The Black-Eyed Susan is hardly as elegant as the Kentucky Derby’s Mint Julep. But, it sounds tasty enough.

The weird thing about the Black-Eyed Susan is that there are so many variations on how to make it. Sometimes it’s made with vodka, sometimes with whiskey. This recipe calls for both vodka and whiskey and Baltimore Business Journal lists five different recipes for the cocktail, all with shots of two different liquors, usually rum and vodka. It’s confusing, but you probably won’t care after a few sips.

The Black-Eyed Susan | The Official Drink Of The Preakness | 2013 Preakness

A series that asks travel and food writers about their media consumption and how they structure their writing days, find sources, and deal with information overflow. Inspired by The Atlantic Wire, but with a travel, food, and culture focus.

Robert Reid recently left his job as the U.S. Travel Editor of Lonely Planet “to pursue my own writing and see if I have a book in me.” His work has been featured in the New York Times, World Hum, ESPN, Perceptive Travel, CNN, and BBC.com, among other outlets and Mashable listed him as one of the Top 15 travel folks to follow on Twitter.

How do you get started with your day?

I’m not a very interesting person before 10:30 in the morning. Like most people, I’d guess, I make coffee and check email and flip through Twitter. It gives me pleasure to let the morning be quiet for awhile, just standing and listening to the coffee percolate. If something catches my eye on Twitter, I’ll follow the link. But I’ve learned I don’t need to know as much as I used to.

How do you structure a typical work day (when you’re not traveling)?

Remember when Marlon Brando asks Martin Sheen about his method in “Apocalypse Now” and Sheen tells him, “I don’t see… any method.. at all, sir”? Yeah, I can be very organized on the road, but at home, I’m usually out to mystify Martin Sheen, like a bald chubby Brando.

Some days it’s one article all out. Other days I follow tangents to unexpected places. One time, as a writing exercise, I just started writing about the Kinks, and found myself three graphs in, talking about cereal instead. Then I started researching breakfast cereal. And found out a bearded bohemian created a Grape Nuts like cereal in upstate New York during the Civil War. When I was in the area months later, I went by and tried to track down the first bowl. I got a video out of that.

What are your favorite sources for news and inspiration?

I’m more selective about the information I put in my body than what food I consume. Yes, I feel bad hearing that there was a mudslide in Venezuela, but I don’t really need to know much about it.

Usually I read things I research for specific reasons, or follow whims. I tend to find stuff way outside the mainstream much more inspiring than, say, New Yorker’s unfunny “Shouts & Murmurs” column. Jim Rome is a sport radio guy with a goatee who is just hilarious. Today he went OFF on the Indiana Pacers for not letting their big man “rock a monocle” in a post-game presser. He called it the “biggest disappointment of his life.” He spent 10 minutes on this. And Bill Simmons’ Grantland blog, linked on ESPN, does with sports what I always wanted to do with travel (and tried), which is to take it way out of itself. Not just Kevin Durant’s shooting percentage, but uniform choices, movie soundtracks, Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance.

That’s exactly what travel needs.

What’s your relationship with social media?

Nearly all the news I hear about is via Twitter. I usually only go over to the Times website to search out something specific – an obit on Woody Guthrie for instance. I occasionally use Tumblr, usually to post fragments I come across that interest me AS I’m researching something for an article or video. I’m bad at Facebook. I don’t quite know what to do with it. So I don’t use it much.

You recently left Lonely Planet. Are there parts of your daily routine that you picked up from working with them?

As “Travel Editor,” I did much on my own. Suddenly you’re going to be on ET to talk about Marilyn Monroe “travel sites,” or Fox about bad airline food. I’m researching that on my own. I watch Monroe documentaries, read articles and see a couple movies – and go in in a Bon Jovi-esque blaze of glory. I guess that all made me shave more. So there’s that, too.

How has your daily routine/media diet changed now that you’ve gone full-time freelance?

Fewer conference calls, meaning I don’t have to deepen my voice to stress “serious” ideas and all that. And I rarely say the word “leverage” anymore. But I stay very busy, shockingly so for an unemployed person. And a recent blog post I did on how to use a guidebook was overwhelmingly my most read post I’ve done. That was encouraging.

What’s the last thing you read that stuck with you?

Oh so much! I read Woody Guthrie’s underrated autobiographical novel Bound for Glory from 1943 recently. It’s like pre-beatnik roadtrip across America. There’s a part where he rattles of the street scene of his hometown Okemah, Oklahoma, during an oil boom that I just had to stop, start at the beginning and read aloud, as fast as I could. Creek Indians, oil workers, sharecroppers, fistfights, cons, little Woody soaking it up. It reads like a race or a rap. I had to reread it a couple times. You’ll find it from page 93 to 102.

Do you listen to any podcasts? And/or is there any particular music that gets you through your writing day?

I go on huge musical whims and immerse myself for weeks at a time in an artist or a theme. Not long ago I listened to nothing but ‘70s German music for a month. Kraftwerk, Neu!, Faust, then spilling over to Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s “Berlin” albums.

And I’ve still not quite kicked my Bowie revival. I can’t stop listening to his ‘70s records like “Lodger” (which is sort of a travel album). I watch YouTube interviews when he was coked up in the ‘70s, or that Serious Moonlight tour documentary where he serves as a guide in Southeast Asia. Loved that. I’m not always sure why I do this. I just trust my interests and follow them with what I consume.

Actually all this has got me thinking of making a series called TRAVEL DUELS, which would start by comparing Bowie the Traveler (he did the Trans-Siberian in his Ziggy Stardust days; can you imagine the looks Siberians gave him?) and Paul McCartney (one of the worst travelers). I mean, go listen to McCartney smack back at the Japanese after they busted him for bringing in a Buick backseat’s worth of pot in 1980. How did he respond? Made a song called “Frozen Jap.” Even if it was about Yoko (and maybe it was), the guy’s terribly insensitive. Then again, half of his songs are about staying at home and eating biscuits with the wife. (Ed. Note: Someone, please make this series happen!)

What are your favorite sources for preparing for a trip?

Easy, it’s Wikipedia. For a recent roadtrip around northern Maine, I simply looked up Wikipedia entries for strange towns I’d visit – Houlton, Madawaska, New Canada, Millinocket. To see where it’d take me. Did you know there was a so-called “Pork and Beans War” in 1839 between armed lumberjacks of Maine and British Canada? And it resulted in a lone death, or a US guy run over by his own supply wagon? And the only skirmish was a fistfight in a Houlton bar? Isn’t that GREAT?

On the trip I went to Houlton to see if there was a plaque. They had a newish bust of George Washington, of all things, and “Iron Man 3” in an old theater. Nothing on the fistfight. I’d love to see New Brunswick and Maine organize a “pork and beans hug” once year (and said so at a tourism event I got to speak at). Huge vats of pork and beans laid out on a border island – no other food welcome – and Americans and Canadians mingle and hug each other.

