Talking the Afternoon Away, With Google Translate

We're sitting in an airport cafe in Santiago with a long layover in front of us. Sony went to the bathroom and ran into Catalina, a journalist from Bogota Colombia who spoke not a word of English. Sony is the same about Spanish, and so it was a bit awkward. But oh, technology has a way to fix that.

Sony took out her laptop and the two began conversing in English and Spanish using Google translate. We just spent eleven days with Catalina and didn't exchange a word, now here we are learning all about Catalina's life in Colombia and what she thought about the trip. So many people get all high and mighty about how useless technology is, and how they couldn't possibly have time for Facebook, or to blog, and yet here we are.

We are absolutely connected and can talk easily simply by typing our messages into a box and voila, she can read it quickly. It's just like a blind person using a machine to converse, except here we are able to gesticulate and add laughter to our sharing. Beautiful!

Iquique Faces the Roaring Sea, with a Giant Dune Behind

Waking up underneath a thick comforter was heaven....at last a long and luxurious night's sleep, one of the things that you take for granted but crave after a succession of tough nights. I'm feeling great up here on the 15th floor of the Terrado Hotel, anticipating a morning of tandem hang gliding. I am trying to not think about the famous movie star whose son died this way, no, I prefer to anticipate the great shots and the scenery up there.

Today after our aerial theatrics we will begin a long journey home. Chile has once again provided us with an overflowing bounty of great photos, and scenes of intense contrast. That's one of their marketing angles--22 of the worlds 25 different environments can be found in this 4000-mile long string bean shaped place.

Before I left I got many emails wishing me a great trip to Chili...something about it makes many Americans mistake this country for their favorite casual dining spot. But then again I was told to watch out for kangaroos once when I was about to visit Austria.

The city has a sad underbelly that's far away from this 15-story seaside suite hotel. We saw it when we chugged up next to the world's largest sand dune, the favela-like shacks that were built by squatters with no where to go. Now adorned every few feet by Chile's ubiquitous political campaign posters, the tin shacks are being replaced by tiny cement apartments. The city looks out at the Pacific, and up to a giant brown wall of sand, where at night a clock provides a giant digital clock to tel l the public what time it is.

At the public market, dark skinned young woman who look Peruvian stack tomatoes, gnarly ears of corn, strangely shaped orange peppers and zucchinis in perfect diamond stacks...it takes them two hours each morning and every night they take each piece down. Many vendors make their livings in renegade markets outside the public space. All over the city people have things to sell that they offer to passing cars or set out for the public on sidewalks.

Wide Eyed and Awake in a Bunk at 12,000 Feet

The pantomimed characiture of a man holding his eyes open proved to be an omen. Our bus driver was showing me what would happen tonight as I lay in a bunk bed with two snoring roommates after chewing on three coca leaves earlier in the evening.

It was a sleepless, restless, and anxious night up here at 12,000 feet where we stayed with Aymara Indians. One family named Lucas lives up here, and they offer guests a chance to watch their native dances and spend the night in simple bunkhouses.

A family from Switzerland, three generations strong, joined us at the communal dinner table, where a hunk of chicken was served in broth surrounded by quinoa, the grain that everyone lives on in Northern Chile. They loved roughing it despite the fact that the water truck had not arrived so there were no showers or running water during our stay.

To help us with the altitude, which at these heights can make the unaccustomed weeze and get altitude sickness, our hosts offered us cups of chachacoma tea. Oh, and those coca leaves that one of my roommates bought in Pica also helped keep me up.

The rugged scenery up here is spectacular: the sunsets up against the brown mountains are even more dramatic when used as a backdrop for the native dancers in their bright red costumes.

The lodge where we are staying was built by the Collahuasi mine, the company's largesse is what pays for people's education, cars, houses and just about everything. In exchange they use a lot of water and get to chew up vast amounts of land and pretty much get their way. Getting a job in one of the many mines, despite its tough regimen, pays nearly $12,500 a year. That's by far the highest pay anyone earns, so the jobs are coveted by nearly every young man in this northernmost region of Chile. A woman who works in a local trade school said that occupations like food service and auto repair are never, ever as popular as mining techniques.

One of our guides, who lives in the town of Pica, has organized an awareness campaign, to let local people know the price that the environment has paid through history by their fealty to the big Canadian, Australian and Chilean mining companies. The water table is getting lower and lower, and the vast open territory is littered with piles of tailings and holes in the ground.

The distances here in Chile are punishing to the uninitiated....and the altitude here in the alto plano makes even busses wheeze, chugging up a moderate incline because the diesel engine is starved for oxygen. All along the road are memorials to drivers who died in head-on collisions, we were told that many of the fatalities result from miners high-tailing it home after a seven or 10 day workweek where they live at the remote mine and want to get back to families and civilization.

Accommodations would continue to be rustic here in this hardscrabble northernmost section of Chile called Tarapaca. Temperatures during the day climb easily to 90 Farenheit, and at night tumble down to 35 or 40. We met a couple, Marco Fernandez-Coneha and Coco Coello who offer camping stays in an outdoor hotel called El Huarango, near the roadside village of Le Tirana. Entering at night, there are cots with warm comforters, and stand-up tents lit by candles. Pathways to each tent are lit with candles too, and our evening meal was taken at wooden tables with plenty of wine to accompany the hearty food part of which was cooked with a solar cooker.

