Next Voyage for the Swan: Faroe Islands

Got another postcard from Ed today. His cards can be counted on to be from far-flung places I’m unlikely to visit. Sure enough, today’s missive from the Shetland Islands, since he’s on a long tour of near-Arctic places best visited in August.

I’m more likely to visit the Shetlands than, say, Uganda, but even getting to Scotland, much less remote islands to the north, would be something of an achievement. It’s a lovely card, one of the long ones (8.5 x 3.5 inches, or more likely in the EU, 21.5 cm x 9 cm). The image is a waterside view of Lerwick, capital of the islands, looking very Nordic, or maybe a Scot-Nordic blend. The back of the card simply says The Swan.

There’s no other explanation of that, so I had to look it up. It’s the sailing ship in the picture, near the right side of the card: a restored vessel that the SwanTrust calls “one of the finest boats among the Scottish fishing fleet, and… the largest ever built at Lerwick in Shetland… The Swan Trust offers voyages around the Shetland Islands, and to other destinations such as Faroe, Norway, Iceland and Amsterdam.”

Ed mailed it on July 30, so that’s only four days in transit, a minor marvel by itself. It costs 87p to send a long card from the Shetlands. Her Majesty is still looking not elderly on her stamps, unlike the woman who opened the Olympics last week.

Lost Mail

This weekend, Friday especially, was cold payback for the temporary summer we experienced last month. Even sunny skies today didn't make the air that warm. But it will warm up again soon, so essentially what we're feeling is a normal April. Except we're seeing May in terms of greenery.

On Saturday I received Ed's postcard from Kenya (see last Wednesday), which arrived after the one from Uganda, even though he says it was mailed earlier. Odd time we live in, when you can communicate electronically to tell someone the specifics of a paper communication that's still en route.

But at least Ed's Kenya card did not disappear down the international mail memory hole. When I was in college, a friend of mine took an early summer trip to the Soviet Union. Thirty years later I'm still waiting for the postcard she said she sent me from there. Afterwards she told me that about half of them got through. I thought of her in Russia a decade later when mailing cards in St. Petersburg, but as far as I know, all of those made their trips successfully (unfortunately I didn't have her address at that point, or I would have sent her a card).

While mulling on the subject of missing mail, I followed a whim and Googled "Titanic mail," and sure enough an article published 20 years ago by the National Postal Museum came up: "Titanic's Mail," it's called. Oddly enough. From it I learned that 7 million pieces of mail, including about $150,000 in postal money orders (in fat, 1912 dollars), went down with the ship, along with five postal clerks, who apparently spent their last hours trying to bring mail sacks out the bowels of the ship. Now there's a story that no big-budget boy-meets-girl-boy-freezes-in-the-north-Altantic movie is going to tell.

Word From Uganda

This week I got more mail from Uganda than I've ever gotten during the rest of my life so far. Both pieces were from Ed, of course.

Ed actually mailed the letter from his home base in Washington state, but he'd acquired the envelope at the Paraa Safari Lodge at Murchison Falls. The postcard, on the other hand, was mailed in Uganda. It pictures Murchison Falls.

"The River Nile, on its journey from its source at Lake Victoria to join Lake Albert -- here it is suddenly channeled into a gorge only six meters wide, and cascades 43 meters below," explains the Paraa Lodge web site. Cool.

The stamps on the card inspired me to check up on Ugandan currency, since I couldn't remember what they use. Shillings (Ush). Good for them. One stamp is Ush 1,200, the other Ush 700, for a total of 1,900 shillings postage. According to XE.com, it's very nearly 2,500 shillings to the U.S. dollar, so that's not so bad to mail a card from the Pearl of Africa to the heart of darkest North America.

One stamp depicts the Bell's Hinged Tortoise, the other the Rastrinebola agentea fish, no common name given. But Wiki tells me that, as a denizen of Lake Victoria, it's "local names are omena (Kenya), dagaa (Tanzania) and mukene (Uganda)," and I'll go along with that.

Item From the Past: Mt. Fuji & T-Shirt

This is about as close as I ever got to Mt. Fuji, during a short visit to the area around the spring equinox in 1993. The remarkable thing was that the peak was actually visible, rather than obscured by clouds.