That all came from Wikipedia. But it’s important to acknowledge Wikipedia serves only as a trigger, not a source. Most of what I learned came from one of its sources, the New England Quarterly.

Anything else you’d like to add?

What do you like? Go after that. Some of my favorite articles and videos I’ve done were complete busts in terms of views or readers. But if you’re not entertaining or interesting yourself, you can’t interest anyone.

Needless to say — you aren’t reading this in Elle, are you? — I was not lifted up easefully into the realm of the brand-name. Probably because I didn’t do any of the things that I would have had to do in order to get there. I still don’t quite understand what it takes to get there. More and more I think it’s not what I’m good at, or even what I want to be good at.  I still feel jealous of people who get paid well to go on junkets and describe them humorously and vividly, of course. But I want something else, and it does not, for the moment, involve sitting alone in a room with a computer.  It also does, of course.  I have been happiest and most miserable alone in that room.

When I went back to working in an office after years of not, I could suddenly see the particular brand of crazy my former compatriots in freelancing exhibited, revealed in high definition. Their obsessive Facebook status updates, their public declarations about how much or how little they’d written that day or how their writing was going, the kind of super-involved tweeting that you only see in people who are either trapped at desk jobs where there’s too little for them to do or in freelancers desperate to avoid the work they’ve assigned themselves. I have done all of this stuff, of course, but the moment I didn’t have time to do it anymore, I could see it for what it was. It was, initially, a blessed relief to be rendered unable to ride the waves of Schadenfreude and fleeting, irrational enthusiasm that wash over the social Internet all day.  I was also rendered incapable of feeling jealous of everyone whose writing was momentarily elevated by a stream of “THIS!”-style sharing. I had other stuff to do.  I have other stuff to do.

Feels blind [Emily Magazine]

Internet socialization is far closer to a 19th century mode of intimacy than to a dystopian future of tragically disconnected robot prostitutes. There’s a Jane Austen-ish quality to online social life. The written word gains unmatched power and inarguable primacy.

Whether we’re sending long-form letters to one another or chatting face to face with friends, storytelling is key, according to Jag Bhalla writing for Scientific American:

Any story we tell of our species, any science of human nature, that leaves out much of what and how we feel is false. Nature shaped us to be ultra-social, and hence to be sharply attentive to character and plot. We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories.

Finally, Discovery News reports that there are 23 words that may date back 15,000 years. Here’s a hat-tip to David Weinberger, whose link to this article poetically ties together these ancient words with our modern technology:

15K-yr-old words: thou I not that we give who this man ye old mother hear hand fire pull black flow ashes spit worm reddit.com/r/science/comm…

— David Weinberger (@dweinberger) May 7, 2013

• Intimacy as Text; Twitter as Toungue [The New Inquiry]
• It Is In Our Nature to Need Stories [Scientific American]
• 15,000-Year-Old Words? [Discovery News]

Blog because you are teaching yourself to write – blogging’s time driven nature creates an excellent framework for homework.  Blog because you are compelled to share your stories – blogging is perfect for that. Blog because you can’t not write – a blog is a good place for you to see your story outside your own head, to see your work made real. The roots version of “Why blog?” is still 100% valid – because you’re having an adventure and you want to document it. Or blog for the same reasons I do, because blogging is your medium and writing is your art.

What about the whole issue of making money from travel blogging?

Don’t focus on making money today or tomorrow or next year, instead, focus on making amazing writing. Dig into the dark places the tourist office doesn’t want you to see. Tell a good story purely for the satisfaction of telling a good story. Experiment, write backwards, unravel history, ask hard questions, tell stories that leave your readers feeling dizzy or angry or exhausted as though they have made the journey with you. Turn away from all the optimizing and strategizing and monetizing and socializing because they do not have to be why you blog.

Pam will be a speaker at the TBEX Conference in Toronto this June.

via TBEX Speaker Post: Ask Me About Art – TBEX USA.

Since early 2010, The Atlantic Wire has run a wonderful series called the “Media Diet,” wherein prominent personalities in news, government, arts, radio, and elsewhere discuss how they handle the “torrent of information pouring down on us all.” I have found all sorts of useful nuggets in these media diet profiles, from how to organize my day to what sources to add to my news reader or Twitter list.

For some time, I’ve mulled over the idea of talking to my writing colleagues about their media diets. Today, I’m posting what I hope is the first in a long series of profiles about travel and food writers and what they read, watch, and listen to.

David Farley, author of An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town, which will be made into a documentary later this year, is the first writer to tell me about what he reads and how he structures his writing time. As I am writing this, I learned that Farley’s April 2012 article for Afar Magazine, Vietnam’s Bowl of Secrets, has been selected for inclusion in the 2013 Best American Travel Writing anthology. Learn more about David Farley at dfarley.com.

How do you get started with your writing day?

When I wake up, I freak myself out by going over the weird dreams I’d had. How did my Dad suddenly become one of my grad school professors who then morphed into the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island and patting me on the back calling me “Little Buddy”? Does this make me Gilligan? Then I think about what I have to do that day, meaning what I have to write and/or edit. When I finally get up, I make coffee. I recently bought I coffee grinder which means I’m officially a coffee snob. I check my email. I look at the New York Times online, I check out the social media.

Ideally I start working right away. But really, I end up looking at a gazillion websites and then, two hours later, convince myself it’s time to start writing. After said convincing I find myself cleaning the bathroom or running to the store to buy ingredients to make an extravagant lunch for myself or going to the gym. Or, likely, all three of these things. Basically, I do a lot of stuff to keep me from writing. But by 4pm, knowing I’m going to be meeting friends for drinks in three hours, I start freaking out and have the most productive three hours, ever.

When I really can’t get started writing, I’ll read a writer I admire. Often this is Joan Didion. Specifically, I’ll read the first few pages of “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” from Slouching Toward Bethlehem. I also like reading Jo Ann Beard and Bill Bryson. Every once in a while, usually if I somehow stumble upon it, I’ll read, say, a feature magazine article I’ve written in the past—just to remind myself that I’ve written something in the recent past that was publishable.

What’s your relationship with social media?

Such. A. Time. Suck. I do glean stuff from twitter and facebook – the occasional newspaper or magazine article I never would have come across – but generally I’m just getting what people ate for breakfast or their political views or their breakfast views. I know it’s mostly a waste of time yet I still am absorbed in the social media every day. And by now with, say, twitter, it seems like, as an author, it’s necessary for me to be on there. Or maybe that’s just the procrastination-inducing devil in my brain telling me this.

You lived in Italy while you wrote your book. What book or books did you use as guides while you were there (if any)?

