Slipstream

A couple nights ago, I walked from downtown Las Vegas to the north end of the Strip. I’d been driving for a couple days, and a long stroll seemed the perfect way to shake off my road burn, especially on such a clear and balmy desert night.

I left my hotel and headed down Fremont Street toward Las Vegas Boulevard. Fremont throbbed with loud, drunk revelers carrying supersized beers and giant cocktails brimming over from clear plastic containers shaped like footballs. Read the rest of this entry »

I was driving through northern California last week, listening to a podcast about Buddhist meditation. It was a great way to dwindle away the long, dry miles of the Sacramento Valley, especially since the speaker didn’t talk like your typical Zen-centered facilitator. A cowboy poet would have been more like it, or cowboy koan-ist, as it were, except that he sounded more Brooklyn than Dallas, with a sprinkling perhaps of the great Midwest.

I particularly appreciated his discussion about his own experiences with meditation—how it had helped to bring about a sense of happiness and balance and equanimity and connectedness to the world around him. Meditation, he believes also made him more intuitive, which he thinks is a real cool thing for guys. “I was never intuitive being a guy,” he said. “It didn’t make any sense to me. Why would anyone want to have feelings like that?” Read the rest of this entry »

In 2010, greenhouse gas emissions around the world rose by a record 5.9%. If these rates continue, we have a 50/50 chance that by the year 2100 the global average temperature will have increased by more than 4 degrees Celsius, a rise that could lead to loss of land, mass migrations, and bloody conflicts in affected countries.

About three-quarters of that increase comes from developing countries anxious to catch up with their wealthy cousins in the West, suggesting that those of us sucking up most of the resources are starting to get a handle on our myopic habits, despite the zealot naysayers who argue that greenhouse gases and rising temperatures are the stuff of science fiction and of little consequence to our everyday lives. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been working on a new guide for my 5-Spot ebook travel series, this one about Portland. The book describes places such as Forest Park, Powell’s City of Books, and The Grotto, a Catholic shrine with a stone altar and a full-size replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà and enough candles to light the Vatican.

When I first visited The Grotto, it reminded me of the 1943 film The Song of Bernadette, which chronicles the visionary adventures of Bernadette Soubirous and her numerous visits to a Lourdes cave in 1858. The cave, as it turns out, also doubled as the town dump, which was one of several reasons why many at the time questioned the authenticity of Bernadette’s visions. They also thought the girl might be a bit touched and should be taken away to an asylum. Despite these naysayers, Bernadette insisted that she had had numerous conversations with a woman who wore a blue girdle, a while veil, and a yellow rose on each foot, a woman who eventually identified herself as the Immaculate Conception—the Holy Blessed Virgin Mary, for those out of the Catholic loop. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, Occupy Seattle joined forces with local unions to occupy one of the drawbridges near the University of Washington. From my home in the Cascades, I monitored the #occupyseattle tweets, a feat impossible 10 years ago, in the days before Twitter and smartphones and such widespread availability of high-speed Internet access.

The tweeters provided up-to-date news and perspectives on what was happening when it was happening, information I wasn’t likely to find elsewhere. What struck me most about the rapid fire of Occupy-related comments was not so much the self-congratulatory pats on the back, but the number of malicious attacks by local tweeters who felt put out by having their after-work commutes disrupted. Read the rest of this entry »