“Ground Zero Mosque” reality check

by Sean McLachlan on

We’ve all heard about it–the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”. Journalists, bloggers, and pretty much everyone else have been screaming at each other about whether it should open or not. All but absent from the debate, however, are hard facts.

Now the Village Voice has published an angry article with facts about the Ground Zero Mosque. First off, it’s a community center as well as a mosque. Secondly, it’s not at Ground Zero. The article has a map showing the proposed community center is two-and-a-half blocks away from Ground Zero at 51 Park Place. Even more revealing are photos of what’s also in the vicinity of Ground Zero–a Burger King, a bookie, and a titty bar. Nobody has called these places disrespectful to the memory of the victims.

Village Voice writer Foster Kamer goes off on people from outside New York City making judgments about the Park51 project, pointing out that the community center will have a 9/11 memorial and saying that people who want to stifle freedom of religion are almost as bad as terrorists. He also reminds us that dozens of Muslims were killed in the 9/11 attacks, including an NYPD cadet. Kamer then rips into the commercialization of Ground Zero. Thousands of tourists flock to it every year, feeding a small industry of guided tours and souvenir stands selling Chinese-made memorabilia. There’s even a hotel that’s using its proximity to Ground Zero as a selling point.

One thing Kamer doesn’t include, however, is a link to the Park51 project, so here it is. The site details what the developers are planning to do with the property.

Is an Islamic community center an appropriate thing to have two-and-a-half blocks away from Ground Zero? Is a titty bar? Is Ground Zero tourism respectful or simply ghoulish? Tell us what you think in the comments section.


Photo of 45-51 Park Place courtesy Gryffindor via Wikimedia Commons.

Art for free in Paris? Paris’ cemeteries are beautiful and free.

by Gadling Staff on

Ah, Paris. City of light. City of magic. City of art. City of admission fees to view art.

Stepping inside the Louvre will cost you $14.00. Want the audio guide? Another 8 bucks. How about seeing one of the temporary exhibitions? That’ll set you back another $16.00. How about an espresso to caffeinate the experience? Plunk down $5.00, please. While no trip to Paris is complete without a foray to the Louve, spending that much money every day is going to result in a quick evaporation of your resources. You came to Paris to see fabulous art, but dang some days you get overwhelmed with the prices and the crowds. What to do? How about seeing world-class sculpture by some of the same artists whose works are exhibited in Paris’ pricy museums and galleries for free? Get thee to a cemetery. First up is Père Lachaise Cemetery, the world’s first “garden cemetery,” established in 1804.

Père Lachaise
48 51’35.95″N 2 23’20.51″E (Main Entrance)
A dozen years ago about the only ambulatory people in this magnificent cemetery were black-shrouded Goths who were on a pilgrimage to see the grave of their fallen high priest, Jim Morrison, or local Parisians who were out for a quiet stroll. That has all changed. Père Lachaise has been discovered. Not to worry, you’ll still be quite alone, at least by big city standards. You may have company around the permanent homes of some of the major celebrities, but wander off the main paths and you’ll get the serenity you want and at all times you’ll be surrounded by the magnificent sculpture you came to Paris to see. Better yet, it’s all FREE … but first things first.

(Père Lachaise)Before embarking on your eternal excursion, download a map and chart your path. (Vendors around the perimeter of the cemetery also sell reasonably-priced detailed maps). Then hop on the Metro and get off at (where else?) the Père Lachaise station. You probably won’t be able to resist making a beeline for JIM so do that if you must, then plan your path from there. Alas, Morrison’s grave is a pretty pedestrian affair, but, well, it is Jim.

(The grave of Jim Morrison.)

Other must-sees are the lipstick-kisses-covered-genitalia-abbreviated tomb of Oscar Wilde, the statue of journalist turned fertility god Victor Noir, dancer Isadora Duncan, writer Gertrude Stein, singer Edith Piaf, composer Chopin, glass artist Renè Jules Lalique and star-crossed lovers Heloise and Abelard. You can easily spend a day at Père Lachaise, but you can always come back and many people do, over and over again. Best haste; there are other boneyard bonanzas awaiting.

(Oscar Wilde’s tomb.)

Montparnasse Cemetery
48 50’10.13″N 219’39.04″E
Montparnasse Cemetery is home to Constantin Brancusi. A rendition of his sculpture, The Kiss, adorns his grave. Poet Charles Baudelaire has a suitably poetic tomb. And don’t miss the over-the-top tomb of Charles Pigeon, the inventor of non-explosive gas lamp. Pigeon’s tomb is a massive polished granite bed complete with a bronze sculpture of Pigeon and his wife. There are dozens of other sculptors, composers, actors, writers, singers and painters reposing at Montparnasse and you can easily spend hours tracking them down.

(Brancusi’s grave, topped with The Kiss.)


(Baudelaire’s tomb.)


(Pigeon’s grave.)

Saint-Vincent Cemetery
48 53′ 20.27″ N 02 20 21.20″ E
This postage-stamp-sized cemetery doesn’t have a lot of notable residents but its eclectic tombs and slanting hillside location make it a pleasant place for an unencumbered stroll.

