Quirky Culture, North of NYC – BBC Travel, 11/13/2012

Only 20 years ago, the quirky cultural haven of Hudson, New York would have been an unlikely candidate to become a far north weekend colony of New York City.

This small city, about 125 miles north of Manhattan and just across the Hudson River from the bucolic Catskills Region, had spent decades in a steady slide, settling into a largely unremarkable and economically-depressed backwater by the mid 1980s.

But before that, in the early 20th Century, Hudson was known as a centre of prostitution and vice, and even earlier still, just after the Revolutionary War in the early 1800s, the city’s main industry – whaling – was one that would hardly appeal to most modern urbane sensibilities. Whales were hunted in the Atlantic Ocean and brought by ship up the Hudson River for processing, a grisly business that is commemorated today with a cheerful cartoon whale symbol on the city’s street signs.

But Hudson did not become a quirky weekend destination by ignoring its sordid history. In fact, Hudson’s seedy past seems to add to its appeal.  Read more at BBC Travel.

 

 

A new New York, Just Up the Hudson – BBC Travel

 

You have to take the idea of a “new” New York kind of loosely in this piece for The BBC – the rough triangle I’m recommending, bound by Beacon, Hyde Park, and New Paltz is actually nothing like the city, but has several desirable aspects of urban life: culture, history, cuisine and art.

Previously, I wrote about FDR’s driveway, pictured above, for Perceptive Travel.

A Travel Guide to American Hypocrisy — The Millions

The park ranger wore a pannier. The side-hooped undergarment held her dress out about a half foot at each side at the hip, creating even wider girth for the already stoutish civil servant. Over the frock, she wore an apron, and over her flushed cheeks and damp curls, a white ruffled mob cap.

It was not regulation National Park Service issue, the olive uniform topped with a Smokey the Bear hat. But nor was it a dress code violation, for the date was July 8th, which all will immediately recognize as the anniversary of the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Every year, Independence National Park celebrates the occasion with a dramatic re-enactment of the first reading, performed by park rangers in period costume on a bunting draped stage behind Independence Hall. The program begins with scene-setting – on this day in 1776, the mood would have been tense and uncertain. The Declaration was an act of treason for its writers and backers, a gamble that would result in either in the glory of a new country or a death warrant.

“But we’re here to encourage you to have some fun,” said the ranger at the microphone, straightening his wool brass-buttoned waist coat. “Think of this as an interactive event. Join in with cheers and with huzzahs!”

“Or join in with boos,” he added, wiping sweat from his brow. Among the thousands of people who attended the first reading, many were loyal to the British crown. He inquired whether anyone in the crowd was of British descent, (“or even Canadian”).  After a beat of dead silence, he dispatched a few costumed rangers into the crowd, to play the part of the dissenters.

Among them, the ranger in a pannier.

“Long live the King!” she shouted, over the cheers, whoops and dog whistles that came during the Declaration’s first reliable applause line, we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident-that-all-men-are-created-equal.

“You all shall hang!”
I should confess that I’m not a habitual attendee of historic re-enactment events. I’d only wedged myself into the crowd behind Independence Hall that day because Domestic Manners of the Americans had gotten into my head…

Read more at The Millions

 

How to Tell a Vacation Story (Without Putting Everyone to Sleep)

So this one time, I was dune bashing in the Wahiba Sands in Oman when…

As we’re entering the summer travel season, the subject of vacation is sure to crop up in conversation: at dinner parties, at the office, at a business lunch.

Wouldn’t it be nice not to bore everyone to tears?  Why yes, it would.  A few years back, I wrote a story about how to tell a good vacation story.  I wrote it because I was really tired of hearing meandering stories about lost luggage, rooms with crappy views, and literal blow-by-blow accounts of food poisoning.

That’s not to say that I always tell a great story — I have sometimes realized in horror that that the story I’m in the midst of telling has no point and isn’t very interesting. At that point, I believe it’s a kindness to change the subject. Abruptly.

Anyway, as you’re trying on your bathing suits and breaking out the flip-flops, here’s how to tune up your storytelling skills.

Rilke’s Failures and the Importance of Thinking Big

“There is only one way. Withdraw into yourself. Explore the reasons that bid you write, find out if it has spread out its roots in the very depths of our heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing was denied to you. Above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, “Must I write?” Dig deep into yourself for an answer. And if the answer should be in the affirmative, if you can meet this solemn question with a simple strong “I must” then build your life according to this necessity. Your life right down to its most indifferent and unimportant hour must be a token and a witness to this compulsion.”

That’s part of the advice that Ranier Maria Rilke famously offered a young poet in 1903 — it’s quoted often enough that it’s basically become a creative process cliché.

It’s still sound advice for any writer, but I think it’s important to understand that Rilke was describing his ideal — not his own writing practice.

At the time Rilke wrote his advice to that young poet, Franz Xavier Kappus, he’d just left Paris, where he’d been working on a monograph about Auguste Rodin, and studying Rodin’s creative process. A few months after he offered his advice to Kappus, Rilke wrote to a friend: “I must learn to work, to work, Lou, I am so lacking in that! Il faut toujours travailler – toujours – [Rodin] said to me once, when I spoke to him of the frightening abyss that open up between my good days…”

Those good days, any writer will recognize, are the good, productive writing days. Rilke was persuaded by, but ultimately unable to follow Rodin’s rallying cry: One must work always – always.

Rilke wanted to arrange his life around his writing, and nothing but his writing. Two volumes of letters to friends and family show that he was not always able to do it. But it’s important to remember that he did get an awful lot of important writing done in his rather short life.

The take away: If you make it your goal to put writing at the center of your life, and achieve only partial success, you’ll get a lot more written than if you make it your goal to carve out a small space in your life for writing. When setting writing goals, thinking big is better than thinking small.

And why am I thinking about all of this?  I’m prepping for a few classes I’m teaching this summer on the Business of Freelance Writing.  One is at The Arts Center of the Capital Region, on June 2nd, and the other will be at Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, in Sleepy Hollow, on July 14th.

Chekhov is Homesick – Perceptive Travel/USA Today

Midway through Anton Chekhov’s first trip to Western Europe, after he’d been blown away by Venice, pictured above, he started to get a case of homesickness. I immediately recognized this as “that mid-trip feeling”.

“I’ve seen everything and dragged myself everywhere I was ordered,” Chekhov wrote in a letter home.  “When I was offered something to sniff, I sniffed. But all I feel is exhaustion and a craving for a bowl of cabbage soup and buckwheat kasha.”  Read more. Also on USA Today.

Chicago Hotel Stories – About.com

Most travelers book one hotel per destination and stick with it. It’s certainly easier not to change hotels each night, but writers don’t always get to make the easy choices. (I know, I know, your tears of sympathy would fill Lake Michigan.)

I stayed at three different hotels on my recent trip to Chicago. All very different from one another in their food & beverage programs, and in other ways, and all recommended:

• Italian Craft Cocktails: The Radisson Blu Aqua and Filini (Pictured Above)
• Dry Aged Steak: The James Hotel and David Burke Primehouse
• Catalan Tapas: The Blackstone Hotel and Mercat a la Planxa