The couple is warm and friendly, and love to take guests on tours of the house that they built out back with mud bricks. It's comfy and stays a constant 19 degrees throughout the searing day and chilly nights. While we visited their German Shepard had just given birth to eight pups, who squirmed inside their mud dog house. Marco also showed us the subterranean storage chamber where he keeps his supplies and his immaculate workshop with each of hundreds of tools in its special place.

As we drove back down from the alto plano, suddenly people on the bus began yelling about rainbows, and we pulled over to tumble out clutching cameras. Up in the sky was a circus of riotous rainbows, a circle right above us with all the colors of the spectrum in a round colored arc and three other rainbows on either side. Wow, that's Northern Chile for you.

Water is Everything in Arid Iquique, Chile

"What time is it?" Sony asked with a yawn, as we sat finishing dinner last night beneath a thatched partial roof at the El Tercer Ojito, or "The Third Eye," in Iquique. Twelve-thirty, I answered, and to that Cristina Burchard, proprietor, told us that here, parties begin about now. She sat sipping Cabernet, and told us how she named her comfortable, open air restaurant after one she visited in Katmandu. She used to have a hammock and showers for passing travelers, now she just concentrates on good food like grouper cheeks, quinoa with shrimp, and veggie lasagna.

We flew up north and arrived in Iquique, a mining town of 200,000 right on the Pacific coast, and practically in the Atacama desert. More than 20,000 here work in giant copper, salt and other mines, the men work 10 days in a row with four off. The jobs are coveted and passed down from father to son. It rains about 2 millimeters a year, so restaurants like El Tercer Ojito don't need any real roofs. "When it rains, it's just a piffle," said Cristina. By the beach, we saw an entire gym set up outside with no roof.

Water of course is very scarce here in this arid climate, and it comes from faraway rivers and lakes. The talk of the city is how they want to force the big mining firms to pay for desalinization plants as they do in Antofagasta, Chile's second largest city. "Water is everything," our guide told us, as we passed a monument to water that stands right next to the pounding Pacific surf. "Nothing grows here unless you water it like crazy."

Snowy Volcano in Northern Patagonia

This plane ride ranked up there with my all time amazing flights. Being able to swoop down and see all of this beautiful countryside from the air in this small 22 seater with huge windows was amazing.

Jimmy Langman Won't Douse His Magazine Dream

At the big closing party, I ran into an earnest young man named Jimmy Langman who lives in Puerto Varas and makes his living as a writer. He's got a dream, and he won't let go of it. I am guilty of pouring lots of cold water on his idea, but this morning over breakfast I got a chance to read his Patagon Journal website, and I liked the strong pro-environment stance and the general look of it. The website might have a chance, but I told him that print was a bad, bad idea.

He told me that he wants to build up his website's readership to 40,000 visitors a month. Now only about 500 make it to the site, but it's still a new project. I told him about how he'd have to get hundreds, or better, thousands of links, and that to attract readers he had to work non-stop by publishing new content, and doing newsletters, RSS feeds, and blogs. I told him that it was a very steep curve, and that the best way to get anywhere in web publishing is to buy an existing trafficked site and piggyback on that traffic to build it up. "What about a print magazine," he said, that's what I'd like to do...printing is really cheap down here in Chile."

He met a man who works on Vermont Life, the glossy photo-filled house organ/magazine of Vermont tourism. "They sell 80,000 subscriptions, and don't rely on advertising," he said. I told him that this was a 50-year-old magazine that's subsidized by the state, and that readers outside of Vermont are easy marks for all of those colorful maple trees and sugar on snow stories. "But this area is just as beautiful as Vermont, surely we could get people to subscribe," he countered. I said that he might indeed sell some ads, but that sustaining it would be brutal.

I reminded him that Conde Nast is chopping titles, big metro newspapers are suffering cutbacks, and that starting a print magazine isn't a good idea, especially if you're scraping by as it is. He remained undaunted, and continued to press on. "How about as a nonprofit entity?"

Northern Patagonia does merit a literate and eco-friendly web publication to rally the many locals and tourists who love the place and want to show it off. Maybe he should pitch the local tourism people, like Vermont, they have the government dough, and maybe they'll help him with his dream.

Guyana? Yeah, We´d Love to Go There

My head is exploding with fascinating stories and data about so many places in South America. There is nothing I like better than to visit with people and in a short span, have them share with you what they love about the places they live.

My last appointment was with Tony Thorne, who runs Wilderness Explorers. Where do they go? Guyana and Surinam! Now there´s a GoNOMAD destination, for sure. Half of the people in Guyana are from India...yes India as in Ghandi and New Delhi, not the tribes of South America. There are only 750,000 residents and 80% of the country is rain forest. Tony said you can be floating down a river and see a jaguar who won´t run away. They simply aren´t used to seeing humans so they don´t fear them. It´s 83,000 square miles, and about 80% of it is nearly empty of people.