I didn’t use any guidebooks (if that’s what you’re asking). I mostly just read a lot of centuries-old documents I’d unearthed in the Vatican Library that related to the book I was working on—16th-century histories of Jesus’ foreskin. Juicy stuff!

Now you live in New York City. What do you read to keep up with the news in your neighborhood/borough/city? What books, magazines, or articles would you recommend to someone visiting NYC?

I subscribe to The New Yorker, New York magazine, Time Out New York, the New York Review of Books. Plus, I have a digital subscription to the New York Times. All this keeps me pretty up to date, especially on the New York food and dining landscape which I write about when I’m not on the road.

What’s the last book you read?

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer. I’m currently reading an advanced copy of a new J. Maarten Troost book, Headhunters at my Doorstep. I like it.

Do you listen to any podcasts?

I always tell myself that I need to listen to podcasts but I never do. So, the answer is no.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Don’t have a routine like me.

In the wake of the passing of film critic Roger Ebert, I am, like many of Ebert’s admirers, revisiting some of his writings. I was particularly struck by this essay, All By Ourselves Alone, in which he discusses his travel rituals in cities like Venice and London. He opens the piece at a familiar Venetian cafe:

Of course you must have a newspaper, a book, a sketchpad–anything that seems to absorb you. If you are simply sitting there, you will appear to be a Lonely Person and people will look away from you. If you seem preoccupied, you can observe them more closely. In any event, I do not sit there for the purpose of people-watching.

No, I am engaged in Being By Myself in a City Where No One Knows Who I Am and No One I Know Knows Where to Find Me. I have such places in many cities. London, of course. Paris. Rome. Stockholm. Edinburgh. Cape Town. Cannes.

He goes on to describe how he likes to visit many of the same places and dine on the same meals every time he returns to a city.

I may to the onlooker appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but in fact I am engaged in a personal ritual. I have many sacred places, where I sit and think, “I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again.”

By the time Ebert wrote this meditation on some of his sacred places, in 2009, he had already lost the use of his voice to thyroid cancer. Ebert lost the ability to speak, as well as to eat or drink normally (i.e., without the aid of a feeding tube), in 2006 after undergoing a tracheotomy and having part of his jaw removed. Three years had passed between that surgery and “All By Ourselves Alone,” so it is easy to imagine how Ebert was able to conjure the wistfulness that comes through in this nostalgic essay.

But the thing that moves me about this piece, especially when coupled with this TED Talk in 2011, is that it came at the beginning of one of the most prolific periods in Ebert’s writing life. In his last post, A Leave of Presence, published earlier this week, right before he passed, Ebert noted that last year he had published 306 movie reviews (up from a typical 200 per year) in addition to a couple of blog posts per week. Ebert was lucid and thoughtful up until the end. Ever a writer.

At the end of his life, Roger Ebert made use of a computer to speak, either by writing text that was translated to speech or by making use of email, Twitter, and other programs to communicate. In the TED Talk, Ebert notes:

I have not come here to complain, I have much to make me happy and relived. I seem, for the time being, to be cancer-free. I am writing as well as ever, I am productive. If I were in this condition at any point before a few cosmological instances ago, I would be as isolated as a hermit. I would be trapped inside my head. Because of the rush of human knowledge, because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not need to scream.

I’ve been a casual reader of Roger Ebert’s columns over the years, but it has only been in the past several years that this larger-than-life character came to life for me thanks to his personal essays and commentary on Twitter. Because he kept busy, Ebert did not appear to be a “Lonely Person,” the type of person he didn’t want to be when he was sitting in that cafe in Venice. He kept himself preoccupied with writing up until the very end of his life.

And what a life it was. It’s easy to be awed by a Pulitzer Prize winner, an author of 20 books, and a writer whose work was syndicated in more than 200 newspapers. But now as I reflect on the life of Roger Ebert, I’m inspired by his dedication to his work; his delight in his writing, even as (or especially as) it became his sole means of communication; and his reluctance to allow himself to be lonely even while pursuing a rather solitary profession.

“I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again.” It seems to be the perfect mantra for coping with the ups and downs of writing and life.

“Do you mind if I interview your little boy for The Washington Post?” asked a sandy-haired man in a jacket of the same color. We were all standing in front of the gates of Nationals Park as crowds were streaming in for the opening game of the season. Dante was wearing a bright red National cap embroidered with a “W,” and was looking very much the part of the young baseball fan.

“Sure,” I said, then turned to Dante and asked, “would you like to answer a few questions for this man?”

“Do you have tickets?” Dante squealed at the man. “Where are the tickets? WHERE ARE THE TICKETS?”

I looked up at the reporter and told him we were still looking for a pair of tickets. It was a beautiful day, the best you could hope for on April 1. The sun was out, temperatures were in the low 60s. It was the exact opposite weather I expected for Opening Day, which is one of the reasons I hadn’t bothered to order tickets in the first place. When I realized that Dante had the day off of school, I made a decision mid-morning that we would take the Metro down to the ballpark to see if there were any standing-room-only tickets. “Maybe we will get lucky,” I thought.

Dante’s line of questioning continued, “We NEED tickets! Do you have the tickets?”

The reporter looked at me blankly, clearly wondering why he wasn’t the one asking the questions.

“He’s autistic,” I offered. It’s never the first phrase I utter about my son but it comes in handy to explain behaviors that others perceive as odd. “He’s autistic, but I can help him answer the questions if you still want to interview him.”

“Come find me when you get tickets. Good luck!”

The journalist had struck out. He was there to report on the excitement of Opening Day at National Park and our twin sob stories of a boy with autism having no ticket to get into the stadium were not what he was looking for.

As the game started, we still had no tickets. By this time, I had asked about available tickets at the ticket booth, “The cheapest one we have is $105.” I had also strolled up and down the path in front of the ballpark looking for scalpers. I had seen a few solo fans trade cash for bar-coded computer print-outs, but I had no idea what the going rate was. Ticket scalpers tend to avoid mothers walking around with their six-year-old sons looking for tickets; we certainly don’t look like big spenders. When one scalper finally sidled up to me and asked me what I was willing to pay (“40 bucks?”), I proved his theory.

Dante was really agitated at this point and it was all my fault. The one thing autistic children don’t like is a change in routine. While Dante had gotten used to the go-with-the-flow days of Spring Break, I had known to give him a schedule to anticipate. At the beginning of this day, I told Dante we would 1) take the train down to the stadium, 2) TRY to get tickets and 3) IF we got tickets we would enjoy the game but, if not, we would have seen the stadium and had a fun ride on the train. Inserting that conditional was where I went wrong. Dante just didn’t understand why we didn’t have tickets.

“But WHY?” he screeched.

“There aren’t any more tickets.”

“WHY?”

“I can’t afford to spend that much on tickets. We’ll find something soon though.”

