Framed

Destinations

Last night, my wife asked me where in the world I would most like to travel if money were no object.

This should have been an easy one for me.  I subscribe to two or three travel magazines.  I sometimes buy guidebooks for places I have no immediate plans to visit just to enjoy some armchair traveling.  Occasionally I map out itineraries to places far away and exotic, just for the fun of it.  Really, there are very few places on the globe I wouldn't want to visit--and so that was why when the simple question was put to me about my top choice, I just gaped.

I can't narrow my travel goals down to just one because I like traveling equally in different styles and with different objectives.  I loved escaping to The Caves, a small boutique hotel in Negril, where we were able to shut out the rest of the world and recharge amid beautiful surroundings and a spectacular level of personal service.  On the other hand, just 18 months later, I loved getting to El Castillo, Nicaragua on a launch crowded with farm animals and cases of beer and staying in an inexpensive posada where the electric service was uncertain and dinner was anything you wanted as long as it's chicken.  Choosing between those two trips would be like choosing between a Porsche 911 and a Leica M8: apples and oranges.

Still, the question my wife asked me was a good one, and it set me to thinking how best to answer it.  I can't narrow my travel jones down to just one place--but here are my top eight, chosen because they are places I have not yet been to and because they are so different from one another.  In alphabetical order:

Alaska--Cycling from Fairbanks to Anchorage

Argentina & Uruguay--Buenos Aires and Punta del Este

Bhutan--Everywhere

Chile--Torres del Paine National Park

Iceland--Reykjavik and the Ring Road

Malta--Valletta

Sri Lanka--Beaches on the southeast coast

Tanzania--Zanzibar

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I've made a few changes to Framed's blogroll to reflect changes in the blogosphere and my current reading.

First, since The Big Pharaoh has been on hiatus since the start of the year, I've removed him from the list of recommended bloggers.  I miss BP's voice, and hope that he starts actively blogging soon, at which point I will restore the link.  Given all that is happening in Hosni Mubarak's tight little republic, I have some concerns for his well-being, and hope he's doing OK.

To keep some Middle Eastern perspective, I've added Or Does It Explode? This site covers the struggle for civil rights in the Middle East and covers a lot of news and developments that American blogs tend to miss.  And it's funny, too.

Sadly, Jersey Goddess has become a by-invitation-only blog.  As an open-source free-speech advocate, my policy is only to link to publicly readable blogs, so that site has been cut.

I've added the ACLU's brand new blog, The Blog of Rights, which is off to a good start.  I frequently complain that there seems to be very little political constituency for civil liberties among either the left or the right; maybe this blog will help change that.

Finally, though it's not a new blog at all, Amanda Marcotte and Pam Spaulding have just significantly (and beautifully) redesigned Pandagon and given it what for some will be a new URL (http://pandagon.net).  Check it out, and update your bookmarks accordingly.

Off the Beaten Path

Happy April 1st.

Nicaragua

My son and I are back home now after our nine-day spring vacation trip to Nicaragua.  We had an amazing time--too many stories to relate here.  In case you want to see photos of our adventure, I have them up on Facebook at these public links (i.e., you don't have to be on Facebook to see them). Our first stop was the Spanish colonial city of Granada.  We got there on Good Friday, which meant a parade (complete with a crystal coffin carrying Jesus).

Granada 1

Granada 2

We then took a 13 hour ferry ride across Lake Nicaragua, stopped briefly in the scummy town of San Carlos, and then shared a launch with 25 other people, 300 cases of beer, chickens, sheep and a goat down the Rio San Juan.

Lake Nicaragua, San Carlos and the Rio San Juan

Our destination was the town of El Castillo, pop. 1100, which sits at the edge of the Central American jungle.  There are no roads leading to or in the town, and consequently there are no cars.  There is no airstrip.  The river is the only way in and out.  High above the town is a fort built in the seventeenth century by the Spanish to keep pirates and the English out.  Lord Nelson and Captain Morgan fought battles there.  It was a delightful place with friendly people--and it was great to be off the grid.

El Castillo 1

El Castillo 2

When it was time to go, we went back up the Rio San Juan to San Carlos again, where we saw fantastic buses waiting like so many dragons to take people away.

The Buses of San Carlos

We journeyed nine hours over terrible roads in an exhausted Blue Bird school bus and eventually got to Managua.  The most amazing thing we saw in Managua was the ruins of the old cathedral, which was severely damaged in the 1972 earthquake.  Though nominally closed to the public, we were able to get into the ruins, which were beautifully spooky.

Managua 1--The Ruined Cathedral

We stayed in the Crowne Plaza, a 1970's era hotel that has some history behind it.  Howard Hughes lived in the penthouse there for a couple of years, subsisting entirely on Campbell's soup and Hershey's chocolate bars.  When Somoza fled the country, the hotel was home to his short-termed (43 hours) successor, and then for a while to the victorious Sandinista government.

Managua 2

You will certainly see much poverty in these pictures. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the hemisphere.  But if that's all you see, you will miss a lot.  We're very glad we went.

Gone

I'm out the door to Nicaragua for nine days, so Framed will be on hiatus til April Fool's Day.  Seems appropriate, right?

Facebooking

So much for Art.  What of Thought?  The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way.  Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways.  Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid.  Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out.  The number of blocks, however, was finite. 

"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements sometime.  What then?"  What indeed.  This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.

--V. by Thomas Pynchon

And so I've succumbed to the decadent lure of Facebook.  People who want to know more about me than anyone really should can find me here.

Happy Birthday

Framed is one year old today!

Some stats:

25,801 lifetime page views

71 page views per day average over the year

152 page views per day average over the last month

638 posts

240 comments

I owe much thanks: to my family for encouraging me, to other bloggers for promoting Framed, and to my readers for commenting.  Let me share my cake with you.

Updates

Wondering why Framed isn't being updated more often these days?  I've been kinda busy:

Tonight

Whoa--how did it get to be Wednesday again so fast?  It's already time for another round of Drinking Liberally, held as usual at Manhattan's, 1516 Adams Street, Toledo.   We'll start work on Scooter Libby's prison diary, consider the red pickup truck phoniness of Fred Thompson, and no doubt argue fiercely about who won Sunday's DemoDebate.

Book Salon Today

I am privileged to be hosting the Firedoglake Book Salon today, where we will be featuring a conversation with Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.  We go live at 5:00 EDT, so I hope all Framed readers will head over there then and join us.