Grasping for the Wind

Star Wars, Tunisia

I was doing some research for a trip to Tunis this summer and came across this interesting gem about the filming of Star Wars in the Tunisian desert. It is apparently a popular tourist destination for Star Wars fans, so much so that Tunisia.com loudly proclaims it!

"When I was searching in 1977 for a place to make the first Star Wars movie I found Tunisia the ideal country for filming: beautiful countryside, unique architecture and a very high level of technical sophistication." - George Lucas

Germany 2008

I'm back from Germany! It was a great trip and everyone had a lot of fun.

Please enjoy these pictures from my trip last week to Germany. We saw lots of sites, including Munich, Rothenburg ob de Tauber, Neuschwanstein, Bacharach, The Rhine Valley Region, Trier, and Burg Eltz.

You will need Flash player to view it. If you can't, you can visit the Flickr page instead.

Blog Temporarily Suspended

I'm headed out of the country tomorrow to take a bunch of teenagers to Germany to learn about art history, so this blog will be on a ten day hiatus. I'll be back in April with lots more stuff. I'll tell you all about the trip when I get back, and will have lots of pictures to share!

My wife's photo included in online map guide

This picture, taken by my wife, was recently chosen to be included in the online map provider Schmap. You can see the page where the photo was included here.

The picture itself is of a tomb located along the Ancient Appian Way in Rome, Italy. My wife and I have traveled there several times and loved it. I hope you enjoy the picture.

A Year of Reading 2008

This is a continually updated list of all the books I have read in the year 2008. Links are to reviews I have written for some of these books. You can also look at my list for 2007.

January February March April May June
July August September October November December

January

Series 65: Uniform Investment Adviser Law Exam Manual by Kaplan Financial
The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay
Instant Knowledge by the editors at mental_floss
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
In The Beginning by the editors at mental_floss
Eberron: Bound by Iron by Edward Bolme
Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy edited by W. H. Horner
Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham
A Bit of Madness by Emmanuel Civiello and Thomas Mosdi
Goblin Hero by Jim C. Hines
The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley
Dragon Outcast by E. E. Knight

February

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams
Breach the Hull edited by Mike McPhail
Confessor by Terry Goodkind
Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman
Sojourn Volume 6: The Bezerker's Tale by Ian Edgington and Greg Land
Forgotten Realms: Neversfall by Ed Gentry
Infoquake by David Louis Edelman
The Golden Cord by Paul Genesse
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

March

The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
Madhouse by Rob Thurman
The Dead Guy Interviews by Michael Stusser
The Hidden City by Michelle West
Klassic Koalas: Ancient Aboriginal Tales in New Retellings by Lee Barwood
Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie
Growingold with B. C. by Johnny Hart

April

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Small Favor by Jim Butcher
Heroes Adrift by Moira J. Moore
Misspelled edited by Jule E. Czerneda
Flash Fiction Online, April 2008 edited by Jake Freivald
Rolling Thunder by John Varley
Empress by Karen Miller
Phytosphere by Scott Mackay
Goblin War by Jim C. Hines
Return of the Sword edited by Jason M. Waltz

May

Shadowmarch by Tad Williams
Forgotten Realms: Obsidian Ridge by Jess Lebow
Iron Man: Beneath the Armor by Andy Mangels
The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
Bloodheir by Brian Ruckley
The Martian General's Daughter by Theodore Judson
The Four Forges by Jenna Rhodes
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan

June

A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans
Wizards edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

July

August

September

October

November

December

January February March April May June
July August September October November December

Where I'm Going in 2008

Every year, I travel with Masterworks Tours as a host. In 2008, the wife and I will be heading to Germany, to visit the Rhine Valley, Frankfurt, and Munich. This will be our first time in Germany, and I'm really looking forward to it! You can see a our itinerary, and little of the history of the region in the Jauntlet below.

Get a Free Travel Plan for Your Profile from Jauntlet

By the way, I highly recommend Jauntlet as a great way to tell people about trips you are taking and posting them on your blog. It is easy, takes very little time, and is free.

Book Review: Explorer's House by Robert M. Poole

Title: Explorer's House: National Geographic and the World it Made
Author: Robert M. Poole
Genre: History, Non-fiction
Pub. Date: January 2006 (paperback edition)
Format: Paperback, 368pp
Publisher: Viking Penguin
Personal Rating: 4/5

Inventors, geography, and nepotism all find their way into the pages of Robert M. Poole’s history of National Geographic entitled Explorer’s House: National Geographic and the World It Made.

Beginning with Gardiner Hubbard and Alexander Graham Bell (best known for inventing the telephone) Explorer’s House tells the story of a great institution founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society, and its progeny, National Geographic magazine.

Poole has expertly portrayed the story of one of the world’s most successful magazines from its humble origins in a small office in Washington, D.C. to the billion-dollar a year company it has grown to be. He describes how a little gathering of men who shared and interest in geography that they wanted to promulgate hired a young man by name of Gilbert Grosvenor to be editor and manger of the little journal they produced for their members. Grosvenor went on to make the magazine the chief end of the society, using innovative publishing, marketing, and photography techniques to draw in several million readers today.

