Ten Things I Think I Know In 2013

This time of year I usually put up a list revealing my 10 most popular blog posts (going by number of views) of the past 12 months. However, my posting was kind of light in 2013--in fact, I barely made it into the double digits for posts this year. So I thought I'd do something different. Since I shut down my tour business (Wayfaring Women Tours) not long ago, due to lack of profit, I thought I'd take this time to reflect on what went wrong and what went right and compile a list of 10 things I learned in the course of this business venture.

Problem is, I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier when it comes to business--obviously, since the business didn't altogether succeed. So coming up with 10 nuggets of business wisdom presents a challenge for me. Therefore, I'll pad the list out with whatever else the hell I learned about life or travel or writing or myself in the year 2013. And if I still come up short, I'll throw in lessons learned from the past several years if I have to. You may even find a few odds and ends like the names of Walt Disney's Seven Dwarves or Santa's reindeer on this list--anything to get those golden digits of 1 and 0 nestled close, side by side.

For lack of a better list name, here are Ten Things I Think I Know In 2013:

1. You gotta make money to make money. Some time ago when I was still kicking around the idea of starting up a women-only tour business, a friend encouraged me to go for it by repeating the old adage: You gotta spend money to make money. That was actually the first time I ever heard that saying. But when I Google it, I see it's a pretty common piece of business advice. To be honest, after a few years of trying to run my own business, I still don't know what the saying means or if it's true. What I do know is true though is that, well, if you're not making money but you're still spending it, you're just losing it is all. Meaning, there's really no "catching up" curve in owning a business. If you start a business and you don't find yourself making even a small profit or breaking even from the get-go, you'll never catch up. You'll just keep falling into debt--slowly or quickly, it doesn't really matter. Debt is debt--at least to bottom-level, 99%-ers like me it is. People who don't worry about money are people who never had to, because they've always had it. I am not one of those people.

I loved setting up Wayfaring Women Tours. I loved the fact that I was chasing my dream. If I didn't, I wouldn't have given the business a chance for the length of time I did, even as I was losing money. But I had to face reality. You gotta make money to make money. I wasn't making money. I was losing it. And I'm over 40 now, with no house, no car or vehicle, no assets, no insurance, no spouse or partner, no children. Nothing left to lose, true, but nothing to help catch me if I keep falling. I needed to get out before falling into a deeper financial hole. I need to think about the future and make sure that future includes at least a roof over my head and a pair of hole-less shoes on my feet.

2. You got to know when to fold 'em. To quote that great late-20th-century American philosopher Kenny Rogers: You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.

If what I wrote above in Lesson #1 doesn't make sense, maybe Dr. Rogers's classic treatise "The Gambler" can serve to clarify. If this business venture has taught me anything, it's when to fold' em. And now, like my namesake in that old '60s song, I am walking away.

The consolation prize is knowing that I tried, and by trying I proved myself a true risk-taker, a gambler. All my life I wanted to be a gambler. Ever since I was a young girl. I have no idea where, how, or why that dream began in the heart of an ordinary little girl such as I was, but the root of it probably lies in coming home from school one day and seeing this:

3. Women who follow their dreams oppress men. Apparently. When I first got the idea to start a travel company that organizes small group tours for women, the last thing I thought it would do would be to drum up any controversy. It's not like I thought I was doing something really revolutionary, considering the growing number of other women-only tour groups and companies out there (as well as other specialty tour companies targeting strictly seniors or families or LGBT people or paraplegics or vegetarians or African Americans, and so on). And the words "a human fail" certainly didn't come to my mind about my business plans at any point.

But those last words are what some guy I was friends with in high school called my company and idea on his Facebook profile one day, not long after I officially opened up shop. He apparently decided that my company was discriminating against men, and he concocted some kind of story suggesting he had been ejected from my establishment (even though I worked out of my home--I never had a storefront or anything beyond a website for my business) because he was male. Never mind that he never even asked me if he could join up for one of my tours (if he had, I would have immediately put together one for mixed groups that he could join, so eager was I to start leading tours and doing business). In fact, until he threw his bizarre, self-pitying, completely-out-of-nowhere little fit on Facebook, I didn't even know he was aware of me starting a business. (I had been sharing the news like crazy on Facebook and by email and every way I knew how, but not everyone I knew seemed to be paying attention or expressing interest. Michael D.--yes, I am naming and shaming--never said a peep. Not one word showing awareness, much less asking if he could join a tour or why I was catering just to women.) Meanwhile, I never had a chance to ask this oh-so-noble fighter for freedom and aspiring men's rights activist why he suddenly chose to take offense at a woman's attempt to go into business for herself and encourage other women to travel, much less make up a story and smear me online--since he immediately unfriended me after crafting his lie, giving me no chance to refute him in front of his other Facebook friends.

His lie upset me. Along with being a lie that had the potential to damage my very new business, his complaint about discrimination is completely bogus. I've already written in a previous post about the numerous reasons a woman would opt for a women-only tour. Every reason I listed--from unique safety concerns to a simple desire for "sisterhood" time--is valid, and not a one has anything remotely to do with discrimination against men. And sorry men's rights dudes, but it's women who bear the brunt of gender discrimination on this planet--not the other way around. If you actually believe otherwise, you are an astonishingly ignorant and naive person, and probably an outright misogynist and classic gaslighter. I have no idea which category of these, if any, my former high school/Facebook friend falls into. Actually, I know exactly which category. It's the one that rhymes with Miley Cyrus's favorite dance move. But sadly, apparently he's not the only myopic fool who's tried to get attention with the cry of "reverse sexism" at women-only businesses. He's not even the only guy who's struck a blow for freedom fighting the tyranny that is women's tour companies. (See here, too.)

After my own experiences, not just with my business but as woman in this world, I honestly think what it comes down to is that there are still people out there who cannot stand to see women doing things for themselves, without the aid or input of men. Likewise, there are still people who cannot stand when the focus is taken off men for a change and placed on women. Hence, women business owners still get hassled for shit that male business owners never have to deal with. Women's achievements and accomplishments are still ignored. Women are still written out of history. Women are still silenced or smeared or threatened for speaking up. Women are still paid less for equal work around the world. Women are still told what's good for them even if "what's good for them" is actually decidedly bad, dangerous, discriminatory, or deadly. Women are still discouraged from doing things their own way or a new way, rather than the way men have done for years (and despite men's long history of messing everything up, to be frank about it). Women are still assumed to be experts at only "womanish" things like baby-making, child-rearing, shopping, fashion, dieting, and such--further, those pursuits and interests in themselves are often dismissed as unworthy fluff for investigation or serious discussion because of their association with women. Indeed, apart from the jerk on Facebook, I had a few sexist reactions from other people to my business idea--assumptions that I was leading "shopping tours" or "Botox and makeup tours" and jokes about "bored housewives" or crude comments about gay women, for example. Thankfully, most of these reactions were very few (and yes, all but one of them came from men--the sole woman was a former acquaintance in Ireland). Most men I know and met have been very supportive and encouraging throughout my whole experience of starting and running a business. After the Facebook incident, a couple men even flat out told me they fully support my business and that they were proud of me. I'll end this number on the list with a big thank you to those men. Your support helped keep me going. Men like you are the genuine gents and fair players of this world. You are also true friends. Thank you for being born.

4. When you got it, you got it. And I got it good. Get your minds out of the gutter, people. "It" means wanderlust here. One of the most difficult things about shutting down Wayfaring Women has been coming to terms with the likely loss of independence and freedom this will cause. Running my own business not only meant that I got to call the shots, it also meant I had the freedom to decide where the shots were called. I could work out of my home in Illinois or out of a hotel in Ireland. I could work in bed, on a bus, on the road, in the air, over the rainbow...