English is spoken all over Guyana, which is located at the top of South America, right beside Surinam (where they speak Dutch) and French Guiana, where they speak French. The biggest businesses in Guyana are exporting minerals like gold and diamonds, plus sugar and rice. Tourism is growing, especially from the UK, where a BBC program about exploring the land of the jaguars gave Guyana a big boost.

I asked Tony about the internet...do they have connections here in a remote place like this? He said that yes, now they use satellites and have crystal clear connections through Skype to the most remote lodges in the middle of the rainforest. What about malaria? He said people in the tourist sectors sleep under mosquito nets, and though it is a problem, it´s easy to treat and so he said he wouldn´t recommend taking the pills, which can make you woozy.

Looking over the map, and showing me the only two roads which are bisected by areas in which one must take a ferry or pontoon bridge, it made me want to come and write about this place. Stay tuned, you might be reading some blog posts next April sent by satellite from the remote heart of Guyana.

The Ups and Downs of the Travel Business

I'm exhausted from a day of chatting, listening, learning, agreeing, and schmoozing...all with a head cold caught from days in a van where people were sneezing. I felt so bad that I had shaken hands with people that later I switched to a Michelle-Barack fist bump, or an elbow touch, to avoid passing along my cold to any more unwitting victims at the Travel Mart.

It's funny in our industry...we're all so optimistic and upbeat, but yet so many people in the business had a terrible 2009. One tour operator in Uruguay said that the worst thing that happened was when Brazil's government announced that people shouldn't travel abroad due to swine flu. That sank their year. Others told me in low voices that it's been terrible, and that they have had to cut down their local staffs of guides and drivers.

The worst economic news of all is for the Patagonia of Chile, and has nothing to do with the economy. It's the salmon virus that has thrown more than 40,000 people here out of work and cut the salmon production by 82%. Something about too many fish in too small tanks, and when one fish catches it, even the water remains toxic for the others.

Despite these gloomy perspectives, I still caught the familiar wave of optimism that keeps our business among the world's most upbeat. I was shown maps of countries like Panama, and Costa Rica, and told about the wondrous places to see up and down those coasts. I was told about how excited people get when they return from seeing Antarctica; and the thrill people have after finishing a jungle trek deep in Peru's rainforests.

We'll get through this, yes we will, because our business always does and in the end, tourism is the most sustainable and adaptable businesses there is. Those cheering locals outside the bus put a smile on my face last night. The hundreds of locals working the catering and other jobs here counted on this big conference to help them out and I'm proud that we all came to this remote place for our meeting this year.

The Falkland Islands Want You To Come Visit

On the bus over to Travel Mart, I met a woman from the Falkland Islands. She told me that she has lived there for more than 20 years, and despite spending time in the UK, she wouldn´t trade living down there for anything. I asked her about the legacy of the war in 1982 that brought the remote islands into the spotlight, albeit before the internet and CNN. I remember hearing about the Exocet missile that sank a British frigate back when I was editing a newspaper in Portland, ME.

Today the island´s economy draws their biggest revenue from selling fishing licenses for squid to Korean and Japanese companies. At a recent conference in Spain, the Argentines convinced their hosts to take down the Falklands flag, and even remove their delegate´s desk. That caused quite a stir in the local Penguin Press, but not in the rest of the world.

I asked her about tourism, which is now the number two industry there. "We have weekly flights, so every visit is for seven days, " she told me. Though there is a famous animosity between the islands and the nearest landmass, Argentina, she said she counts many Argentine tour operators as valuable clients. She said that many visitors come to see birds, and that there are five species of penguins who live there. ´"We also allow Argentines to come for short visits to see their relatives graves on the islands, but they don´t stay that long," she said. "Visitors also like to see the battle sites, which are preserved just as they were left in 1982."

What Would It Take to Pave that Highway?

At the big cocktail party opening for Travel Mart Latin America here in Frutillar, Chile, I met a man named Jose Koechlin Von Stein. We recognized him from when we saw him last night at the Cliffs Preserve, they were the only guests besides our large contingent of grumpy journalists.

He and his wife own three hotels in Peru and we talked about the prospects for increasing tourism in Patagonia. "Why can't they pave the road, the Austral Highway?" I asked.

He answered with some wisdom gleaned over decades of living in South America. "In the 1920s, think of how your highways were in the US." he said. "Just think about it...no interstates, corruption, it was hard to get something like paving roads done. But it did happen, it just took time."

Patagonia, and Chile is like that. It takes a lot of time to catch up, and they are where the US was many, many years ago.

That has been the one thing that struck many of my fellow journalists as we bounced down terrible road after rutty avenue...that if a country wants to increase tourism, roads should be the highest priority. Because you've got to get people down here if you want them to enjoy the nature and the other attractions. There are an abundance, but infrastructure is tough.

But Patagonia's population is only about 200,000, for this whole bottom half of the country. In Santiago, that's where the millions of people are. The poor down here don't have a voice. We listened to discussions and saw maps of building roads on the remote barely populated islands below Puerto Montt, and one guide said he doubted anything would actually ever happen with the plan.

