Omnivore’s Revenge

Omnivore’s Revenge

Jules Older
Lifestyle, Personal essay

by Jules Older

 

I am not a vegetarian.

I say it with pride: I am not a vegetarian.

But I live with a vegetarian — well, a mostly vegetarian, and when the vegetarian’s daughters (and mine) come home, then we get into serious vegetarianism. Because I'm outnumbered, three to one.

Now, I have nothing — well, almost nothing — against vegetarianism. It’s true, I think the best diet is a richly diverse one. And it’s true that I think everything about us, from our taste buds to the shape of our teeth to our digestive systems, indicates that we are built for eating meat as well as tofu.

But at home, I'm more likely to get tofu.

That’s why it gave me such pleasure when the editor of Vermont Magazine called and said, “Jules, m’boy, we’d like you to get yourself down to Windsor. Write us a story on the New England BBQ Championships.”

And I was even happier when he added, “Oh, and bring the vegetarian photographer with you.”

Payback’s a brisket.

Legend of the Betelnut Princess

Kristin Mock
Off-the-beaten path destination, cultural musings, exotic travel, travel essay

by Kristin Mock

This is not the betelnut princess I imagined. This woman is sitting outside her one-room apartment tying waxy betel leaves around smooth, ivory-colored nuts while her daughter does math problems out of a textbook and sips a cup of mango juice. She has been tying betel leaves for hours, flinging them onto a waxy mountain of wrapped-up nuts piled high in a cloudy glass case, snatching one every once in a while and placing it between her lips. It is this, the stained lips, the tell-tale pink with a hint of scarlet, the color I’d come to learn as the betelnut smile, that holds my curiosity most as she hands me a paper bag.

We are on the tiny tropical island of Xiao Liuqiu, a wet and humid place off the southwest coast of Taiwan. After driving home on the two-person motor scooter we’d rented that morning, Matt, a Canadian adventure writer who lived in Taiwan for seven years, and I sit on a wooden swing outside of my purple bungalow overlooking the sparkling lights on the shores of the South China Sea, and I learn the legend of the betelnut.

"What Color is Your Paris Shoot?"*

Paul Ross
Art and Culture

story + photos by Paul Ross
      (*warning: contains no photos of Paris)

There are just too many photo contests out there. Most of them are meaningless –except to those running the competition and collecting fees.

The winners sometimes get gear and money but --with lottery-like odds-- the payoff is more often mere bragging rights and having your work displayed in cyberspace, which is the electronic equivalent of being tacked-up on a refrigerator.

In spite of all the preceding, when my wife found and forwarded one notice, the competition caught my eye. “Capture the Colour” (the contest is Brit-based) has separate judges for images concentrated around each of five hues: red, white, green, blue and yellow. Given my opinion that many in the photo world are enslaved by the unwritten artistic law that serious photography is B&W, this contest had instant appeal. It got me thinking, and not just about my own photos.

Consider the topic:  colors are more than the result of physics and its interaction with human anatomy. They’re emotional. Psychologists and marketers would tell you that blue is “cool,” white is “clean” and red “passionate.” At least in our contemporary society. In other cultures and in other times and places, it’s different. Among some Native Americans, certain colors are linked to the cardinal directions (North= white, West=black, South=yellow and East=red). In Christian traditions, white stood for purity, red signaled blood and, borrowing from the Roman Empire that alternately repressed and embraced the church, the color purple was royal.

Dancing With Martha Graham

Nancy King
Art and Culture, Life Lessons, Personal essay

Martha Graham 1948 via Wikipedia Commons LicenseThe Martha Graham School of Dance was in an old mansion on East 63rd street between 2nd and 3rd avenues in New York City. Walking into the building was like entering the temple of a high priestess whose devotees all looked alike—the men, gorgeous, tall, well built, strutting around in tights so revealing I blushed each time I tried not to look. The women, tall, thin, yet muscular, their long dark hair pulled into buns or twists, not a hair daring to disturb the sleek coiffures. 

Confessions of a Slow Traveler

B.J. Stolbov
Lifestyle, Personal essay, travel essay

by B.J. Stolbov

 

I don’t like jets.  Yes, I know, they are the most convenient way to get somewhere far away quickly, but I still don’t like them.  Jets are just tubes with seats.  Soulless.  They make me feel detached from the earth.