People who start travel businesses and travel blogs are people who love to travel. They're people who are trying to align their hearts and dreams with the practicalities of life. Staying in one place all the time, or even most or part of the time, doesn't make them happy. It just makes them feel trapped. I admit it is hard to reckon myself to a future where I have to stay in one place all the time, except for maybe 10 to 14 days out of the year when I'm granted vacation time, just to make ends meet. For the sake of my own happiness, sense of fulfillment, and even mental health, I'm hoping for a more flexible future, one that still gives me the chance to see all the places I'd like to see in the world. Which leads me to #5...

5. It's not a small world after all. It's a very big one. With lots of worthwhile places to go and visit. And the more you see of the world, the more you want to see more. Traveling grows from checking off places on a list to adding places on a list. A list that never ends--probably because the world never ends. It's a globe after all, a big circle. Even if you run out of places on the earth to see, there are all the places inside it and all the places beyond it. Travel is a drug, people. Travelers will always find a way, in the true sense of the word. Even death doesn't stop the desire for journeys, since nearly all of human wishes about the afterlife are really more expressed yearnings to travel, to move on, to see it all, to keep exploring and encountering, to visit or revisit, to be anywhere but here or everywhere at once.

6. South Africa. This is one of the places at the top of my list of where I really want to go.

7. Norway. This is another one.

8. Grand Canyon. Another one. Though I've already been here once before. I'd like to go again anyway, and this time walk all the way down into the canyon and spend a couple nights at the ranch at the bottom before walking up. The last time I went to the Grand Canyon was just for the day. I was with a small group of foreign men (believe me, being the only female and only American wasn't my plan). Our leader walked us down part of the way into the canyon, but I found myself petrified by the drop-offs all the way to the bottom on the side of the path. I only went a short way down before turning back and walking back up. I regret that fear. That was in 2005. (I think). I've made it one of my goals to get back to the canyon and overcome the fear that kept me from enjoying the place more the last time around. I hope you see a blog post sooner than later about this goal.

9. Moving on is necessary for survival. This is a personal one. I'm not sure if I'll do a very good job of explaining it. I may even sabotage it out of privacy or self-doubt.

I said above that's it a great big world...with lots of places to run to (to quote Tom Petty, on the subject of us American girls--it seems I'm all about wisdom from songwriters in this post, aren't I?).  And I have so many more places I'd love to run to someday than the few I've listed here. A couple (like the Grand Canyon and Mexico) are ones I'd like to revisit. But most are places I've never been to before.

Here's where it gets personal. Years ago I ran from a place I really loved because someone was treating me badly there. It took me years to work up the courage to go back to that place. It took more years yet to finally face the person who hurt me. I still haven't come to terms with it all, been able to close it all up in a neat bow or a smooth circle signifying healing or anything like that. But the whole experience has taught me two things, I think.

First, the bad experience long ago that led me to run away probably helped me in learning to walk away in later situations. Meaning it helped me to put some things in perspective. I could really regret starting a business, losing some money, and then closing up shop. For sure, I do wish it went better. And the day I made the last decision, I was sad. But then I think about the longer course of things, other disappointments I've had and such, and I know surely that if I was able to run away from that and survive, then I can walk away from this and survive again. (Can you survive again? Or would you say "survive some more"? Inform me, friends.) I won't lie and pretend that I've always managed to walk away with dignity, or that I always will in the future. But it's enough to know you have the capability to move on, and to trust there's enough space in the world for doing just that.

The second thing is that I think I can cross a certain place off my list of ones to visit or revisit in the years to come. Namely, the place I ran away from years ago. I think I need to. For awhile at least. This one place occupied a lot of attention in my mind for a very long time. It will always occupy a big space in my heart--as will many of the friends I know there. But there are other places in the world that need my attention--or maybe it's me who needs those places. Citizen of the world, as they say. That's me.

10. This is me too. Here's that Tom Petty song I was talking about. I can't think of another item to add to and round out this list. And Tom Petty is always a sure bet for closing out stuff. Especially "American Girl." Here's to all the American girls traveling the world in 2014. Take it easy, baby.

Who Doesn't Like To Get Away?

Travel...even coyotes do it.

Pic courtesy of Portland Mercury.

End Of A Road

"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." – Jack Kerouac

This is an announcement I posted a few days ago on my business website, Wayfaring Women Tours, and I thought I should post it here too.

"We are sorry to announce that we will no longer be offering tours. For financial reasons we have decided to close up shop. From its conception, Wayfaring Women Tours was a dream project for its founder, a solo female traveler who hoped to encourage other women--especially women without readily available travel partners--to see the world, experience adventure and sisterhood, and reclaim the world's paths for women. It has been a great and enriching ride, but we simply don't have the funds to keep the dream alive. Our website will remain up for the first few months of 2014, and you are free to contact us while it's still working.

"We'd like to thank all of you who have joined us on one of our tours. We'd also like to thank all our suppliers for our tours the past few years, as well as those of you who had a hand in getting us set up for business and getting the word out. Thank you a million times over for your support and encouragement. It was a blessing to meet and share the road with each and every one of you. We hope to cross paths again somewhere down the line. Until then, keep her lit... "

I may write a post soon about what I learned in this venture. But for now I'll just add that this blog will stay up, regardless of the end of Wayfaring Women Tours itself. As long as I have places to visit and stories to tell, I'll keep Writing and Wayfaring....

On The Poetry Front

This is a post for the super-fans--because I have so many. ;-)

A poem of mine is being published in the latest Journal of Modern Poetry, a publication put out by Chicago Poetry Press. The poem is called "Life's Reversal." It's about a dog. And life. And snow. That's all I can say about it.

If you'd like to read it, you can order a copy of Journal of Modern Poetry 16 (or JOMP 16) through the Chicago Poetry website (I'll provide a link when it's available). You can also get a copy in person at the Chicago Book Expo in Uptown on Sunday, November 24th. The Chicago Book Expo is free to attend and will be open from 11 AM to 5 PM at St. Augustine College at 1345 W. Argyle. Chicago Poetry will have a table there, along with tons of other Chicago-area publishers and authors, and will be selling copies of the latest JOMP.

Also at the Chicago Book Expo will be a reading by poets featured in JOMP 16 from 5 PM to 6 PM. I'll be there and will be reading my poem, time permitting. Here's a link to the Facebook invite for the reading. Thanks to CJ Laity of Chicago Poetry for putting together JOMP and organizing a reading at the expo.

While the poem of mine featured in the latest JOMP is not a travel poem, another poem of mine that was inspired by my travels was published a few years ago in a kind of earlier incarnation of JOMP. In 2008, my poem "Front Porch Swing in North Carolina" was published in chapbook 3 of Cram, also put out by CJ Laity and Chicago Poetry Press. That poem was written after a trip to Asheville, North Carolina, in the summer of 2008. Again, I can't reprint it here, and meanwhile nearly all copies of Cram 3 were given out at the 2008 Printer's Ball at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago that summer. But you can read the poem in an anthology of all the Cram chapbooks, Poetry Cram: The Ultimate Chicago Poetry Anthology, published last year and available for purchase on Amazon.

Hostel in Asheville, N.C. Inspiration for "Front Porch Swing in North Carolina." See, you can spot a tiny corner of the porch swing to the left of the flag. I assure you my poetry is better than my photography...sort of.

Finally, for those of who you are super-obsessed with me, or with poetry, or both, the one poem of mine online that you can read (as far as I know) is right here on this blog: "Australia."

