Our Work

Rosemary McClure on traveling to Palm Springs

Our Rosemary McClure, an award-winning travel writer, has this in-depth look for the Los Angeles Times at vacationing in Palm Springs, California, the desert get-away site. From her piece:

The Rat Pack lives again — or at least Palm Springs, once the party pad of Sinatra and the boys, does.

The Coachella Valley city, which had devolved into a down-at-the-heels caricature of a Hollywood playground, has reinvented itself: Its retro-chic look, striking scenery and hip hotels and restaurants are drawing a new generation of visitors.

And, of course, there's always the weather, a tourist attraction on its own (in winter, anyway).

The city prides itself on having 350 days of sunshine a year, a siren song that plays loudly and clearly in Canada and other frosty North America realms in the depths of winter. That's why snowbirds swarm here during the pricey high season (January through April). Besides spending wads of cash, they double the city's size to about 100,000.

Chris Kraul, our busy man in Bogota

Our Chris Kraul, who is based in Bogota, Colombia, has been very busy lately. The other day he had a piece in Barron's on potentially good investments in Latin American banks. And he also has this interview piece for KPMG with the head of Fiat Argentina on trying to sell cars in Brazil. And he has this piece for the University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge@Wharton site on Argentine ranchers switching to soy production, From his story:

In San Miguel del Monte, Argentina, fifth-generation cattleman Mario Caceres never wanted much more from life than to be a modern day gaucho tending his herd, which a few years ago topped 1,600 head of Angus cattle, the breed that has helped make his country synonymous with delicious cuts of beef.

But globalization, modernization and his country’s politics have intervened. Like hundreds of other Argentine cattlemen, Caceres is slowly leaving his cowboy life -- if not its spirit -- and becoming a farmer of row crops, notably soy, to meet increasing demand from food buyers in Asia as well as biofuel manufacturers in his native country.

Since the height of his cattle-ranching career in 2007, Caceres has converted half his two ranches’ 5,000 acres to soy and other row crops while reducing his livestock to 130 head -- a token number that he keeps, he says, largely for sentimental reasons. And he’s hardly alone. In the San Miguel del Monte district of Buenos Aires province, virtually all his neighbors on the eastern edge of the Pampas have converted in some degree or other to soy, corn, sunflower and wheat, Caceres says.

It's a microcosm of a trend spreading across Argentina. According to the Agriculture Ministry, the national herd this year will decline 22%, to 47 million head from the 2007 peak of 58.7 million head, and is expected to continue falling. 

Jamie Reno weighs in on the Aubrey Sacco story

This is unusual for us. Two of our members have now written about the same topic - the sad story of Aubrey Sacco, who has gone missing in Nepal, and the efforts of her family - including brother Morgan Sacco, a San Diego State University soccer player - to find her. Robyn Norwood wrote about it a couple of weeks ago for USA Today. Now we have Jamie Reno's take on it for ESPNW:

SAN DIEGO -- Aubrey Sacco, an accomplished athlete, scholar, musician and artist, is the brightest star in her family's universe.

"Aubrey lights up a room when she enters it," said her younger brother, Morgan Sacco. "She's an effervescent person, full of life, and she totally loves glitter -- it reflects her personality."

But a year and a half ago, the "Glitter Girl," as her family and friends call her, mysteriously disappeared.

Aubrey, then 23, was nearing the end of a five-month journey of self-discovery through India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. She graduated from the University of Colorado in 2009, with a double major in art and psychology. She taught yoga, studied meditation and volunteered to teach children in one of the region's poorest schools on this trip.

Aubrey, who'd been everywhere from Costa Rica to Greece to Thailand, took a 45-hour train trip to Katmandu, Nepal, followed by a 10-hour bus trip to Syabrubesi to get to the western tip of Nepal's Langtang National Park. But she may have made a big, perhaps even fatal, mistake when she left her laptop and other items at a hotel and headed out on the popular Langtang Trek trail alone. It was the end of the trekking season and very few other backpackers were in the area.

That was in April 2010.