I don’t like taxis, either.  I know that they get me quickly from place to place, mostly to or from airports.  They are a necessary convenience.  I often try to engage the taxi driver in conversation, but we both know that this is only a business transaction, and I know that the taxi driver’s job is to make the most money from an uninformed traveler.  I find it unpleasant, and I’m glad to pay and get out of a taxi as quickly as possible.

I do like to travel slowly.  I try to choose the slowest form of transportation available: be it car, bus, motor scooter, bicycle, boat, canoe, kayak, raft, horse, mule, elephant, or, my favorite, walking.  I like to see the landscape; I like to see mountains and rivers, rocks and caves, trees and plants.  It is the scenery moving by me slowly that soothes my soul.

Sure, I want to go somewhere, but the where is not really the point.  A hotel room is just a bed with a roof (when you close your eyes, all hotel rooms look the same).  A simple guesthouse with a friendly host is fine for me.  A bed under the stars is better.  When I want to see places, I want to see the roads, rivers, and paths that connect these places.  The adventure is in the getting there.

For me, traveling is in the snap of a twig underfoot bringing me directly into the world around me, the creaking of a bicycle seat at the turn at the bottom of a hill, the rocking in the wind and waves of the small boat, the bumping and bouncing of a bus, the road and the trees and the fields rolling by, the houses with their doors open, and the people, especially the children, smiling and waving as I go by; they are all a part, the most important part, of my journey. 

Boquete Wife Fights

Stephen W. May
Family Travel, Personal essay, travel essay

by Stephen W. May

Seated at Boquete Garden Inn’s small bar in Panama, my wife Joyce, our friend Bill and I, struck up a conversation with Dennis, the owner of the inn.  Dennis’s wavy blond hair, chiseled, stern and weathered face was tough and thoughtful, but young at the same time.  I chalked him up to the middle-aged surfer type.

Having access to someone like Dennis, a veritable treasure trove of local information on tap, beats even the best tips that any Frommer’s or Lonely Planet guide has to offer.  He rattled off a list of main attractions- the Café Ruiz coffee plantation, nature hikes, decent bars and the least touristy and most authentic restaurants in town.

Sensing my lackluster response, Dennis raised an eyebrow and leaned forward.  “There is one other experience.  If you go, watch it from a distance,” he warned.

In downtown Boquete, there is a bar that is frequented by the Ngobe Indians, native Panamanians that are non-Spanish speaking.  The Ngobe are the primary labor force behind Boquete’s vibrant coffee plantation operations.  After a hard day’s work picking coffee beans, they unwind at the bar with friends and family.

Ngobe Indian men have a unique form of conflict resolution.  Whenever a serious dispute arises, the men engage in an one-on-one fist fight, usually on top of broken shards of glass bottles, in an alleyway leading to the bar.  The last man standing is the winner with the conflict resolved in his favor.

Ten Tips To Stay Safe While Traveling Abroad

Norm Schriever
Travel Tips, cultural musings

by Norm Schriever

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all around the world but also witnessed an unbelievable array of street scams and hustles.  From Cairo to Caracas, Amsterdam to Amman, someone was always trying to sell me wolf tickets: the fake drunk, the razor blade slash, the Rio shoe scam, money exchange bait-and-switches, shifting walls, high-speed car chases through barrios, muggers with machetes, riots shrouded in tear gas, clans of pickpocketing gypsies, exotic temptresses who slip something in your drink, being a guest in a Third World jail, and running for my life from the Triads, the Chinese mafia.  I even survived an elaborate and well-orchestrated grift in Bolivia involving fake policemen with a fake police car and a kilo of fake cocaine that had me sweating like a hostage.  But please don’t let all of this discourage you from grabbing your passport and exploring the beautiful world we live in; you’ll find most places to be as safe as your front porch if you exercise some basic rules of caution:   

1.     Stay ready and you won’t have to get ready.

Before you embark make copies of your passport, medical card, credit cards, and travel itinerary.  Give a copy to a friend back home and keep one set with you, separate from the real thing. Email any pertinent information to yourself through a web based email account so you can get it from any hotel or internet café if needed.  Check in with the U.S. embassy when you arrive.  I even keep $20 folded under the sole of my shoe for emergencies.

2.     Don’t be the ugly American.

Don’t draw negative attention to yourself.  If you’re going to party overseas (which I highly encourage) don’t get too drunk and always take a taxi at night.  Don’t accept an open drink from someone or leave yours unattended.  Most importantly, never mess with drugs while you’re in a foreign country - I have a friend serving five years in a Costa Rican prison who can back me up on this.