But Chile's Vice President tonight stated that his government was going to make tourism promotion a high priority..since as he explained, "it costs ten times more to train someone to work in a mine than it does to learn how to be a tourist guide."

As we drove into Frutillar, a small lakeside town, the citizens were standing on corners of the road, smiling and waving flags as the coaches full of Travel Mart participants passed by. It was heart-warming to smile and wave back at them, crowds of people celebrating that so many tourism representatives had convened in their part of Patagonia...a place that could use the jolt of good news and inspiration from a major event after their salmon farming businesses have gone bust and hard times are upon them.

Biting the Hand that Sumptously Feeds Us

We were dropped off at our luxury villa tonight, and taken for a quick tour of the sumptous property at the 8000-acre Cliffs Preserve. We saw the outdoor wood-fired hot tub, were amazed by the luxurious huge bedrooms, and dazzled by the ocean views, which in the morning would lie resplendent in front of our huge picture windows. I kept expecting a blue whale to swim by.

Then the hotel manager left and a giant argument ensued. The French writer kept saying, 'this is bullshit!' and remarking over how outraged he was that the resort doesn't allow easy access to the beach. Others mocked the concept of building relationships between guests and staff.

A couple who live in Brazil were outraged at how presumptuous it is for the resort run a program that brings US dentists in to help fix local people's teeth. "We have plenty of good dentists here in South America, why are they bringing in US dentists?" they thundered.

Sony tried to counterpunch, mentioning the fact that the resort employs lots of locals and adheres to strict green guidelines. But the socialist crowd of Chileans would have none of it.

Biting the hand that put them up in this resort for the rich, they attacked, saying that the claim that this place builds 'relationships' is crap. "Relationships with the help?" they scoffed. "That's crap.

I escaped to my sumptuous luxury room to do what I do best...write blogs and leave the arguments to those who feel such passion. For me, it's just funny to hear it going on in the next room, which, by the way, has 400 count Egyption cotton sheets. And that's not bullshit!

The Cliffs Preserve: Spectacular View at a Price

I'm digesting a fancy dinner at a fantastic place. It's called The Cliffs Preserve, and it's on Chile's Pacific coast, an 8000-acre property that caters to the ultra rich. The rate for the villas here is $1200 per person per night, with a three-night minimum. The jaded travel trade writers who I am here with sighed, saying that they have never heard of a place with rates this high.

Jimmy Anderson is the American born manager here. He's confident and convinced that there's a market for this type of luxury, and says they've got this high end here all to themselves. With rates like this you got that right. He told us that they grow much of their own food, and that nearly everything on tonight's elegant menu was sourced from within 100 kilometers of our table.

They offer boating, and horsebackriding, and kayaking, and a chance to see sea lions and penguins, and promise an experience that builds relationships. A slick slideshow we watched provided glimpses of the life their guests can experience. It was a lot like what we saw these past few days, nature, fauna, and the gorgeous ocean views you can get if you stay somewhere with a private beach. Who knows if this is a bad bet or a homerun for the South Carolina tycoon who bankrolled this impressive project for $30 million or so.

Maybe the ultra rich are craving experiences like this, where they can build relationships with local Chileans, and build up their own family's closeness by communing with nature. Jimmy said they want to be a destination that changes the way people look at life. That's a tall order, but a worthy objective, and if their target of 'aging baby boomers' who work too much do indeed come here, they will have this market all to themselves.

Touring the Comau Fjord by Boat

We spent most of today aboard a 35' yacht, cruising among the towering wooded cliffs of th Comau fjord. Nobody goes in these mountains that are so inaccessible due to the high cliffs. We came upon a massive colony of sea lions who bellowed and barked, snapping at eachother and flopping into the sea.

At about 9:30 am, a gregarious Colombian journalist discovered a bottle of Ballantine whisky and began drinking the booze on deck. His bad behavior was contagious so soon there were three morning tipplers being raucus on deck.

Our guide told us that he hoped that some day this fjord would rival New Zealand's Milford Sound in terms of tourism. It has the same incredible wildness, and cliffs that rise up with nothing civilized on top.

We motored to the end of the fjord and found fisherman picking mussels from the wall of the cliffs, free seafood that they sell in the market. Later we flew over this wild place and from above, the lack of any hint of civilization is what struck me the most.

If You're Rich, You Must Have Stolen or Cheated

We drove out of the small lakeside town of Puerto Varas to an elegant boutique hotel called Casa Molino. We were greeted warmly by Angela, who owns the property with her husband Albert. We walked through the glass fronted back wall which looks over the lake, and in the distance a white covered volcano peeked with half of its top covered in clouds.

After a walk down a wooden stairway to the shore of the lake, we repaired to the patio where over Chilean chardonnay we talked about the differences between Chile and the US. Al Cherry has a unique perspective, since he's a US citzen who grew up here in Chile and spent 20 years in the US as an executive of Reebok. Now he spends his time running this and another hotel, and on the weekends he ferries his horses around to Chilean rodeos, which are horsemanship competitions and very popular.