 

Rosemary McClure on some travel bargains in Monterey Bay

Rosemary McClure, a veteran travel writer, has this piece in the LA Times on cheap hotels and restaurants on the Monterey peninsula -- home to Carmel, Pebble Beach and other notably pricey places. From her piece: 

Reporting from Monterey, Calif.— Clint Eastwood knows how to set a scene on screen or at Mission Ranch, his strikingly handsome hotel and restaurant in Carmel.

The hotel, a historic property, has a multimillion dollar view of the sea and beautiful grounds to match. Magenta bougainvillea spills from balconies, flowering pots decorate porches, huge cypress trees shade buildings and lawns. You'd expect a room to cost $500 a night or more.

So how about $120 a night?

Hard to believe, especially in a pricey tourist area like Carmel. But that's the starting rate for Eastwood's beautiful Mission Ranch, which he rescued from a developer.Eastwood's hotel isn't the only find we discovered in the Monterey Peninsula on a recent visit. We scoured the region and unearthed five great hotels with rates beginning as low as $79 a night during the high season (summer) and $59 a night during the low season.

We also found 10 deliciously inexpensive restaurants where you can eat for $10 or less. To top it off, we list 15 free things to do, enough to keep a family happy for a weekend or a week.

Robyn Norwood with a story of sadness, and hope

Our Robyn Norwood has this compelling piece in USA Today about a San Diego college soccer player and his family's quest to find his sister missing in Nepal. From her story:

SAN DIEGO – In the days before the San Diego State men's soccer team started readying for the season with drills and corner kicks, midfielder Morgan Sacco was 8,000 miles away in Nepal, hiking through terrain marked by landslides, leeches and snakes.

He was searching for his sister Aubrey, a 2009 University of Colorado graduate, world traveler and yoga instructor who disappeared in April 2010, while trekking alone in the Himalayas.

The family still has no answers, despite an earlier trip by Sacco's father and older brother to search for her, as well as the involvement of the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu, the FBI and the Nepali army and police.

"It was really emotional for all of us, but it was really good to see the terrain she had walked, the lodges she had stayed at," Sacco said. "But it was, again, really frustrating. We didn't find as many answers as we had hoped."

Rosemary McClure on cats, dogs, and life on the road

Our Rosemary McClure writes in the Los Angeles Times about B&Bs and hotels going to the dogs. But not to the cats. It's a story that will interest pet-owners everywhere. Except maybe folks who keep fish. Hard to take them on the road with you. From her piece:

In the age-old war between cats and dogs, the Fidos of America have scored another victory.

Their triumph revolves around the nation's bed-and-breakfast owners. Long a bastion of anti-pet sentiment, the B&B industry has grown so fond of dogs that it's luring them with special toys, treats and cushy beds. 

Cats, meanwhile, are rarely invited anywhere.

This makes my pal Darby, a handsome Wheaten terrier, giddy. He loves to travel and hates felines, so he's only too happy to hit the road and check out places to stay, especially places that don't allow cats.

In the past three years, our jaunts together have chronicled a growing dog-acceptance trend. It began with budget lodgings such as Motel 6, which has always had a soft spot in its corporate heart for man's best friend. (I haven't told Darby, but the chain also accepts cats.)

As the recession took hold, high-end hotels rolled out the grass carpet, making it clear that affluent clientele could bring Rover along; they'd even supply Evian water and down-filled dog beds.

"The economy threatened to put a lot of innkeepers out of business," said Jenn Wheaton, program coordinator for the California Assn. of Bed & Breakfast Inns (www.cabbi.com). "They found a new niche by opening their doors to travelers with pets."

 

Chris Kraul and Colombian writers on their violent nation

Our Chris Kraul has this interesting piece from Colombia in today's Los Angeles Times looking at Colombian writers Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Hector Abad Faciolince, and how they deal with the nation's long-runnng crime problems. From his story:

Vasquez said that for years his efforts to write about his country's recent history fell flat. But something clicked in 2003 when, living in Spain, he witnessed the terrorist attacks on the Madrid subway, which left dozens dead. Experiencing "a fearful society that felt vulnerable" made him try again. "Vargas Llosas said we writers are like birds of carrion; we feed during times of conflict on the worst aspects of our societies," said Vasquez.