An Innocent Goes To Las Vegas

Tiara Saikia
travel essay

by Trish Saikia

 

Several years ago I took my first of many business trips to Las Vegas. I was still young in my career, learning the ropes of traveling alone, and excited to see Sin City. I walked up and down the Strip, took the monorail from resort to resort, and meandered through several casino floors too scared and naive to have a clue about how to gamble.

I had heard about the bright lights and amazing shows, but didn’t have much money to buy a ticket to a fancy headliner show. So I went to the hotel (a hotel I won’t name since it has since been razed and replaced) concierge and asked for help. She mentioned a few shows to me, asking what my “level of taste” was. Not understanding what that meant, I told her I wanted “lots of glitter, glam, and showgirls.” BIG mistake. At first she showed me a completely topless revue. Who offers a young single woman tickets to a topless revue?? I said no. Next she showed me a too-family-friendly show. I said no, I wanted something less tame than that. She showed me a show featuring ice skaters, a singer, a motorcycle that would do flips, and said it had “lots of glitter, glam, and showgirls.” She assured me it was within walking distance from my hotel. She also added, “this one is very tastefully done.” I bought a ticket and couldn’t wait to go.

A Night at the Bates Motel

Candy Harrington
Life Lessons, Personal essay, road trip, travel essay

by Candy Harrington

 

Sometimes you should really just go with your gut instinct when you’re on the road. Such was the case when we motored up to a rural Indiana motel late last fall. Granted it was only 3:45 P.M. and check-in wasn’t until 4 :00, but since there were only six rooms I figured it really wouldn’t be a problem. Well, I figured wrong.

To be honest, just walking into the motel office gave me the creeps. It was small and dingy and covered in dust; but to be fair, everything in that part of the country was covered in dust. And then there was the manager, who at first wouldn’t take her eyes off the mini television in front of her, or even acknowledge that another person had entered the room. I cleared my throat a few times. No response. I made some noise and shuffled my feet a bit. Still no response. Finally, I awkwardly blurted out, Hello, I’m here to check-in. That at least elicited a stony cold look.

The Magical Dunes of White Sands

The Magical Dunes of White Sands

Jean Kepler Ross
Nature, Off-the-beaten path destination, road trip, travel essay, travel photography

words + photos by Jean Kepler Ross

They say one picture is worth a thousand words. I believe being there is worth a thousand pictures.

For several years, I edited a travel guide about New Mexico and saw many photos of the gorgeous white sand dunes in southern New Mexico, known as White Sands. Each photo illustrated the beauty of the dunes - sensuous mounds of sand, blooming yuccas, delicate lavender wildflowers, kids jumping off the dunes into space...it all intrigued me. I traveled in that area a few times but never had a chance to actually visit White Sands until a few weeks ago.

Sardinia’s Coastal Towers: The silent watchers

Silvia Pe
Art and Culture, Historic Travel, Personal essay, cultural musings, life

by Silvia Pe

 

We were all children once. Childhood is the time of dreams and fantasies, when our imagination craves great adventures. I wonder if there’s a child who has never dreamt of becoming the king of an enchanted, beautiful castle? It was my dream when I was six.

I grew up in Sardinia, listening to the legends of the proud guardians of the Sardinian coastline. My favourite locations were the coastal towers: They’re scattered along the edges of the whole island, from Cagliari to Alghero, from Oristano to Siniscola, placed to form a big protective circle. My Sardinian history teacher was my grandfather, an old fashioned sailor.

He was a charming middle-aged man. His broad shoulders and rather serious demeanor gave him an authoritarian look, but he had kind eyes. He loved to enchant me by gesturing with his knotty hands, telling me about the Sardinian silent watchers… Built to resist the pirate’s incursions, the towers were managed, equipped and defended by the Royal Tower Administration, a proto-agency based in Cagliari. A stone in Uras dating back to 1546 stands as a witness of one of the incursions by the infamous Red Beard, or Barbarossa as we call him (his real name being Khayr al-Din).

The towers were placed in a way that allowed the watchers to communicate using visuals and sounds, without leaving their stations… a little bit like when I was in front of my grandpa and my thoughts started running as if into a dream world.

Hippie Bob

Jules Older
cultural musings, travel essay, travel writing

by Jules Older

 

Sure, I wanted to go to San Francisco. Cable cars, Chinatown, Golden Gate… and something more. Daughter Willow had moved to the Haight district, which in my day was the hippie epicenter of the world. What a chance to introduce Willow to her dad’s own, personal history! So I signed us both up for something called the Haight-Ashbury Hippie History Bus Tour.

