Category Archives: Travel

Cooking, Travel, Writing

Laying in Supplies

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Samhain                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

Ovid got some attention this morning.  Jupiter’s pretty mad at Lycaon.  Mad enough to destroy all of humankind. There’s a flood coming.

Missing in the afternoon.  Adding description, sprucing up the defenses of Hilgo, the Winter Realm’s port city on the Winter Sea and describing the terrain advantages in general for the Winter Realm.

Yesterday’s push left me dry today.  Not as on, but then yesterday was an exception.  The normal is plug alone, plug along, plug along.  Like today.  No magic, just work.  Now, the work was fun. Yes.  But not inspired.  Most often not inspired.

Kate’s been to the library for audio books.  Nebraska is interesting depending on the author you choose.  I’ve been laying in supplies and will make a final sally forth tomorrow to Festival for the last batch.  It’s odd, but being without a car for a week doesn’t daunt me at all.  My work is here and there’s plenty of room around to get outside.  With the food delivery service from Byerly’s I might be able to last quite a time.  As long as there are no doggie or human emergencies.  I have plans in place for those if they occur.

It will be like being a hermit in my own home.  A hermit with three dogs, a computer and an HD TV.

Family, Travel

Back in the S.A.

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Samhain                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

Brother Mark is settling into Muyhail, Saudi Arabia.  He said it has a back of beyond sort of feel and its location makes that no surprise.  I posted this map a while ago, but here it is again.

Muyhail is in Asir province and shares a border with Yemen.  It’s also not far from the Red Sea though a long ways from the Suez Canal.  What it’s very close to is the Rub Al Kahli, the famed empty quarter that is the desert of Arabian Nights’ fantasies. And mine, too, for that matter.

He’s teaching in a Basque owned company providing technical college students an opportunity to learn English.  Tip of the hat to brother Mark for finding a new position in the land of oil and sand.

Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Travel

Over the Plains and Through the River

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Samhain                                                               Thanksgiving Moon

Beginning to get that over the river and through the woods feeling.  This coming Sunday we head out for Denver.  Kate discovered, in a drive to Denver that she made this spring, that if she drives, her back doesn’t give her fits.  So, she’ll drive and I’ll watch.  Lot of good book thinking between here and the Rockies.

Holiseason has begun to assert itself more and more.  I’ve heard the occasional Christmas song, seen the articles about Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, been asked what we’re doing for them.  Now the feelings, those old, yet always new feelings, Holiseason feelings have begun to bubble up.  They’re positive for me, though I know they aren’t for a lot of folks.

As a pagan these days, I focus on the lights, the many festivals of light, the Christmas tree, the Yule log, the Thanksgiving medieval banquet, the turn of yet another new year, but reserve my real longing for the Winter Solstice.  It has become my favorite and most significant holiday of the sacred year.  I’ll be writing more about it as it approaches.

Now it’s Thanksgiving.  When growing up in Indiana, we went to my Aunt Marjorie’s for Thanksgiving.  She was the acknowledged queen of the kitchen in the Keaton family universe, consistently turning out great meals.  The kids got the card tables in the family room while the adults had the dining room table.  After the meal, the men would retire to watch football and smoke cigars.

I would read comic books, generally try to huddle in a corner somewhere, usually overwhelmed by the mass of people.  Too many and too little chance to escape.  Even so Thanksgiving was a strong part of the glue that held the Keatons together, me and my 21 first cousins.  It’s now a shared memory, several blocks in the quilt that covers our generation.

Later on Kate and I cooked many Thanksgiving dinners here in Andover, for many different configurations, but those days have waned with the movement of the kids to lands far from here.  So now we pick up and go to Jon and Jen’s who cook in their renovated kitchen.

We’ve done a couple of family Thanksgivings at Lutsen and I hope we can again.

And I don’t even like turkey.  Go figure.

Travel

Small Miracles

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Fall                                                                   Samhain Moon

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Trip over.  A key reason I dislike our state security apparatus (in addition to the primary one of there being a state security apparatus at all) is its unpredictability and its inscrutability.

My friend Tom Crane, who flies many thousands of miles a year, a pro at the airport dance, observed quite a while back that smaller airports are more restrictive because they see exceptions infrequently and don’t know how to respond to them.  The airport at Lihue, Kauai gave me an early instance of this when they detained me to investigate my DVD player which had already transited, without comment, mainland security.

In Atlanta last night I experienced pre-check screening.  My eligibility for this surprise, a pleasant one (which was a surprise in itself), came at the TSA kiosk for security.  The woman said, “Pre-check screening.”  And pointed.  No explanation.  She pointed toward a roped off section.  A TSA officer opened it for me, provided a cryptic explanation and pointed me toward another roped off area.  No one was there to open it so I had to move the stanchion myself and go around.

