Counting Coins

It's the last business day of the year, which means it's time to take our jar o' coins to the bank. I never used to collect spare change, but for the past four years I've been hauling in my husband's 12-month stash, dumping it in a counting machine and waiting to see what total pops out.

The past few years it's hovered at $80. I wonder what it'll equal this year.

Reading Orange

My hubby wants to know why the past three books I've read all have orange covers.

Hmmm. I've always claimed my favorite color to be red. I am drawn to orange; I built my web site around the color. Yet I never would have thought the color capable of influencing my reading decisions. If it did, however, I'm okay with that. My past three reads have been varied and good.

First I read a travel memoir called Stalking the Wild Dik Dik.

Then I read a novel called Minaret, written by Leila Aboulela, a Sudanese writer.

The book is about a Sudanese woman who is living in London as a political refugee. The setting flips back and forth between London and Khartoum. Basically, it's the main character's story of spiritual awakening, but it is also a love story and a family history.

I was surprised by how drawn into this book I got as it felt like it moved slowly and not much happened. Yet lots was happening. The back cover quotes use words like "delicate," "gentle," "moving," and "quietly angry" and I would have to agree with all of these descriptions. This book had a very understated pull.

My third orange read was All the Fishes Come Home to Roost by Rachel Manija Brown. It's a memoir about the author's rather traumatic and unusual childhood.

Brown spent a chunk of her childhood on an ashram in Ahmednagar, India. Her parents were followers of a guru named Meher Baba. While her parents were busy devoting their lives to an obscure, dead spiritual leader, Brown was attending a horrific local school and suffering extreme loneliness as the only foreign child for miles and miles around.

The first half of the book was enjoyable and fun to read it was in the child's voice and quite witty. Yet half-way through when the author switched to her adult voice and started writing about how she'd come through her childhood, I found myself jumping paragraphs. I preferred the child's voice.

However, I was glad to have read the book. Years ago, in a graduate course I was taking, a guest speaker came to class and spoke about her travels to India in search of enlightenment. She brought a slide show and a good portion of the pictures were of this dude named Meher Baba. I thought the speaker was bizarre and chasing a cult, yet I'd never been able to shake the name "Meher Baba." She said it like a million times in her hour presentation.

After reading All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, I still think the Meher Baba followers are a bit goofy, but I'm glad to know I didn't make up that name that has kicked around in my head for the past 10 years.

This Year's Favorite Gift to Give

This holiday season, my favorite gift to give was something I found online: BaZura luggage tags.

The luggage tags are made in the Philippines from recycled juice boxes.

School children collect the empty juice boxes and sell them to a woman-owned cooperative that reuses them to produce handbags, tote bags, luggage tags and a bunch of other nifty stuff. The finished products are fairly traded.

What a cool way to keep bulky stuff out of landfills, teach the concept of recycling and help women in a developing country avoid sweat shops in favor of entrepreneurship.

Not to mention the fact that in a world flooded with black suitcases, everyone needs a quick and easy way to spot the exact one that is theirs.

Politically Incorrect Christmas Gifts

Here's our vote for the most politically incorrect Christmas gifts!

From my brother to my hubby and me - a Hillary Nutcracker and Biodegradable Dog Poop Bags sporting pictures of President Bush and Dick Cheney and the slogan: "They're Full of Crap."

Upon further inspection, we noticed that both the Hillary doll and the dog poop bags were made in China, to which Quang raised an interesting question:

In a Communist county, can't you be jailed or killed or something for being disrespectful to your leaders?

It shouldn't surprise us that these items were made in China (like everything else these days), but late on a Christmas night, we puzzled over the idea that these products, which are most certainly disrespectful to American leaders (no matter which side of the fence you're on) were made in a country where freedom of speech is limited.

Remembering Your Roam

My article, Remember Your Roam: Tips and Techniques to Bring Your Travel Journal Alive was recently posed on GoNomad.

It lists 25 writing prompts to help any traveler (even a reluctant writer) keep a diary on the road.

My favorite tip? #21

Write a haiku. Remember the rules? Three lines of counted syllables: 5,7,5. Traditionally, a haiku is supposed to be about nature, but I’ve use the format throughout my travel diaries. Here’s a haiku from my Roam journal:

Sticky table top
Hot waiter winks and I will
Forgive anything

Photo
* My attempt to recreate a green house in a Buenos Aires park.

TC Green

I did a little holiday shopping this weekend. The first place I hit was a store I've been reading a lot of press about: Twin Cities Green.

The store is operated by a Twin Cities couple. This is their second store front. The first, Re-Gift, is also in Minneapolis.

The stores specialize in selling recycled and reclaimed goods that are fairly-traded or made from organic/sustainable materials.

There was furniture big and small. For example, there was an entire bedroom set but there were also end tables. There were Christmas tree ornaments, lamp shades, martini glasses, tins of lip balm, tubes of diaper rash cream, squares of dark chocolate and rolls of 100 percent recycled toilet paper called Shit-B-Gone.

It certainly wasn't crowded when I stopped by, however, there were a fair number of people milling about and I did have to wait in a line two-deep before making my purchase.