I commented on the very rutted private road we drove up on our way to the hotel. "A month ago, I had that road graded," Al told us. "None of the other people on the street were willing to contribute one peso toward the cost. I do it every time, but now, I'm waiting, I'm going to wait and let someone else step up." This led us to more discussion of the opinion of the rich here in Chile.

"In the US, we might meet a successful guy and all want to ask him about how he did it, and get ideas about how we might also become rich like him. In Latin America, when someone meets a rich guy, their reaction is to want to tear him down. Their perception is that he cheated, or stole, or is corrupt in some way and that's how he got rich. It's a totally different way of viewing successful people, and it creates real divisions between classes."

We talked about the law here that makes voting mandatory, and not voting illegal. That is, unless you're not registered. "There are two million people here, between the ages of 18 and 25, who will never, ever, register to vote, because of this law. " I thought about the other innkeeper that I met when I was here in 2005, who told me the same thing. Once, the idea must have been virtuous, making everyone vote, but now it just keeps people from wanting to ever sign up.

Claustrophobia in a Dark Cabin with 6 Hours to Go

Last night I breathed a sigh of relief after an uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation. I was seated way, way back in row 37 of the Boeing 737, tucked into a window seat. The flight was about two hours old, and the movies were long over. Beside me a Chilean woman snoozed, everyone was asleep and the plane was dark. I suddenly felt anxious, nervous, and claustrophobic there in my little bubble. I didn't want to wake up the woman beside me, but finally I did. Ugh, I had to get out of there...but where was I going?

I thought about the duration of this flight. Eight hours. Then I thought about my trip to Venice in October--6 or 7 hours--and then with an even more strenuous sigh, contemplated New Zealand in November--12 hours. Oh God, I've got to cancel, I thought. I can't put myself into one of these tubes for a long flight like this again! I got almost panicky, thinking that no matter how hard I wanted to get out, I was trapped. I had to wake her up.

I strode down the dark aisle, sweating and feeling anxious. The claustrophobia was a new feeling, I had only briefly had this before. I went up front and spoke to a flight attendant who was in the galley. "Do you ever get claustrophobic on the plane?" I asked. "No, she said, and gave me a newspaper. Later as I nervously paced trying not to get in the her way, she offered me a large seat where the other FAs were just getting up from their naps.

I took my seat there, stretched out a bit with no one next to me, and a wave of relief washed over me as I plugged in my headphones and soothed myself with familiar music. Ok, ok, I will go on my next two trips, and probably fly many more times after this. My advice to anyone who shares an experience like this: They have ways to make you more comfortable, all you need to do is ask.

Across a Frozen River, And Across a Border

I'm crouching down and looking out the window at a plane that's pushing back from the jetway at Bradley Airport. I'm off on another adventure, leaving behind the hussle and bustle of the businesses for a faraway place in South America. This will be a long day of flying, and thank goodness BDL has free Wi-Fi and plugs!

Last night we watched a movie called "Frozen River," that told the story of Mohawk Indians who smuggle people into the US. The way they do it is over the frozen river, which at first the white woman played by Melissa Leo is leery of. "Semis drive over this," says the tough, short-haired Mohawk woman named Lily Two Trees. The pair make an unlikely team, brought together because Lily drove off with her deadbeat husband's car. It seems that this model, with its button latch hood, is prized by the smugglers, who bundle the confused Chinese or Pakistani citizens into its trunk to drive them across to freedom, a dingy motel on the New York side.

Susan needs money to pay for the doublewide trailer that she's been dreaming of, a few steps up from where Lily lives, in a tiny 20-foot RV which is very cold at night up there near the Canadian border. The men tow the giant modular home to her decrepid trailer residence, but tell her they won't leave it unless she has more money to pay them. So when Lily tells her that putting these people in their trunk can yield them wads of cash, she goes for it.

The movie portrays the sad life up there, where the Mohawk 'Res' straddles a lake, and goes across the US/Canada border. It makes an idea place for smuggling, much to the chagrin of the local state troopers. They are on to Lily and warn Susan, but she needs that final payment so bad, well, it's worth it.

They're calling my flight to board, so I'll just say, well it doesn't always end up the way you want, yet the film progresses into a somewhat comfortable conclusion. From here on out, Readuponit will be about Chile and Patagonia, I can't wait to set foot again in South America!

That Damn Bottle Cap Emailed My Doctor!

Here's something interesting....more than half of all prescriptions that are handed out to patients are never filled. I read a story in the WSJ this week that contained several ideas about how to remedy this problem, that makes drug companies and doctors unhappy. It's behavioral economics. The story by Michael Sanserino described a Cambridge MA start-up called Vitality, Inc. They make a cap for prescription bottles called 'GlowCap,' which uses lights and sounds as reminders for its owners to open it up and consume the pills inside.

The caps also contain a radio transmitter that sends email to doctors, relatives and others about how often it is opened. Behavioral psychologists say that people do care about what others think...and how they act is deeply affected by others.

Another way to make people take their meds is to bring the pills right to their doorsteps. Lowe's the big home improvement store chain, worked with Express Scripts on such a program, and saw the use of its home delivery service climb from 14-42% of eligible employees.