“WHY DON’T YOU HAVE ANY TICKETS?” With this final question, Dante balled up his fist and made contact with my upper arm. Then he kicked me in the shin. It was typical Dante-at-the-end-of-his-rope behavior.

“It’s not my fault we don’t have tickets!” I held his hands to his sides so he couldn’t hit me anymore. But, yes, it was my fault we had no tickets and it was my fault we were down here looking like vagabonds. “Let’s walk up by the Metro one more time to see if anyone up there has anything.”

Roars came from the stadium. Bryce Harper had hit a solo home run. Tens of thousands of people were cheering within yards of our desperation.

This was our last chance to score tickets. I walked slowly with two fingers held aloft, a technique I’d picked up by watching other fans and scalpers prior to their transactions. No sooner that I held up my fingers, I heard an older man’s voice to my left.

“Excuse me, lady,” the officer drawled. “When you hold up two fingers like that, it signifies that you either want to purchase or to sell tickets. That is called scalping and it is illegal. If I catch you doing that, you could be arrested.”

“Do you know where I’m going to get tickets? I can’t get tickets. They’re $105 at the box office right now and I just want to get myself and my little boy into the game.”

“Well that motion is illegal in these here parameters.” He created a wide rectangle outline with his fingers. As he’s telling me all of this, I notice at least three other people with their fingers in the air.

“What about those people? Why aren’t you stopping them?”

“You’re right. Just don’t get caught in these parameters,” warned the policeman, as he turned to explain the rules to another passerby.

“Well, I think we’re just going to have to go home, Dante,” I sat at I slumped down on the sidewalk. The lack of tickets, the frustrated boy, and the stern warning from the pasty man in blue suddenly weighed on me and I began to bawl.

“I’m really sorry, Dante. I thought this would be fun for you.” I lifted my sunglasses and rubbed by eyes, but I couldn’t stop the tears.

“Don’t cry, mom” Dante rubbed my arm. “It’s ok. It’s ok.”

“Well, do you think we should try one more time? Or should we get on the train now and go home?”

“One more time!” Dante started singing his favorite song of the moment, “One More Time” by Daft Punk. I gave him a teary smile, stood up, and we walked about fifty steps back to the big blue gates of the stadium.

By this time, hardly anyone was milling about, either outside or inside the gates. Ticket holders had found their seats, so we could see the large screen television right inside the entrance.

“Look, Dante, you can watch some of the game on that big television over there!” I grabbed his shoulder and pointed to it. “That’s pretty neat, huh?”

My tears had mostly dried by this time. But I was still wearing my sunglasses on my head and I could tell my eyes were red. As I was pointing out the television to Dante, a woman just inside the gates said, “Excuse me.” I looked over to see an exceptionally pretty girl with long black hair and already-tan skin. She was wearing a long sleeve blue shirt, denim shorts, and sandals.

“Do you need a ticket just for him?” she asked.

“No, we need two, unfortunately,” I told her and shrugged my shoulders at our misfortune.

The girl paused for a second, then reached her arm through the gates. “Here,” she said, as she presented two tickets. These were not the wrinkled, computer print-out tickets I’d seen most people walk through the entrance with. These were tickets emblazoned with the team logos, date, and time. These were souvenir tickets.

“The players gave me some tickets and two of my friends can’t come. You and your boy can have them.”

“Are you sure?” I asked stunned. As soon as she nodded her head and smiled, I began to cry again. “What can I give you for these?”

“Nothing. They’re yours.”

No one but Dante was around to witness this miracle transaction. We walked about five feet to our right, where stadium staff were helping the stragglers check in. We scanned our tickets and we were good to go. Within five minutes, our luck had changed dramatically. We were on the other side, just in time to see Bryce Harper hit his second solo home run of the day.

Dante and I had an amazing time at the ball game. He didn’t quite understand everything that was going on. For example, every cheer was met with the question, “Did we hit a home run?” But he loved watching the scoreboard, especially the pitchers’ pitching speeds (“95 miles per hour!”). And, if you ask him today what the attendance was, he can tell you without hesitation that it was 45,274.

While I was writing this post, I was aware that it is World Autism Awareness Day. I don’t need an awareness day; I live with the effects of autism every day. But I thought this post would be a good opportunity to shed light on a day-in-the-life of an autistic child as well as thank that very sweet woman who unsuspectingly made the day of an autistic boy and his mom.

Now, where’s that Post reporter? I have a great story for him…

I used to think that George Bernard Shaw’s habit of stopping after completing his daily quota of exactly five pages, even if he were in the middle of a sentence, was simply a sign of his eccentricity. But I now realize that he was being canny. A big obstacle to starting to write is not knowing what you are going to do first. Stopping at a point where you know exactly what needs to be written when you next sit down is an excellent strategy for overcoming that barrier.

via Change Magazine – Seven Steps for Becoming a More Productive Writer

I know a lot of fascinating people.

I know writers and editors, chefs and restaurateurs, celebrity personal assistants and a few well-connected people in the television industry, pilots and programmers, museum curators and fashion designers. Many of the fascinating people I know I knew Before Social Media (BSM)*, while many others I “know” I have met thanks to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc.

I know as many details – if not more – about some of my online “friends” as I do about the ones I knew BSM. This is not necessarily because I’ve been stalking people’s profiles or Googling them. I have learned about them through reading their writing, corresponding with them, asking them about their lives. My online friends are the pen pals this introvert always wish she had: people with intriguing occupations and riveting travel stories available for a conversation within seconds of my bidding.

It doesn’t matter how I know people; the dynamics of acquaintance are so fluid these days. What has me concerned is that the more people that I meet, the more I feel like I am reducing my chances at achieving some professional goals. The more that I network, the less inclined I feel to use that network to land a job or ask for favors.

Yes, I’m going about this all wrong. But let me explain.

I adore meeting new people. While I’ve never considered myself much of a networker in the “real world,” socializing online feels very natural to me. For better or for worse, my head is filled with the minutiae of others’ interests: that guy works on death penalty issues, so let me send him this link; she is an eco-conscious mommy blogger, so she may be interested in this article on a new medical study; he likes planes; she’s traveling in Australia; etc.

I’m not sure how I keep up with it all, but it gives me great pleasure to connect the dots and share information with those I know will appreciate it. What’s more, having had this online interaction makes it easier for me to engage these friends should I meet them offline at a conference or happy hour. Being able to begin a “real life” conversation with a frame of reference, possibly even months or years in the making, puts me at ease. No doubt, I have acquired many real friends thanks to initial online contact.

So, what are the perils of this type of networking?

Over the years, as I have met fascinating people, I have corralled them into a virtual “friend zone” whose borders I am reluctant to cross. Once I know the name of a fascinating friend’s baby or allow a fascinating friend to enter my Facebook world of family photos, it becomes harder for me to ask them for professional advice lest they feel that I was using them all along. For example, once I am friends with an editor of a publication for which I want to write, asking her about the latest staff job posting or how to query her publication seems like a breach of trust on my part.