Along with four 20-year-olds — I think they were history students — Willow and I climbed aboard the bus — the psychedelic VW bus — owned and operated by tour leader, Hippie Bob.

H.B. was in his fifties. He wore a long, graying ponytail and those little, round John Lennon glasses. He had on enough love beads to serve as a flotation device, and he smelled of a familiar herb; maybe it was patchouli. Maybe not. 

Just the guy to teach my daughter modern American history. 

“Hippies like me came out to the Haight for the Summer of Love,” Hippie Bob began. “We lived in communes in big old houses like the ones on this street.”

“When was the Summer of Love, Bob?” Willow asked. 

“In the sixties, man. Definitely in the sixties. And call me Hippie Bob. That’s my handle, you dig?”

Willow looked puzzled. “I, uh, dig, but when in the sixties, Bo — Hippie Bob?”

“I dunno. We weren't all hung up with numbers and dates and stuff back then. If it feels good, do it.” 

I piped up, trying to help the history lesson progress. “Wasn’t that 1967, Hippie Bob? And weren't there many famous rock stars and other cultural icons living right here in the Haight?”

Belly Dancing in Bali

Artemes C. Turchi
Art and Culture, Personal essay, Travel Humor

by Artemes C. Turchi

It was a given that I would be the only male in the weekly belly dancing class that I took off and on for years. Being a gay man, you would think that I would be put off by the incredible lack of testosterone. It actually was a blessing because I didn’t have the distraction of watching gorgeous men moving their muscular bodies. Therefore, I paid closer attention to the instructor and learned how to do the many tribal movements with grace and ease. Who knew that eventually I would get the chance to wiggle my hips in a far away, exotic land.

Fat and Happy

Fat and Happy

Ariel Bleth
Art and Culture, Personal essay, Transformational Travel, cultural immersion, exotic travel

by Ariel Bleth

 

“Promise you will stay one more year.  We are so happy with how you relate to us.  And you are happy, yes?  You are getting fat.”  Looking at Mama Ami, I know she is quite serious.  How would she know that where I come from, being called fat isn’t exactly a compliment? My mind jumps full speed into a rapid analysis of how much I may have changed in the months since my arrival in Nigeria – a diet primarily of okra or bitter green soups with starchy porridges; the occasional dish with beans and crayfish but general deficiency of good protein; the dearth of fresh produce in our market, the lack of refrigeration and my waning interest in learning the labor intensive traditional methods of preparing their dishes – anything was possible. Snapping out of it, I let myself simply feel pleased that they are comfortable with my presence.   

Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how comfortable I would be here – a country of over 200 different ethnic groups, a mixture of Muslims and Christians, an international image well ensconced in corruption and scams.  But here I was, living in a small town, working for a local organization whose office was housed on the family compound.  The business’ fish tanks and hatchery edged one side of a large dirt yard otherwise surrounded by the homes of the cousins, their families, and the elder mamas.  Sitting on the porch with Mama Ami and her husband Joshua, I know she is right - I am happy.  The contentment has been unfolding so slowly I barely noticed it; made up of hundreds of tiny milestones of recognition and inclusion.

The Great Migration Outside My Window

Kristine K. Mietzner
Environmental Commentary, Lifestyle, Personal essay, Wildlife , travel writing

by Kristine Mietzner

Eyelids closed, I postpone viewing the new day. I linger in dreamtime until a familiar honking breaks the morning stillness in Benicia, California, a waterside community thirty miles north of San Francisco. The world outside my window rests under the great Pacific flyway, the north-south path of North American migratory birds. 

Eyes wide open; I peer through the bedroom window in time to see Canada geese, a trio in flight, noisily bound elsewhere, calling to one another, beaks pointed, necks stretched; chests lifted upward, wings flapping hard. I track their flight over Southampton Bay, the cove on Benicia’s west end. The pale gray clouds of the marine layer blanket the opposite shore of the Carquinez Strait. This wide watery ribbon funnels fully half of California’s water drainage through a deep channel on its way to the Pacific Ocean.   

Cuddling under a soft, embroidered, cotton quilt, while I marvel at the waterfowl, Franz Kafka’s translated words come to mind.  

You do not need to leave your room.

Remain sitting at your table and listen.

Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, 

it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The universe blesses Benicia with a significant year-round presence of waterfowl—mallards, coots, the great blue heron, and snowy egret. Spring brings an upswing in activity: nesting and the annual migration of some birds to points north. 

Spiritual GPS: Discovering holiness in every moment

Richard Rossner
Personal essay, Sacred Places, Spirituality

by Richard Rossner

Where can we find holiness?

Sometimes I feel like I am in a grand hide-and-seek game with the Creator.  Just when I think I’ve found the deepest of the deep, He escapes me.  Just when I’ve found the perfect light, the right sound, the special spot for a spiritual experience, a hiccup or sneeze ruins the instant.

Then again, moments in life occasionally arrange themselves to create spontaneous experiences that become life-long memories with deep teachings that touch the soul.  They sneak up on you like the first warm smell of Spring that subtly tickles your nose.  You have to stop to make sure they really happened.  To miss these moments would be to miss the juiciest slices of life.

In 1994, I had just moved from Los Angeles to Scottsdale, Arizona.  The Northridge earthquake shook up more than the foundations of my West L.A. town home.  I was shaken to my very core.  I wanted out.  I had been blinded by too much show biz (I had been a writer on a hit show), too much disappointment (I was off the hit show and didn’t bag another staff position), and I was finally tiring of too much life in and out of the Hollywood fishbowl.

A Very Thai Massage

Adam Jones-Kelley
Art and Culture, Foreign Language, Personal essay, Travel Humor, cultural musings

Thailand is renowned for having some of the world’s best prostitutes.

It also has some of the scariest.

My first order of business upon arriving in Bangkok was an early morning trek to the Damnernsaduak Floating Market, a 90 minute drive south of town in light traffic, and one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever been. 

The Damnernsaduak Floating Market is a series of canals lined by rickety wooden stalls selling all manner of goods, from tacky tourist items to local art and sculptures. You can purchase exotic spices and oils, native clothing, a vast array of fresh fruits, and even play with snakes.

When you arrive at Damnernsaduak you hire one of the long-tailed wooden boats to guide you through the markets. A 2-hour tour is around 300 Bhat (about $9), and the boatman will just float along past shops til one peaks your interest and you ask him to pull up alongside. There are also numerous merchants in other boats selling fresh fruits, meats, or cool drinks. They’ll pull up beside your boat to pour you hot tea, show off their fruits, or describe (always in a language I don’t understand) what their meat on the stick is and why you must buy it.

In the middle of the market is a non-descript shack that at first glance appears to be selling nothing. There are a couple of guys lounging in chairs enjoying a smoke. Upon closer inspection you discover that the men are draped in huge snakes, and are all too eager to show them off to interested tourists.

I can’t resist bad decisions like this, so of course I stopped.

In Wales, Nothing is Quite What it Seems

In Wales, Nothing is Quite What it Seems

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Personal essay, Sacred Places

by Elyn Aviva

We were savoring our after-dinner espressos at Llys Meddyg, a “restaurant with rooms,” in Newport, Pembrokeshire, Wales, when my cell phone rang. I looked at it suspiciously.

During the week we had stayed at Llys Meddyg the cell phone had never functioned inside the hotel. There simply wasn’t any signal. To make a phone call, I had to walk down the street waving it in the air until gradually the bars started showing up.

The phone kept ringing. I answered it and heard a woman’s voice, speaking rapidly. “Hi, this is Winifred. I hear you’re going to write about my land. If you write about my land, you’d better get it right!”

“Hello,” I replied. “How’d you hear about us?”

“My friend David told me. When can we meet?”

The phone suddenly cut out. I ran outside the restaurant and down the street, looking for a signal. One bar, two bars, three. I tried to return the call. It rang once and Winifred answered.

“Sorry, we lost the connection.” I said.

“It’s because of all the volcanic rock in the Preselis. It interferes with cell phone transmissions.”

“So that’s why!” I exclaimed. “I wondered.”

The Primeval Waters of Bahia de Ascension

The Primeval Waters of Bahia de Ascension

Susanna Starr
Eco Travel, Family Travel, Off-the-beaten path destination, adventure travel, cultural immersion, travel essay

On the first trip I made with my family to the Yucatan in 1973, tourism was virtually unknown. It was prior to the building of the Cancun airport and the only people who ventured down to this part of the world used cars or trucks on the little-traveled roads. Those existing roads were rarely paved once you got off the main two-lane highway.

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