Thanks for reading.

The Ballymaloe Revolution

Wayfaring Women tour group in front of Ballymaloe House, Sept. 2013

When I tell people in the U.S. that I miss Irish cooking, I always get a laugh. And when I visit friends in Ireland, they're always trying to steer me to Thai restaurants and tapas bars or make home-cooked meals for me featuring curry or pasta or tortillas or some such imported specialty. No matter how much I tell them I'm excited to be back in the country, where I can have the traditional Irish foods I've been missing, they don't seem convinced. Irish cooking has had a poor reputation around the globe for too long a time I suppose, and maybe even many locals still figure that the fight to prove otherwise is a lost cause. 

But Irish cooking is far from a lost cause. In fact it's a winning one. Any regular visitor to the country over the last two or three decades, like me, can tell you so. Likewise with anyone who's ever visited Ballymaloe in Shanagarry, County Cork. There are two Ballymaloes, and here I mean both of them--Ballymaloe House, the country home and restaurant first opened to the public in 1964 by Myrtle and Ivan Allen, and Ballymaloe Cookery School, begun in 1983 by the Allens' daughter-in-law Darina Allen and her brother Rory O'Connell.

Debbie Shaw teaches a baking course at Ballymaloe Cookery School. Check out the assortment of baked goodies: soda bread, scones, focaccia, lemon poppyseed cupcakes, and sponge cake with lemon curd and raspberry filling.

View of the front grounds from one of the guest rooms at Ballymaloe House.

Clearly, Ballymaloe is a family affair. It's also an empire largely powered by women, from Myrtle to Darina to Rachel Allen, Darina's daughter-in-law and the latest cookery celebrity to emerge from Ballymaloe. The influence these three women have had and continue to have on modern Irish cooking cannot be overstated. Their lifework is a large part of the reason for the turnaround in Irish cooking's reputation in recent years. A recent television special in Ireland on Myrtle Allen clarified as much. Long before the establishment of the Slow Food Movement or farmers' markets in Ireland, Myrtle practiced and championed an approach to cooking that would form the basis for slow food methods. Meanwhile, it was Darina Allen who spearheaded the Slow Food Movement and the founding of farmers' markets in Ireland. In more recent years, Rachel Allen has become the new face of Ballymaloe, a popular and ubiquitous host of Irish cooking programs and author of Irish cookbooks and food columns.

The Ballymaloe recipe for good food and good cooking is really simple and straightforward. Use fresh, locally sourced ingredients. Make meals from scratch as much as possible. Grow your own. And if you can't, then buy from local and ethical suppliers--local fishermen, farmers, bakers, gardeners, butchers, cheese makers, brewers...you get the drift. Reclaim some of the skills your country grandmother may have lived by, such as making your own butter or jam or baking your own bread or raising your own hens or pigs or cows...or simply growing your own herbs on the window ledge of your city apartment.

Pumpkin patch outside the glass house at Ballymaloe Cookery School

Cabbages and flowers growing at Ballymaloe Cookery School

Tomatoes grow on vines in the glass house at Ballymaloe Cookery School. The school grows and raises all the ingredients used in its cookery courses and served in its cafe.

Ballymaloe even raises its own animals on a farm on the school grounds.

Of course, not everyone has a country grandmother to learn from. And for a long time in the 20th century in Ireland (and going into the 21st), country ways were viewed by many as a way of life to abandon and even be ashamed of. Rural life in Ireland was often stereotyped as backwards and associated with poverty and oppression. Even when romanticized, there was still a stigma of poverty attached to country life and a sense that any attempts to reclaim or revive the culture of the countryside were probably a lost cause. In terms of the role of food and cooking in rural Irish life, it must be remembered that one of the most significant events in Ireland's long history was a series of potato crop failures that spiraled into the Famine of the mid-19th century. The Famine caused at least a million deaths in Ireland and drove another 2 million Irish out of the country to North America, Britain, the European Continent, Australia, and beyond in the late 1840s alone. The great majority of these people who died or emigrated during the Famine were country people, the rural Irish, the life blood of traditional Gaelic culture and Gaelic ways. At the same time as this massive hemorrhage of life throughout the Irish countryside, large volumes of food were inexplicably and unconscionably being exported from Ireland to Great Britain for commerce. Rural Ireland never really recovered from this horrific time, not even to this day, certainly not population-wise. Since the 1840s, emigration has been the one tradition of country life in Ireland that has never disappeared, never needed reviving.

I include this little history lesson because I think you can't fully understand how revolutionary the Ballymaloe approach to Irish cooking and food was until you understand the against-all-odds experience of the rural Irish and the difficulties in presenting Irish country skills in a positive light, much less in reviving them. At the time Ballymaloe House first opened to the public in the 1960s, the culture to emulate in the hospitality industry was French, not Irish. You wanted to learn how to cook or just to eat well, you went to France--not to an isolated farm and old home in a tiny village like Shanagarry in County Cork. The idea that the best in food and hospitality could come from an Irish housewife using locally grown, raised, and made ingredients (rather than importing products from France or Britain or from anywhere outside Ireland) would have been laughable to many self-proclaimed foodies back in the 60s and 70s. What did the Irish know about cooking? What did an Irish housewife know about hospitality?

Inside one of the lovely guest rooms at Ballymaloe House

The Top Room at Ballymaloe House

Quite a bit as it turned out. The Irish have long been known for their hospitality--it's been a vital practice in Irish culture going back to pre-Christian times. Meanwhile, Myrtle Allen had the sense to simply work with what she had and what she knew to make good meals first and a comfortable home away from home later for guests at Ballymaloe.

Today, Ballymaloe is internationally renowned as one of the best guesthouses and finest cooking schools in Europe. It has produced some of Ireland's best chefs and cooks, who in turn have gone on to change the nature and reputation of Irish cooking throughout Ireland and beyond for the better. Guests come to Ballymaloe House for a country Irish experience that is both luxurious and genuinely friendly, and students come to Ballymaloe Cookery School to master everything from how to make sushi to how to make a loaf of classic Irish soda bread. At the house, guests stay and eat in the same rooms where Myrtle raised her family; at the school, students learn to forage food from the same surrounding countryside where Myrtle gathered ingredients for her home-cooked meals. Beyond the house are acres of fields and grounds that include a tennis court, swimming pool, croquet set, and wooded walkways. Beyond the school are formal gardens, a glasshouse where vegetables are grown, a Celtic maze, a giant chess set, and an amazing little house with an interior made entirely of shells.

The Herb Garden at Ballymaloe Cookery School

Looking down path through the Herbaceous Border to the Shell House at Ballymaloe

The Herbaceous Border garden at Ballymaloe Cookery School

Inside the Shell House

Detail of shell work inside the Shell House

I had the privilege of staying at Ballymaloe House and taking an afternoon baking course with a tour of the grounds at Ballymaloe Cookery School this fall with a group for my tour company, Wayfaring Women Tours. For many women on the tour, Ballymaloe was their favorite experience of their time in Ireland. We were treated well at both the house and the school and had a great time in our course and enjoyed a delicious dinner. We learned how to make savory scones and Irish brown bread, with insider tips on "letting the fairies out" and "using the claw." We drank refreshing elderflower cordial and decorated cupcakes in Cork colors (in honor of our wonderful Cobh-born-and-bred tour driver, John) and made lemon curd (which was also turned over to John in gratitude). In our guest rooms we found everyone had her own fluffy white robe, glass bottles of Ballymaloe spring water, and little gifts of Ballymaloe relish and Voya bath products.

