In January 1841, a 21-year-old man named Herman Melville set sail out of New Bedford, Massachusetts as part of the crew aboard the whaler Acushnet.

His experiences at sea laid the foundation for the novel Moby-Dick, and if you’re a fan of history or literature, you may want to be at the New Bedford Whaling Museum starting at 8 bells (noon) on Saturday, January 9, 2010 for the annual Moby-Dick Marathon.

A wide variety of people (including descendants of Melville) will read the entire novel, in 8-10 minute intervals, from start to finish.

Parts of it will be read in other languages like Portuguese, since there’s a large Portuguese influence in this part of New England.

From the Museum’s Web site:

“Starting at 4 bells in the 1st dog watch (6 p.m.), light whaleship fare, including grog and cider will be served. Coffee and snacks will be available throughout the night, with breakfast to follow at 8 bells (8 a.m.) in the morning watch. Join with us in this celebration of our heritage. Come at any time. Leave at any time. The Marathon lasts approximately 25 hours.”

Until this year, the Marathon was held on January 3, the day Melville actually sailed in 1841, but it’s been moved to the first weekend after the 3rd so that more can take advantage of a weekend trip.

The Whaling Museum….located at the perfect New England-y address of “18 Johnny Cake Hill”….is nicely laid out and a must for history buffs.

They also have a museum blog and are on Twitter (if you tweet about the reading, use hashtag #mdm14,) the photo-sharing site Flickr, Facebook and they have a YouTube Channel.

The seafaring town of New Bedford itself is good for a stroll, so I recommend a visit if you’re in southeastern Massachusetts.

A similar marathon reading event was held at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut in summer 2009, aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last surviving wooden whaling ship (it was built the year that the Acushnet sailed with Melville aboard.)

I’m not sure if they’re going to repeat the event in 2010, but the video below warms the heart with a topside deck full of Melville readers.

If you can’t see the embedded player box, click here to see the Mystic CT Moby-Dick Marathon video on YouTube.

A few years ago, I visited Geysir Park in West Iceland, a major attraction in one of the most volcanically active places on Earth.

By convention and history Iceland is a part of Europe although this island nation sits on the newest land on the planet — land that’s being formed as the North American and European plates slowly pull apart. It’s the home of the first geyser, the one that gave every other propulsive plume of steam and sulfur its name. Geysir itself isn’t reliable any more, but the park has another star now, a geyser called Strukkor, which means “The Churn”. It erupts every five to ten minutes or so.

The whole hot springs area smells like sulfur, but that’s not remarkable in Iceland — much of the landscape is steaming and smells faintly to strongly sulfuric.  Strukkor sits behind a casuallyroped-off area, and it at first it seems like not much is happening — like the gathered crowd is for some reason staring expectantly at gray slabs of rock.  Growing closer, I could hear some gurgling and closer still, I could see the sounds were coming from a crater which seemed to be filled with swirling water, all ringed by a rock wall.

Presently, the water in the center starts to rise into a dome. The dome is electric, glowing, neon blue.  It falls back into itself a few times, as if gathering its strength. Each time the dome subsides, the assembled let out small sighs.  Then, finally, the dome grows and grows and suddenly it blows a plume of white steam and clear water  high into the air. There are whoops and applause and cheers in many languages. (I happened to be standing near a French contingent so I heard “oh la la la la la.”)  And then water rushes back into the crater, and also out and down the rock. And then the whole thing starts again.

That was pretty cool, but the highlight of the day for me was nearby — a hot spring pool called Blesi, “The Blazer”, a name I assume it earns due to its amazing heat.  Blesi is an entire pool of that remarkable blue water of Strukkor’s dome, and it is the bluest blue I’ve ever seen, the Platonic form of blue. (I am slightly obsessed with the color blue, as careful readers will no doubt recall.)

Blesi is undisturbed by eruptions, and does not draw a crowd, so I stood over her a long time, letting the sulfur steam pass over my face. I wondered about that pure blue color afterwards. Was it a reflection of the sky? It seemed unlikely, a nearby pool, which was of a cooler temperature, was clear and I could see down to gray rock. I heard someone explain that the blue was due to the presence of algae, but the high temperatures made that seem unlikely.