A short while before, a graphic artist friend of mine created a t-shirt to commemorate her wedding, and she sent one to me (note the cartoon characters holding hands). I told her in a fit of exuberance that I would have pictures made featuring the shirt in famous places, and send her copies. This was one of the first such pictures, if not the first, and I made a few others, but eventually the notion fell by the wayside.

A decade later, I received a Route of Seeing cap from Ed, and not-quite-seriously had the idea to do the same as with it as with the wedding t-shirt. Except now, in the age of digital photos and e-mail, it would be much easier to send him the images. During our trip in '05, whose ultima was Yellowstone NP, I managed to take a few pics featuring the cap.

The next year, I took it to Canada and documented its visit with a few more pictures. The cap seemed to have a penchant for continental divides.

And then I lost the cap.

Without Bees, Our Nation Would Be Misshapen

Another winter blast for the East again. I traded these e-mails today with an editor of mine based in New York:

Me: Did you make it to the office today? To hear weathercasters tell it, New York has been buried under mountains of snow. But they are an excitable bunch, prone to a little exaggeration.

Him: Yeah, it’s not that bad. A lot of snow, sure — especially in Queens and the other boroughs — but not exactly the apocalypse.

Here on the western shore of southern Lake Michigan, in that region called the Midwest, but which is all part of the North to me, not so much snow today. Maybe an inch fell late this morning and into the early afternoon, just enough to freshen up the dirty snow already on the ground and add a new top ingredient to the snow/ice parfait on certain outdoor surfaces, such as sidewalks. That's not usually a good thing to have underfoot.

The retailer Amazon pestered me with an e-mail this morning, the subject line of which said, "Amazon.com recommends 'Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation.' " I puzzled over that for a moment, then realized that the Amazon Machine had reached the conclusion that if I'd buy one book about bees and honey, I would surely want another. I don't particularly.

Last month I bought A Short History of the Honey Bee, images by Ilona, text by my old friend Ed Readicker-Henderson (Timber Press, 2009, subtitled "Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey"). It is, astonishingly, the first and still only thing I've ever bought from Amazon; but I'm a late adopter in many things. Actually, "adopter" is too strong a word, since I still vastly prefer physical bookstores and will do my little part to help a few survive, along with physical books themselves. I haven't read Ed's book yet, but it's in my vague queue for this year.

Bees seem very important, and Bees in America might well be an excellent work, but "shape a nation"? I'm reminded of a skit I saw long ago, on The Carol Burnett Show or its ilk, that involved a traveling Jim Nabors striking up a conversation with another traveler.

Nabors played an earthworm salesman, I think, and went on at some length about how important earthworms were for farms and the nation and the fate of the free world and so on, with the kind of irritating enthusiasm he brought to Gomer Pyle, much to the other character's displeasure. (Tim Conway? Or maybe it was Harvey Korman, trying not to laugh.) Toward the end of the skit, Nabors said something like, "When you think about it, earthworms are the backbone of this country!"

From the Pribilofs to Schaumburg in Five Days

On a day like today, the thing to say is, Mitch Miller was still alive? I never saw Sing Along With Mitch that I remember, being more in the Slam Bang Theater demographic.

I'll also put in a kind word or two for the beleaguered USPS, despite the prospect of another price increase, the occasionally ugly stamps, and the items that go astray. (No Saturday delivery, that would bother me.) This is an interesting graph that depicts the nominal cost of first-class postage vs. the cost in 2008 cents. Mailing a letter, for those of us who still do that, is now moderately high by historical standards. But the real cost has been higher at times: during the 1890s and first two decades of the 20th century; during the Depression; and during the late 1970s. The eras of cheap postage, on the other hand, were the 1920s and the post-World War II years until about 1965.

As for losing things, that's no monopoly of a quasi-public monopoly that really isn't a monopoly any more. Some years ago when I was an editor, we used to ship physical images for use in our magazine to the printer via a well-known overnight delivery service. Good thing we had plan B images, because one time -- oops, now where did that shipment go? The delivery company found it, weeks later, and returned the images to us. Some of them. Those we got back looked like they'd been dropped to the floor and ground up by heavy boots.