Our savory scone creations at Ballymaloe

More of our Ballymaloe masterpieces: pizza bread made from a basic soda bread base, lemon curd, and a sponge cake with strawberries and cream

The bright and colorful cafe and course room in Ballymaloe Cookery School

When I started my tour of Ireland, some of my group remained convinced that Irish cooking was all about overboiled vegetables. They didn't think they came to Ireland for the cooking. By the tour's end, I think I managed to change their minds. Or more accurately, I think Ballymaloe changed their minds. Ballymaloe and the three mighty Irishwomen who've steered it to such success: the Allen women, Myrtle, Darina, and Rachel.

Concrete and Celtic Seasons: Two Gardens

I come from a place where the official motto is Urbs in horto...City in a garden. In Chicago terms, that's translated into an extensive public parks system (pretty much one for every neighborhood with several large-scale parks "anchoring" the city's downtown and north, south, and west sides) and miles and miles of beaches and lakefront. You might also add to the Urbs in horto vision that giant lake called Michigan which borders Chicago--even though the lake was here long before the city was a dream in any pioneer or planner's mind. You should also include the Chicago River, the multiple smaller lakes and rivers that bound the Chicago area, the remnants of original prairie and native flowers that have been fiercely reclaimed and preserved, and all the wildlife that you find in and around the city--from our urban coyotes to our summer fireflies to our ubiquitous suburban squirrels, raccoons, possums, skunks, bats, bunnies, foxes, and family pets.

Skyscrapers of Chicago viewed from prairie wildflower garden in Lincoln Park

That's a lot of nature. Much more than folks around the world who've never been to Chicago likely realize. It's not quite the concrete jungle and gangster playground non-Chicagoans imagine it to be.

Graffiti in alley in Lincoln Square, Chicago

I mention all this because I was gonna begin this post with some cliches about how "we" (whoever that is) tend to forget, ignore, or take for granted the cycles of nature and life that surround us in this comfort and technology-worshiping day and age. I suppose by "we" I was thinking of people who live in urban and suburban areas in developed countries. Not that I buy into the notion that city or suburban people are disconnected from nature, but I've known a few gloomy, judgmental types who've tried to sell such a notion to me. I've been told by these sad folks that I come from an "artificial" culture and country--plastic, corporate, materialistic, sterile, yada yada--and I'm guessing the evidence for this lies in Americans' appreciation for stuff like air conditioning and grocery stores and life-saving vaccines and antibiotics and roomy cars. I wonder would it matter to the folks who have such a low opinion of the place I come from (whether they're talking the U.S. or Chicago or suburbia) that while I write this I sit in a coffee shop, yes, corporate-owned, with a parking lot full of cars...that's well interspersed with trees full of leaves newly and vibrantly colored by the changing of summer into fall as well as half a dozen plots of wildflowers? Does it matter that right across the street is a farmers' market bustling with suburbanites stocking up on late-summer and early-fall fruits and vegetables, home-made pies, jams, and hummuses, and locally raised and butchered meats? It's a market held every Sunday from late spring to late fall, and if you miss this one there are other farmers' markets on every and any day of the week in nearly every suburb and neighborhood in Chicago--including downtown, right smack dab in the middle of all the skyscrapers. Hell, they even grow and hawk vegetables on top of the buildings in downtown Chicago. Meanwhile, last night I witnessed a stand-off between a skunk and a raccoon in my backyard, and later tonight as I finish this post I'll write to the song of crickets and cicadas that drown out the hum of late-night traffic and freight trains that run through my town. So much for the picture of a plastic and artificial American landscape.

Summer gardens in Lincoln Park, Chicago

The city in a garden? In the courtyard at the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago

Yes, this part of the American landscape, Chicago, is a big, brawling city of crime and corruption and corporations...and a Midwestern city of farmers' markets and bountiful local food and green spaces and four kinds of seasons and all the fine and fierce weather that comes with them. A heartland city. Once upon a time, not that long ago, this city was the nation's hub for everything a farmer could raise and sell and grow and mine in the U.S. Everything that came into this city went back out to everywhere else in the country. Chicago, like nature, worked year-round to keep the exchange going, the cycle turning--but it roared loudest and throbbed strongest during the harvest season. Years ago, the stockyards and many of the original transport systems in Chicago that were supported by this national exchange of nature's bounty were demolished or dismantled and erased from the city's landscape. The city was "cleaned up," prettified. But the cycle continues in new forms of exchange and transport, as well as new forms of expression and appreciation, such as the ubiquitous farmers' markets and parks and the city's experiments in high-rise and restaurant rooftop gardens. This is not a city that tries to hide its middle American cowtown roots--in fact it wears its mucky, Midwestern roots on its sleeve, lets the world see how a heartland town can thrive and succeed and support a nation, leaves its roots to spread and anchor all forms of industry and creativity in the city, and keeps coming back, keeps surviving and evolving, even as other once-great Midwestern cities and former cowtowns fall into bankruptcy and misguided scrambles at revisionism and reinvention.

Beaches of Chicago's north side viewed from the Hancock Building

Bridge over the Chicago River in downtown Chicago

I wish people outside Chicago, and outside the U.S., understood this better. I wish they knew how important, special, and amazing Chicago is. I wish as I traveled I got less people asking me questions like if we eat or have access to fresh vegetables where I come from or if I ever swam in a natural body of water before traveling to a seacoast. I wish the world knew more about Chicago's garden-city roots and less about its gun-violence rates. Not that Chicago and the world should ignore the city's problems any more than is already the case. I just wish there could be a more balanced view, one that reflects the daily life and connections to both nature and culture that Chicagoans--and Illinoisans and Midwesterners--of all backgrounds cultivate and enjoy. People in the poor neighborhoods in Chicago appreciate when the sun is bright and the sky is blue and feel the changing of the seasons, just as people in the wealthy neighborhoods do. People in the "sterile" suburbs hit the beaches in the summer, go to farmers' markets and orchards in the fall, build snowmen in the winter, fall in love in the spring. So do people on the "gritty" south side. We all contribute and we are all connected--it's the Chicago way. The genuine Chicago way. Don't let anyone convince you different.

Maybe what Chicago needs to clarify its vital importance and deep connection to the American landscape and environment is some place where people can see just how it all works, how it all comes together. Another park maybe, another garden, that locals and tourists alike can visit to learn about the Chicago life-cycle. Some place designed by someone who cares equally about the city's nature and culture, and who can figure out how the two meet and make the city (and the U.S.) what it is today. Some place with beauty and a sense of humor, a good dose of whimsy as well as wisdom, and an inclusive and friendly spirit.

There's a place like this in Ireland that I visited recently. A place where I learned a great deal about Ireland and its Celtic past and present. And about the part the seasons and the natural world played in shaping Irish culture long ago, and how contemporary culture in Ireland can re-engage with nature and the environment to inspire new generations. The place is called Brigit's Garden. It's in the west of Ireland, near the village of Moycullen, about 20 minutes from the city of Galway. I visited Brigit's Garden with a small tour group of women the morning after most of our group arrived in Ireland from overseas. Their arrival was immediately followed by a busy afternoon walk around Galway City. Brigit's Garden turned out to be the best place to go to for recovering from a long flight and a leap into a loud, bustling city. Peaceful, lovely, imaginative, colorful--Brigit's Garden was designed as much for delighting in nature and enjoying oneself in a natural setting as for education and contemplation about the environment and Irish history. Our group enjoyed a walk around the Celtic gardens, a tea and scone break, and a special workshop on making traditional Brigid's crosses.

