June 3rd, 2008 writerspice
Last year I spent some time chatting with a few local farmers to produce an article about the importance and ease of eating from the fields in the county I call home. Called Think Fresh, Eat Locally, the article is in the May/June issue of Simcoe Life magazine.
With my ever-burgeoning interest in growing food and using wild edibles and herbs (my newly-planted veggie garden is sprouting and a batch of mullien from a neighbour’s driveway is drying in the dehydrator as I type), I poured my heart and soul into this piece.
Unfortunately, in the print issue, it ran with the wrong byline.
Although this has never happened to me before, it is a fairly common occurrence for lots of writers (a few colleagues were quick to share their own tales of woe when I released my sorrows in a forum).
But do me a favour. Should you live somewhere within Simcoe County and come across the magazine, take out your pen, cross out the wrong name and write mine in. That would make me feel a whole lot better.
Chef Doug Porter puts together some locally-grown greens at Collingwood’s Simcoe County Restaurant (photo by Lauren Carter)
Posted in Food, Going Green, Issues, Ontario, Recommended, Seasons, Simcoe County, World, Writing Life | No Comments »
January 19th, 2008 writerspice
Last May, in downtown Santiago de Chile, I found myself laughing my head off in a brightly-lit diner. It was around midnight and a few of us, gripped by hunger, had sauntered up the street from our hostel to find something to eat. Little did we know the menu would prove more entertaining than the sauce-slathered chicken sandwiches, spilling slabs of avocados (although that does sound pretty good right about now).
Without a camera, I couldn’t surreptitiously record the pages, nor did I want to insult the staff by stifling giggles as I asked for a copy. Instead, I committed a few of the jucier bits to memory and wrote them down in my journal back in my room.
Isn’t this one of more amusing aspects of travel? Finding English words twisted into phrases that are just so funny… In that diner last May, I laughed harder than I had in months. My three Hungarian friends eyed me, alarmed, probably afraid I’d soon slip into convulsions.
In reality, I simply couldn’t make up my mind between “meat for the poor thing” and a pork dish called “he she differs / he she cooks”.
It’s a shame that the Beijing Tourism Bureau is working so hard to wipe out “Chinglish” in time for the Olympics. Not only are these abstract little phrases amusing, they also provide some poetry. Anyone up for an “attache pan of mold?” Yum.
Posted in Contemplations, Just For Fun, World | 1 Comment »
December 18th, 2007 writerspice
Travelling on my own in Argentina a few years back, I read about the ruins of San Jose de Lules, a Jesuit mission outside of the small city of Tucuman. There wasn’t much to do in Tucuman. I barely spoke Spanish and I’d already seen the sights of the town, so of course I decided to go. It seemed easy enough. Climb on the bus, get out at the chapel, wave down a bus going back when I wanted to return home. There was a museum there, my guidebook said, which in my mind meant people, especially since it was summer holidays. Mid-January; hot as blazes.
Let out on the dusty side of the road, I followed a quiet dirt path to the chapel. Nobody was there. This was okay by me, as it meant I could actually be alone for the first time in ages without having to hide away in my hotel room, buried in Dracula, the only English novel I’d been able to find.
But the lack of people meant the presence of something else.
Dogs.
They entered the chapel, their low growls resonating in the empty stone space. There were three of them. As I slowly backed up, they barked ferociously. When I was far enough away, I turned around and hustled back toward the road, their breath hot on my calves. When I got to the road, shaking, I discovered they had torn the leg of my cargo pants.
It was terrifying. Needless to say.
Once I returned home, for months afterward, I kept meaning to write to Lonely Planet, to tell them about this omission of information that could have cost me my life. But I didn’t ever get around to it, a fact that still makes me squirm.
This is what I thought about today when I read blogger and traveller Julie’s excellent post on Matador about the inadequacies of guidebooks and her reasons for not reading them. I still use guidebooks but I learned a big lesson in Argentina. Namely, they are not the authority on any given place.
