When you think of Charles Darwin — should you think of him at all — you might call up images of the tropics in the Galapagos Islands, or the harsh climate of Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, or possibly monkeys and courtrooms in Tennessee. All of those have connections with the nineteenth century scientist, but with the exception of five years spent voyaging around the world on the HMS Beagle, Darwin spent most of his life and did most of his groundbreaking thinking and writing at home in rural Shropshire, in the English midlands, not far from the border between England and Wales. It was there that eight songwriters gathered, in a farm house that was already old in Darwin’s time, to create a group of songs to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.

That in itself would have been challenging enough. Added in to The Darwin Song Project, : although each musician was an accomplished writer and performer in the folk music world, for the most part they did not know each other at all. In addition, they’d have to perform the songs at an already sold out concert at the end of the week they’d spend together, a concert which would be recorded for an album and taped for a program to be broadcast on the BBC. It seems only right that the song they decided on to open the concert and the recording was called Trust in the Rolling Ocean. It finds Darwin jumping head first into voyages to unknown lands.

That song was a collaboration among four of the writers, Karine Polwart, from Scotland, and Jez Lowe, Rachael McShane, and Stu Hanna, all from England. Many of songs are collaborations, while a a few, such as American Krista Detor’s meditation on time, change, and mystery called Clock of the World, were written by a single artist.

The flourishing strangeness and attraction of tropical lands comes up in the song Turtle Soup. Darwin is on the run in the western outlaw style ballad We’ll Hunt Him Down, and From Miss Emma Brawley finds an indignant woman setting Darwin straight on man and monkeys. Deep questions of faith, family, and facing change come into play beyond the science and the controversy, as well. Mother of Mysteries, written by American Mark Erelli along with Karine Polwart, puts Darwin the questioner front and center. Erelli has a master’s degree in evolutionary biology, “but I felt that stuff was tangential to any songs we were going to write. It was really more about the man than the theory,” he says.

That’s a conclusion each of the artists came to, although they each did differing sorts of research while preparing for the project. “I wasn’t too bothered by the science side of things,” Emily Smith says. .“I don’t grapple with evolution, it’s not really bothered me about where we come from or how old we are and what not.” Smith, from Scotland, mixes both traditional material from Scotland and her own original songs in her work. “I was much more drawn to his personal life,” she says, “and his relationship with Emma and the children.” Darwin and his wife Emma shared a deep love, and deep differences over ideas of faith. Smith, along with Stu Hanna and Jez Lowe, gets to the heart of that elegantly and simply in Save a Place :

Farewell my love
Close though you be
Your mind is many many miles away
From your children and me

The world you spent traveling is here
at your feet:
Is there a way to make it all complete?

At the end of the week, all the songs, styles of collaboration and co writing, and differing voices and instruments came together for the live concert, and live recording at Theatre Severn, in Shrewsbury. “The stage was brand new, too, and the day we had the concert, the theatre staff, the sound guys, us, the music — everybody was literally finding their feet everywhere, “ Smith says. “There was such potential for things to go wrong, but I think there was such huge hope in all our hearts for things to go smoothly — and I’m still amazed at how good the recording sounds. If we’d gone into a studio, you wouldn’t have gotten that energy to it.” A fine energy, indeed, excellent leads, creative backing vocals and instrumentation, and a range of thought provoking songs which reach beyond the specific details from which they arose.

“Gok Gok! Bup Bup! Gok Gok!”

Male elephants are known to be testy and often highly irritable, and the massive one staring us down just 25 feet from our jeep was definitely having a bad morning. From out of the brush deep inside Yala National Park, he lumbered towards the red-dirt road on which we were parked, our engine silenced, not another safari jeep on this hot southeastern Sri Lanka morning in sight.

He stopped mid-stride and turned towards us. We sat there, sweating, waiting for this ornery elephant to make his next move. He swayed slightly forward, stamped his front right foot, and for a minute the three of us—me, my girlfriend, and our driver/animal tracker, Nimal—thought he was about to charge.

Note: as rugged and ready to tackle Yala’s rough-and-tumble roads as our jeep was, every time Nimal turned off the engine and tried to restart it, it stuttered, gasped, and needed a second or third turn of the key to rev back up. This fact was not lost on us.