I know that job opportunities come along more often than not because of who you know not what you know. But how does a job seeker break out of the “friend zone” and feel comfortable asking for help or advice or a reference?

Social media has given all of us unprecedented access to people we never would have met BSM. This access has also helped to break down communication barriers, bringing our would-be idols down to earth and, sometimes, turning fascinating people into true friends. I am grateful for my ever-growing list of contacts. They are friends who perform all manner of jobs, live all over the globe, and inspire me to do more and reach higher. But I am also curious how I can use my network to my advantage without upsetting the friendship cart.

I have been looking for a professional “home” for years. And while I am content to freelance, I know that there are some awesome projects, part-time jobs, and full-time assignments for which I am remarkably qualified. Further, I have on more than one occasion linked an online friend to a job opportunity, a press trip, or a book-writing contract. What can I do to make others think of me when a job opportunity using my skill set comes across their desk? I know that I can not be passive in this pursuit, but taking an active stance does not feel natural when relationship dynamics are at stake.

Have you faced this problem? Now that you are connected to someone in an enviable position, do you feel reluctant to ask them how they got to where they are and how you can get there, too? Surely, I’m not the only one experiencing this networking conundrum.

*I use BSM (Before Social Media) for brevity. Please don’t think I’m trying to coin an annoying new anagram here!

Photo: ZeroOne

This is just a magical moment that I want to record on my blog for my own record. Thanks for allowing me one last look.

The New York Times has released its 10 Best Books of 2012 and one of them stands out as a winner for lovers of travel literature.

‘The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot’ by Robert Macfarlane meanders around the world on well-worn routes, such as the Camino de Santiago, through the Himalayas and the Palestinian territories, and to walking paths closer to MacFarlane’s home and heart. While I have not read this book – in fact, I’d not heard of it until this week – I am motivated to purchase it or present it to a travel-minded friend after reading the NYT review:

To describe Macfarlane as a philosopher of walking is to undersell the achievement of “The Old Ways”: his prose feels so firmly grounded, resistant to abstraction. He wears his polymath intelligence lightly as his mind roams across geology, archaeology, fauna, flora, architecture, art, literature and urban design, retrieving small surprises everywhere he walks. In one such passage, he notes the power of what urban planners call “desire lines,” in which one person’s impulsive shortcut encourages others to follow, creating informal, unmapped channels through a city. Macfarlane is likewise fascinated by what geologists have termed “preferential pathways,” grooves carved by the solvent action of water on limestone. Those pathways in turn pull in pedestrians, “all of whom etch the track of their passage with their feet as they go. In this way the path of a raindrop hundreds of thousands of years ago may determine the route of a modern-­day walker.”

Purchase Robert MacFarlane’s “The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot” on Amazon.

Pico Iyer talks to Don George

Pico Iyer is the author of some of the best travel literature of the last several decades. His best-known books are Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far-East and The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto. At NG Live!, Iyer was promoting his book The Man Within My Head.

Andrew McCarthy talks to Don George

Andrew McCarthy is the author of The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down as well as numerous award-winning travel articles. Yes, he’s THAT Andrew McCarthy, too.

Students gathered around “Grapes” by Ai Weiwei

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s first major exhibit in the United States – “According to What?” – opened a few weeks ago at DC’s Hirshhorn Museum. Taking up almost the entire 2nd floor of the museum as well as a couple of spaces on the ground floor and third floor, According to What? is extensive and impressive. I instantly “got” the message that Weiwei was trying to convey. His exhibit is a commentary on the modern overtaking the ancient, of might overtaking right. I’ve described the exhibit in this article on my USA Travel site and that piece also includes links to more scholarly reviews of the exhibit than I can provide.

Following are some photographs I took inside “According to What?” I cannot stress to you enough how cool this exhibit is, so check it out at the Hirshhorn before February 24, 2013. After that, it will travel to some other cities in the USA, including Indianapolis, Miami, and Brooklyn.

All photos © Melanie Renzulli

“Mid-1970s Ankara was a grim place. At times the air was so polluted you had to wear a mask, there were long queues for basic necessities, and political strife had become so common, our favorite game as children was “communists versus fascists.” Still there was room for magic. Going to Youth Park on a weekend for a ride on the roller coaster or eating ice cream at the city’s foremost recreation area was a special treat. I adored the two mascots of the city, the Ankara goat that produces the soft wool Angora and the Ankara cat, famous for its long, silky fur and blue eyes.”

via Elif Shafak reflects on Ankara, Turkey – Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

In the three years since my family returned from a two-year posting in Ankara, Turkey, this is the first article I have seen about the city. That’s shocking when you consider that Ankara is the capital of one of the world’s most dynamic, geographically strategic countries in the world. Although Shafak discusses an Ankara I never knew – it was placid and it’s pollution problem mostly gone by the time I got there in 2007 – I must admit this article left me slightly homesick, even for a city that I never quite embraced.

The Best American Travel Writing 2012 is out.

I started writing about travel just a few years shy of the debut, 12 years ago, of this annual series of the best travel stories from American publications. For most of the last dozen years, I have treated myself to the BATW, usually at Christmas time. It’s a professional expense, yes. But the book also gives me insight into the sort of travel writing readers are responding to, which places are being written about, what their angles are, and which publications are still promoting and producing quality travel tales. Browsing the table of contents as well as the “Notable Travel Writing” in the back of the book provides a snapshot of where the best writing is being done and who is doing it.

The 2012 edition of the Best American Travel Writing features stories from Pico Iyer, Mark Jenkins, and Paul Theroux, among others. I’ve learned from World Hum (a publication I first learned about from BATW) that three of its stories made the notable mentions section.

For better or for worse, the majority of stories found in this year’s Best American Travel Writing can be found online. Here are a few to check out before picking up the book. I really recommend buying yourself a copy, if not for the nightstand then for the virtual bookshelf.

• The Wicked Coast (on Maine) by Paul Theroux in The Atlantic
• The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu by Paul Gwin in National Geographic Traveler
• Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden by Henry Shukman in Outside Magazine
• The Tijuana Sports Hall of Fame by Bryan Curtis in Grantland
• Belfast: City of Walls by Robin Kirk in The American Scholar

And a few of the pieces listed in the Notable Travel Writing section:

• Operation Iraqi Vacation by Saki Knafo in GQ
• Greek Paradise, Lost by Dan Saltzstein in World Hum
• Bad ‘Carma’ (on Italy) by David Farley in World Hum
• The New Russia by Gary Shteyngart in Travel + Leisure
• Why Would Anyone Want to Go to Burning Man? by Seth Stevenson in Slate

Branded For Life is a depressing look at a few people who allowed themselves to become human billboards for dotcom companies in the 90s. If this isn’t bad enough, all of the companies are now defunct.