In a second line.  Checked again.  The TSA person here looked at my i.d. and my boarding pass, blew out her cheeks for whatever reason and passed me through.  At this point I encountered a miracle.  I passed through security with shoes on, belt on, all objects in my backpack and went through an old style metal detector.  No buzzes, no scans, no dirty looks.  Just straightforward, go on through.  Thanks.  Whoa.

After my experience in Charlotte on Saturday, this highlights the unpredictability of the whole process.  Here’s a note from the TSA website about precheck screening.*  If you read it, you’ll note it says something about pre-flight volunteering.  Nope.  Did not.  A mystery.

Here’s a link about the program and how to access it.

*TSA Pre✓™ How it Works

TSA Pre✓™ is a pre-screening initiative that makes risk assessments on passengers who voluntarily participate prior to their arrival at the airport checkpoint.

TSA Pre✓™ includes U.S. citizens who are select frequent travelers of participating airlines or members of existing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Trusted Traveler programs including Global Entry, NEXUS, and SENTRI programs. Canadian citizens who are members of NEXUS are also qualified to participate in TSA Pre✓™. In addition, passengers 12 and younger are allowed through TSA Pre✓™ lanes when traveling with eligible parent or guardian.

Eligible participants use dedicated TSA Pre✓™ lanes at participating airports for screening benefits which could include no longer removing the following items:

  • Shoes
  • 3-1-1 compliant bag from carry-on
  • Laptop from bag
  • Light outerwear/jacket
  • Belt

If TSA determines a passenger is eligible for expedited screening, information is embedded in the barcode of the passenger’s boarding pass. TSA scans the barcode at designated checkpoints and the passenger may be able to receive expedited screening.

Travel

Rant about State Security

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Fall                                                                   Samhain Moon

Bon Aire, Ga.  Up early yesterday to make the US Airways flights from Minneapolis to Atlanta.  Unremarkable except for a TSA officer in the jetway in Charlotte while loading for the Atlanta flight. Travel brings out an ornery side of me, well, air travel.  So, when I got to the TSA officer I said (something it would be better to have said in my head), “Just another way to make travel annoying?”  He said, “Another layer of security. And I’m doing it for free.”  Me, (again something better kept in my head), “I don’t care.”

Might not have been so vocal but I’ve been reading Dave Eggers new book, The Circle.  This is a thinly disguised critique of Google and online culture.  In particular it attacks the insistent need for transparency, for personal knowledge spread out over the web and instantly available for all.  It cranked up my already strong sense of personal privacy, created in part by my introverted nature but also by my political stance far to the left of the norm.  I’d also had my first taste of Foucault in the last week which, like the Eggers, lays bare the unintended consequences of otherwise well meaning systems.

In the instance of airport security for example I realized we have been trained for submission as we line up passively, wait for someone to check our tickets and i.d.  We then take off clothing, even our belts, allow our bodies to be probed by x-ray and agree to be judged by ill trained, low paid TSA personnel.

This is, ironically, an antidote for the toxin of terrorism. Those who would take our liberty have, through the judo of fear, managed to convince us to take our liberty away through our on own efforts.  Security, in exactly the degree to which we apply it, reduces our freedom and reinforces fear.

Training for submission is the opposite of democracy, yet it seems to appear everywhere these days.  The NSA debate now swirling has a large component of I don’t care if they watch. Well, I care.  I care because they care to sweep my data up.  Like the TSA the expectation is that we will embrace this is training in submission to those who know better than we do.  Well, I don’t think they know better and I’m not willing to share my data unasked and with no safeguards other than “Trust us.”

Anyhow.

Garden, Travel

Plato

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Fall                                                                    Harvest Moon

Kate and I drove out to Plato, Minnesota today.  Picked up broadcast fertilizer for both the vegetable garden and the orchard, plus the concentrated liquids for sprays and drenches. The broadcast fertilizer goes down now, worked into the soil.  Tomorrow.  The rest will be next year, including the nitrogen in the vegetable garden.  Different vegetables, different sorts of nitrogen.

Luke has a building up on the concrete slab Bill and I saw when we were out there in June.  He’s running a small business right now from a crumbling concrete block building. It’s stacked full of barrels and bins, weights and mixing apparatus.  A bare bones operation.  He mails all over the U.S. from Plato.

They missed a shot there in Plato.  Should have Aristotle Avenue, Diogenes Boulevard, Zeno and Anaxamander and Thales Streets.  But no.  Main Street.  2nd. 3rd. Coulda been good.

The fields of corn are dry, most not harvested though there was a cleared field or two.  Orange and green in the landscape.  There were, too, shallow lakes with wind rippled water, a bright deep blue, one with an egret pointing toward the west, white on blue, beautiful.

It takes an hour plus to get to Plato from Andover, a journey from the northern ex-burbs to the far south-western boundary of the metro area.  Each time I hop in the car, drive to someplace like Plato to pick up something, I remember how far away Indianapolis was from Alexandria.  Less than 60 miles.  Planning involved.  Rarely if never done.  Now, to pick up some fertilizer we get in the car and drive further than a trip to Indianapolis.  Because, you see, it’s all part of our area.  Our metropolis.  Our urbanized region.  Strange.