Montemarte Cemetery
48 53’7.15″N 2 19’51.75″E
If nothing else, Montemarte Cemetery is a study in urban intrusion. Urban cemeteries have long been victims of city swell. Often the residents of these cemeteries are exhumed and deposited elsewhere with little or no fanfare. However, at Montemarte road designers figured out a way to thread a motorway above and through the burial ground. Sitting at the bus stop surrounded by petite mausoleums presents a unique opportunity to contemplate one’s mortality.

Paris Catacombs
48 50’1.99″N 2 19’56.06″E
Okay, this ones gonna cost you about 12 bucks, but for the truly macabre-motivated the Paris Catacombs are not to be missed. In the late 18th century, officials ordered the closure of various burial grounds in Paris and the transfer of the bones to abandoned underground quarries that at the time were just south of the city. In the next few decades the bones of approximately 6 million expired Parisians found their way to what became the Catacombs of Paris. The catacombs are open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm. Bring a light jacket and sturdy shoes (130 steps down on a spiral staircase).

Douglas R. Keister is a graveyard guru, who Sunset magazine said “has done for cemetery exploration what Audubon did for birding.” His 39 books include four books on cemeteries such as Stories in the Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography. Read his blog on Red Room.

Torquay on the English Riviera throws birthday bash for Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime

by Lillian Africano on

In September of this year, Agatha Christie fans from all over the world will converge on Torquay to celebrate the 120th anniversary of her birth in a week-long festival of murder, mayhem and mischief.

With two billion books in 50 languages in print, Christie is the most-published novelist in the world; online games based on her mysteries have had 30 million downloads. She was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1971 and her summer house, Greenway, was gifted to Britain’s National Trust in 1999, and opened to the public last year.

(Agatha Christie Bust unveiled by her daughter on September 15th, 1990 to mark Christie’s 100th birthday.)On September 12, Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard, will launch the festival with a re-creation of an English country fête of the 1920s and ’30s, with period costumes and a jazz band. A Hercule Poirot lookalike will be on hand to solve any mysteries that might arise. The festival’s 40-odd events will include murder mysteries aboard a train and a vintage bus, treasure hunts, fireworks, productions of Christie’s plays and films, and even a charity swim along the same beach where Christie herself used to bathe. (Dame Agatha was certainly no sissy — the water temperature hovers around 55° F in midsummer.)

Like millions of Christie’s fans, I’ve “traveled” with Agatha — in a beach chair, on trains, on planes, whiling away the hours with the 80 ingenious whodunits that featured her engaging detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. So I’ll be joining the crowds at Torquay to enjoy the celebration and to sample the attractions of the English Riviera.

Dame Agatha herself was an intrepid traveler and explorer. She visited Egypt and the Middle East and met her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, while visiting an excavation. In her imagination, she saw crime everywhere she went. Result: Murder in Mesopotamia, They Came to Baghdad, and Death on the Nile.

Christie rode the famous Venice-Simplon Express to Istanbul, and, like all upper class Britons of the time, stopped at the Pera Palace. She may even have written Murder on the Orient Express here. Her room, 411, is now called the Agatha Christie Room, and the hotel’s new international restaurant will be called the Agatha Restaurant when the Pera Palace reopens on September 1 after an extended renovation. The Pera Palace will also observe its famous guest’s birthday with a party on September 15.

Back in England’s capital, Brown’s Hotel will be offering a special Agatha Christie Afternoon Tea, September 12-19. Brown’s was the inspiration for the too-perfectly-English-to-be-true hotel in At Bertram’s Hotel. While in London, fans can take in The Mousetrap at St. Martin’s Theatre in the West End, where it continues its incredible world-record run of 58 years and counting.

But it was the people and places of her own hometown of Torquay, in the idyllic rural county of Devon, that really fired Christie’s murderous imagination, resulting in no fewer than 15 mysteries, some set in her gracious Georgian home, Greenway.

(Greenway, Christie’s Georgian-style home, and the setting for Dead Man’s Folly)

In Christie’s time, Torquay was a fashionable seaside resort, with stately hotels, sandy beaches and a glorious harbor; the 1948 Olympic sailing events took place here. Britain’s upper classes came for the sea air and a bit of golf or cricket.

Today, the palm-lined promenade and seafront gardens give a nod to the French Riviera; the international marina is a recreational hub of sailing, water-skiing, and diving. Occasionally there’s even a pirate sighting — as when Johnny Depp sailed into Torquay on the Black Pearl (aka HMS Bounty).

(Torquay Harbour and the new harbour bridge)

Stroll along the sea front and you can’t miss the Grand Hotel, an aptly named Victorian-era pile with an Art Deco flourish. Agatha and first husband Archie Christie spent their honeymoon at the Grand in December 1914. During the festival month, the hotel has a special package that starts at £159 (about $246) per room (three-night minimum) and includes a full West Country Breakfast daily, nightly dinner in the AA Rosette Gainsborough Restaurant, one complimentary Devon Cream Tea, and tickets to several Christie attractions.