Cutting the ends off a Brigid's cross at Brigit's Garden

We went to Brigit's Garden because I'd wanted the group of women to learn more about Brigid, one of the 3 patron saints of Ireland and perhaps the central feminine figure in all of Irish culture and history. Everyone around the world already knows plenty about Patrick, the saint most associated with Ireland...so much so that he gets a national holiday while Brigid gets none. Brigit's Garden seemed like the perfect place for learning about Brigid--about who she was and what she's meant to the Irish people.

My group did indeed learn about Brigid, and so much more. We learned about the seasons as they were celebrated in Celtic Ireland, about the life of Brigid and her lasting influence on Irish Christianity, about the role of the "divine feminine" before Christianity in Ireland, about how Ireland's natural resources have traditionally been used in both the practical and creative arts and how they were used in designing and creating Brigit's Garden. Brigit's Garden has been open to the public since 2004, though the idea of it came to its founder, Jenny Beale, back in 1997. Jenny describes her vision for Brigit's Garden as "to create special gardens where people could reflect and relax in beautiful surroundings, and also to provide imaginative environmental education for all ages."
The plan was built according to a design by landscape designer Mary Reynolds, who incorporated traditional materials and stories with a contemporary twist into her design. The result is a place of woods and meadows, rushes and ring forts, apple trees and wishing trees, standing stones and basket swings, ancient bog oak sculptures, thyme-covered earthen mounds, a thatched roundhouse, a crannog, a giant dancing woman, a grassy sleeping woman, and a lovers' hollow encircled by wildflowers and crowned by the western Irish sky and stars.

Wishing trees in the Bealtaine (May) garden

A sculpture made of 5,000-year-old bog oak representing the flames of love in the Bealtaine garden. Bealtaine is the traditional fire festival in the Celtic calendar

In the Samhain (Winter) garden, a woman made of bronze leaves rests in the shelter of an island, awaiting her rebirth at Imbolc (Spring)

That's not a mere mound. That's the resting head of the giant sleeping woman at Brigit's Garden, snuggled on the earth in front of the thatched roundhouse for the Samhain (Winter) season

It was Jenny Beale herself who led us around the Celtic seasonal gardens, explaining to us the significance of its design. Everything in the gardens, everything on the grounds, has a story, and every story has a meaning that is reflected in its design. You could say that Brigit's Garden is a wholly organic space, in that everything in it and about it has been inspired by the places in mind where nature and culture meet. The overall story that Brigit's Garden tells is the story of Ireland and of Celtic culture, of creation and endurance, of birth, life, death, and rebirth, of constant renewal. It's only fitting that Brigit's Garden has taken a feminine figure of Irish/Celtic history for its name, as the story of Ireland that it tells has a very feminine slant to it. This is not the history book's story of Ireland--a linear, masculinist tradition of dates and decrees, and texts and timelines, heavy on the tragedies and heavy on the heroes (nearly all men of course). This is the earth's story of Ireland, a cyclical story of how the land has shaped the culture and how the culture has shaped what the land has given.

Jenny Beale explains the 3 faces of Brigit in the Imbolc (Spring) garden

For me, it's a story of Ireland that makes more sense, in that it's a story you can feel yourself fitting into, literally. Ireland's history is a very long one, and many of its traditions are very old. In many other places in Ireland that tell the story of the country, for example in many museums or folk parks, it can be easy to feel very remote and distant from what you're learning about, even if you find it interesting. There's a disconnection when looking at a document on a wall or a re-creation beyond a barrier or an artifact behind plated glass. (And forget about the silliness of seeing actors in costumes wandering around old-timey-looking villages.) At Brigit's Garden you walk amongst the stories and are invited to interact with the design and displays as if you were walking across your own backyard. You can pick one of the pears or apples, swing in the baskets, seat yourself on the ancient bog oak throne, run down the aisle of standing stones, brush your hands over the beds of herbs and take the smells of the garden with you, gather rushes for a Brigid's cross, leave a wish on the wishing trees, lie in Diarmuid and Grainne's (uncharacteristically) grassy bed. You can come back at different times, different seasons, and see how the gardens change and take on new meanings with each visit. No matter when you visit, you leave a place like this feeling calm and connected.

A wayfaring woman claims her place at the bog oak and yew throne and hearth in the Bealtaine garden

A wishing tree and the grassy hollow where lies the bed for the mythical lovers Diarmuid and Grainne

It's a magical place. And the world needs more places like it. Even Chicago, for all its impressive parks and well-planned gardens, could do with its own sort of Brigit's Garden. Perhaps a place that tells the story of Chicago and its connection to the heartland, a place designed with equal parts big-city gusto and Second-City humor, a place of prairie flowers, cowtown roots, lake breezes, and concrete sculpture. What would a place dedicated to the Chicago life-cycle look like? Or is the whole city itself the place I'm looking for, the place of vision, the urbs in horto come to life? Maybe I need to simply look at my hometown with new eyes, with eyes refreshed by the vision that inspired Brigit's Garden. I would love to feel as connected to the city of my birth and the land that shaped it as I did in lovely Brigit's Garden way across the Atlantic Sea.

Wayfaring Women Go To Ireland

I'll be putting up a couple new posts very soon. But I just wanted to post something inviting people to check out pictures from my recent tour of Ireland with my company, Wayfaring Women Tours.

We had 6 cool lady travelers and myself spending 9 days touring the counties of Galway, Clare, Kerry, and Cork in late August and early September. We had great weather almost all the way, especially while visiting the show-stopping Cliffs of Moher and Dingle Peninsula. We also had great times at the lovely and peaceful Brigit's Garden (where we learned how to make Brigid's crosses and enjoyed a meditation with Jenny Beale) and the Ballymaloe Cookery School (where we met Darina Allen, had a tour of the grounds and organic vegetable garden, and were treated to a fun baking lesson on Irish breads, scones, and more with Debbie Shaw).

The Cliffs of Moher, County Clare

Speaking of Ballymaloe, we had some delicious meals at beautiful Ballymaloe House and the award-winning Wild Honey Inn. In Dingle, some of us even started the day with a decadent bowl of Drambuie-flavored porridge at our great guesthouse owned by the Heaton family! We risked our lives crossing from Doolin to Inis Oírr on the Happy Hooker ferry--but it was all worth it for the gorgeous Aran jumpers on sale at Dara O'Conaola's craft shop and the delightful walking tour and talk we had with Cathleen Ní Chonghaile, who told us all about the unique crafts made on the Aran Islands. We also found ourselves enjoying modern Irish poetry movingly recited to us by Tony Kirby of Heart of Burren Walks, in the midst of the secluded and special St. Colman's Hermitage in the Burren. And we got the inside scoop on Galway City from guide and local man Conor Riordan, who even passed on a few tidbits about student life in Galway as he showed us the campus of his alma mater, NUIG.

Best of all, we had a man named John Donovan taking us everywhere we went, on one of the most comfortable coaches in the world, supplied by Butlers Buses of Cobh, County Cork. John was a fantastic guide and driver who cheered on the sun's appearance every morning, sang to us on long stretches of the Irish roadways, and converted us all to Rebel fans by the journey's end.

Our group at Ballymaloe House in County Cork

There's much more, but I'll shut up here finally and let you see for yourself. You can check out pics from our visits to Galway and Clare on the Wayfaring Women Tours Facebook page here. (You don't even have to have a Facebook account to see the pics!) Our journey through Kerry and Cork can be seen here. If you like what you see, you can even like our Facebook page and show your support.

Two wayfaring women at the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry

A Story On Where I Found Freedom

Hi. This blog has been quiet this year, but I have a few new pieces of writing in the works that I should be posting about soon. How soon? Well, I've already got one for you!

