I don’t like to think of myself as a bleeding heart, but something just doesn’t sit right with me about killing whales. It’s seems like an excruciatingly anachronistic practice that has little reason to continue other than culture. Where countries like Japan are concerned, there does not appear to be a broader necessity to hunt whales. And so it’s a bit of a disappointment to learn that last Wednesday, a fleet of six Japanese whaling ships left the southern port of Shimonoseki to begin their annual Antarctic whale hunt.
The group plans to hunt 850 minke whales and ten fin whales. As reported by the BBC, Japan says the catches are small and the populations of these whale species are relatively plentiful in the Antarctic. Of course, someone will out there protesting (and good for them). Captain Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an activist organization determined to protect the whale species, plans to intervene and prevent the hunt. Again, some outdated cultural practices are probably tolerable, but IMHO whaling is not one of them.
Best/Worst of Times: Dublin Bookstores Experiencing Difficult Period
I once lived in Dublin for nearly a year and seemed to have spent a great deal of that time in the city’s grand bookstores. When I was bored, I’d swing by one of the many independent bookstores and spend time browsing the titles and reading little snippets of literary gems.
I was therefore disappointed to come across an article by Kevin Cullen lamenting the difficult period these very bookstores are currently experiencing due to Ireland’s booming economy. As the city becomes more affluent and rent continues to soar, more and more of these small, independent shops are having problems paying rent. Many have already shut their doors.
I find this simply tragic. There is perhaps no city on this planet with a richer literary heritage than Dublin. The bookstores are as much a part of the city’s character as its many pubs. As they shut down one by one, the collective screams of Yeats, Joyce, Wilde, Swift, and so many other Men of Letters will ring out loud and clear across this Dirty Old Town.
Couch Surfing Travel
Many many moons ago, I traveled to Europe with a program called Servas that essentially set yo up with people in other countries and allowed you to stay with them for a few days. A quick Google effort reveals that, indeed, the organization is still around. This was pre-widespread-Internet days, and so what the group did was give you a stack of books with people’s names and numbers, and you had to arrange the stay via the telephone and a archaic system of communicating whereby word were written on paper and actually sent in an”envelope” to another person, thus conveying a message. Anyway, Servas was cool, and offered me, a fresh-faced kid right out of college, the opportunity to meet and stay with other people who I am sure I would never have met otherwise. It got me out of the hostel system, too, which can be both hectic, over-crowded and annoying.
Well, in the modern age we have the Internet and we have enterprising people eager to make these types of connections easier. And we have a new program called the Couch Surfing Project, a Web site that lets travelers and adventurers get a unique taste of local life. The project is the brainchild of Casey Fenton, who got hold of a university list serve and e-mailed hundreds of local students asking for a place to crash. Rather soon after, he received scads of e-mails from students offering their couches and their friendship him. Very nice. And so for now, Couch Surfing is a free, nonprofit service with more than 60,000 members. Some seven continents are represented (although we haven’t confirmed this and wonder where in Antarctica one can find a couch….and close to 200 countries.
Could be a very cool opportunity not just to reduce the cost of travel, but to get in with the locals.
Verge Magazine
Writing a travel blog can sometimes be a daunting task. The reason is that there are so many kinds of travel. On the one hand, there is luxury travel, where folks ho aboard a pristine ocean liner and drop into ports of call where the main activity is being led off like a herd of sheep, perhaps dining in a restaurant and more or less having your whole experience orchestrated by some tour group.
I generally look at this kind of travel with a measure of revulsion. It might be OK when you’re 70 and are less, shall we say, mobile than you used to be, but it seems to me that this kind of travel is rather sterile. Then there’s the whole backpacking adventure, which is much more appealing to most of the folks that read Gadling. But yet another kind of travel involves real commitment…you might even call it work…and that is the volunteer vacation. We’ve posted about volunteer vacations numerous times, and usually we’re quite bullish about the concept.
Our good friend Josh Berman did this and talked about the experience at some length in the podcast we did a while back. But I just recently stumbled upon a whole magazine that’s largely dedicated to the subject, and I figured it was worth mentioning.
Verge Magazine comes out of Canada, and is geared, as you might have guessed, towards Canucks (wait, is that the right use of thee term? Oh, well). It’s got articles galore on the volunteer vacation concept with other fine pieces about conservation, science and profiles of folks who make travel a part of their occupation. The online pickings are actually rather slim, so I’d love to actually get my hands on a bona fide copy, but the site has some pieces online that make it worth a visit. But one section worth checking out is the resources area where you can find links to organizations who offer vacations for activits types and adventureres with a leftie bent.
Craig Duff Blogs from Egypt
Craig Duff is a filmmaker, journalist, writer, traveler…he also happens to be a friend of mine. And a little while ago Craig headed overseas as the recipient of the much-coveted, very prestigious, Knight International Fellowships. Never mind HOW prestigious, you can go to the site and check that out for yourself. Or Google it.
The thing I want you to check out is Craig’s blog. Craig selected Egypt as his host country for the duration of his fellowship and he’s been living now in “choking, chaotic Cairo” for several months. While he’s had the opportunity to savor Cairo’s hubbub, he also gets out of the city to experience its gaping, ancient-world loveliness as well as the epic diving of places like Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab (where I spent my honeymoon).
Craig is an excellent writer, not to mention filmmaker, and his observations on life in Egypt are a must-read for anyone interesting in this region of the world. His insights are thoughtful and penetrating, while his superb sense of humor lends a light-hearted and entertaining touch that makes this blog a worthy bookmark.