It is always better to ask a local, especially when planning to head out, innocently enough, into open, empty, countryside with no idea exactly what you’ll find.
Photo by Ian Hsu
Posted in Contemplations, Issues, Recommended, World | 1 Comment »
November 28th, 2007 writerspice
These days, the city of lights is once again the city of street fires.
And as the rioting continues in Paris, I listen to a politician from the right-wing French National Assembly saying things like “tribalism” and “racism against French culture” and “it’s easier to make a living through drugs” on a CBC radio interview.
It’s not an economic issue, he says, dismissing any claims that this outpouring of rage and such a violent and hopeless attempt at change has anything to do with high unemployment among teenagers and widespread poverty and the alienation that many immigrants face.
A lot of other people, of course, are saying that this is exactly where the problems start.
Even former president Jacques Chirac, after the last wave of rioting in 2005 (also sparked by the accidental deaths of two teenagers) came out and admitted the obvious inequities.
“There is a need to respond strongly and rapidly to the undeniable problems faced by many residents of underprivileged neighborhoods around our city,” he said to the media.
At that time, Nicolas Sarkozy, now the country’s president, took a tough stand, asking for the deportation of “foreigners” (I guess he meant immigrants) involved in the riots.
As experts argue, policeman and teenagers continue the war, with many falling from injuries. And this whole thing is nothing new.
This summer, I spent some time in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a former industrial town that saw their factories leave and unemployment rise. In 2003, when a kid on a motorcycle was killed in a police chase (sound familiar?), the remorse and rage drove rioters out into the street.
Thanks to grants and the immense commitment of both locals and outside parties, Benton Harbor is being revitalized. Three galleries and open studios have opened up, as well as a glass school that offers lessons to young people at risk of being sucked into the downward spiral of poverty.
The answers are not easy, but they begin in the same place: an acknowledgment of the humanity of those driven to such extreme action and a condemnation of violence. Physical violence, yes, but also the violence of a system that abandons those who need help the most.
Photo by webbmb
Posted in Issues, World | No Comments »
November 26th, 2007 writerspice
I’ve been going through my pictures recently – you know, that ubiquitous crate full of matte paper snaps left over from pretty much every moment before digital cameras came of age – and found a bunch from my trip to Ecuador in 2000.
A remedy for a broken heart (I left on Valentine’s Day), this trip was a whirlwind two weeks in the cheapest, closest country I could think of. Mostly I stayed in Baños, a small town in the central-south region, with hot springs and hardly any people around. Tungurahua, the active volcano nearby in the Andes, had erupted in the fall and kept threatening to go again so many people had evacuated. Weirdly festive banners showing the proper route to take should the crater start oozing still hung in the streets. In the town’s cathedral, murals painted over hundreds of years showed scenes from the previous 15 eruptions – think women in old-fashioned dress running from fire-tongues while frightened angels looked on. But by then, with the last eruption five-months past, the town still bustled a little bit with tourists and locals who ran restaurants, hotels and bars.
What a trip that was! In Quito, I met and immediately clicked with a Spanish-speaking French Canadian woman and the two of us travelled together for pretty much the entire time, basing ourselves in one spot, lolling about in the steaming hot springs, getting to know the locals and even helping some Ecuadorians open up a nightclub, where bands played folk music and the wait staff served deadly traditional drink in clay jugs. Our hotel room, our home away from home for the fortnight, cost us each $2 US.
I also did a five-day trek into the jungle. The picture above was taken during that excursion. Andres, from Brazil, is standing closest to the camera. Despite a total language gap – no Portuguese for me, no English for him – we got along famously. A kindred spirit, he reminded me so much of my dear friend Darrin, a happy-go-lucky traveller who once wandered his way from Vancouver, B.C. to Panama and back.
