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Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Small Town Views

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I made a comment a while back that it turns out I need to clarify. I said that when I went off to college in the Big City, I didn’t know how to use an elevator, and apparently created a vision of a youth spent among cargo cults or the Amish. “We went into a room and closed the door, and when we opened the door we were in a different place!” Nothing so dramatic: I though that when the elevator was on the upper floors, one pushed the down button to summon it, rather than the up button to tell it where I was headed. Fortunately the school had 40,000 students and those guys were German majors so I never saw them again.

On the scale of cosmopolitanness, living in college towns gives you the effect of many thousand more than the actual population size would indicate—another hosannah for libraries, concert series, and independent cinemas. But it’s a not a well-known effect. (more…)

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Posted in Play, Travel | 5 Comments »

Turning Japan into Ireland: Life and Writing

Monday, August 24th, 2009

This was the year I learned to tie a necktie

This was the year I learned to tie a necktie

Before reading Rain Fall, what my year in Japan reminded me of most was a year my family spent in England. Instead of an eighth-grade teacher, I was the student. Superficial things: the food is different, the language is different, the kids wear school uniforms. Deeper attitude things: both are island nations with a sense of apartness from the geographical region (Europe and Asia are Them, not Us). In both places I felt tagged as an outsider. In Japan, obviously so, but to be perfectly clear, 96.9 percent of my family tree originates in the British Isles (and the rest is northern European): one might think that in Manchester I would have blended in.

But everyone in my school of nearly 2,000 knew that I was the American kid.* When I walked down the hall, someone would start singing “We’re the Kids in America” (a song I think is stupid to this day). In English class we read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I was the translator for cultural questions. Another teacher wanted to compare the educational system with the United States. (more…)

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Posted in Creativity, Travel, Writing | No Comments »

My Ideal Office

Monday, June 1st, 2009

tree house office
Lately this is the kind of space that appeals to me. Fresh air, breezes, the twittering of birds . . . I think I could get a lot of thinking done in that hammock.

It turns out that these aren’t just fantasy movie sets. (more…)

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Posted in Process, Travel | 2 Comments »

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