I entered a travel writing contest at We Said Go Travel recently. The contest theme was independence or freedom, as in where in the world have you found independence or felt the most free? The nice folks at We Said Go Travel have been posting a couple entries a day (they got loads of them, from writers all over the world) every day. Today mine went live.

My entry is about a little town in New Mexico I visited back in the fall of 2008, when I was on my Greyhound trip around the southern and southwestern U.S. It's called New Mexico: Freedom on the Ground. I hope you read it, and I hope you enjoy it.

The Rio Grande and Turtleback Mountain, in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

And for my fellow writing nomads out there, We Said Go Travel is hosting another writing contest soon, opening in September, on the theme gratitude. Check it out here.

Review: Overbooked by Elizabeth Becker

Right after reading Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism by Elizabeth Becker, it occurred to me what an utterly unoriginal idea travel is. For one, people have been traveling for centuries. We do it as much out of a desire for discovery--both cultural discovery and self discovery--as out of necessity. And what we end up discovering tends to be the same ol' epiphanies the world over, regardless of the culture you choose to explore or who you are. Perhaps that universality is what explains or benefits the second point. Travel has become so common and so relatively safe, such a typical pasttime really, that it's been successfully co-opted as a marketing concept, a means for entire countries and cultures to sell themselves to would-be travelers.

The notion of country or culture as just another brand to be advertised and sold is a large part of what Becker's book is about. While her book covers some history of travel in general, she generally doesn't go back any further than the early 20th century, when the idea of travel seems to have given way to the concept of tourism. Becker focuses on a few countries and cities specifically (to name a few, France, Cambodia, China, Costa Rica, Zambia, Venice, Dubai, Las Vegas) and examines how each has used tourism to promote itself and what positive or negative effects the embrace of tourism has had on the local environment, economy, culture, and everyday community. She also discusses a number of general trends in tourism, old and new, such as cruises and ecotourism.

Overall, it's not exactly a thrilling read. Don't expect an action-packed travel memoir. Even though Becker visits each of the places she reports on and signs on for various tours and excursions, her vacation fun-time is compromised by interviews with numerous tourism and government officials and attendance at tourism conferences, a couple of which sound about as exciting as an orthopedic footwear conference or world watchmakers summit. Nevertheless, quite a bit of the info in this book should be eye-opening to even experienced and well-informed world travelers. The chapter on cruises was especially revelatory, as Becker documents the various violations and abuses in everything from labor rights to taxes to waste disposal that the big cruise companies have been getting away with for quite awhile.

I've found a few critiques of this book that accuse Becker of having an elitist attitude, and I wonder if those critiques stem from her less-than-thrilled review of a Royal Caribbean cruise she takes with her husband to Cozumel and Belize. If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that people who love cruises LOVE their cruises. In fact, for many people who say they love to travel, cruising is the only way they experience travel. Becker acknowledges that the reason for this is because cruise lines have made it so easy for people. Everything is accounted for on a cruise--accommodation, meals (from fancy dining to massive buffets to 24-hour pizza and burger stations), shopping, excursions, gambling, dancing, drinking (as well as AA meetings onboards), workout centers and spas, photography, live entertainment and shows, art auctions...you name it. And while cruises may stop at ports in exotic, foreign countries--thereby advertising the notion that cruises offer a taste of foreign culture--the truth is most passengers are steered into tourist villages at these ports, where retailers offer "cut-race" prices on items such as diamonds or leather products that are heavily talked-up during shopping seminars on ship. Becker explores the relationship between retailers such as Diamonds International and Park West Galleries and the major cruise lines, as well as how efforts to enforce U.S. labor laws and environmental regulations have been stymied by cruise bigwigs and their political benefactors in Congress.

(Full disclosure: I'm not a cruise fan. Granted, I've only been on one. And only because it was free. I'm glad I got to go for free because I would have been pretty T-O'ed at the end if I had to pay for what it all turned out to be. Yes, the meals were fabulous--but other than eating 24 hours a day for a week if I wanted to, I didn't find much that was on offer on the cruise to be my kind of thing. I don't gamble. I don't karaoke. The swimming pools were filled with kids. Every place was crawling with kids actually. Our tiny cabin had no windows or port holes, no nothing. The drinks were expensive. The decks were crowded and noisier than I expected, and then it rained a few days when we were out to sea. The art auction was confusing and disappointing--and Becker's account of it explained a lot about how these cruise art auctions are talked up to essentially swindle passengers into buying a bunch of pretty worthless paintings. My cruise stopped at Cozumel (Mexico), Belize, Roatan Island (Honduras), and Freeport (Bahamas). It poured and poured buckets at Cozumel. I got off the ship to basically just wade through some flooded streets and find an Internet cafe to tell friends back home how much fun I was having. At Belize I signed on for an excursion of canoeing and wine tasting that was actually pretty fun--even if I did get drenched in another downpour while still out in the canoe and found myself standing in a nest of red ants while taking a picture of some crocodiles at the winery. At Roatan I went to the beach and was scared off by a hotel guard with gold teeth and a gun when I tried to sit on one of the hotel's beach chairs. He didn't have the English to tell me I was on private property, and I didn't have the Spanish to talk to him nor the chutzpah to ignore him as he stood over me with his arms crossed and stared down at me. Message understood, I went to another end of the beach to try out some famous heavily alcoholic "Monkey LaLa" drink at a cabana, but the cruise drunks had already hit the cabana and guzzled all the booze and the bartenders said it would be half an hour or so before they could get any more to make even one Monkey LaLa for me. At Freeport my family and I took a cab to some tourist market and then walked on the beach for maybe 20 minutes until it started to rain. Whenever I list the countries I've visited, apart from Mexico (which I've visited on another occasion for 2 weeks) I never include the countries I "visited" on the cruise. What's the point?)

In defense of Becker and her skepticism about cruises, she takes another cruise, a much smaller one organized through National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions aboard the ship Sea Lion, of Costa Rica and the Panama Canal--and she loves it. Indeed, much of what she has to report about Costa Rica's forays into tourism, especially ecotourism, is positive. Costa Rica and France are in fact two countries and governments that seem to be doing the best that can be done in terms of both promoting and regulating tourism. Becker also gives credit to Zambia and a number of safari and tour companies there that have been working to give tourists authentic safari experiences while preserving the wildlife and combating the destruction of African native species by poachers and hunters. The hitch in many of Africa's wildlife parks is that some locals would prefer to turn them into more modern development or use them for their own farming.

Indeed, the wishes and rights of locals in the face of tourism are a running concern throughout the book. Becker's chapter on Cambodia investigates how that country's tourism development has pushed thousands of people out of their homes and off their land, rendering them absolutely homeless and powerless. In turn, the "sex tourism" that has plagued Thailand for so long--and that Thailand has been working to combat of late--is now booming in Cambodia, with so many young girls being sold off as prostitutes by their own destitute families to brothels and tourists. Meanwhile, Prague, newly in vogue as a destination for Western European visitors and especially popular for stag parties, has seen a significant rise in prostitution and sex trafficking to feed the city's tourism boom. Dubai's transgressions in the race to be the tourism mecca of the world may be the worst of them all. A culturally indistinct  desert city of manmade islands, half-finished skyscrapers, indoor snow slopes, and outrageous opulence and garishness, modern Dubai has essentially been built by imported slaves. I admit Dubai is not a place I have any desire to visit. It's always sounded to me like a triple-hell version of Las Vegas, another city I try to steer clear of. Of course, this is a world of different strokes for different folks, and clearly lots of people are digging Dubai these days. But part of Becker's point is that those people are a key to change when it comes to correcting the problems caused by tourism. Who owns the hotel you're staying in or the tour operator you're traveling with? Where does all the money you're spending abroad go? Back into the workers' pockets? Back into the community? Or does it line the pockets of bribed local officials or multinational CEOs? When a tourism business advertises itself as "green" or tosses around the prefix "eco-", whose environmental regulations are they supposedly conforming to, if any? How are the locals and long-standing businesses in the area being affected by tourism? Are they being pushed out by increasing rents and non-local chains? Are the locals happy with the changes tourism has brought to their community, culture, and country? Are there any locals even around to ask anymore?