“Bikini is paradise again, but with an asterisk.”

via Bikini Atoll: Site of One of History’s Most Infamous Science Experiments

This fascinating long read from Outside Magazine’s S.C. Gwynne follows the story of Alson Kelen, a native of Bikini Atoll, site of the most famous nuclear bomb test in the world.

___

Please note I’m trying something new here with my blog. I have been looking to turn my blog into a sort of WordPress/Tumblr hybrid by posting “asides,” or links to articles that I feel are worthy of sharing on MissAdventures. Here, I’ll be able to provide more context or commentary on links I find worthy of a read. Plus I hope to bring into the fold of my blog more quick tidbits without spreading myself so thin on Twitter, Tumblr, and the like.

Please also note, asides in the future will not be this long! Thanks for letting me experiment…

As a travel writer, I’ve always got places in mind. I’m constantly on a search for Italy travel updates, for instance, and I frequently find myself searching Google, Twitter, and other websites and apps for news and trends in DC, New York City, Montreal, Istanbul, and Mumbai, to name a few destinations.

For about the past month, I’ve been using Radiuus, a new social media site founded by Brooklyn-based Ben Ostrower and Gregg Altschul, that may change the way we all keep up with the news of the world. In simple terms, Radiuus lets you do two things: listen to a location or broadcast from it.

The first thing that Radiuus prompts you to do after the initial sign-in is to add a “Listener” – a place whose updates you want to follow. Add a city, a specific address, a landmark – anywhere. After you click “Listen here,” then you have the option to set up the radius around that location depending on how close you want to listen in.

For instance, I added the White House with a radius of 0.5 miles and the city of Istanbul with a radius of 10 miles. You can tweak the distance settings (up to 10 miles) as you see fit. To listen to the world, just tune in to the Radiuus home page.

Radiuus also gives users the ability to broadcast from anywhere. Is there a new restaurant, art installation, or concert coming to your city? Broadcast it! The interface is simple and works as simply as the “Listener” prompt. Once you add the location from which you want to broadcast, you can add notes, links, or a photo to accompany the broadcast. Once you have broadcast something, users listening in to that area will be able to see it on their dashboard or get notifications. They can also comment on the broadcast or echo it, an action that works a bit like Reddit’s upvote. Commenting on and echoing a broadcast will help to amplify and give import to it, thereby generating even more interest and discussion.

From my travel writer/blogger perspective, I love the idea of the Radiuus broadcast feature. Let’s say I write a post about Italy. After it is published, I can broadcast a link to that post from Italy (or drill down the broadcast location according to city, village, piazza). Radiuus users who are listening in to my location will be able to find the information they are looking for more easily, perhaps leading to higher readership for my blog and greater satisfaction and less frustration for the end user/reader.

Why Sign Up on Radiuus? The Upshot.

Radiuus is very much in its infancy, but the potential for growth is huge. For instance, Gregg and Ben are working on a mobile and tablet app, which will greatly enhance the listening and broadcasting experience on-the-go. The duo have also told me about a slate of other features that will make broadcasting and listening more fun and useful to users.

Here are a few ways that I think radiuus could be used in the future:

• Community information tool – Know what is going on within your neighborhood, school, or at City Hall
• Reporting and news tool – Listen in to breaking news or broadcast news as it happens. Keep track of protests in the Middle East or tune in to what is happening on the campaign trail as it moves across the country.
• See where the world’s flashpoints are on a certain day. I foresee “Trending Destinations” as something we will talk about as radiuus grows.

Of course, a social media site is only as good as its users make it. Radiuus needs both listeners and broadcasters to help it become the kind of site that I think it could be. You can go to radiuus.com now and Request an Invite to get in on the ground floor of early Beta testing. Who knows – your suggestions now could be baked in to future iterations of radiuus. From my social media geek standpoint, I think that is a very awesome opportunity.

Go request a Radiuus invite now. I really think this could be the next big thing.

And if my post doesn’t convince you, then watch this vintage Sesame Street video. I swear this song should become the Radiuus anthem:

On the few occasions that I have visited the State Department, either for interviews, to get help from the Family Liaison Office, or to visit my husband for lunch, I have felt the need to linger just inside the security gates, in the imposing, marble lobby of the Harry S. Truman building, to view the American Foreign Service Association’s Memorial Plaque.

Located on the west end of the building, the plaque lists the names of State Department personnel who have died while serving in U.S. diplomatic missions abroad. The plaque lists the officer’s name, where and when he/she died, and the nature of the diplomats’ deaths.

“Lost at Sea” reads the listing for William Palfrey, the earliest member of the Foreign Service to die while abroad in 1780. Other causes of death include all sorts of ailments, such as malaria and yellow fever; murder; earthquakes; hurricanes; burned or drowned while trying to save a life; landmines; plane crashes; and even exhaustion. There are also the political deaths: “Assassinated by Uruguayan Rebels;” “Murdered by Palestinian Terrorists;” “Killed in Bombing of Embassy.”

The AFSA Memorial Plaque has always held a morbid fascination for me, mostly because I could read the names and these two- or three-word obituaries and construct in my head entire Graham Greene novels from them. But, today I am waking up to realize these lives lost are not part of fiction. They are very real. And the AFSA Plaque exists to underline the very real dangers of Foreign Service life.

Today’s news that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American diplomats died in a raid on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, really hits home for me. News outlets are giving this horrible incident attention because Ambassador Stevens is the first U.S. ambassador since 1976 to die “while serving the U.S. Government and the American people abroad in foreign affairs.” In fact, prior to yesterday’s attack in Libya, the most recent Foreign Service Officer to die while serving her country was Sharon S. Clark, who died in Nigeria in 2010 of Cerebral Malaria.

In total, 236 names have been inscribed on the AFSA Memorial Plaques: 108 names on the west plaque and 128 names on a second plaque located on the east end of the State Department’s diplomatic lobby. Ms. Clark’s name was the last FSO to be memorialized on the AFSA Plaque. On May 3, 2013 – Foreign Affairs Day – surely Ambassador Stevens’ name and the names of those others who have died while serving abroad will be forever etched on that wall, too.

Please note that the photos above are screenshots of the names on the AFSA Memorial Plaque. You can see a list of all the names here.

It’s a question we all ask of one another, the same question our parents’ generation asked each other when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and the same question our grandparents’ generation asked following Pearl Harbor:

“Where were you?”

Everyone who was alive and aware of the horrific events of September 11, 2001, know exactly where they were when they heard the news. Most of us remember the minutiae, as well: the faces of the television anchors breaking the news, what we were wearing, how we got home that day or night (even if we were nowhere near the attack sites). Many of us also know friends or friends of friends who perished and/or lost someone that day.

I was in Florence, Italy, on September 11, 2001. Where were you?

