My friend Evans Mehew (the man who, several years ago, introduced me to this brand newfangled thing called “blogging”) has launched a site called Guerillassance (as in guerilla + renaissance). Evans is a very smart guy and lately he’s been thinking a lot about our addiction to things, to stuff, and more generally, what the hell has happened to the American Dream?

Have a look at his latest, “Retail Therapy (Or, The Most Effective Trap Is the One We Volunteer to Walk Into).” Thoughtful and immediate – I’m guessing most of us are going to see our own reflections in the mirror he’s holding up to the world.

After visiting Nashville, Tennessee on the fourth night of our road trip, my sister, Julie, and I geared up for a day of historical site-seeing along the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Our brother, Dan, and I attempted this drive once last summer after receiving a recommendation to take the famous byway from Nashville to Southern Mississippi before cutting South to New Orleans. Not 30 miles into our trip, we crossed a park ranger who threatened us off the parkway with a ticket and authoritative scolding. Unbeknownst to us, a 14-foot yellow Penske truck is considered a “commercial vehicle” and eyesore on a scenic byway.

Though Dan could not join us on this road trip, Julie and I took advantage of having our compact Toyota Camry and picked up where Dan and I left off. Full story »

I first visited Nashville, Tennessee this past summer as part of a Midwest road trip with my brother, Dan. We visited the city in mid-August when the near-100-degree temperatures and humidity index left us wandering the streets dressed in shorts, flip flops and sweat.

This week, the city prepared a more mild climate for another round of siblings to come through. My sister and I arrived from St. Louis just in time to enjoy a sushi dinner, check-in rush hour at a motel-style Best Western (equipped with an already-intoxicated bachelor party to greet us) and an evening walk through downtown. We visited Nashville for one day on this road trip and managed to see most of its highlights. Full story »

Thursday morning, Julie and I took our trip West for a turn South. With Einstein Bros breakfast sandwiches in hand, we got an early start out of Chicago and headed toward St. Louis, Missouri.

We spent almost two days exploring St. Louis, but not without first making a stop in Illinois’ capital city of Springfield. Three hours and acres of open land Southwest of Chicago, we parked Julie’s car near the state capitol building and went for a walk. Full story »

A famous saying reads “Home is where the heart is,” and day two of our road trip brought new meaning to this phrase for me.

Wednesday morning, my sister, Julie, and I woke up in South Bend, Indiana only 95 miles from Chicago, Illinois. Though we grew up in Rochester, New York, Chicago has been the next closest city to offer me that warm and welcoming feeling of home. The city was finally within reach, and I couldn’t have been more excited.

Julie and I began this day of our trip with a leisurely drive through Notre Dame’s campus. We saw the university’s football field, snapped photos of “Touchdown Jesus” and awed over the grand and expansive size of the campus. We had both seen the university before, but it appeared just as beautiful the second time around.

Though we had both been within miles of the Michigan border on several occasions, neither Julie nor I had ever stepped foot in the state. Full story »

I have driven Interstate 90 between Rochester, New York and Chicago, Illinois more times than I can count. Before Tuesday, however, I had only been a tourist along this route once during a family road trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This week, my sister, Julie, and I decided to tour this land while kicking off our road trip South. What I learned? Ohio impressed me.

Our day included a 7:00am departure from North Chili, New York and a 10:00pm dinner at a local Notre Dame bar called “Brothers.” By the time Julie and I pulled into South Bend, Indiana, we ate what could have been the most delicious veggie burger and chips I have ever devoured. Full story »

I live and breathe travel. I love to see new things, but more importantly I travel to learn. To me, exploring the world firsthand has proven the most effective way to learn about the depths of people, culture and myself. Our trip from Chicago to New Orleans included a drive through seven states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Of these seven states, I had only been to three before making this trip, which proved a unique and exciting opportunity to learn more about the hidden beauties and truths of America. Full story »

Six days, 1,500 miles and seven states later, we made it to our final destination of New Orleans, Louisiana. This city will be my new home for at least the next 16 months and will mark the birthplace of a new life journey while I pursue my Master’s Degree at Tulane University.

Since Dan only had limited time in the city (he’s embarking on his own adventure with a one-way ticket to Nepal and plan to climb Mount Everest) and I could not move into my apartment for a few more days, we decided to explore New Orleans as we have every city on our road trip – as tourists. We kicked off our time with a stop at Plum Street Snoball, one of the oldest and most popular snoball stands in the city. Snoballs compare best to “snow cones” only with more finely shaved ice, more flavor options and a sturdier cup to hold the refreshing treat together.

