April 30, 2003
Vagina-gabonding -- Book tour stop #7: Kansas City, February 11
Shortly before I left for the Kansas City leg of my book tour, a second-hand email message landed in my...Read this article
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Richard Halliburton on freedom and youth
"Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world...and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now, completely and abundantly....Read this article
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April 29, 2003
Waffle Houses and purple bedsheets -- Book tour stop #6: Tulsa, February 6-7
Ever since I had a book tour schedule to worry about, I'd been worrying about Tulsa. Tulsa, to all appearances,...Read this article
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Phil Cousineau on the extraordinary in the ordinary
"The practice of soulful travel is to discover the overlapping point between history and everyday life, the way to find...Read this article
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April 28, 2003
Six degrees of country music: On the road in Texas -- Book tour stop #5: Dallas, February 4
Today, en route to a book reading in Dallas, I finally felt like I was traveling America in the pure,...Read this article
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Rolf Potts on simplicity in anticipation of travel
"Travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don’t believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you...Read this article
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April 25, 2003
Cruising Berkeley in the Bourgeois-mobile -- Book tour stop #4: Berkeley, January 30
I mentioned yesterday that I rented a car in Oakland, but I never included the humbling details of the automobile...Read this article
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Paulo Coelho on the world as a threatening place
"Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be...Read this article
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April 24, 2003
Breaking my own rules of vagabonding -- Book tour stop #3: San Francisco, January 29
Today was the day when, at no real choice of my own, I was forced to break one of the...Read this article
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Bill Barich on the heightened state that travel allows
"Travel spoils you for regular life. When you're moving from country to country in blithe ignorance, you're usually granted the...Read this article
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April 23, 2003
The bungled tale of Kurt Vonnegut's asshole -- Book tour stop #2: Portland, January 28
Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon holds a place in my heart -- and not just because it's one of the...Read this article
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A note on human population, from The Economist
"Demographers like to dramatize this recent population growth by asking a spooky question. Of all the people who have ever...Read this article
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April 22, 2003
What was the name of my book again? -- Book tour stop #1: Seattle, January 27
My Vagabonding book tour started in earnest this morning at about 4 a.m., when I woke up with a twinge...Read this article
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April 21, 2003
This week: Back in the tour-diary saddle
After several weeks in limbo, I have finally converted the hurried scribblings from my gray pocket notebook into a coherent,...Read this article
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April 18, 2003
de Botton on the perks of traveling alone
"It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially molded by the company we...Read this article
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April 17, 2003
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis
As a satirical concept, Tony Hawks's travel-humor book Playing the Moldovans at Tennis is brilliant. The premise, as Hawks describes...Read this article
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de Botton on the open-minded state that comes with travel
"What, then, is a traveling mind-set? Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. Receptive, we approach new places...Read this article
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April 16, 2003
Is it still OK for Americans to travel overseas?
Over at Vagbonding.net, I got an interesting question from a woman in Texas. The gist of it was this: With...Read this article
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de Botton on the heightened romanticism of exotic lands
"To the appeal that an attractive person might possess in one's own country is added, in an exotic land, an...Read this article
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April 15, 2003
Gee whiz! (what I'm reading in the jungle)
It's been just about a week since I returned to Ranong, the south Thailand jungle town where, a little over...Read this article
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de Botton on travel as a medium for introspection
"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains....Read this article
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April 14, 2003
Notes on Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel
I recently finished reading Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel -- a book I'd been meaning to read ever...Read this article
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de Botton on travel as a search for meaning
"If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics...Read this article
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April 13, 2003
SARS collector's cards and other trophies of travel
It has been a very odd and eventful past three weeks, taking me from Wichita to Memphis to Los Angeles...Read this article
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Updatum: Tony Perrottet and David Stanley interviews
In the process of trying to get back on the road in Asia, I let my RolfPotts.com updates slide a...Read this article
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April 06, 2003
Back in Asia
Just a heads-up for those of you surfing in this week. After two months of touring the United States to...Read this article
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