dome the following year, there is not a single outdoor ski area left in southern New England.

The entire mid-Atlantic ski business has been wiped out, along with most of the Midwest. In the West, New Mexico, southern Utah and with two exceptions, California, are ski-free zones.

In California, there's still lift-accessed snow on what was the top of Mammoth Mountain and, during relatively cold winters, on Kirkwood’s upper slopes. In Utah, Brian Head is now “the country’s biggest mountain-bike terrain park.” California’s Heavenly promotes “big-mountain living.” Colorado’s Vail is “Your mountain dream.” Everybody uses “mountain;” only the lucky few mention “snow.”

Ask the Captain: Jamaica Airplane Crash

W.M. Wiggins
Ask The Captain, Current Events

Plane Talk: Got a question? Ask the Captain!

Do you have a question about airline safety, flight etiquette, jet lag, or air travel in general? Submit your question and look for answers in a future column.

by W. M. Wiggins

What did you see as the problem in the American Airlines Jamaica runway accident? 

 

First, I saw the problem, landing with a tailwind (possibly) out of limits. Then I see what appears to be some of the best publications relations in the realm of corporate aviation.

 The following is my opinion:

Basic airplane 101 says, point that little puppy (the jet or “de plane”, “de plane” ) into the wind for all takeoffs and landings.

The “Specs” or specifications for the Boeing 737-800 say max takeoff / landing tailwind component is 10 knots. Please note, it does NOT say About, Sorta’or Kinda’10 kts. It says 10 kts. This will be important later.

Then the  “Specs” goes on to say…There “May” be 15kts ( tailwind) as customer option. Hmmm? Seems just a tad contradictory, yes?

Uh, NO, not really.

What that means, basically, is that Boeing is “on the hook legally” for that 10 kt tailwind number.

Now, but, but, but what about that 15 kts?

Well, that’s “Show me the $$ money $$ time.

Peace and union for all

Peace and union for all

Eric Lucas
Current Events, cultural musings

The afternoon sun was highlighting the vineyard rows next to us as I asked my Croatian guide the key question of the day, if not of all days. She stopped short, appraised me for a minute and smiled, but not an easy smile, one weighed against both pain and promise.

“Of course I visit Serbia. I have many Serbian friends. They are our neighbors. Each people, each country, there are bad persons and good. We do not hold to the bitterness of the past,” Biljana declared. “We must not.

“Do you understand?”

Boycott Mexico? No, boycott American stupidity

Boycott Mexico? No, boycott American stupidity

Eric Lucas
Current Events, cultural musings, travel, travel essay, travel writing

The market vendor handed me the sack of fresh-made potato chips she’d just hauled out of the fryer, and motioned that I should add a bit of salt and lime juice. I told her thanks in my serviceable Spanish (mil gracias, senora) and did as instructed. Then I gently lifted one chip from the sack and took an experimental bite. I’d never tasted made-on-the-spot potato chips until my wife and I wandered by this food cart in the market in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico.

It was the best potato chip ever.

Too bad that one potato chip had more mental acuity than some of our own countrymen. Don’t go to Mexico and spend your money, urge the Americans United to Halt Tourism in Mexico, on the novel theory that the way to discourage Mexican immigrants from coming here to earn money is for us to not go there and spend money.