Nimal has been doing these morning tours of Yala for “at least maybe 25 years”; in other words, he knows what he’s doing. So when he saw this mighty elephant sway, he began to quietly make those odd-sounding noises: “Gok Gok! Bup Bup! Gok Gok!”. I turned and looked at him, wondering if these sounds were the only protection we had from this elephant. Whether it was because of Nimal’s calls, or just because our big-eared friend decided it wasn’t worth the effort, the elephant soon turned and walked back into the brush.

Lesson learned: trust in Nimal, Yala National Park’s wily veteran animal tracker.

Photo Copyright Brian Spencer

You know it is good when a knife is almost superfluous, the meat is so tender.

A visit to a top steak house is not cheap, but the meal is so many notches above my own comparatively puny efforts on the backyard grill that it is worth saving up the money to enjoy such bliss.

A really well-cooked steak is a marvelous foodie experience, and here are three places in the US where I’ve had that carnivore urge completely satiated:

• Plaza III Steakhouse at Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, MO. If you’ve never seen the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City (built in the 1920s in an elaborate Spanish/Moorish style) you might be surprised to find such an elaborate shopping palace in the Midwest, but no one should be surprised to find amazing steaks in a meatpacking center like Kansas City.  The Plaza III Steakhouse serves up a delicious assortment of beef strip steaks, filet mignon, T-bones, Porterhouses and prime rib.  The atmosphere and decor are more light and modern than “clubby.”
• Morton’s The Steakhouse, Chicago, IL. This place feels as though it’s been around forever (the logo is very Art Deco) but it was actually founded in 1978 and is a worldwide chain. No matter;  it still feels like a restaurant that your very elegant uncle would take you to for dinner. The steak was divine, but I was particularly impressed with the attentive, friendly service and the signature Morton’s verbal menu (wait staff tells you the menu, but they somehow sound as though they haven’t recited it 48 times in the last hour.)  Portions are massive; split the side dishes with a dining companion.
• Cattlemen’s Steak House, Historic Stockyards District, Fort Worth, TX. The opposite of, er, super-elegant dining, so a good option for families. Cattlemen’s seating is Naugahyde, the artwork is giant paintings of award-winning steers, the decor is Saloon Circa 1947 and there are three giant broilers (with cooks busy working) inside the dining rooms, cranking out the plates full of tender beef.  Any problems with that, cowboy?

Did I miss your favorite steak house?  I’ll bet I did; please let us know about it down in the comments.

(Disclosure:  I was a guest of Travel Media Showcase for the Plaza III meal.)

If having access to hotel WiFi, and in particular free, reliable WiFi, influences your decision on where to stay when travelling, then you’ll want to check out HotelChatter’s sixth annual Hotel WiFi Report.

The HotelChatter.com’s report lists both the best hotel WiFi and the worst hotel WiFi.

But perhaps the most useful information the report provides is this list of hotel chains offering hotel wifi ‘Always Free, All The Time’.

· Hotel Indigo
· Courtyard by Marriott Hotels
· Residence Inn Hotels
· Best Western Hotels
· Four Points by Sheraton
· Hyatt Place Hotels
· Element Hotels
· Aloft Hotels
· Red Roof Inns
· Hampton Inn Hotels
· Wyndham Garden Hotels
· Wingate By Wyndham
· Drury Hotels

HotelChatter.com has also compiled a series of ‘where to find free hotel wifi guides’ for travellers heading to London, Las Vegas, and New York City.

(photo from sxc.hu)

I don’t usually take my phone with me when I’m running at home, but I often do when I’m traveling. For one thing, it means I’ll have a map on me if I get lost, and it’s easier to carry my BlackBerry than a folded up map.

Anyway, I went running this morning, and in an unprecedented event for me, I found myself totally unable to resist snapping a couple of phone pictures as I ran down Moonstone Beach Boardwalk. (I’m in the midst of a 10-day California road trip — I flew into Los Angeles and will fly out of San Francisco, I was just about half way this morning.)

Now, I’ve had some amazing morning runs on this trip — along the water in Santa Monica, or on East Beach in Santa Barbara, for instance. But this morning’s run really was remarkable, as the path snaked me through wild flowers and twisted up for dramatic ocean views.

The boardwalk seems to be a part of WR Hearst State Park, and while Hearst Castle, which I toured later in the morning, was certainly over the top, I’m not sure it beat the beauty that I found running on this trail.