Endless Knots

For Nepal, my essay from WBUR's Cognoscenti site #cognoscenti #nepal

In 1997, I made a lightning work trip to Nepal (and three other nearby countries in 14 days) for UN Development Programme. I enjoyed my time in Thailand, Laos, and Pakistan, but it was Nepal that settled deep into my soul in barely four days. When the earthquake struck on April 25, I bounded from bed to my keyboard and banged out a 1500-word piece, almost without taking a break. As I did, the numbers of dead increased, then increased again. And again.

Then, cognizant of word-lengths for op-edish type pieces, I cut it down to 900 words and submitted it to Cognoscenti, WBUR's "Idea's and Opinions" site. They asked me to trim it by another 150 words, which I did, and it was published this morning. They added photos, one sad, illustrating the devastation in Kathmandu, the other a picture of precisely the World Heritage site that I wrote about taken two years ago, much as it was when I was there.

Here's the piece, "In Nepal, Getting Back to Normal in the Dust of Time." 

Slow down, keep right, I mean left

 

On the road with a skip, wombat, and koala

"New York family trades urban jungle for outback adventure"

Nearly eight years ago, Daughter #1, Miranda Stamps, and her husband, Jay Albany, set off on a six-month trip to Asia. Although they were both gainfully employed in NY where they'd gone to college and met (she, Barnard, he, Columbia), they figured that this was a good time to chuck their 9-5s and have some fun before kids and grown-up responsibilities prevented exploring what might make them very happy. They chronicled their trip at the link above. I was lucky enough to join them for part of their New Zealand travels.

Nearly four months ago, they did it again, once more relinquishing gainful employment and a well-situated Brooklyn apartment. Instead of kindergarten, their five-year-old twin boys, Lake and Finn, are learning geography and botany and survival skills by doing as they travel through Australia, chronicled on their new blog and Instagram feed, Miles from Brooklyn.

Today Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Blythe Moore profiles their journey with the aptly titled "New York family trades urban jungle for outback adventure." Here's the pic, followed by some others from their blog that I love. Many dream of doing such things but few have the courage. They've barely met a single American so far--nor have they slept inside much! A very many Miles from Brooklyn and the life of the B and the Q (that phrase for the New Yorkers among us).

With thanks to ABC (Australia-style)

 

Finn, l, and Lake, r, inspecting the equipment

 

Poppa telling boys a story, which Mommy recorded as "Jay's Secret Parenting Sauce"

 

What it's like to live in the bush

 

Though sometimes you can run into a bit of a problem

 

But then you find yourself here, Miranda's photo
that's gotten 3200 likes on the Queensland Instagram feed 

 

Best fried chicken in Boston? Try Back Bay Station

Vegetarians, avert eyes and try this post. Or this one. Or even this.

But if you're a flexitarian, then I bet you like fried chicken as much as me. Love it.

And so when I stumbled into Boston's Back Bay Station a few years ago starving and about to hop on the train to NY, I was drawn by the redolence of fried chicken. At a food court. Delicious and since then I've tried to procure same again but without luck. I was always there at the wrong time.

However recently (i.e. earlier today) and in the same situation -- and although it was barely 11 AM -- I found myself in front of T.J. Enterprises, talking with T.J. himself, who, once he heard how much I love his fried chicken, was willing to put it on offer earlier than usual. And so I enjoyed an early lunch/late breakfast of fried chicken on the train and learned the following:

1. T.J. is from Laurel, Mississippi, where he learned how to make it.

2. He perfected it via trial and error, a little less of this and a little more of that.

3. He usually serves it from 11:30 on.

4. Much as I dislike nuked chicken, it was absolutely delicious.

5. I should have taken a picture of T.J. but instead have only this to show for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roland Merullo: Importing common sense from Cuba

Roland, author of so many books including his recent Lunch with Buddha (as well as a novel about Cuba completely unrelated to this story, Fidel's Last Days), traveled "90 Miles From Home" (see Warren Miller's 1961 book by that title) recently on assignment for a golf magazine, picked up a few souvenirs (total value = $75), and had them confiscated at his port of re-entry, Burlington, VT. Irony aside that the only state with a "self-described democratic socialist" as senator should be the customs gate that enforces our antiquated embargo of Cuban imports, Roland, as usual, reflects thoughtfully on why it's time to change our policies in "A new path to Cuba: It’s time the US admitted the embargo doesn’t work." Note also that instead of doing what countless other visitors to Cuba likely do -- pretend that they were in Mexico or Canada, allowing custom officials to look the other way -- Roland went for the true story, which ultimately makes for a better one.