Later, I consulted The Geography of Iceland, and learned that waters in high temperature geothermal areas contain blue-grey boiling clay, “the color due to sulphur compounds of iron which form when sulphuric acid dissolves the rock.”

It’s the last week of the year, so I’m in the mood to confide.  It’s curiosities like that — and their eventual satisfaction — that keep me traveling as much as I do.  There’s something wonderful to me about knowing that the bluest blue I’d ever seen was, in fact, boiling clay.  I find it equally wonderful to know that Mister Clean products are Meister Proper in Germany, as I found out in a jet-lagged wandering through a drug store in Frankfurt one time, or that a good way to dry mushrooms in Shanghai is to dump them on a plastic tarp on a busy sidewalk. My life would be the poorer if I didn’t know that Hackensack, New Jersey used to be called New Barbadoes, or that sick immigrants to the United States were first quarantined in Staten Island Marine hospital.

I’m sure I could find out much of what I learn from (or because of) traveling with access to an internet connection and a good library. But if I didn’t travel, I wouldn’t know what little things to wonder about.

“Details are the thing. God preserve us from commonplaces,” Chekhov once wrote.  I’m with him. And I wish you a fascinatingly detailed 2010.

From the Perceptive Travel webzine: Strange Sensations in Iceland

There are many ways to explore a city. You can ride the buses, walk the streets, or take numerous tours. But my alltime favorite way to explore a new city is by segway.

I first discovered this fun and interesting way mode of transport a couple of years ago when in Madrid, Spain.

I met up with Antony Bruce, the owner of the Madsegs Tour Company, at the Plaza de Espana in front of the statues of Don Quixote and his faithful servant Sancho Panza. And under their watchful eyes, I learnt the two basics of Segway travel: lean forward and the segway moves forward, lean backwards and the segway moves backwards.  Then it was a short practice around the Plaza and we are good to go.

First stop was the Templo de Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple given to Spain in 1968. The Temple once stood in the Valley of the Nile but it’s continued existence was threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam. So the Egyptian government dismantled the historic site and freely gave it to Spain in 1968. Stone by stone, the Spanish government reconstructed the ancient Temple, opening it to the public in 1971

A brief stop at the Temple and then we zoomed off to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace), Plaza de Oriente and the adjacent Almudena Cathedral. In the courtyard of the Almudena Cathedral, we were given advanced lessons in segway ‘gliding’ and the opportunity to re-key the segway to a faster speed.

Weaving through the small streets and plazas, we received a running commentary about the history of Madrid. We passed by churches, statues, and Sobrino de Botin, the world’s oldest restaurant made famous by Ernest Hemminway in his book The Sun Also Rises.

Arriving in the Plaza Mayor, we stopped for a well deserved break. We are served food and drink and allowed to glide around the Plaza for one last play. Then it was time to return to where we started. No one could believe that the three hour tour was finished. No one wanted to give back their segway. Some even considered booking another tour…

Read more Segway adventures:  

Segway through the Sonoma Vineyards

In Texas (and I assume other Southwestern US states) the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays means it’s time for tons of tamales.

They are made year-round, of course, but are particularly prominent in December.

From the excellent NPR story (with lovely photos) Tamales for Christmas Are A True Texas Tradition:

“The corn masa-and-meat bundles — individually wrapped in corn husks and then steamed — are part of the traditional Mexican celebration of las posadas, which commemorates Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter before the birth of Jesus.”

Every town has its favorite local places to pick up your order (for those who don’t throw a tamalada tamale-making party themselves) but I wanted to mention a year-round Texas Hill Country tamale and Tex-Mex food restaurant between Llano and Burnet, next to scenic Lake Buchanan – the Tamale King.

I love that on their business card under the highway address, it says, “Next to Phillip’s Chevron.”

My parents, who have lived in the area for decades, tell me that the owners started out under a nearby tree, selling tamales and other items out of a portable cooler.  Years ago they bought property, built a restaurant and are still expanding.

The menu is extensive and well-priced, the decor is colorful and the delicious tamales are $12/dozen.  Not cheap, but not bad for handmade, served at one of the few non-fast-food joints in the area and one of the few Tex-Mex restaurants as well.  You can get them To Go; there were a bunch of people running in to do just that on the day I visited.

The well-regarded Canyon of the Eagles Lodge and Nature Park is nearby as well, if you’d like to stick around after eating all of those tamales.