Asia, Cinema and Television, Politics, Travel

Human Trafficking

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Summer                                                             Moon of the First Harvests

9 years ago this November I went on a significant trip paid for by money inherited from my father.  It took me to Singapore where my sister, Mary, hosted me and showed me her adopted city.  After Singapore I flew Tiger Airlines to Bangkok where I spent 5 days getting acclimated to Thai culture and the particular culture of Bangkok’s China Town. My hotel there cost $17.00 a night.

(Yaowarat Road.  Bangkok’s China Town)

On the 6th day I took a flight from Bangkok’s old airport on Bangkok Air to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  We landed late at night and the customs area looked like a prison detainee facility in a bad B-movie.  At one box I applied for my visa and at one right next to it, a Cambodian official stamped in it and I was in country.

The taxi scrum had all kinds of vehicles and people, but I happened, quite by accident, on a wonderful driver, Mr. Rit.  He drove me around for the entire time I was in Siem Reap, including several trips out to Angkor, the ancient Khmer region where over 75 different temples built by many different rulers dot the landscape, among them what westerner’s call Angkor Wat, which actually means, Angkor Temple.

(Siem Reap)

Tonight I watched a movie called Trade of Innocents.  It’s a Netflix streaming movie, so it’s easily available.  The focus is human trafficking, based on real events, in the city Siem Reap.  This lovely city, deep in the Cambodian jungle, has what I guess you could say is the misfortune of being the gateway to Angkor.  As such, it has seen a hotel building boom of enormous proportions, making it possible to stay in Siem Reap at almost any price point.  My hotel was $25 a night for a room with teak furniture and a tiled complete bath.  You could pay then $500 a night at Hotel D’Angkor, the old French colonial hotel of ridiculous elegance.

(Bayon Temple.)

All this tourist traffic has apparently made Siem Reap a center for the trade in Cambodian and Vietnamese girls.  The problem gets reinforced by a culturally acceptable practice of sending a daughter into the city brothels to support her family.  This was a side of Siem Reap that was invisible to me.  I saw a small city with contradictions between rich and poor, with beautiful buildings and a friendly people, with local artisans of incredible skill, but I didn’t see the backrooms and back alleys where children, young children, were bartered and rented for an evening.

My friends Paul and Sarah Strickland have made the trafficking of girls a priority issue.  It’s easy to see why.  Girl Rising, the movie Kate and I saw earlier this month, also pleads the case for girls, a vulnerable population everywhere, vulnerable not only to human trafficking but to enforced ignorance, too.  If you have a daughter, or a granddaughter, or if you love a woman who was a daughter once, then these two movies should make you pause a moment.  And wonder how to help.

Family, Travel

Coming Up From the Deep

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Summer                                                                                   Solstice Moon

In the decompression zone.  Visits from family, any family, are occasions for renewal of ties and creation of new memories.  Further sticky material for the mysterious field that defines often faraway people as belonging to each other.  Both Mark and the Denver Olsons were here this last week.  Now they’re both gone.

Introverts like Kate and I have a doubled experience each time.  That is, we greet visitors and embrace them, eager to hear the latest news and have some new experiences together; but, too, we find our quiet and our routine disrupted.  Even our physical space.  That creates a tension, overlaid by the unusual such as cooking for 8, getting a driver’s license test, building bonfires, navigating to new destinations.

That means leave taking has a doubled sense, too.  Sadness at good-bye, but also relief as the quiet returns and the day’s rhythms return to their norm.  Of course, feeling relief when loved ones go can generate guilt, but for introverts that guilt has to be parsed with the knife of one’s true nature.  Sadness is just that, sadness.  And relief, well, that just means we are who we are.

Family, Memories, Travel, US History

Travel Memories

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Summer                                                                                      Solstice Moon

Funny how events that happen during a visit, often outside the particular place visited, shape memories.  Last night Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe were in Minneapolis when a riptide of lightning pulled heavy rain in its tow.  Jon said, “I knew if I could get to Columbia Heights, we’d be ok.”  They saw manhole covers burst up and forded one high spot, but managed to get back to our merely soggy home about 9:30 pm.

On a visit to Denver a year ago right now, James Holmes shot up a theater full of late night movie goers watching Batman:  The Dark Knight Rises.  This was in Aurora, not far from where my hotel and Jon and Jen’s home.  They teach in the Aurora school district, so the event hit them hard.

Back in 1968 I tried, briefly, to move to New York City.  Stymied by uncertain draft status I couldn’t find work.  But, I was there for Bobby Kennedy’s funeral held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Another trip a year earlier found me in Toronto during the time of what would become a historic John Cage concert, which I accidentally attended.