Here's the opening to whet your clicking:

On my way home from Cuba the other day — Havana via Montreal — I had all my souvenirs confiscated at the US-Canada border. I’d spent a week in Castro country and had loaded up on about $75 worth of T-shirts and small gifts. Instead of lying to the customs officials and saying I’d been in Montreal visiting friends, which would have been easy enough, I decided to tell them the real story: I’d gone to Cuba on an assignment for a golf magazine. Good-bye, T-shirts.

I’m not really blaming the rules-bound customs guys at the border checkpoint north of Burlington, Vt. US law says that any goods purchased in Cuba — with the strange exception of literature — must be confiscated. “You should have checked the State Department website,’’ one of them told me, and he was correct. But setting my own travel sloppiness aside, the law that says you can’t bring home a small bag of gifts from Cuba is absurd. If I remember right, we lost 58,000 good Americans in Vietnam, and 40 years later you can bring home just about anything from that nation. China, Russia, Albania, Burma, the dictatorships of Africa — please, spend some money there, bring home souvenirs for your kids.

But don’t spend a peso in Cuba...

PS: This makes me want to create a new category: Common Sense, but alas I fear it would lack for entries.

 

Entrained, entranced in Castleton, VT

I may secretly be a three-year-old boy. I love trains. Keen readers may recall my history of meeting people on trains, people being writers, that is. Writers are great (very great, she says modestly) but so far nothing beats the train station I left recently in Castleton (pop. 4717), VT, headed for Penn Station in New York.

Yes, there's a train from tiny Castleton to NYC and back every day -- the Ethan Allen. (In case your American history is as rusty as mine, Wikipedia tells us: In May 1775 Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys met in Castleton with Benedict Arnold to plan their next day's attack on Fort Ticonderoga, 30 miles (48 km) west, on the New York side of Lake Champlain.)

And so the train named in the patriot's honor makes its way through peak foliage, along the Hudson, and even has a club car with Kashi cereal. But words can only do so much in a situation like this.

First passenger to arrive, I opened the door to this waiting room.

Next I notice the honor-system coffee bar.

And the Rutland Herald waiting on the bench.

A collection of things we used to use...

A quilt of old trains...

And the station door...

At which point, the stationmaster, Mary Ann Jakubowski, showed up to tell the story of this little jewel.

Short version: First used as a train station in 1850, the last passengers  came through in the mid-1940s; freight continued to pass through until the mid-'50s. In 1966, Jakubowski's parents bought the building and her father, Cecil Ducharme, opened a honky-tonk piano store there. After her parents died, Jakubowski and her husband, Val, decided to rehab the building -- and appeal to Amtrak to reinstitute service in Castleton. Their campaign worked; they transformed the building to its current quaintness; and service was restored in January, 2010. Today the Ethan Allen leaves for Penn Station around 8 AM and returns back to Castleton around 8:30 at night.

And then...I, and about a dozen others, go to the platform and watch the train come in:

Very sweet. And for the record, I didn't meet any writers on this train. Instead I met a museum curator... and on the return trip, two friends. Take the train.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clipping Delta's wings

Look, I'm no expert on aviation or airport traffic but when the Boston Globe splays an above-the-fold headline like "Jets crash on Logan taxiway" and the airline in question turns out to be Delta, with which I've just had, shall we say, a rather inferior "user experience," I've got a bit to say. Briefly, perfectly good weather, before dark, and:

A large Delta jet preparing to take off at Logan International Airport for a trip to Amsterdam last night struck a smaller jet, slicing through its tail and leaving at least one passenger injured, authorities said.

Reading on we find that "two planes collided at New York’s Kennedy airport in April. One of the planes involved in that incident had just arrived in New York from Boston. That was also a Delta plane [that]...operates as Delta Connection, a regional partner contracted to fly certain flights."

Last weekend, returning from abroad, I attempted to fly back to Boston on a Delta Connection flight through JFK. I'm not a fussy passenger but I do think a few things make sense like:

1. Announcing the flight. No, I'm not being flip. Delta Connection was boarding THREE flights from the same gate and while they announced the Charlotte and Atlanta (forgive me if it was a different city but I think it was Atlanta) flights, Boston passengers never heard a call for theirs. Then as departure time drew near, we started asking and we suddenly were rushed to the head of the line.