I only found a couple items as it seemed the shelves had been picked over, which (while frustrating as a shopper) made me happy for the retailers. My visit made me curious enough to want to seek out Re-Gifts. I didn't make it this weekend, but it's now on my shortened to-do list.

The Write Place

Last week I spent some time at an area high school interviewing two teachers and a student about that district's new Writing Center.

The Writing Center provides free writing help to any student or teacher in the building. The educator in me thought the center a brilliant idea.

The writing teachers hope to bring in a variety of professionals over the course of the year to talk to students about writing in the wider world. The freelance writer in me immediately pitched myself as a possible guest speaker. I hope they call me on my offer.

At any rate, the resulting article appeared this week.

I keep a running list of my recently published articles on my my homepage if anyone out there is so inclined. I try to keep it fairly up to date.

Photo © Lakeshore Weekly News

Mmm Bop Grows Up and Gives Back

I really should read the Sunday paper on Sunday. When I don't, I miss out on good stuff. Like this:

Hanson - that teeny bopper boy band of three blond-haired brothers from the 1990s - was in Minneapolis yesterday and performing at First Avenue.

FIRST AVENUE!!!

If you're not a Twin Cities person, this might not mean anything to you. Let me fill me you in. First Avenue is where Prince got his start. It's the setting for the movie Purple Rain. The building occupies a downtown Minneapolis corner and is painted pitch black -- inside and out.

The outside walls are studded with silver stars boasting the names of musicians that have played there, names like U2, the Ramones, Soul Aslymn and Cake. The interior walls, again, are black. The focus is not the decor, which is quite lacking, but the stage.

It's hardly the sort of place where a one-hit-wonder boy band makes a come back. Or is it?

Turns out the Hanson brothers have grown up. So have their politics. And so has their music.

The brothers had been spending time in Africa, doing philanthropic deeds, and decided to record a song with a South African child choir.

Proceeds from the download of the resulting song, Great Divide, support relief work in Africa. Check out the video...

Inclusive Junk Mail Part 4

As the annual slew of holiday greetings begins to arrive at my house, one particular piece of junk mail recently caught my eye. It's a Dish Network mass-mailer postcard printed in Korean.

If you're a newbie to my blog-o-sphere musings, you might not be familiar with the Korean mail that's been showing up at my house. See, my husband was born in Vietnam. He's got one of those names that customer service people always stumble over: Quang.

Somehow, Dish Network got a hold of an "Asian" mailing list and we've been getting their stuff ever since. The mailers started arriving one year ago. First, it came in Chinese. The second mailer was in Korean. So was the third. And now the fourth.

I was thinking that if we just waited long enough, one would eventually show up in Vietnamese. Not yet. This is our third mailer this year in Korean.

Last Night's Fortune

What's a Dik-Dik?

When I picked up this book, my husband teased me. "It's very important to stalk the dik-dik," he said with a smirk.

I smiled, made some suggestive comment then turned and took the few steps to my reading chair. I snuggled in, ready to follow author Marie Javins as she traveled from South Africa to Egypt, alone.

I found it an interesting read as the book is based on the author's travel blog, Marie's World Tour. Since I also traveled, blogged and harbor hopes of turning my online travel journal into a print book, I was curious how she handled the material.

It was a quick read, perfect for distracting me from the cold winter weather that's starting to brew outside. And hey, now I know what a dik-dik is.

Patagonian State of Mind

Over the noon hour, I spoke to a senior group about Patagonia.

The talk was arranged through a local school district's community ed. department. This particular district has an arm-chair travel group that meets once a month to see a photography slide show about a far-away place.

I spoke about Patagonia today, but last month I was also the featured guest. That time I spoke about Myanmar (Burma). There were many returning faces in the crowd and it was fun to have the whole room fill up; about 40 people were in attendance.

Afterwards, several interested parties stuck around to ask my advice. It seems I got a few listeners into a Patagonian state of mind.

Learn more about my presentations.

Need Magazine: Ideas for Giving

It's snowing here in the Twin Cities and this morning I wrapped myself up in a thick blanket with a pot of coffee and the newest issue of Need Magazine, which is published right here in Minneapolis.

If you've never heard of Need Magazine, that's because it's quite new. It's only been around for a year. Its tagline sums up its mission quite well: "We're not out to save the world, but to tell the stories of those who are."

As a traveler, I'm drawn to the magazine because many of its articles are about far away places.

As a reader, I've found I appreciate the layout -- lots of white space, nice color photographs and good writing.

In this issue there is an article about several nonprofit organizations that do good in various parts of the world. I learned about Nothing but Nets, a group that buys and distributes mosquito nets in Africa to help prevent the spread of malaria. Just $10 buys and ships one net.

There is also a nice profile about a man named Jorge Chojolan, an indigenous Mayan man who overcame poverty and started The Miguel Angel Asturias Academy, a school for 200 children in Xela, Guatemala's second largest city.

And if you're still on the hunt for a unique holiday gift for a traveler you know, I think a subscription to Need would be a great idea.