This comes to mind because I got a postcard -- two postcards -- today from the Pribilof Islands, Alaska. They were mailed on July 28, which is speedy service considering that the islands are in the Bering Sea. One card depicts Saint Paul Island, one of the group, and the other card sports Wrangell, which is on the mainland. Both postmarks depict Saint Paul Island, home of Aleuts, seals and sea birds.

Of course Ed sent them to me. The generation -- maybe Lilly and Ann's -- that doesn't know the pleasure of dropping a physical message in a box, with the near-assurance that it will reach a remote location (everywhere is remote from the perspective of the Pribilofs) for a small fee, will be poorer for it. Nor will they know the pleasure of receiving such a card. They won't realize what they're missing.

Dispatch from Sukhbaatar Square

Noticeably cooler today: the first tug of fall. Soon summer and fall will be in that tug o' war that summer will lose.

This is the kind of envelope I like to see in the mail box (scanned a bit crookedly):

It's actually postmarked from Washington state, where my traveling friend Ed lives, but he picked up near Sukhbaatar Square earlier this year. I understand that a statue of Genghis Khan has been added since I saw the place in the 1990s. And, from the look of the photo at Wiki, it looks like some glasswork has been added to Mongolia's parliament building as well. I recall that it was drab and exceedingly Soviet-satellite style once upon a time. Good to see that Mongolia is making some aesthetic progress.

Timbuktu! (or Tombouctou!) (or Timbuctoo!) (or even Tumbutu!)

I got a postcard from Timbuktu today. It's the first and perhaps last one I'll ever receive from that city, with such a storied name. Naturally, it was from Ed, very likely the only person I know who will actually make it to Timbuktu, a journey that takes a concentrated mix of time, money and inclination.

“Tombouctou” is the spelling the card uses. It’s a simple card, a picture of tourists (and other people, many of whom are probably touts, buzzing nearby) at the Djigarey-ber, one of the city's golden-age mosques, which to me looks instead like the inspiration for the Foreign Legion fortifications in every Beau Geste knockoff since Gary Cooper played the part.

The postmark says “Postes Mali 26.02.08” and the colorful Republique du Mali stamps are of 20F and 385F, the former with a “Scene de thé dans le desert” and the later sporting a “Femme Peulh.” There was some damage in transit, so the tea in the desert scene was a bit torn away, but you can still see the tribesmen dismounted from their camels, enjoying a relaxing spot of tea on the sands. I had to look up the Peulh, and they are the west and central African people variously known as Fula or Fulani or Fulbe or Peul or Peulh or Peuhl, at least according to Wiki.

At the bottom of each stamp is “Imp. Poste Tunis” which I would think means that that Tunisia had something to do with the manufacture of these stamps. Just a guess.

Ed says: “I’ve been here & you haven’t. Ha.”

True enough. If I can get a card at the Ford Presidential Museum later this month, I will write exactly the same thing back – it’s a fairly safe bet.

Zero

Ed reports from the UK of a visit to the Prime Meridian: "I went to Greenwich today. Interesting, but much less impressive than crossing the Arctic Circle. I think we give more weight to latitude than longitude. Maybe that's just because we all hit all the longitudes long ago."

I can't describe crossing the Arctic Circle, though I have an ambition to do so (the ambition is fairly dim in February, however, when the Arctic has come to me). The closest I've come is Vyborg, Russia, latitude about 60° 42' -- roughly six degrees short. I've passed through all of the longitudes, as Ed has, and had before Yuriko and I made it to Greenwich near the end of 1994. Still, I got a kick out of standing on the Prime Meridian, as illustrated here, though I've since read that the zero line used by the Global Positioning System is about 100 meters east of the former line, now the tourist-attraction line, at the Old Royal Observatory.

The sign behind Y is, or was, actually a vending machine. Insert a pound coin and you get a time-stamped souvenir. (As a very small child, Lilly got a hold of this souvenir, causing the damage visible here).

"Some interesting stuff in the maritime museum," Ed continued. "The first actual Franklin relics I've ever gotten to see. Pretty exciting for an Arctic geek like me."