It was raining on my last night in Venice, but I put on my heels anyway, and minced through the puddled pavers of the Riva degla Schiavoni to Al Covo for a cozy supper.

He was sitting at the next table, facing me, although I didn’t notice him until I was paying the check. He had dark clipped hair, brown eyes and he wore a lavender sweater. Around his neck was a pink and lavender scarf, shot through with silver thread. He wore a wedding ring, and there was something in the way he was sitting with the woman opposite him that suggested she was his wife — familiarity without conversation. She was wearing a complicated beige sweater and jeans.

The meal was ending, we were signing the check, and while I was gathering my things, I felt his eyes on me. I looked up, and yes, he was staring at me so I looked away quickly, but then but made myself look back and he was still staring at me. But not really staring, no, he was regarding me,  and his brown eyes were filled with unmistakable judgment: negative.  I’d been traveling in Italy a week at that point, so I’d seen The Look before, enough to grant it a title case, and it was, I was quite sure, related to my outfit.  Which is to say: not European.

What was I wearing that night? Jeans (nice ones!), and a cream colored sweater. Not as complicated as the sweater his woman was wearing, but still: nice.  I felt like giving him the finger, but instead I walked away.

Days earlier:

“I just love looking at the Italian men and their nice shoes,” my friend sighed.  This was at the beginning of the trip, before Venice had become annoying. We were lazily leaning on the rail of the vaporetto and watching a group of young Italian men get off at Accademia. We giggled and went back to admiring the palazzos along the Grand Canal, but it was a conversation we’d return to over our week in Italy, as we gradually began to tally up the times we’d seen The Look, mostly from women, the flicking of the eyes up and down and then frank, blank, absence of approval. (“I feel like a pudgy, dowdy, awkward American,” I moaned in my journal. Not unlike high school, except for the word “American”. )

It was, in fact, a continuation of a conversation I’ve been having with myself since I started traveling to Europe, which is: why do these people look so much better than I do?

At the Rome airport,  a young woman, off the red-eye from New York. Patterned stockings, suede boots to the knee with suede fringe that descended to mere millimeters above the floor. A bright orange stiff leather suitcase, and a slim emerald leather satchel slung across her hips, all encased in a black fitted coat and a blue scarf, just so.  Awaiting my connection to Venice, a woman, maybe in her late 40s, early 50s. The burgundy of her nails matches the burgundy leather stripe on her purse. The purse is also lavender, which does not match, but goes perfectly with, the precise muted blue of her jacket. All of which goes with the grey, knee-length skirt. A  man with salt and pepper hair and a long nose, collar propped up on black overcoat, black scarf, again just so. Even the  people wearing sneakers, jeans, and t-shirts, and even those with the imperfect figures, the muffin tops, seemed more carefully calibrated more elegant and somehow better than what I come across in airports and other places here in the States.

It seems to me that the first step is to articulate what the difference is between the American Look and the European Look.   Fashion magazines and blogs make this something of an evergreen topic, but descriptions are either too specific to make for a broader theory, or so vague as to be meaningless. To wit, on the Paris look: “It’s all about a retro urban ensemble that’s a little worn, a little designer, fairly neutral, full of character, unmatched, eclectic, always accessorized and never sporty.”  “Your bag should be no bigger than your dog.”

Over the past couple of years, during trips to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Antwerp and of course, this recent trip to Venice, I’ve taken stabs at trying to articulate the characteristics of the European Look.  Attention to detail. The same soil once occupied by the Roman empire, the Renaissance. Greater comfort with euphemisms, with the process of reconciling the ugly with the beautiful. Precision. Monochromatic color schemes. Neatness. Confidence. Better tailoring. A social safety net. A different relationship to time. Money. (See this interview on one of my favorite blogs, Deep Glamour, for more on how money affects style.)

At the same time, I’ve also questioned whether these fashion differences that I’m observing are as widespread as I think.  Am I suffering from confirmation bias? That’s an error in observation that makes you only notice what supports your theory, or, as Francis Bacon puts it in  “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (…) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects[.]”

Have I ignored the European schlumps and fail to consider the lovely-attired Americans that come into my field of vision, who would fit the bill in every way if they were not American? Have I failed to notice their look? (Related concern in re: The Look. Paranoia, insecurity, both?)