The land between two cities sometimes makes for the most interesting places to explore. Though the 427 miles of land along the route between Little Rock, Arkansas and New Orleans, Louisiana may require a more intense search to support this theory, my brother, Dan, and I found ourselves still entertained by these lonely miles of countryside.

It all started during our hour-long exit from Little Rock. Because of the detours and lack of road signs, we found ourselves driving down a wooded backroad with not a soul, car or house in sight…not a soul, that is, besides a brown, mid-sized dog trotting down the road toward us wearing a collar and leash around his neck. Full story »

I only enjoy adventurous travel with a few people, but my brother, Dan, is one of them. We travel well together, because we can change plans last minute, make no plans at all, and get pulled over on a famous Central Tennessee parkway then laugh about it while forging ahead to find an alternate route.

Upon leaving Nashville during our week-long adventure south, we received a recommendation to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile scenic route we had never heard of and spent all day learning to pronounce (turns out, it’s “Na-chiz” if you talk like a true Southerner). Though we already had plans to see Memphis later that afternoon, the Parkway seemed well worth a three-hour detour along the way. Full story »

It’s 95 degrees and humid. We cannot stop sweating. I’m in shorts, a tank top and flip flops, so I cannot imagine what the people wearing cowboy boots must feel like. Maybe they’re all just more accustomed to this Nashville, Tennessee weather than we are.

Nashville may be the happiest place on earth for someone whose favorite things include alcoholic beverages and country music. Most of the city’s entertainment revolves around bars and live music, so anyone who enjoys this combination has a good chance of enjoying Nashville. Non-country music fans can still enjoy relaxing with a cold beer (or double jack and coke, as the middle-aged gentleman next to me ordered yesterday) among the various age groups of bar visitors along Lower Broadway, a four-block part of town lined with bars, restaurants and businesses. Full story »

The accents and humidity are becoming thicker. Words are becoming both shorter and more drawn out. Odd stares have led me to believe my vegetarian habits are becoming less common. We are approaching the South.

Today’s trek began at our cousin’s home in Louisville, Kentucky and ended at a $60 Days Inn in Knoxville, Tennessee. We stepped foot in three states today – the third on a drive through Cumberland Gap National Historic Park at the juncture where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia meet. At one point, we straddled the state line between Kentucky and Tennessee while overlooking the Appalachian Mountain region in Virginia. I never imagined Kentucky to stretch so far east. In fact, our road trip through the Midwest has kept us on east coast time most of the journey so far.

We hit many of the hotspots in Louisville, including the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, Steamboat Belle along the Riverwalk and Churchill Downs, an establishment that left me nearly speechless just from staring at its impressive size from the parking lot.

Full story »

It’s official. I no longer live in Chicago. I currently don’t live anywhere, actually. For the next week, I will be homeless, bouncing around from couches to hotels to spare bedrooms. Last night, I even slept on couch cushions (minus the couch) on the floor of my own empty Chicago apartment. As it turns out, moving sometimes brings unexpected twists to set plans.

Today, my brother, Dan, and I set off for our road trip south from Chicago to New Orleans. Since neither of us have seen any land between the two cities before, we decided to make my city-to-city move an adventure. And what an adventure it has already been.

In the past two days, I have learned that my life fits on a 12-foot Penske truck, condo building rules annoy me and my cat does not like other cats…particularly other male cats named Sparkle.

Full story »

Fourth in a series

As a child turning teen in the late 1950s, the black-and-white RCA in the living room received only three channels … well, four, but we didn’t watch PBS. So I read. Newspapers, of course (after Dad finished sports and Mom finished news). And books. The library was only two blocks away, so I spent afternoons there sampling the stack. I was a small-town boy at the end of the idyllic “Father Knows Best” decade of Eisenhower placidity, a geeky kid feeling the first pangs of puberty.

I longed for adventure beyond being a Boy Scout or tossing a football with neighborhood pals. In the library I found adventure stories set in space, spun with well-chosen words and exquisitely crafted plots.

I discovered Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End.” Then Robert A. Heinlein’s “Methuselah’s Children,” Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” and Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation and Empire.” Science fiction (or, in Clarke’s case, science prediction) captivated me. I became a sci-fi cognoscente.

Then, in 1957, came the shocker: Sputnik. Full story »

Author: Robert Lane Greene
Publisher: Delacourte Press: New York, 2010

by Samantha Berkhead

It’s plausible to argue that lingual differences have caused more discrimination, conflict and cultural controversy throughout history than race or religion ever did. From the Hindi-Urdu bloodshed in India to the Balkan Wars, history shows that tolerance for different languages both within and without national borders is hard to find.