Many Newspapers Still Live in the Dark Ages

I am proud to say that we've got more than 2500 followers on Twitter. I learn so much from this platform, this misunderstood 'microblogging' forum. So many cool links, so many stories to share. Check out this graphic, it shows that 24% of newspapers have not even begun to use Facebook or Twitter or YouTube to disseminate their news. Wow.

At 13, Delcie Was Already A Businessman

In yesterday's Daily Hampshire Gazette business page, a feature caught my eye. It was about a man named Delcie Bean who has grown up quickly, and told his Horatio Alger tale of success starting out at a very early age.

Bean began his business career by founding a computer repair business called Vertical Horizons Computer Services. He helped family members and friends navigate their confusing email and how to browse the web. His clients had to come pick him up and bring him home for the work, since he was just 13 years old.

Today Bean can boast that he's got seven full-time technicians, an office manager and a full-time sales rep. He decided to buy an existing business called Valley Computerworks back in 2003, and he moved it to a building he bought on Rt 9 in Hadley. Now he's reached the ripe old age of 23. He told reporter Deborah Oakley that his precocious success as a mere child "is a double edge sword. There is some level of hesitancy when they realize [his tech support service] is going to be run by someone 18 or 19."

Aaron Vega: A Good Choice for Holyoke City Councilor

I don't vote in the city of Holyoke, yet tonight I spent time listening to a candidate for city councilor in this fine city. His name is Aaron Vega, and I think he got Cindy and Leona's vote. We were invited to our friend John Lachappelle's house and mingled with our friends and neighbors while we heard the candidate give us the pitch.

It's refreshing to see a young guy like Vega step up to the plate and join the fray. Many of us complain about problems in our cities and towns, but few of us have the stones to actually take out papers and run. Vega's dad is well known in the city, and his wife is another asset, warm and approachable, and she's as enthusiastic as he is about getting elected and making a difference.

Vega has some interesting ideas, like getting downtown neighborhoods cleaned up by fining landlords who don't clean up and rewarding the ones who do. He also said that Holyoke should market itself as a green city, with our bounteous hydropower and the potential for windmills on Mount Tom. All in all, Vega has energy and charm, two attributes that will be key to succeeding in a crowded 15-member council.

So far I haven't convinced Cindy to put up a Vega lawn sign, but who knows...she liked him and I think he's got a lot of promise on November 3.

Getting Back on the Road in a Big Way

My travel schedule gets ramped up big time over the next few months. This Friday, I have to go to bed early because I am flying at 6:30 am down to Miami, en route to Patagonia Chile. There I will visit the rainy rugged area and also spend a few days schmoozing with tourism officials at Travel Mart Latin America.

I am eager to meet people there because South America interests me and I want to see more of the continent. It will be speed dating; 15-minute interviews with 70 different tourism reps, airlines and tour operators. Then we will fly up to the north and spend time in the desert, where it only rains about five times per year.

I will be heading to Murano, Italy, one of the islands that makes up Venice at the end of October. I will stay for two days in a family-run hotel and learn about the glass and mirror business that's centered on the island. Then I'll join a huge contingent of journalists and tour operators in Venice to finish out the week.

In November I'll fly to New Zealand with Cindy and our trip will take us to Stewart Island, at the very bottom of the country's south island. One of our cafe customers has been telling me we should go there, and now it's going to happen. I can't wait to tell Fiona the Kiwi we're actually going to see her hometown.

Some Day, We'll Sail the Seas Using Batteries

I spent some time in the heat of the summer on a boat off the Massachusetts coast. I was told that this vessel used very little fuel, because they cruised at a leisurely 8 miles per hour. I read today about an even more economical way to cruise on water, using hybrid powered boats.

According to Earth Talk, in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, there are now ferries that ply the San Francisco Bay and use electric powered batteries. The Hornblower ferry over to Alcatraz and Angel Islands is powered by several alternative energy sources, including a hybrid diesel-electric system powered by solar cells and wind turbines right on the deck.

There's also a 24-foot boat you can buy that uses just 11 cents for an entire day of cruising. A small diesel motor kicks in when the eight batteries run down.

The US Navy is also interested in hybrid boats, since they love being able to sneak up on the enemy without making that putt putt sound of a gas engine.

Shelley's Always Got an Idea Percolating

Shelley Rotner, a New Yorker and Northamptonite, is a woman with a million projects percolating in her head. I met her while I was traveling in the Alps last year, and she told me about an upcoming children's book--her 32nd--that she was working on. It's just one of the many ideas she comes up with and often realizes into print.

She dropped off a copy of "Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth," for me the other day, and it's become my grandson Nathan's favorite book. That's because the funny book is so simple, a four-year-old can read it to his mom.

Each page is a series...a likely doggie situation, and an unlikely one. So we see the dogs fetching balls, then we see a dog up to bat at the plate. We see a dog riding in a car, and then by God, the dog is DRIVING the car! Needless to say, to a four-year-old, these improbabilities are the stuff of wild guffaws.

I know many people in my line of work who have written books. And I know many more who say they want to write a book, or started writing a book, or some day will write a book. Shelley, with 32 under her belt, trumps them all. Congrats to her and co-author Diane deGroat for this new accomplishment!