The Grand Hotel is also the start of the Agatha Christie Mile, which takes in many of the landmarks pertaining to the author’s past and which can be walked with the aid of a leaflet, available from the local Tourist Information Centre.

(Grand Hotel, where Christie and her first husband, Archie, spent their honeymoon.)

In her youth, Agatha roller skated on Princess Pier, attended concerts at the Torquay Pavilion and went to balls at the Imperial Hotel, featured in three of her novels — Peril at End House, The Body in the Library, and Sleeping Murder. Built on the top of a cliff, the hotel commands a sweeping view of the coastline from its well-known Regatta restaurant as well as 77 of its 152 rooms.

High on my sightseeing list are the Torquay Museum, which has an entire gallery dedicated to Christie and the Agatha Christie Potent Plants Garden, which opened last year. Call it a “green” attraction, but fans will instantly recognize the garden as a cornucopia of grow-your-own murder weapon choices: dwarf peaches and nectarines, whose fruit stones produce cyanide, used in Sparkling Cyanide; deadly nightshade, the murder weapon in The Caribbean Mystery; and aconite, which dispatched several characters in 4.50 from Paddington.

If time permits, I’ll visit the prehistoric caves at Kents Cavern. Though Christie never chose the caves as a setting for murder, they are perhaps Torquay’s most mysterious places, pre-dating proper British society by about half a million years and said by some visitors to be haunted by ghosts of Stone Age man.

You can travel to Torquay by train from London’s Paddington Station; it’s an easy three-and-a-half hour ride. A number of hotels and guest houses are offering special festival packages.

Stay tuned for more from Agatha Christie Country.

Lindblad Expeditions announces upcoming Global Luminaries

by Kraig Becker on

Lindblad Expeditions has earned itself a reputation as one of the top adventure travel companies on the planet, offering a wide variety of options for travelers to visit the far flung corners of the globe. The company is well known for having some of the best trained and most knowledgeable staff in the entire industry, offering clients great insights into the places that they visit. But their “Global Luminaries” program takes that reputation to a whole new level, with a line-up of very impressive specials guest that will enhance an already great trip even further.

These dignitaries come from a wide variety of fields, but are generally broken down into four categories; World Affairs, Broadcast Journalism, Exploration, and Research. Each of the Global Luminaries will be joining guests aboard the National Geographic Explorer, one of Lindblad’s luxury cruise ships, for a specifically selected journey through a region of the world that they know well and can offer unique perspectives on. For example, when the ship visits the historic waterways of the Baltic at the end of August and Early September of this year, and again in 2011, passengers will share that journey with former Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev as well as the former President of Poland, and Nobel Prize winner, Lech Walesa.

Other famous names on the list of luminaries include well-known naturalist and television personality Jim Fowler, former astronaut Rick Hauck, mountaineer and explorer Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary, Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland, and ocean rower Roz Savage. But those are just the beginning, as there are a number of other scientists, explorers, and writers scheduled to take part in the fun as well.

For the complete list of Global Luminaries, and the trips they’ll be taking part in for the rest of 2010 and 2011, click here.

[Photo credit: Lindblad Expeditions]

DMZ peace park a hopeful Korean destination for children

by Tom Johansmeyer on

In my career as a writer – and before that as a management consultant – I saw some pretty strange proposals. But, nothing that crossed my desk compared to what Jonathan Lee has put together. The 13-year-old was born in South Korea and lives in the United States, and he’s going on a most unusual journey. The enterprising teenager was scheduled to fly Thursday night to Pyongyang to pitch an idea to Kim Jong-il … yes, that Kim Jong-il. The one who rules the reclusive North Korea with no tolerance for dissent.

Lee hopes to secure support for his idea to create a children’s peace forest in the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone. He expects to meet with officials in North Korea, to whom he will proffer his idea, which will include “fruit and chestnut trees … and where children can plan,” according to the Huffington Post. Most likely, armed guards will continue to stand on either side of the Zone with weapons ready to be used if necessary.

The DMZ is not a peaceful place, of course. Though the Korean War’s fighting stopped in 1953, peace was never formally attained, and a cease-fire has been in place for close to six decades. The United States doesn’t have diplomatic ties to North Korea, and any interaction between the two governments usually takes place through the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang.

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Lee says he knows the visit is supposed to be safe, but he’s a bit nervous, given that North Korea is still a communist country. His mother, Melissa, adds, “”We know, it sounds crazy.” She continues, “When he first said, ‘I think we need to go to North Korea,’ I looked at my husband and said, ‘What?’ It was a radical idea.”

Lee has already worked on laying the groundwork south of the DMZ:

Reports by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency say Jonathan met former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung three years ago and suggested planting chestnut trees on the Korean peninsula and that he went to see the then-ailing former president again last year.

In a letter Jonathan hopes to give to Kim Jong Il, he wrote that Kim Dae-jung talked with him about his “sunshine policy” of peaceful coexistence with the North.

So, if l works out, there will be a new destination for the family – in neither country! Doubtless, the likelihood of Lee’s dream being realized is pretty low, but let’s give him credit for a valiant effort that is leading to some wild places.

[Via Foreign Policy, photo by UNC – CFC – USFK via Flickr]