John Franklin relics -- very cool indeed, and I don't mean that as a gag line. I went to the Greenwich Maritime Museum, too, but don't remember seeing anything associated with the famed Arctic explorer. Maybe I was of too ignorant of Franklin at the time to notice, or maybe those items weren't on display. I do remember a fine exhibit on John Harrison and the Longitude Problem, which impressed me, and added to the experience of standing on zero degrees east-west.

Summertime, and the Living is Busy

Time for summer break around here. Back to posting in about two weeks -- August 7 or 8. Much to do until then, both work and play. Summer recommendations until then:

Hairspray. A major delight. That coming from someone who isn't completely taken with movie musicals. I took the girls, at Lilly's request, to see it on its opening day last Friday. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie on opening day. I didn't even do that as a teenager, though of course opening days were localized in those days. For example, Star Wars opened in San Antonio on July 1, 1977, some weeks after it had in larger cities (I went with friends to see it on July 2, and waited in a fairly long line).

Cicadas. They've finally come in some numbers to my part of the world. When I hear them, I like summer even more. They make the sound of high, hot summer. Summers of yore. That's a strong association to get from a noisy insect.

This video, Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, made for YouTube some months ago. Especially entertaining to those of us with significant exposure to Japanese TV. It must be fun for other people, too, what with about 1.6 million views.

All these suggestions are noisy. For something quiet, read "The Quietest Place in the World," an article by my friend Ed. The complete text is here. As a travel writer, Ed's at the top of his game. I'd like to recommend longer reading material, but among the handful of books I've pursued recently in the few moments I have time to read them, nothing stands out. For now, high-quality short articles, such as anything on Ed's web site, will do.

Way Down South

Not much time for writing today, but I will post an image, the very first at this site, and one I just received from Ed, who's lately been to Antarctica, South Georgia, the Falklands, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (look it up) and other extreme points south. If I had 10 grand and a few weeks to spare, it is a trip I would need no urging to take. Best of all for him, someone else paid for his trip - he is, of course, part of that rare tribe, the professional travel writer.

Ed didn't say, but I assume this is Antarctica. He's interacting with the natives. Also, I received a postcard recently from him with a British Antarctic Territory stamp on it. Wow.

Down Antarctica Way

Yesterday we had cold rain, then freezing rain and sleet, then snow: a full array of wintertime precipitation, for your sensory pleasure. Much of the time the air was slightly above freezing, so water flowed from the driveway into the gutter. Or it did, at least, after I removed some of the icy slush at the base of the driveway, to drain a huge puddle of icy water. Today, just snow. Dealing with plain old snow is a lot more simple, and I have a foolproof method -- don’t go out in it. (That almost worked, but I did have to take Ann to pre-school.)

An e-mail from traveler Ed, who’s gone south for a while -- really far south, Antarctica: “Got the passport stamp at a Ukrainian research station (which used to be a British station, which was where they discovered the hole in the ozone layer) at 65 degrees, 15 minutes south,” he writes. “Shy of the circle, but as far south as we go on this trip. Penguins, fog, ice. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect.”

We’ve got ice, and sometimes fog, but no penguins around here. Though from my home office window, I do see a variety of things go by, so one of these days a waddle of penguins might wander by.

Soap to Go

Got some soap in the mail today. It isn’t too often you can say such a thing, but I can, at least for now. My friend Ed has just returned from parts of the ethnic salmagundi formerly known as Yugoslavia (or more charmingly I think, Jugoslavia – why did English-language maps make that shift?). Upon his return, he sent me a souvenir, a small bar (15g) of soap in a small box marked Hotel Central Zagreb on one side, with the greetings DOBRO DOSLI – WILLKOMMEN – WELCOME – BENVENUTI on the other. The word “soap” is also in the same four languages (I assume) elsewhere on box.

Most surprisingly, there’s an ingredient list on one of the side flaps, in English. At least, the word “ingredients” is in English, but items such as sodium tallowate may be universal.

Ed was right in thinking that this is my kind of souvenir. When I was a kid, I participated in stripping every motel room we ever stayed at of its soap, matches, postcards and stationery. Even as an adult I do this, though it’s harder to find hotel/motel matches, postcards and stationery than it used to be. Souvenir soap endures, however.