But the gestation period takes awhile, Abad said. "Borges counseled that the time to write poetry is not when you are in love but when you are remembering having loved."

Abad said nearly 20 years passed before he could write about the death of his father, a doctor whose medical training included a fellowship at UCLA under public health pioneer Dr. Milton Roemer. His initial efforts to tell the story of his father's murder by two young assassins invariably ended in tears. "Now, the wounds are scars and I can tell what happened," Abad said. "I would have betrayed by vocation if I had not told it."

Comparing Colombian books to unquestioned classics written after the Mexican Revolution such as "Los de Abajo" by Mariano Azuela and "Pedro Paramo" by Juan Rulfo, professor Hugo Ramirez in Bogotá says it's premature to talk of a new literature arising from his country's recent past. "We're still counting the bodies, evaluating the sociological damage," said Ramirez, who teaches literature at University of the Andes. "A sign that the time has arrived may be when we see writers take a humorous look at what happened, when we're able to laugh at war. But we don't have that distance yet."

Paul Tullis on growing competition on your dashboard

Our Paul Tullis has a piece for Edmunds Inside Line on telematics - the technology that gave us OnStar -- and the competition among its successors. From the story:

For more than a decade OnStar effectively ruled the telematics market, even initially outsourcing its services to other automakers. Despite that dominance — or maybe because of it — telematics technology remained dormant for years, with OnStar adding occasional safety features like stolen-vehicle tracking and convenience services such as navigation and hands-free calling.

But recently, telematics has undergone a renaissance of sorts, and suddenly OnStar has lots of competition. Ford, Hyundai, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota have introduced new offerings in the past two years, while OnStar and BMW have added significant new features to their existing systems. And thanks to the popularity and capability of smartphones, the new breed of telematics systems are set to change the way people interact with their cars.

Web-enabled smartphones and their attendant apps are providing drivers with more features and a closer connection to their cars — and, for automakers, a closer connection to their customers. And it's just getting started. "The floodgates are on the verge of opening wide to enable you to do virtually anything in your car," predicts Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics, a market research and consulting firm.

Rosemary McClure on a surprise destination in the SoCal desert

Our Rosemary McClure, an inveterate travel writer, didn't stray far from her backyard for this look at springtime in the Southern California deserts for the Los Angeles Times. From her piece:

With spring around the corner — and parts of the monument bursting into color from verbena, lupine and other wildflowers and cactus — Mountains National Monument would seem to be a natural. If only more people knew about it.

"It's an ongoing issue," said monument manager Jim Foote of the Bureau of Land Management. "We're doing our best to alert people and let them know what kinds of treasures we have and how to get out and appreciate them."

I'd learned about the park while researching new places to hike. How had I overlooked a national monument? Especially one that's 60 miles long, 13 miles wide and only 100 miles from downtown L.A.

Our Susannah Rosenblatt with a personal essay on engaging the world

Member Susannah Rosenblatt, a Wake Forest graduate, has this nice essay in her alumni magazine about engaging the modern world. From her article:

My undergraduate experiences overseas primed me for my most challenging trip yet: moving to Taiwan, where I just finished a year living with my husband, Aaron Winter (’02). Aaron took a job as a visiting professor of American literature at National Tsing Hua University while I worked as a freelance writer. He, too, spent a semester at Worrell House. But it was the semester before me, so the two of us began our courtship through transatlantic online chats. Since then, we have traveled to more than 35 countries, together and separately; traveling is a shared passion that has brought us closer. (Perhaps closer than we’d like at times — four showerless days hiking the Inca Trail can do that.) We arrived in Taiwan bumbling and illiterate, pointing at indecipherable menu listings and hopping on buses whose destination could only be guessed. Mandarin, a tonal language with thousands of non-alphabetic characters, is not something you just pick up. But little by little, we were able to make ourselves understood, and make friends.

True, I once asked a worker in the campus cafeteria for a job when I wanted juice. True, I inadvertently made sexual advances to strangers, not realizing the slang expression “I like fried rice” meant something quite different from what I intended.