One Hundred Percent American, by Ralph Linton

American anthropologist Ralph Linton wrote the following essay, which appeared in the American Mercury in 1937. Published half a decade before “globalization” became a buzz-word, it humorously illustrates how everyday routine in modern America is the sum of years of global human ingenuity.

“One Hundred Percent American”

There can be no question about the average American’s Americanism or his desire to preserve this precious heritage at all costs. Nevertheless, some insidious foreign ideas have already … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on One Hundred Percent American, by Ralph Linton  | August 21, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

There is no conflict between tourism and traveling

“Disdaining tourists is the last permitted snobbery, a coded way of distancing oneself from the uncultured classes. And it drives me beyond bonkers to incoherence — so I shall try to settle down. Examined calmly, there is no conflict between tourism and traveling. Just as one may eat one day at McDonald’s and the next beneath Michelin stars, so one may both romp about the beaches of Lloret de Mar and trek through the Sarawak … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on There is no conflict between tourism and traveling  | May 4, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

The art of body language is an essential travel skill

“Learn to watch faces and expressions. Language is not all it’s cracked up to be. Often you go wrong when you are struggling with dimly remembered foreign words and neglect the person or context. You’ll need a bit of Russian, a bit of French, and a bit of Spanish, at least, to do the world. Sometimes it’s better if you just use the international hand-to-mouth for food, or go into the kitchen to point.” –Mike … Read more »

Posted by | Comments (1)  | April 27, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

On the road, disorientation is as important as discovery

“Any budding academic can tell you that deliberately placing oneself in a position of not-knowing, and to then go about finding out what you don’t know, can be a fulfilling pursuit, and the disorientation itself, the early stages of figuring out what you didn’t know that you wanted to know, was as exciting as the eventual discoveries. This was one of the reasons I traveled.” –Alden Jones, The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler’s Memoir from … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on On the road, disorientation is as important as discovery  | April 20, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

Travel, its very motion, ought to suggest hope

“Travel, its very motion, ought to suggest hope. Despair is the armchair; it is indifference and glazed, incurious eyes. I think travelers are essentially optimist, or else they would never go anywhere.” –Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

Posted by | Comments Off on Travel, its very motion, ought to suggest hope  | April 13, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

“The Tramps,” by Robert W. Service (1907)

Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God’s land together, And we sang the old, old Earth-song, for our youth was very sweet; When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked at tie and tether, Along the road to Anywhere, the wide world at our feet.

Along the road to Anywhere, when each day had its story; When time was yet our vassal, and life’s jest was still unstale; When peace unfathomed … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on “The Tramps,” by Robert W. Service (1907)  | April 6, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

Foreign news should offer us a means by which to humanize the other

“At a much deeper, more metaphysical level, foreign news should offer us a means by which to humanize the Other — that is, the outsider from over the mountains or beyond the seas who instinctively repels, bores or frightens us and with whom we can’t, without help, imagine having anything in common. Foreign news should find ways to make us all more human in one another’s eyes, so that the apparently insuperable barriers of geography, … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on Foreign news should offer us a means by which to humanize the other  | March 30, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

People from cultures that prize individualism tend to misapprehend cultures that don’t

“We were leaving not just a place but a consciousness — one in which the “I” was different for the Asmat than for me. It was group, tribe, family, tied together in ways difficult to grasp. For me, as an American, “I” is the biggest, most important unit. For us, freedom is everything. The right to do as we please, unbound by clan or village or parents — to move two thousand miles at will, … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on People from cultures that prize individualism tend to misapprehend cultures that don’t  | March 23, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day

The secret of travel is to approximate the life of a local

“When I started traveling professionally, I was surprised and delighted to find that I could still make emotional connections to places. I discovered this for the first time in Portugal, where — after having schlepped around Spain — I met a young Dutch woman who introduced me to a her friend, a colorful poet, who invited me to dinner (this after weeks of solitary meals) and then took me to a dive to hear men … Read more »

Posted by | Comments Off on The secret of travel is to approximate the life of a local  | March 16, 2015
Category: Travel Quote of the Day