This trek was tough and beautiful, with lots of rubber-boot-sucking mud and hard uphill climbs and one particular fruit that seemed to come from a fairy land: it tasted exactly like vanilla ice cream. When I complained, using plenty of miming and sneezing and blowing of the nose, about a nagging sinus infection, Eduardo, our Shuar guide, peeled back the bark of a tree, scraped some of its fleshy green insides into a rolled up banana leaf, mixed it with water and gestured that I snort it up my nose. I did. It was a bit like combining some illicit drug with super-extra-strength nasal spray. Apart from the minor fire that flared in my brain (or maybe because of it), my breathing passages opened right up.
But that was then. Things have changed a lot since this pic was snapped. Tungurahua has not been quiet, causing the local tourist trade to die down. The country’s decision to adopt the U.S. dollar has also created some chaos. But still, Ecuador remains a beautiful and compelling country, well worth exploring and extremely photogenic.
Posted in Pretty Pictures, World | 2 Comments »
November 22nd, 2007 writerspice
Like a bunch of bullies, the current Canadian power mongers government in power has decided not to invite anyone out of the in-club to the upcoming major important meeting on climate change in Bali, Indonesia.
The reason? The last time they invited opposition MPs to an international environmental conference, they were held accountable for their crappy policies and others – like the French environmental government guy – also got in on the critic’s game.
Seems the Conservatives didn’t like what they were saying. This being that, um, you guys might want to rethink a plan that has Canada meeting our emissions cuts by 2020 or 2025. By then, who knows what kind of burning, drought-ridden, flood-prone, hurricane-haunted world we’ll be living in. THAT’S 18 YEARS FROM NOW. NEARLY AN ENTIRE GENERATION.
Last week, some serious faces at the U.N. stepped forward to say things like “irreversible”, “frightening”, “defining challenge of our age” and to call for much tougher action to mitigate this dire and urgent problem which is already causing record numbers of droughts, floods and fires.
But instead of embracing all the help and dialogue that they can get and trying to move toward, uh, the opposite of ANNIHILATION, our government is crossing their arms, barring the door and firmly shutting down the debate.
All so they can avoid being criticised and keep a firm grip on their flimsy power.
Makes sense to me. After all, when I’m being an idiot and my husband calls me on it, sometimes I just leave him at home, too. But then again, the two of us aren’t holding the FATE OF THE WORLD in our hands.
Posted in Contemplations, Going Green, Issues, World | No Comments »
November 19th, 2007 writerspice
For a few days before the cyclone hit the shoreline of Bangladesh, the local weather folks were talking about it. Their normally Toronto-centric radar images had suddenly swung into the far east, pointers rising as they told us how the full brunt of the wind would hit the Ganges delta and push upriver.
And, uh, yeah, it sure did. Late last week, Cyclone Sidr hit, leaving a death toll that continues to climb. The latest numbers are reaching above 3000.
Meanwhile, back in Mexico, health officials are now fumigating a vast area of the state of Tabasco to kill mosquitos born out of flooding that has affected an estimated million people, mostly poor.
What’s all this got to do with travel? Usually, sadly, not much.
While the floods were covering Mexico and reports came swarming in about death, destruction, dire straights, I found myself reading somebody’s blog entry about great food in the most southerly North American country. And as the death toll climbs to staggering numbers in that small country on the southeastern edge of India, I cruise to another blog recounting a current journey a stone’s throw from the scene of such mind-numbing devastation. Amid discussion of how tough travelling in India is, there’s no mention of it at all.
This, I don’t get.
I remember being on a press trip a few years ago into a desperate part of the United States, where jobs were nil, poverty was pretty much a tradition and tourism is viewed as the new hope. During the entire week no mention was made of said suffering until a park ranger made one slip. When asked whether they still stumble upon moonshine stills in the woods, she said, “these days, it’s more likely to be crystal meth labs.”
That one moment of truth brought the whole place to life for me.
Right then I was able to see the people, to share in their experience, to become rooted in what life must be like for them. And this, I feel, is what travel should be about – a sharing of place, its trials and its great tribulations. Not an insulated journey that involves us simply staring out of ourselves, still locked in our own home, despite being thousands of miles away.