Poole’s writing style reflects the nature of his long association with the magazine. Each chapter is an article itself and could easily have found printing in any major newspaper. Poole explores the relationship of the Bell and Grosvenor family to National Geographic. It was this family and their talent and psychological make-ups that made the magazine successful and so a study of them and their correspondence gives the reader a best sense of the germination and growth of the magazine. Poole had unprecedented access to former employees, the National Geographic archives, and the Grosvenor and Bell archives, allowing him to tell the story as no one else has.

Many other characters come into the history as well. Maynard Owen Williams, first foreign correspondent; Robert Peary, arctic explorer; and Jacques Costeau, deep sea explorer, and beneficiary of one of National Geographic’s research grants; all play significant roles in the story of National Geographic. There is the story of opening Tutankhamen’s tomb, the first American climb of Everest, the conquest of the North Pole, and Jane Goodall’s research into primate behavior; all of which would not have been possible without the help of National Geographic and its society.

Ultimately, the book is excellent, although there are some flaws. Poole’s history some time skips backward and forward in time to often, making the reader very dependent on the dates mentioned. This lack of straightforward history is not extremely detrimental to the history, but the reader would be wise to pay attention to all dates mentioned. Poole also spends little time in the more recent past. The book was published in 2004 (begun in 2001) and glosses over a great deal of the 1990s and misses much of the early turn of the century.

However, for anyone in publishing, who has enjoyed National Geographic in the past, or historians of Alexander Graham Bell and his family, Explorer's House is both a helpful resource and fascinating story. Poole has shown how National Geographic’s devotion to geography, adventure, exploration, and learning has shaped American culture profoundly.

CovFriends Reunion 2007

Pictures from our get together of the past weekend.

Masterworks Tours 2008

For those of you who don't know, one of the things I do for a hobby (along with my father) is take home schoolers on trips to Europe every year to experience the culture and history.

We are currently accepting applicants to the trips for 2008. Next year we are planning on heading to Rome, Italy; Paris, France; and the Rhine Valley, Germany (including Munich).

Any home schoolers fifteen years old or older are more than welcome. Our prices include airfare from Atlanta but if you are coming from somewhere else, you will have to find your own transportation to Atlanta. However, if others are coming from your area, we would be happy to assist you connecting with them.

All that to say there are currently, 16 spaces for Paris, 15 spaces for Germany, and 15 spaces for Rome. Check out the website for more information, including a brochure with more detail and prices. Spaces fill up fast, so if you are interested, let us know.

You can contact me through the email me button above or by clicking email me on my blogger profile page.

Philadelphia and Ocean City 2007

We have returned! Here are some the pictures from our great vacation! Thanks Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. Thanks also to Vox Vendsel for letting us visit and meet cute little Philo.

Book Review: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Genre: Travel, History, Humor

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” so concludes (or nearly so) the most irreverent travel book ever written, by that unique American humorist, Mark Twain. Hired to take ship on one of the very first cruises ever envisioned (a near flop, actually) and write about the experience, the thirty-seven year old and relatively unknown author begins to find the voice that would make him one of the most popular American novelists of all time.

The Innocents Abroad is a sequence of letters to several newspapers (later compiled by Twain into book form) that appeared in print for the purpose of belittling the idea of cruise ships and pleasure excursions. The year was 1867, and Twain took his mandate to heart. The Innocents Abroad is filled with cutting wit and satire, sometimes at his own expense, sometimes others. “It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once I have discovered and ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy of all praise, the pleasure it gives me is infallible proof that it is not a beautiful picture and not in any wise worthy of commendation.”

The ship was called the Quaker City and began its trip in New York and traveled around the curve of the Mediterranean, visiting Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Holy Land. Twain describes the trip in such an exciting and humorous fashion that the reader will easily see the sites as they were in the great Age of Travel, before the commercialization of it.

Twain is a man of the lower class, unused to the appreciation of art, architecture, and history in the “acceptable” ways, and so the reader will find that his descriptions of what he sees and learns are honest and forthright and lack any ostentation. Twain’s travel history really examines the things seen and heard while maintaining his critical wit. His writing is an example of how a travel journal should appear. He thinks on the things he sees, questions his reactions, and accepts or dismisses them. He describes in detail the things that move him, and lightly passes by those that don’t. He both praises and derides his travel companions, but in his conclusion (written a year after the book’s publication) maintains that some of them are still his dearest friends. In fact, his future brother-in-law was his cabin mate, although he didn’t know it at the time.

The book is enjoyable for its insights into a time period, a beginning of the Golden Age of Travel, and for its insights into the growth of a writer’s voice. The Innocents Abroad was only his second book, but remained one of his best selling, even after the publication of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Any traveler will enjoy the book. It is a good book to read to learn how to journal about travel, and it also presents a slice of history not often mentioned in the history books. It is funny and thoughtful, and deliciously irreverent.

Roma

I promised you, dear reader, that I would show you little slice of the Rome I just visited. Here you go.

PS: Flickr Rocks!