2. Connecting the gate with the plane. Again, we're talking about an airline flying out of one of the world's premier airports. We walked down a rickety jetway, around a corner, down again, perhaps the equivalent of three or four city blocks, off of which there were various openings - sort of like a movie theatre - #1 for Harry Potter, etc. Finally there was a sullen attendant (I would have been more than sullen if I had that job) who pointed out the door. Into a bit of a torrential downpour. And the instructions to walk to the plane, which was another good city block or so away. Certainly a less customer-friendly approach than the one we'd had in the developing country that we'd just left.

3. Taking off. After more than an hour when we sat on the plane, we learned that we were returning to the gate where a "customer service representative" would tell us what was happening.

4. A customer service rep to tell us what was happening. There wasn't.

Sheer persistence (it's now 11 PM) on the part of perhaps 75 enraged passengers brings the rumor that the flight is cancelled (there's never an announcement) - and each of us individually is left to make new arrangements. Briefly, we were sent to an airport hotel (this took another hour), were given two meal vouchers (for dinner and breakfast - need I add that the hotel restaurant was closed by this point), and rebooked on a flight that would get us to Boston around noon the next day.

The meal vouchers were $6 each, not enough to cover the hotel breakfast.

The next morning's flight was postponed due to "technical problems."

And we finally landed around 2 PM the following day - but only because I insisted on being rebooked on a different flight. Why did I suspect that the "technical problems" on our plane might lead to another delay?

Delta. I posted to Facebook about this and got a bit of a dump from others about their Delta experience. My favorite from my friend, Rhodes: "As for myself, I swore off flying with Delta years ago."

My story is one of inconvenience and incompetence. What happened on the runway last night in Boston was dangerous. There needs to be a pretty large delta at Delta to get this airline right again.

 

 

 

Telecommuting goal to reduce carbon footprint in Hubei province

Remember my obsession with "green teams" and ideas generated by readers to use virtual meetings to clean up the carbon? Encouraging article in China Business News: "Telecommuting to solve Hubei’s carbon emissions problem." Check out the optimistic last paragraph about the impact of virtual meetings on carbon emissions. (My only nit is whether the virtual meeting carbon reduction is corrected for emissions of the IT infrastructure to support such meetings - a quibble, to be sure):

When the China Mobile Hubei Company recently called on other companies and the public sector to work together on a low-carbon smart city initiative, to turn Hubei province into a “low-carbon area” a dozen companies applauded the idea...

The National Development and Reform Commission selected Hubei, earlier this year, as one of the first group of bases in the country for low-carbon pilot tests.

It did not seem to be an easy job. The province is famous for its traditional concentration of heavy industries and scant regard for the environment, but, emerging telecom developments seem to paint a much more hopeful picture.

In fact, the telecommuting sector has the greatest potential for carbon emission reductions in China, and could save 340 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2020, Guo told the audience of environmental experts, local government officials and company representatives.

In the long run, he said, savings from virtual meetings will increase at a much greater rate – about 623 million tons of CO2 annually – by 2030, thereby cutting commercial aviation emissions by nearly 40 percent...

Two passages to India

Interesting blogs from two friends, one recently, the other currently, in India.

Bombayva is the work of Ava Shapiro, who's there on an 11-month stay on American Jewish World Service’s World Partners Fellowship.

Andi.in.India documents Fulbright Scholar Andi Edson's five-week tour of India's primary education system this summer.

Both blogs educational and delightful.

 

 

6 countries, 24 hours and a virtual team stat

I had occasion to chat with Colin Rainier earlier this week. (No, I'm not switching industries - if you follow the link, you'll see what I mean.) We'd had a bit of trouble scheduling the call as Colin was one of those whose travel plans were affected by that nasty plume of ash that was pouring out of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull (I love that word - should be in spelling bees) volcano.

Colin had to get to a meeting in Nice, or thereabouts, in fact a tiny village even more beautiful than Nice (Eze). To get there, he flew from his home in #1 Bermuda (below, the view from his office window, which he kindly sent) to #2 Newark to #3 Porto (Portugal) to #4 Geneva, where he picked up a car, swinging through #5 Italy and finally arriving in #6 Eze (France.) Right. Six countries, for a brief meeting, then turned around and came home, all within 24 hours.

His colleagues at the meeting had even greater adventures getting there - ferries, trains, cars, and such.

That the subject of our call was virtual working was not lost on Colin who went on to cite his experiences with same and this phenomenal stat: he figures that his "expense ratio is 40% of [his] competitors" due to his use of virtual teams, sourced for the need, then dispersed when the task is done. Well done, Colin, especially when you have the good fortune to be "assembling" those teams while looking out on this.