Robert Lane Greene, an international journalist, speaker of nine languages and M.Phil from Oxford University, takes on several interlocking topics and forges them together to show why certain people speak the way they do.

For the average nonfiction author, synthesizing millennia of politics, history and economics (among many other unlikely factors) into a simple explanation of contemporary language would be a daunting task. Yet Greene’s linguistic elucidations never become muddled or obtuse. Full story »

Egads! News flash from pollster Gallup Inc.:

PRINCETON, NJ — Mitt Romney (17%) and Sarah Palin (15%) now lead a smaller field of potential Republican presidential candidates in rank-and-file Republicans’ preferences for the party’s 2012 nominee. Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain essentially tie for third, with Cain registering 8% support in his initial inclusion in Gallup “trial heat” polling. Notably, 22% of Republicans do not have a preference at this point. [emphasis added]

Yawn. This poll conducted May 20-24 with a random sample of 971 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents tells me nothing I want to know or need to know. I’m not necessarily picking on pollster Gallup; my objections apply to most of these almost weekly presidential preference polls. They mislead and misrepresent more than enlighten. In sum, they represent manufactured noise with little signal.
Full story »

Back to the British Library this evening for another interesting panel discussion as part of their Science Fiction series, this one on “Who owns the story of the future?” Given the extent to which we’ve seen the media get compromised by corporate ownership over the past two decades, at least in the US, this turns out to be a really good question—where do the narratives come from that we tell ourselves to make sense of the world as it is today, let alone of the future. And one that people seem to be interested in, given that it was literally a full house. Part of that may have been the fact that two of the speakers were William Gibson and Cory Doctorow, who have clearly thought about these issues in some detail. Plus, they’re old hands at this sort of thing. The other panel members all looked just as interesting, all being writers on what the future may or may not hold.

First, Mark Stevenson has written An Optimist’s Tour of the Future. And economist Diane Coyle has just published something that is sure to go on my reading list—The Economics of Enough (reviewed here by Fred Pierce). I haven’t read any of these, I have to say, so this was a bit of an adventure—going to talks with people you’ve never heard of can be a dicey proposition. On the face of it, Coyle appears to be genuinely frightened of what the future might hold, whereas Stevenson, I imagined, might be pretty chipper about things, a representative of the Matt Ridley view of the world.
Full story »

Who cares about Arnold?? I feel very sorry for Maria Shriver and most sorry for all the children involved in the mess, but it shouldn’t be dominating the national news. Adultery, sadly, occurs frequently. Shriver is not the first nor will she be the last cuckolded spouse.

But there is real news going on all over the planet that is getting less coverage as the media hounds the other woman, Arnold himself (who cares about him anyway? He’s a former and future actor who used to be governor of financially broke California).

I did care about the arrest of International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, just until he stepped down overnight. Now he is no longer running the IMF he is unimportant except for what it says about what he’s seemingly gotten away with as an alleged sexual predator for years.

I do care about real news–like what is going on in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, India and Syria. Full story »

If you’ve been around awhile, then yes, you have seen this item before, a couple of times. It originally posted on Jan. 25, 2008 and was updated on April 19, 2010. Unfortunately, I tend to move a lot, and it’s about to happen again. So every time I pull up the tent and head off somewhere else, I’ll be refreshing the post and giving people a chance to offer their thoughts on their own mobility and that of their families, friends and neighbors.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s back to packing.

We’ve become a very mobile culture. Education, jobs, adventure, marriage – there are a lot of things that call us away from home in ways that were unprecedented even a generation ago.

I’m like a lot of people in that I’ve moved around a lot, especially in the past few years. For instance, this coming Saturday will mark my 15th move since fall of 1993. Full story »

The great medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer created timeless characters in his Canterbury Tales; archetypal personalities such as the Wife of Bath and the Miller endure to this day. Through them Chaucer could readily celebrate, criticize and satirize different aspects of the society of his time. Additionally, Chaucer, as a public servant and man of the people, preserved a vernacular that may otherwise have been lost.

The late Richard Pryor, often hailed as the greatest comic to ever take the stage, is the American Chaucer. A master storyteller in the grand tradition of West African griots, fired by passion and pain, possessed of keen insight, he was also a brilliant impersonator with amazing range, an intuitive actor who never got his due, a social critic, a writer, a folklorist, a philosopher, and, most importantly, one funny motherfucker… Full story »