articles

a few samples

Slate: Well-traveled
November 2006
Girls’ Week Out with Yunnan’s Matriarchal Mosuo
HEKOU, China—The guards at this border crossing don’t look twice at your codeine, but they aren’t overly fond of books. The random selection in my bag includes one with a photo of a prison cell on the cover (Harmful Error: Investigating America’s Local Prosecutors), one with the word “uncensored” in its title (Letters From the Earth: Uncensored Writings by Mark Twain), and an epic by a Russian (Eugene Onegin). All elicit suspicious grunts. But the book they really want to ban is the Lonely Planet guide. read more

National Geographic
October 2005
Saving a Stone Age Site
No Small Find at the Big Eddy
Hard by the Sac River in southwestern Missouri, Neal Lopinot and his dirt- smeared team are engaged in an urgent rescue attempt. All are sharply aware that time is running short, that the victim they are toiling to save can’t hold out for much longer. That victim, Big Eddy, is a trove of North American prehistory, named after a large natural whirlpool that swirls nearby. The threat: A hydroelectric dam six miles (nine kilometers) upstream at Stockton that spews some three million gallons of water a minute when generating at full tilt, turning the sluggish Sac into a sluiceway and eroding the riverbank at a rate of four feet a year. “We’re losing the site faster than we can excavate it,” laments Lopinot. “In less than 15 years, maybe even sooner, Big Eddy will be gone.” read more

Voyaging
Spring 2005 cover feature
Aeolian Odyssey
Italy’s Islands of the Wind prove as enchanting as they sound during an Aicon’s maiden cruise

Ulysses just wanted to get away. The hero of Homer’s Odyssey can be forgiven—he wandered these waters for ten years, trying to find his way home. read more

Global Traveler
May 2005 cover feature
Banking on Business Class
Air carriers worldwide are rolling out the red carpet for premium-class passengers.

You’re a business traveler; you know the routine. Plush carpeting, rich woods, leather recliner, mood lighting. You sip the welcome cocktail, lather with spendy soap in the luxuriously appointed loo. If you’re peckish, room service rushes in with a snack of your choice. The butler hangs your suit while you don silk pajamas and dive under the down duvet, ready for a good night’s sleep. All standard operating procedure for most five-star hotels. Except that when you wake up … you’re in Sydney. Or Abu Dhabi.

Toto, I don’t think we’re on Southwest anymore. read more

Humanities
June/July 2005
Ernest Hemingway
One True Sentence

They were perhaps the greatest literary rivals of the twentieth century, brothers in self-destructive brilliance. F. Scott Fitzgerald came first, but Ernest Hemingway had the last word. read more

Harp
July/Aug 2004
No Mo Mojo
Elvis is everywhere, but Mojo-for now-has left the building.

Thus spake Mojo. Citing “old age,” “fatness” and the fact that “nobody gives a rat’s ass about the things I’ve been saying for 20 years,” cowpunk iconoclast Mojo Nixon insisted he was retiring during a would’ve-sold-out-if-it-hadn’t-been-free show at Austin’s legendary Continental Club. Coinciding with South by Southwest, the farewell concert capped the Continental’s seventh annual “Mojo’s Mayhem” and featured performances by James McMurtry, John Dee Graham and others. read more