It's worth asking some of these questions before heading out on a trip. And it's worth asking yourself if some of the awesome adventures or cheap deals you're looking for while traveling are worth the trouble being caused to locals, workers, and the environment.

It's also worth asking yourself why you choose the destinations you do when you travel. And that question brings us back to the role of branding in tourism and the relationship between tourism marketing and government these days. Why is France so popular with tourists around the world? Becker's argument is essentially that the French government takes tourism very seriously. France wisely recognized tourism as the potent industry and money maker that it is decades ago while recovering from the world wars and successfully branded itself as an ideal tourist destination. It's true that so much of modern France's infrastructure is designed around making things easier and beautiful not just for the French, but for visitors as well. France's pact with tourism might also explain the so-called cultural arrogance many accuse the French of flaunting. The French are protective of their culture because that culture is a big draw for tourism, which in turn contributes mightily to the French economy. Cultural arrogance? Or economic shrewdness? I'd credit the French with more of the latter when it comes to tourism. In any case, whatever France is doing, it's working. It's currently the most visited country in the world. And that success has as much to do with the French government knowingly exploiting the desires that fuel human wanderlust: romance, good locally grown and raised food, beautiful buildings and art, pretty countryside, easy transportation, cultural authenticity, the wish to be at the center of it all (as in Paris) and then to get away from it all (as in Provence). Not many other places in the world have managed to combine all these desires into one cultural and national package--at least, not one that can be neatly organized into a one or two-week holiday that'll please folks from all parts of the globe.

France's success at branding itself to visitors contrasts with the approach these days of the United States. It was illuminating to read of the "lost decade" (as Becker calls it) in American tourism. The U.S. used to be one of the top destinations for travelers around the world. And no wonder--we are the country of Yosemite and Yellowstone, Vegas and Times Square, Disney World and Graceland, the Grand Canyon, the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachian Trail. Our national parks system in fact paved the way for other countries to begin protecting their own wilderness areas, for the sake of tourism as much as for wilderness itself. Tourism in the U.S. banked on our country's reputation for wide-open spaces and welcoming smiles. Too bad the U.S. stopped banking on tourism.

Since 9/11, the U.S. seen has seen a significant drop in foreign tourists. All those travel safety and security measurements implemented by our government in the wake of 9/11 have made it much harder for people abroad to come to the U.S. even for a couple weeks' visit. (They've certainly also made it harder for Americans themselves to travel abroad and to travel by air within their own country.) Many potential tourists are simply afraid. And it's not so much what may happen to them while they're in the U.S. that scares foreigners--it's what may happen while they simply try to get in. Foreign visitors to the U.S. speak of greater hassles at airports and borders both coming and going. Some of these complaints are coming from even frequent visitors to the U.S. from our former allies like Britain. In the meantime, unlike France, our government has had less foresight in taking tourism seriously. Becker traces this back to the 1990s. While President Clinton welcomed tourism bigwigs in the U.S. to White House in 1995 to discuss the potential for tourism in boosting our economy and world image, Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House used his "Contract with America" to slash, among many other things, the federal government's travel and tourism office. Congress reasoned that tourism promotion could be left to the states and regional offices to figure out. No big loss? Becker cites the numbers in a report covering U.S. tourism between 2000 and 2008 (the Bush years, essentially): a decrease/loss in "68 million visitors; $509 billion in spending revenue; 441,000 jobs; $270 billion in trade surplus and $32 billion in tax revenue."

With the election of President Obama in 2008, there's been some improvement in recognizing the importance of tourism to our economy and a friendlier national image. One example of this that Becker actually makes no mention of is the Obama administration's concession to Cuban Americans, who may now travel freely to Cuba since 2009, as well the approval of numerous "people-to-people" programs that allow Americans to make educational package trips to Cuba since 2011. While this development might seem backwards to the idea of inviting foreigners to come here, I'd argue that improving the U.S. image can just as well begin with encouraging Americans to travel abroad more often and with more open minds--essentially as ambassadors for America.

When it comes to the idea of selling America as a tourism brand, I admit I don't like it. I think American culture--any world culture really--is far too huge and complex to reduce to a neatly packaged idea or tour. And although it certainly makes financial sense, I suppose I also don't like the idea of governments controlling "cultural branding" because it makes me wonder how much my dreams of travel have been sold to me. I like to think that my wanderlust is an organic outcome of my personal worldview and experiences. That my dreams are my own. That any fears I might have about the world and travel were allayed by my own determination, curiosity, courage, and sense of adventure--not by advertising. How much was I buying into a brand, masterfully marketed by the French government, when I made my first trip to Paris? When I took off for Australia for 7 weeks with less than a month's planning ahead of leaving, was it pure spontaneity on my part--or was it all those cute kangaroo commercials promoting the land down under? Maybe it was even the Men at Work song...or the sight of Hugh Jackman with his shirt off in Baz Luhrmann's Australia.

This is where Overbooked leaves me. How has tourism changed the world, the books asks--and answers. My question is how has tourism changed travel? How has this new industry changed the ancient impulse of wanderlust? Whose dreams do I really follow when I travel the world's roads? Who owns my dreams? Who sent them? And what sends me?

Farewell To Frommer's Guidebooks

If you're both a bookworm and a travel...worm(?), you probably already heard the news. Yesterday it was announced that Frommer's, a travel guidebook publisher that's been in business since 1957, will no longer be publishing print editions of their guides. From now on, it's all digital in the world according to Arthur Frommer, the veteran travel writer who began with The GI's Guide to Traveling Europe a couple years before publishing the first official offering in the Frommer's series, Europe on $5 a Day.

Even without ever picking up a Frommer's guide or having heard of the series, you can easily gather from that initial title that Frommer's specializes in budget-conscious travel advice. Though over the years the boast of $5 a day would creep up to $20 to $45 to $90 a day (and the "on" in the title would sneakily morph into a "from": Frommer's Italy from $90 a Day), after which point the series faced financial realities and just started titling them "day by day," leaving the penny-pinching up to you (Frommer's France Day by Day). A magazine called Budget Travel (still in publication) would join the Frommer's brand and, as with most publishers, so would a website with pretty much all the information you could find in the guidebooks as well as a travel blog written by Arthur Frommer himself.

The decision to stop printing guides really comes as no surprise, regardless of whether you have any insider knowledge of the travel industry or the publishing industry. It's just the way publishing has been going for a long while now. Everybody can probably think of at least one example of some publication or other that you used to be able to hold in your hand and crack open the covers or flip the pages of that you just can't anymore, simply because they don't make 'em like they used to. I used to work in publishing. Encyclopaedia Britannica, the company I worked at longest--and that had existed a full 240 years before I even pushed a few editorial pencils and marked up a few manuscripts there--made a big announcement last year that it would no longer be printing encyclopedia sets. It was something I'd say most of the company's employees and former employees and anyone who'd ever worked for a publishing company for that matter could probably see coming--yet it made world headlines (both digital and print kind) and it was hard not to feel some loss and shock, even for those of us who set down our red editorial pencils and closed the cover of the company style manual years ago.  

