There is no telling when a photo will show up as a Photo of the Day. Ultraclay! posted this one December 1, 2006. Why now? Why today? These tango dancers, one a blur, but for the clasp of a hand, evokes a romantic dream–the type of shot that can only be captured at the right instant.
Great!
Send your captured moments our way at Gadling’s Flickr Photo Pool. Who knows? Next week –, tomorrow, or two years from now, it could show up as a Photo of the Day.
There is a newly published Forbes.com article on the top 10 cities for making a living in the United States. Each has something to offer travelers as well. Here are the top cities and one place to go to in each. These are the first places that immediately came to mind. It’s an odd assortment.
1. Houston, Texas. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles and found it incredibly worthwhile and moving. From the description of the Holocaust Museum in Houston, it sounds similar, although there is a section that includes first person accounts of the Holocaust survivors who live in the city.
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota. As I’ve posted before, the outdoor art in Minneapolis is fantastic, particularly, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
3. Boston, Massachusetts. The Freedom Trail that winds through the old part of Boston highlights the important places during the American Revolution. Here’s a tour that looks like a fun way to take it in. When I walked the Freedom Trail in Girl Scouts, we were on our own. I wish we had been on this tour.
4. Washington, D.C. For my next trip to D.C., I’d take Jeremy’s suggestion and head to the Brickskeller, a beer lover’s paradise. Sure, I’d take in the sites, many I’ve seen before, but Jeremy’s post offers something new.
5. New York City When I was sweltering in line in Central Park at the Delacorte Theater, not getting tickets to “Hair,” an experience that I recounted in a recent post, a Danish man and his daughter visiting NYC wanted recommendations on what to see. I suggested Ellis Island. The ferry trip there also swings by Liberty Island for a close look at the Statue of Liberty, and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum is superb.
6. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’ve only driven through this city, but have plans to visit the Andy Warhol Museum one fine day.
7. San Francisco, California. I must have a thing for taking boats to landmarks. I just love the tour of Alcatraz Island, that includes the famous prison that has been the backdrop for escape stories and intrigue.
8. Dallas, Texas. I went here to attend a cousin’s wedding and picked historic Dealey Plaza, the location of the grassy knoll and the Texas Book Depository, the scene of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, as my must-head-to-before-I-leave-town destination.
9. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s not that I am overly fond of beer drinking, but the Miller Brewing Factory tour of is a lot of fun, particularly if there is a polka band involved.
10. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Liberty Bell may be just a bell, but there’s something about that crack in it that makes for an icon to see if you can swing it.
To find out why these cities are top notch for making a living, read the article. One hint: It involves money.
Matt Gross, the New York Times’ “Frugal Traveler,” seems to have everything– a dream job, plenty of money, a talent for travel writing, and dozens of interested women. So why, in his revealing new essay in Nerve, does he claim to be so sexually frustrated? Because, oh yeah, he’s married.
We often stereotype travel writers as being rootless, wandering singles who bounce blithely from one location to the next. But this isn’t the case for Matt Gross, who writes that being a married travel writer is often an “exercise in sexual frustration.”
One of the great things about travel is the sense of adventure it brings, the willingness to try anything– consequences be damned. But that only extends so far for the Frugal Traveler. He writes:
“Travel is about embracing new experiences: foods you’ve never eaten, languages you’ve never spoken, religious rituals you’ve never even heard of. To decline any offer at all – a spontaneous wedding invitation in Pondicherry, a swig of rice wine from an unmarked flask in a Saigonese goat restaurant – is to deny the very spirit of voyaging, and so I decline nothing. Except for it. The fact that I can’t take part in it, that most hallowed ritual of travel – sex with strangers – frustrates me on a philosophical level as well as a primal one.”
Read the whole entertaining essay here.
[HT: Our good friends at World Hum]
Today is the first day of school for my children. My daughter waltzed out the door at 7 a.m. this morning after showing me the piece of cheese she was eating–(she plays soccer and I’m adamant that she eat some sort of protein), to catch her ride. She’s a 10th grader.
For my son, who is now a first grader, the anticipation build-up of last year is much less. We know our routine. Kindergarten left a lump in my throat. First grade is old hat, but he still wants me to drive him and walk him in for the first day. After today, he heads out on the bus.
This first day of school got me thinking about schools around the world and what a gift having a school to go to is. When I was in the Peace Corps, I worked with my village primary school on certain days to do health education. In The Gambia, at the time, most kids did not go to school. The primary school in my village was the only one for miles around.
Amazingly, this shot by tigz pix was taken in N’Jowara where I served. This is inside one of the three classroom buildings. I’m not sure where my pictures are, so I’m happy to use this one. It looks exactly the same.
On this first day of school, here’s an ode to all those parents, grandparents or other caregivers, who make sure their children head to a classroom if they can find one and they have the means, and all those people who have chosen to teach, and all those children who sit in rows or gather in groups, day after day, working to learn–and if not working to learn, have a kernal of hope that life will turn out well once the last bell rings on their last day of school ever–when they head out into the world to see what happens next.
Click on the photographer’s name to go to the Flickr page. I picked these because these are the photos I found with Creative Commons use.
Mexican 2000, who snapped this shot, points out that school kids in Japan were different colored hats in order to show which class they belong to. These little guys are on a field trip to Himeji Castle.
On September 11, 2007, was Read with a Hero Day. Stories of heroism, tolerance and justice were read, according to the photo’s description. This shot by Staff Sgt. Russell Kilkar was taken at East Side Elementary School in Edinburgh, Indiana.
Head to a rural village and pull out a camera to take pictures of children and see how many show up. This photo by OpenDemocracy reminds me of my own experiences. It’s a swarm. For an excellent film that shows what a rural school is like in China, check out Not One Less. It’s about a 13-year-old girl who reluctantly becomes the teacher of a one-room school when the teacher has to leave for some reason.
School girls, in what I assume is Chile. Photographer Angela7dreams didn’t label the specific country in South America where this was taken, but this one is in a group of other shots of Chile.
School kids either heading to school or home in Taxco, Mexico. The shot is by michale.
School girls with their book bags in Bandung, Indonesia. Wouldn’t it be great if all school kids looked as happy as sektordua found these three?
This photo taken at the Khmer Literacy School in Cambodia, and posted by cambodia4kids.org, shows the efforts of a farm project to encourage farmers to send their children to school. You can read about the project, by clicking on the link.
These school kids in France are on a field trip that I would love. This was taken by ConspiracyofHappiness at the Musee Rodin.
A group of school kids in India taken by Tom Maisey.
Man and his son at the opening of Salah Hadi Obid Elementary School in Afak Village, Iraq. Photo by James Gordon, Flickr.
* The first photo is of my son walking into school this morning. He is in good hands.
Ever thought about taking a video camera with you on your next trip? Over at Brave New Traveler, Gadling alum and documentary filmmaker Brook Silva-Braga talks about the challenges of shooting video while on the road, why long-term travel isn’t so scary after all, and what his next video project is about. The interview is well worth a read.
Brook has done more to preach the benefits of long-term travel than just about anyone I know, and he sums up his argument for it thusly: “To me the most powerful evidence in support of long-term travel is this: I’ve never met someone who gave it a try and didn’t like it. It’s only people who don’t go who can list all the problems with it.”
For those wondering what Brook has been up to recently, you won’t be disappointed. Brook is following up his award-winning documentary A Map for Saturday with a new film called One Day in Africa, which is an attempt to “show a more nuanced version of Africa than the devastatingly dire or falsely hopeful stories we see so often.”
Brook plans on releasing that film in early 2009– we’ll keep you posted.
Read the whole thing at BNT here.