Photo by Flickr user althouse

Plan for Cuban Ballet School a Dance of Art, Politics — “…the school’s original structures are intact, a dazzling swirl of red brick shapes and huge domelike Catalonian vaults set against the lush green jungle. The winding corridors, stairways and sightlines come together in a cascade of twists and graceful curves, like music turned to stone.”

Ten Erotic Books Sexier Than Fifty Shades of Grey — “The following ten erotic books are alternatives we at Time Out New York find riskier, sexier and simply better written than E.L. James’s feminist-baiting juvenilia.” Includes Nicholson Baker’s Vox and How a Person Should Be by Sheila Heti. Great round-up.

Istanbul: A City of Spies: In Fact and Fiction — “Turkey’s golden age of espionage was World War II, a period that continues to serves as a muse for writers of historical thrillers.”

How to Move from Travel Blogging to Travel Journalism — Matador Network’s David Miller breaks it down for those of us who feel as if we are in purgatory between blogging and journalism: “‘Journo-mode’ is similar in that it can stimulate story-finding, but instead of approaching a given experience or place with the goal of internalizing it for a blog, you’re reaching outside of yourself, looking for others’ stories that would never be told otherwise.”

How to Be Friends With Another Woman — Girl…Roxane Gay’s helpful guide – re-printed on Jezebel – makes me think.

Remnants of Japan’s Tsunami Attract Archaeological Interest  — ” These citizen scientists aren’t waiting for government direction. Kayakers in Washington have taken it upon themselves to explore remote islands for refuse, surfers in Oregon have posted cleanup guidelines on local beaches, and scuba divers in Hawaii have retrieved debris off the coast of Maui. Their efforts have quickly become the backbone of a national effort to better understand what is washing up along thousands of miles of coastline.”

Every so often, I like to contribute to the Twitter discussion #FriFotos. This week’s topic is “bridge,” and I can think of only a few bridges I like as well as the Bosphorus Bridge. A feat of engineering more than a thing of beauty, Istanbul‘s Bosphorus Bridge connects Europe with Asia. When driving over the bridge, there are signs that tell you, “You Are Now Entering Europe/Asia” The change from one continent to another is not immediately evident, but a switch goes off in the head that makes you think: Crossing this bridge is special.

This photo was taken in the neighborhood of Ortakoy next to the oft-photographed Ortakoy Mosque. I highly recommend paying this part of Istanbul a visit.

Marshall Point Light in Maine

A little more than two weeks have passed since I was on vacation in Maine with my family. It was a first time any of us had been in the state and it made a lasting impression.

Now I am in the process of going through notes and photographs so that I can attempt to put into print what I felt, touched, smelled, and tasted while I was there. (By the way, I didn’t write while I was there because I was too busy being in the moment.) This hasn’t been an easy process, mostly because so much has been written about “Vacationland” for the travel pubs that I have what Don George calls in his Lonely Planet Travel Writing guide the “fear of the known.”

In doing a little post-trip research, I also stumbled upon this article from the University of Maine titled, “The Maine That Never Was.” Shortly after arriving in Maine, my husband and I were plotting out how we could live there. We felt relaxed, unburdened by emails and the Internet (mostly because the 3G signal on the Midcoast was nonexistent – a blessing in disguise). But then we had to step back and think, “What could we possibly do in Maine to make a living?” I also reminded my husband that we should probably consider visiting coastal Maine in the dead of winter before making such a leap. He concurred. The article I linked to above explains that disconnect between what Maine tourists see and experience and what Mainers actually go through year after year.

I’ve written a couple pieces and uploaded a few photos from the Maine vacation if you’d like to have a look. For Gadling, I wrote about The Best Lobster Roll in Maine, an article that tells you about a few well-known lobster roll joints but also argues that lobster rolls may be a bit over-rated (especially when the whole lobster costs a lot less). Over on USA Travel site on About, I wrote about A One-Day Tour in Acadia National Park. I’ve also uploaded (but have yet to add descriptions and tags to) more than 500 photos from Maine on Flickr.

Finally, I’ve also made a short of reading list for travel in Maine. Not (yet) included on the list is Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, which is more of King’s personal story to writing and getting published than it is a Maine travel book. But King paints a very real picture of the Maine where he grew up. It is an excellent antidote for the over-romanticization of Maine that you may find in the travel section and it’s a damn fine read for anyone experiencing writers block.

The New York Times Is About to Say Goodbye to About.com -by @pkafka dthin.gs/N4raCn

— All Things D (@allthingsd) August 8, 2012

It was the first of several headlines I saw throughout the day that spoke of The New York Times’ impending sale of About.com to Answers.com. In the All Things D article, Peter Kafka characterized About as a site that produces “high-volume, low-cost content” and “a precursor to ‘content farms’ like Demand Media.”

I have been a writer for About.com since April 2010. First, I was a contributing writer on Italian Cities, a quasi-apprentice for the site’s long-time guide to Italy travel. Since June 2011, I have been the guide to USA Travel for About.com. While I can vouch for the fact that About.com does prefer a high volume of content from its writers and guides, I take exception to the characterization of About.com as a content farm that doesn’t pay its writers well.

Look around at any popular website or blog these days and you will see that a high volume of content is what drives traffic and conversations. Each day, there are at least 900 guide sites under the About.com umbrella that are able to publish blog posts, evergreen articles, and how-to pieces on everything from Feng Shui to Geography to Thyroid Disease to travel in India. Some writers have been guides for About.com sites since 1997, making About not only the precursor to “content farms” but the precursor to blogs in general.

Being a writer for About.com requires not only the ability to produce a lot of content for one’s respective topic, but to be passionately engaged with the subject and capable of mastering a number of content management tools. In fact, it is a wonder that anyone wants to be a writer at About because it is a fairly grueling process to get through the front door. New writers go through a series of hurdles that include writing samples, developing a site taxonomy, and learning CMS software, a process that can take two to three months to complete.

Why do we submit to such an extended evaluation just to write for a “content farm?” It is because About.com offers editorial autonomy and a chance to make a decent wage as a freelance writer.

After reading the comparison of About.com to Demand Media, I took a look at DM’s “How it Works” page. In Demand’s 7-step process, the writing – or content producing, if you will – is the 4th step. Demand looks at, listens, and analyzes customer demand before producing any content at all. About.com writers are certainly aware of SEO and reader demand, but guides are also given the freedom to write about what they, as experts on their topics, feel is important or interesting or entertaining. I am not saying this to fault Demand Media at all, but to show that the process is different.

As for income, About really does offer the opportunity to make one, which is something that can not be said for most freelance/contractor gigs. I know at least three couples in which both draw incomes solely from their About.com guide sites. Because About pays guides according to a metric based on several factors but largely on page views, a guide who puts a lot of care into his or her site year after year can stand to earn a living solely from About.com wages. I am not quite there yet. But now that I have worked on my site for over a year, I am starting to see the benefits of being an About guide.