These days, as a part-time traveler/full-time travel dreamer/once-upon-a-time copy editor, I admit I get a lot of my info and advice online. A lot of it--but by no means all. I still buy and read actual travel guidebooks. And I still rely on guidebooks when I travel--much more so than any current or new technological device. In fact I probably rely on guidebooks exclusively for info and advice while I'm on the road--as I generally don't bring along my cell phone (it's a cheap one anyway with no apps whatsoever that I don't even know how to upload or install or use or whatever you call it) or laptop (it's too heavy and I'd be afraid to lose or damage it). Even when I've resorted to printing out articles or maps from online sources while preparing to go somewhere, note that I'm still relying on the good old-fashioned technology of print, of actual, physical pages that you hold in your hand, fold up in your pocket, spill food and drink on, scribble in the margins or on the backs of, tear up in fits of traveler's frustration or panic, use as toilet paper in emergency situations (uh-huh, you heard me...and fellow travelers, you know what I'm talking about), and about a thousand other actions.

As for which brand of guidebook I rely on, I'm not married to any particular brand. I usually flip through a few different brands on the same destination whenever I'm planning a trip before deciding if I want to buy one and which one. Sometimes it's size and weight that make the decision for me. Sometimes it's organizational style--things like good indexing, useful general info grouped together at the beginning or end of the book, color fold-out maps at the beginning or end with more detailed maps placed often throughout the book. Sometimes it's content--more advice and consideration than average for female travelers' concerns, more info on a lesser-known place or sight I'm planning on visiting, more history. Sometimes it's writing quality--does the text sound like it's been written by some stoned 20-year-old backpacker dude or a detail-obsessed architecture zealot or a cranky xenophobe or what? Budget almost always plays a big part in my choice of guidebook. If a guidebook lists no hostel options, it's out of my league. Sad fact. Hostels, B&Bs, budget motels, lunch cafes, sandwich shops, whereabouts of grocery stores, free days at museums, work-exchange options, local public transit stations, public restroom locations--these are the kind of deadbeat, er, I mean pennywise listings that speak to me. Conversely, the more a guidebook gives space to car rental and valet services, Zagat restaurant ratings, exclusive spa and salon getaways, high-end shopping recommendations, directions to high-rise rooftop nightclubs with swimming pools, and helicopter tour options, the more I know it's not meant for me. I don't think such guidebooks are even aware travelers like me exist much less share the world's roads with their kind of target tourists.

A woman with suitcase. Edward Dimsdale - Road, East of England, Autumn, 1997

Being budget-conscious has usually meant I lean towards brands such as Lonely Planet, Let's Go, and Rough Guide. These brands are also better suited towards younger and solo travelers in my opinion. Their recommendations have certainly saved me a lot of money, and I've probably been able to travel farther, to literally get more mileage out of my dollars, with these brands than I would have with the advice of brands like Fodor's. I admit the budget brands of travel guides have also misled to me to the occasional forget-rustic-this-is-just-downright-scuzzy accommodation or eating place. I once heard a genuinely intrepid and fearless young female backpacker make a similar complaint about the Footprint guides, which I've seen but have never used.

Where do Frommer's guides fit in with all this? Frommer's has always been decidedly budget-conscious but with a step in the direction of comfort, cleanliness, and class-consciousness. A fair bit closer to Fodor's than to the Lonely Planet variety, a forerunner to Rick Steves if anything. For enthusiastic, adventurous, and frugal travelers, yes, but specifically for those who long outgrew the "charm" of sleeping in a dorm with a bunch of strangers or washing their clothes in the sink or shower (and using the complimentary soap and shampoo samples) to save on hotel laundry charges.

I think it was for this reason, as well as the brand's reputation for unpretentious yet good-quality writing, that I chose a Frommer's guide when I purchased my very first travel guidebook. It was in 1994, the year I first went to Ireland. I was 21, a student, and working as a store girl in a local Polish bakery for something like $5.50 to $6 an hour. My previous occupations up until this time had been an usher and candy seller at a movie theater and a book checker-inner and sorter at a library. You can see why I might have been drawn in by the promise on the Frommer's cover: Ireland on $40 a Day. In truth, I think I managed on a third of that--mainly by eating a full breakfast in the morning, which tied me over for hours, then drinking a bottle of Coke or a small carton of milk really fast for "lunch" (drinking fast, in a few gulps, tricks you into feeling full), and for dinner eating the 6 scones I had gotten for a pound in the Moore Street Market in Dublin--one scone per day, sometimes two if I hadn't managed the full breakfast in the morning. I ate the scones dry--no butter, no jam, no nothing. The older they got, the more they crumbled--but just as long as they didn't turn green. I remember eating one in St. Stephen's Green in Dublin and one on Inishmore, the crumbs falling all over the little patch of grass I had staked out in some field where I'd knocked over my rented bike and climbed over a wall to hide from the road. (Even though no one knew me in all of Ireland and so no one cared, I remember feeling I had to eat on the sly, like it was a vulgar thing to do outside of any restaurant--where I felt too awkward as a young foreign girl sitting by myself--and like it was something to be ashamed of that I was basically just consuming scones, milk, and Coke on my vacation.)

My first job was at a movie theater at age 17. I was always dreaming. New York Movie, 1939, Edward Hopper

I cut corners in tons of ways that first trip outside my country. I wanted to supplement a reasonable but still somewhat costly for me tour I took for part of my trip. Taking a tour had been something of a compromise to easy my parents' worries about me being all alone in a foreign country for a couple weeks. I think choosing the Frommer's guide may have been a bit of a compromise as well--in the sense that while it suited my budget tastes, it was maybe meant for a more mature and secure traveler. By using the Frommer's guide at that very inexperienced stage in my life, I was being thrifty but also perhaps trying to make up for my inexperience with the security that came from following the decidedly sensible advice and middle-class recommendations of Frommer's well-respected and well-traveled writers. You might say that my Frommer's book served not only as a guide but also as a guard--likely steering me away from some of the edgier places and more reckless fun I might have gotten myself into had I taken a Lonely Planet guide along with me. (Or maybe it made no difference whatsoever. I did hitchhike during that first visit in Ireland after all. But just once. And just for maybe 5 miles. And I kept my hand on the passenger door handle the whole time and sprung out of the car and ran the second the driver stopped at my destination--just to be safe. I am a proper product of a Midwestern suburban upbringing, people.)

I've only hitch-hiked twice in my life. Pic ource: Jeremy and Claire Weiss: http://www.day19.com/

I know I still have my first Frommer's guide somewhere--packed away in boxes ever since I moved out of my Chicago apartment and essentially gave up a permanent address of my own for awhile to travel at length. It's a pretty tattered copy. Far more so than any of the guidebooks I've used since. It's well marked up with pages torn out and then shoved back in from those times I just wanted to carry one of the city maps around rather than the whole book. In many ways it's as much proof of my travel credentials as a stamped-up passport. Arthur Frommer would probably love the tattered sight of it--the wreck of it much more potent evidence of the good use I got out of it than a million personal hits on his website could ever be. It's like the difference between a battered suitcase and a brand new credit card. Both got you around the world. But while one's all about the money, the other's all about the journey...and has the scars to prove it. I'm hanging onto my old Frommer's and all my old guidebooks--and I'll keep buying them as long as someone's printing them. I'd no sooner be satisfied with digital-only reading than I would be with virtual traveling, with a paperless world than a roadless one.