Photo by Selena Mora. See more photos of the flooding in Tabasco at http://www.flickr.com/groups/tabascodisaster
Posted in Issues, World | No Comments »
November 8th, 2007 writerspice
Lately I’m in love with a couple of brazen kids from Portland, Oregon.
One year ago this past Tuesday, Amy and Sloan packed up a bright yellow 1977 VW camper van and took off across America for the first stage of a year of traveling throughout India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong, Ireland, Guatemala, Belize and Mexico. In preparation they’d ditched their jobs and sold all their stuff to just, you know, do it!
I found Reason to Wander through travelblogs.com and I’m sure glad I did. Every day now, for about a week, I’ve been stealing moments to read their daily updates. Most recently in Mexico, and about to head back to the U.S., their latest entries involve a kind of quiet acknowledgment of both their adventure’s end and their empty wallets. As I follow their gradual drift homeward, I’ve gone back to the beginning to ride the building wave of their journey out.
Right now I’m on Reason To Wander Number 15. It’s sometime in December 2006. and they’re in Texas, where Sloan writes:
“You can’t shake a brisket in Texas without hitting some of that Lone Star spirit. It’s on car bumpers, street signs, billboards, t-shirts and etched into the sides of highway interchanges taller than its high rises, all of it reinforcing the popular understanding that Texas’ constitution reserves its legal right to secede from the US. While that may not be technically true, the surprising sum of all this ego is a kind of gentle charm that can only be achieved after decades of being told, ‘your Frito Pie is the best in the world, now y’all go make one for your neighbor.’”
In a world of travel blogs where people often sacrifice personality for sterile or pithy description of place, it’s refreshing to find simply smart and witty writing from a couple of characters who show their likeable selves. What’s not to love? Check it out. Live vicariously!
Photo by Alpoma
Posted in Recommended, World | No Comments »
October 10th, 2007 writerspice
When I was 17, I took my first jump across the pond to visit the branch of the Carters still in England. My father’s cousin and his family took me on a tour of London, complete with a roam through the foreboding Tower of London. I remember the Beefeaters standing still as stone in the yard and the black crows, gathered in crowds, as if still scavenging bloody bits from all those beheadings.
This love of British history drew me last night to the Tudors, a new Showtime production that debuted last week. On our ancient 1970′s television set, the 16th century court came to life, accentuated by King Henry’s recreated studliness. While I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the spontaneous shirtless wrestling scene with the King of France, I am hoping that the show will transform him, taking us through the series of confused, greed-driven actions that resulted in him packing on the pounds.
I know it’s difficult to condense a lifetime into a television series, but watching with my copy of David Starkey’s Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
in hand caused some confusion. As it always does, history shifted for the sake of dramatic device. Most particularly, in the role of Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife.
This woman took a lot. A failed baby-making machine, she bore her cheating husband six babies in eight years and watched them all die, except one. But near the end of last night’s episode, after Henry has the Duke of Buckingham executed (this happened in 1521) and his mistress, Elizabeth Blount gives birth to a son (which occured in 1519), Catherine kneels before the Virgin Mary and asks her to fill her barren womb.
Huh? She wasn’t barren. She already had a daughter, Mary, the only child to survive into adulthood, running around in the King’s court. Maybe the writers meant something different. More like, “Please God, give me an heir that will survive past childhood for my greedy, gluttonous husband, Henry, who is going to kill me or send me to a nunnery if I don’t produce.”
Ah, well, it’s long before the days of women’s lib. Still, I can’t help but think that Catherine of Aragon deserves to have her truth told and left unaltered, even if tragic infertility is a much bigger draw.
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October 8th, 2007 writerspice
Where are you? Click on the ClustrMap in my sidebar (look right) to tell me where you’re sitting while you read these accounts of my travels around and about…
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Last year I spent some time chatting with a few local farmers to produce an article about the importance and ease of eating from the fields in the county I call home. Called Think Fresh, Eat Locally, the article is in the May/June issue of Simcoe Life magazine.