About.com is far from perfect, of course. There are internal things that irk me and the company suffers from a lack of pizazz, something I like to call the Yahoo! Syndrome. So I am waiting anxiously to see what happens to About.com in the coming weeks and months.

At any rate, I welcome my new overlords and hope that they will work to help About.com grow without sacrificing editorial freedom, guides’ chances at a fair income, or the guide sites that we have all worked so hard to create.

I was definitely one of the few people on IRC at the time. Anyone out there ever dwell in #altpunk circa 1993? If you did, message me and I’ll tell you my somewhat embarrassing username – my first username!

I’m kicking myself I didn’t end up a coder or developer or something. I took a one-off course in computer science my sophomore year of college. I taught my professor and the students in my course how to go online and use EMAIL. I tried to teach my boyfriend, who was leaving spring semester for Buenos Aires, how to email me while he was away. There was nary an Internet cafe in the Palermo neighborhood of BA in 1994 Argentina. So that semester, the only thing that took me away from the computer lab was the one week I hopped in a band bus post-concert and ended up in Atlanta five days later. Everybody’s gotta have a spring break!

I miss those early days of the Internet, especially because I knew they had such promise but also because I could envision a future that all the technology I was digging would be easier for others to use. I wish I’d envisioned what we have now (except maybe with fewer animated gifs). I wish I would’ve taken another computer course (and another) and had the guts to switch majors. Or at least minors. A minor in German? WTF?

So yeah, I’m the same age as Marissa Mayer and I kind of want to throw up. But I can’t help but cheer her on because she came of age in the same computer age as I did. We have inhabited roughly the same span of time.

• Want to Drink a Budweiser BNA? How About a Bud Light LAX? – Budweiser has applied for rights to airport codes, possibly to brew specialty beers in its branded airport bars? Interesting idea.
• Locked Up Abroad Lessons Guyana: The False Allure of Pre-Paid Vacations  – I didn’t have a chance to watch the episode that the National Geographic Channel alludes to. But the accompanying article is a word of warning to anyone facing a too-good-to-be-true living abroad opportunity.
• 21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity – I usually hate these kind of listicles, but this one got to me. Have a look. It’ll make you feel better.
• How sticking your thumb out became the universal sign for hitchhiking – Via @davidfarley, an intriguing piece about hitchhiking.
• National Geographic Magazine As An ‘Instrument Of Doom’ – I found information about this old National Geographic Magazine doomsday hoax and wrote about it for Gadling.
• Bodleian Library considers lending books after 410 years – This is seriously cool news. Do you think they should do it?
• ‘You’re not special’: The best grad speech ever? – One of the most bubble-bursting graduation speeches of all time is followed up by Cory Booker’s speech to Stanford graduates, an incredibly inspiring speech.
• Robert King’s Photos of Syrian Violence – The New York Times presents photos from Syria by Robert King of Polaris. We’re not seeing a whole lot of photos about the violence in Syria. These give you a sense of just how terrible the situation is.
• Gin Leads Summer’s Fight – Eric Asimov of the New York Times defends gin (delicious gin!).
• Eater Maine : The Portland and Maine Restaurant, Bar, and Nightlife Blog – Eater just launched its first state food blog, Eater Maine, this month. I’m heading to Maine later this summer, so this is awesome news.
• Photo of the Day – Horseshoe Bend – I took over Photo of the Day duties at Gadling and found this beauty in the Flickr pool.
• ‘This Is The Place Death Delights To Help The Living’ | Gadling.com – I wrote this piece on the National Museum of Health and Medicine (aka the Army Medical Museum) for Gadling. I also took the creepy photos in the gallery.
• Researchers Find Online Photos are Worth Much More than 1,000 Words – All of our photos are being cataloged and spliced together to create 3D images of places around the world. Via @craignewman.
• FunnyJunk is threatening to file a federal lawsuit against me unless I pay $20,000 in damages – The Oatmeal responds to a $20,000 lawsuit the best way he knows how. Of course, the fallout of all of this is that the Oatmeal raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in an IndieGoGo campaign only hours after posting info about this pending lawsuit.
• Watergate Timeline – This is the 40th anniversary of Watergate. Here’s a fascinating look at the timeline via @ngjennings and created by @tjortenzi
• Jailed Turkish Journalists Available for Adoption -  Via @ClaireBerlinski on Twitter, an interesting way for the international community to gain awareness about the plight of many Turkish journalists, jailed for their views and words.

I don’t know who at the European Commission thought this would go over well. But “Science: It’s a Girl Thing” is one of the most insulting campaigns to women I’ve seen in years. Is it still 1983 in Europe? Anyhow, watch the video. It speaks for itself.

• Our Animal Natures – NYTimes.com – Animals do drugs, get cancer and overeat. What we can learn from that. Via @palafo on Twitter.
• Most beautiful places on earth – A map of the most beautiful places in the world via @spgreenwood on Twitter.
• Top 3 Places In The US To Experience LEGO-Mania This Summer – I’ve been meaning to do some piece about LEGO exhibits for a while. Here’s one I did for Gadling this week.
• Turkish pianist faces trial for joking on Twitter – Via @ProducerMatthew comes this unsettling news about some Turks getting upset over nothing. That country is so edgy sometimes.
• These people really love to fly – Did you aviation geeks catch this? Quotes lots of people I “know” on Twitter, including @nycavaiation and @ryanvb.
• Display outside the hobby store (Taken with… | Guilt and Logistics – Photo: Display outside the hobby store (Taken with Instagram) http://t.co/zs87ywL0
• Right as Rain « Steve McCurry’s Blog – Steve McCurry’s simply gorgeous photos of India during monsoon season.
• Here’s to the generous side of social media – A very nice piece to read when you’re feeling social media overload. Via @travelogged on Twitter.
• Hosts of ‘Car Talk’ to Retire After 35 Years of Automotive Banter – This depresses me deeply. How else will I wake up on Saturdays?
• Photos: Space Shuttle Enterprise’s Epic Final Journey – Very cool photos of Enterprise sailing down the Hudson.
• Doomsday Bicycle Tour Lets You Ride To The End Of The World – I wrote this article for Gadling. I love the epic transcontinental bike tours that this company puts together.
• And the Most Bike-Friendly City in the USA Is… – New on USA Travel: And the Most Bike-Friendly City in the USA Is… http://t.co/5eyrFtFq #about
• ‘Museum Of Endangered Sounds’ Collects Sounds Made By Old Technologies – Go now and listen to a bit of tech nostalgia.
• Textiles Encoded With Text Messages, Using WWII Cryptography – This is so cool.
• How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord | Fast Company – A lesson to all those who are considering making money renting out your property. Via @kressie42 on Twitter.