The Real Meaning of Thanks...Helping Someone Else

My editor Steve and I got this email from one of our freelance contributors to GoNOMAD this morning. What can be more satisfying than getting an email like this?

Over the years you’ve taught me to fine tune my writing; to listen and learn about what an editor wants and deliver on it on time, every time; you’ve taught me to analyse what a magazine and website’s about and how I could contribute to it. I don’t think you did this knowingly but I need to thank you for it. Your guidance has been like gold to me, and because of it my client base has become more and more impressive and now I’m a regular contributor to international names like Time Magazine - and I’ve just signed and returned my first contract with National Geographic, who have also asked me to contribute to a travel book they’re putting together. This, I know, would not have been possible had I not known the two of you. Thank you guys!

xxx

Thank you Cindy, we wish you best of luck in your future endeavors and will miss your contributions to GoNOMAD, which of course are still up on our site!

Windmills Are a Bird's Worst Friend, Next to Cats

I've always been a big fan of windmills, and of birds. In yesterday's WSJ, Robert Bryce makes a case that these giant turbines are getting a free ride by not having to account for all of the birds that their spinning turbines kill. Bryce claims that oil companies have had to pay in federal court for the deaths of birds covered with spilled oil, yet "the wind industry has been given a 'get out of jail free card,' since they've killed thousands more birds than other industries.

Altamont Pass is what you drive through when you go from LA to SF by car, and up here, an average of 80 golden eagles die each year, sheared by the whirring older technology turbines. A study showed that a whopping 10,000 birds, all protected by the migratory bird act, die every year here.

Yet why persecute the wind turbines? What about that fierce killing machine that lives among us? Housecats are responsible for at least one billion bird deaths every year. But, Bryce writes, when these attacks happen, nobody brings them to court like they do oil companies.

While Cracking the Lobsters, I Can't Resist Reading

Last night my daughter brought back 15 lively live lobsters from the Scarborough Maine lobster pound. While the bright red crustaceans sat cooling off on the rail of the deck we set the table for an outdoor lobster feed. I found some papers from the fireplace and laid them out so we could begin cracking apart the lobsters.

We didn't have any lobster crackers nor even the little picks used to extract the delicate white meat from the crevices...so we set up an upside down mortar and pestle and began wacking the legs and spattering eachother with lobster juice across the table. I kept looking down and reading the newspapers that were laid below us at they turned grey with the moisture of the leaky lobbies.

I couldn't help being drawn to a story in the WSJ about an attempt to sabotage a billionaire industrialist's helicopter by two maintenance workers. In Mumbai, employees of Air Works Ltd poured pebbles and dirt into the gearbox of Anil Ambami's Bell helicopter. The big guy was supposed to use the craft the following morning. According to the story, one of the perpetrators of the crime was later found run over by a commuter train. Police say that he committed suicide because of the stress of being an accused murderer.

Fireside Fun on Green Lane

Once again the star of our evening's show was the firepit, that I transported in the back of the truck down to Cindy's for our little dinner party.

En route in the black of night, the screen top blew out of the back of the truck, so when I arrived in Holyoke it was gone...lost some where on I-91 I guess.

I cooked an entire feast of vegetables, the star of the night being the fried green tomatoes that I picked myself at Olga's Farm in South Hadley. We also picked guests who mixed easily and laughed even easier, so it was convivial and a great mix for the whole night.

When night fell we gathered by the fire and continued our conversation, at one point we had four iphones all going exchanging Facebook connections in a modern day version of swapping business cards. At 1 am it was finally time to say goodnight,

Rambling Around South Hadley to Find Flowers

I took a ride out into the country, exploring the village of South Hadley Falls, where I saw that one of the only thriving businesses are roadside bars. Many of the old style bars had their doors open, soaking in a bit of sunshine in their dark insides. I passed through the center of South Hadley, saw crowds of Mt Holokers getting acquainted with their new school and then drove down Pearl St.

A man had two bikes for sale, and I pulled over, interested in one for my son Sam. A man with only a few teeth came out, and told me that it was a valuable collector's item, a 5-speed Mossberg "It was built in New York," he said. I asked him if there was a farmstand around here. "Atkins, down in Amherst," he said. "No, a farm, a stand you know. "Ohhh, well, we get our corn from Olga.

Olga turned out be a white-haired grandmother who speaks Polish, as I heard when a trio of Polish speaking customers were ahead of me. I asked her about flowers, and she handed me a sharp little knife. I headed out to the field to select stems amidst buzzing friendly bees.

I passed another house with a sign out front that said Turkeys...now taking Holiday orders. I took a few photos of the turkeys enjoying the sun and crowding around their water dispenser. It was a lovely September day, and this part of the world looked beautiful.

Friends Who Get You? Priceless!

Most of my regular pals were out of town. Phone messages left, emails sent, nobody around. I read on Facebook that this is a popular week to take off for vacation, since everybody gets that extra day on Monday off too. Despite my lack of connections I cruised the Avalon down to Northampton and parked myself at the bar at Paradise Tavern, and asked if they had any fresh mint.