Tropical Storm Claudius

Temperatures fell with a thud this week in northern Illinois, colder than even early December ought to be, if you reckon things by comparing averages over the last century or so. Single Fahrenheit digits last night, they say, and not much warmer during the day today. Repeat 90 to 120 times, and that’ll be winter.

Today I talked on the phone with former colleague Angie, who drove with her husband to Baton Rouge, where her mother lives, for Thanksgiving week. She said part of a fence on her mother’s property had been blown down by Katrina, and that labor is so scarce that she hasn’t been able to find anyone to rebuild it.

Also, Angie and her husband drove into New Orleans to see what they could see—something I would have done, too. One telling detail she reported was an open Burger King offering a $6000 signing bonus for workers and $20 per hour after that. Now we know what comes after the deluge: a labor crisis.

Ed, professional traveler and old friend of mine, has just left the Canary Islands for London. A tropical storm with the pedestrian name of Delta whipped into the islands while he was there, knocking things down and killing seven people, six of them in a boat of asylum-seekers from mainland Africa; talk about bad timing. Ed’s a fine writer (see his piece on the subtleties of honey.). I suspect he’s going to get a better-than-usual travel piece out of his experience.

Why Greek letters? That’s erudite, I suppose, but not very interesting. Maybe next time the b-list storms can be named after Roman emperors. Delta, then, would have been Tropical Storm Claudius.

In this country, I suspect—I didn’t follow it closely—that Delta got scant attention in major US media outlets, but I did pull up some articles on the Net. The BBC, Euronews.net and Science Daily all had items. Definitely out of the majors when it comes to American media.

A line from Euronews.net intrigued me: “The famous Finger of God standing stone on Gran Canaria was blown over.” The Finger of God? An image of it before the storm was only a Google image search away. First the Great Stone Face in New Hampshire, now this. Been a bad decade for famous rock formations.

Pause

No blogging until next Sunday or so. Not because I’m going anywhere very far, though that would be nice. But there are events to go to and much other writing to do. But one of the events might be worth writing up, since it’s at an interesting setting in the city.

In the meantime, read the Ed’s blog. How many other places can you read about Icelandic elves?

Bear Fence

High heat on Sunday, the first 100-degree day in at least two years, then thunderstorms today, including a terrific one that snuck up on us just before dark. On Sunday, sirocco-like winds blew for hours. Been a long time since I’ve felt such strong, hot winds, though I remember walking across a mall parking lot in the infamously hot Texas summer of 1980 against winds of that made it hard to stand up, heated past 100 F. This Sunday in Illinois wasn’t that intense. Today, the thunderstorms brought their own cooler wind, enough to knock over our heavy metal patio table, even with the umbrella folded up. It didn’t slide into the window, fortunately.

Just the time to go to the Yukon. I am, in fact, not making that trip, but my friend Ed is. He should be there by now. A few days ago, he sent me an e-mail that included: “Yeah, Vuntut is utter middle of nowhere. We helicopter in from Old Crow, set up a "bear fence" around the camp. Doesn't that sound encouraging? But these people have lived out here for a gazillion years, I figure they know what they're doing. And I've been in bear-infested places before.”

He’s going to a place so remote I had to look it up: Vuntut National Park, in extreme northwestern Yukon. The Parks Canada web site has this to say about the place: "There are no facilities or services of any kind in the park. Travelers must be entirely self-sufficient and able to handle any medical or wildlife related emergency on their own." Bear fences are probably a very good idea in Vuntut.

Notes From Ed

Too busy! After I'm done with buzzing through a current assignment, I need to take a couple of days off. Except from child-rearing and blogging.

I only have access to a Mac these days, which makes you a second-class citizen in Blogger-world. For one thing, you can’t use the shortcut buttons when posting, to do such functions as post a link without having to enter all the html code. So I would have posted this link earlier, but when faced with html code, my indolent streak kicks in.

But here it is. You might remember traveler Ed, who’s now in the big leagues of the travel-writing world (Arthur Frommer knows his work and gives him assignments, for instance). Ed’s started a blog, Unexpected World. It’s even the same format as this one. The main difference is that he gets to go far and wide, while I go near and narrow.