"Sure," said the 'tender, a friendly lanky guy, and he promptly made me a very well done Mojito, tall and icy. I sat with my drink as the woman next to me looked down at her phone. There was a seat between us, and I sensed that gulf between my age and hers. Yet I wanted to chat with someone and I had no friends in sight. "Have you been here late at night?" I asked, wanting to know more about the amazing metamorphisis that this bar is famous for, turning from a mellow adult hang out to a wild and wooly 20-something club. "Oh yeah, it's amazing, so many people in here," she answered.

I ordered some food and sipped my drink. About 30 minutes later a friend I had emailed showed up at the bar, and I think my relief was palpable. It was great to see him, and we didn't stop talking for the next two hours. We talked about our jobs, and our girlfriends, we talked about my employees and his boss, and a lot of other topics that kept us rapt and attentive.

Having friends who meet you at the bar is wonderful; having something to talk about, well, that's priceless.

Cuban Says "Kill the Parasites" By Not Letting Them Link

Jim Romensko wakes up at 5 am every morning and heads to a cafe with his laptop. There he sifts through the news about the media business that earns him the biggest paycheck at the Poynter Institute. Today his column included a dispatch from Newsweek, in a column by Daniel Lyons.

Lyons writes about billionaire Mark Cuban's idea of how big media can "exterminate the parasites," the hated news aggregators who have made a lucrative business out of publishing links to old media's on line stories.

Cuban said that money-losing newspapers and magazines should declare war on the Drudge Reports and the Huffington Posts of the world by using a piece of software that blocks incoming links from aggregators. "With a few lines of code, the old-media guys could snuff them out."

The aggregators claim that they provide readers for the old media sites, since many people click through to the original source to read the whole story. Cuban asserts that very few readers actually do, and that having the content on the aggregators sites surrounded by ads is like giving guns to the enemy to fight a war.

But here's the rub, as Lyons points out...this trick will only work if everyone does it. It would have to be a mass effort, every big guy doing it at one time

My Favorite Day of the Year: Tag Sale Day in Deerfield

There's a hum in the air, that distinct buzzing of the late summer early fall insects. The sunlight is clear, and direct, punishing at some points of the day, then turning to a softer glow in the late afternoon.

I'm passing out flyers, one by one, one in the hand of each businss owner to put up in the window. I felt like by handing each one out, I was valueing them each a little more, and that they would be put up, rather than thrown out after I leave.

It's time for Tag Sale Day in Deerfield, my creation from last year that drew 60 sales. I am hoping that we have 80 this year! I am keeping it all simple, the poster is sparse but I think effective, and I love the fact that it's about having sales at each person's house. Nothing central, no big event, just a series of simultaneous little ones. Collective action.

The Son Got the Best of His Father Frank

You don't hear much about Frank Sinatra Jr. Nat Hentoff wrote a piece praising the son of the famous singer in last night's WSJ. I learned that the younger Frank as become as beloved to his musicians as his dad did, and about an honor that was bestowed upon him that makes a grammy look like, well, not as much.

Sinatra of course, grew up around big bands and today is thought to be one of the few singers with a deep depth of experience with the genre, says Hentoff. "There are even fewer with such real-feeling for the lyrics of a song and such a knack for investing a song with style and personality."

When his dad was getting old, a year or so before he died, he sent his son Frank Jr out to find songs 'made up of ballads that swing, all songs I've never sung before.' One song that the elder Sinatra especially liked was "The People That You Never Get To Love," by Rupert Holmes. Age caught up with the father, and he never did record it. So every time he performs Frank Jr sings this song with the Nelson Riddle arrangement.

Hentoff asked Frank why he didn't record more, and was told there's not that much demand. Instead he keeps busy touring with a 38 piece big band in big casinos and at state fairs. He remembers his father taking him to Vegas and becoming entranced by the spirit of the late-night big band sessions. Like his father, he is known for rigorous rehearsals before a gig.

In 1988, Sinatra was asked by his father to be the conductor and musical director for his last years. The senior had outlived all of his conductors, and he was frail, and needed someone he could trust. But performing was so important to him that it would keep him alive longer to be able to do it. The son put his own career on hold to be there for dad.

Peter What The Hell is Wrong With You?

Reading the local paper, I find an account that startled me. That's because I can't believe how cruel and mean men can be to women. Take Peter, featured in a big local story in the Recorder. He shows up in the doorway at his ex-girlfriend's house late at night, uninvited, and tells her to take him back. She refuses, scared, and tries to call 911, but he's cut the line. He forces her into a car and beats her, kicks her and drags her by the hair. Oh, she's also three months pregnant.

Then Peter, said the account, threatens to stab her with a pen as she tries to crash the car near the Sunderland Police station, to draw someone's attention to the fact that her life is being threatened by a psychopath. He runs off, and is located at a Charlemont trailer park.

But of course this isn't his first incident of beating up his woman. He entered his former wife's house in 2006 and beat her up, and smashed all of the windows on her cars. A month later he attacked her again and was finally jailed.

Again and again I read about men like this. What happened that caused him to act like this; is rejection that painful?