Welcome to the August 25, 2010 edition of the Carnival of Cities, where we tour the world in a single blog post.

Thanks go out to the host for the previous edition, Travel with Teens, and greetings to our next host on September 8 at Let’s Do Something Different.

If you’d like to host on your blog, please contact me at Sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com. Thanks!

Off we go….

Cities in Africa

Kampala, Uganda Mark Jordahl presents 5 Things I Love About Kampala…but probably shouldn’t posted at Wild Thoughts from Uganda.

Cities in Asia

Manila, the Philippines Ryan Murphy presents Smogtown baby posted at Eleven Degrees North, saying, “This is an blog article I wrote about Manila, the capital of the Philippines.”

Macau, China Ignatius presents Macau Day 3 posted at Self Drive Tours.

Cities in the Americas

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Bill Church presents Mazeroski Gets His Statue posted at The Listening Post.

Seattle, Washington, USA Mary-Alice Pomputius presents Two more Seattle street trucks: Bring your dog! posted at Dog Jaunt.

Topeka, Kansas, USA Shalyn Marsh presents Confessions of a pizza addict posted at Visit Topeka.

New York, New York, USA mick presents 5 New York City Apartments We All Know and Love posted at PadBlog.

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Bonnie Way presents Explore: Beacon Hill Park, Victoria posted at The Koala Bear Writer, saying, “We just moved to Victoria, BC and have been exploring the city, so I thought I’d share some of our explorations with my blog readers.”

Buffalo, New York, USA Andy Hayes presents Buffalo Sightseeing posted at Sharing Travel Experiences, saying, “Think Buffalo is dull and drab? Think again!”

Galveston, Texas, USA Lee Block presents Galveston Island – Eaters Beware posted at The Travel Connoisseurs, saying, “Restaurants to dine at and to avoid in Galveston Island, Texas.”

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Christian Carollo presents ben franklin: dressed for the occasion posted at Picture Philly, saying, “The Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia showing off its Fourth of July colors.”

East Hampton, New York, USA Jennifer Miner presents Cheap East Hampton Vacation Attractions posted at The Vacation Gals, saying, “In many ways, East Hampton deserves its reputation regarding the upscale travelers that come every summer and change the small town atmosphere. But like all vacation destinations, there are alternatives to the luxury stores and activities; travel experiences here can be richer with a visit to one of these cheap or free East Hampton attractions.” (more…)

Darrin DuFord started his traveling life when he co-founded the band Motor Betty. He’s since become a travel writer, and although his curiosities lead him in many different directions, he often finds a way to work music into his travels. That’s what happened in his latest Perceptive Travel story,  A Dialog of Echoes in Uruguay.

He’s the author of Is There a Hole in the Boat? Tales of Travel Without a Car in Panama, and a contributor to Transitions Abroad, GoNOMAD, Perceptive Travel, Travel Channel’s World Hum, and McSweeney’s, among others. He lives in Queens.

Alison Stein Wellner: What made you decide to go to Uruguay?

Darrin DuFord: I planned to go to Uruguay to research their native meats — like nutria, which is a rodent.  When I was getting ready to go, I kept noticing references to candombe, a style of drumming in Uruguay. My old passion for drumming took over, and I thought, I’m first going to write about that. So I kept researching candombe, and put the nutria idea on hold.  I hooked up with a candombe teache there, and arranged a lesson.

ASW: What sort of research did you do?

DD: I ordered some music CDS from some artists from Uruguay,  and I read some of the liner notes — that helped out. I also went back and forth with my drum teacher on email.

ASW: How did you handle note-taking?  You’ve got such great details in this story, but you’re also holding a drum a lot of the time, which seem like it would make it hard to hold a notebook!

DD: It’s a process I keep on honing every time I travel.  I have small notepad with me, I don’t bring a laptop — I’m old school analogue, so I’ve got my pen and paper,  but it’s dark outside on the street, so I’m just getting lost in the sensory experience. Once I get back to the hotel, I write it all down.

“I followed the sounds of the drums ricocheting off the houses. The walls seemed alive, responding to the drums in perfect time. As a percussionist, I caught a naughty thrill hearing the irresistibly sweet—and often forbidden—marriage of drums and street acoustics. That was when I noticed Pocitos—this residential neighborhood—was noticeably well kept. I thought of David Byrne’s ruminations in his Bicycle Diaries  concerning the usual correlation between a neighborhood’s affordability and its tolerance for eccentricity. I wished he could have joined us, bike and all.” – From A Dialog of Echoes in Uruguay.

ASW: No laptop, wow.

DD: I often get criticized about not bringing a laptop with me — but I’ve never brought laptop with me, I’m afraid of getting it lost or stolen or some stupid thing. With a notepad, it’s just a stupid crappy notepad. I do prefer Moleskines. I also like hotel pens, although usually when I travel I stay at places not fancy enough to give you a pen in the room. So I “borrow” a pen from reception — a permanent loan. I also bring at least three or four pens from home, but I say it’s always nice to have a fresh pen waiting for you. At reception.

ASW [who would never criticize]: And you also take photos, do you consider that research too?

DD: Yes, in fact it’s faster to take a photo than it is to write something down. Some of my photos are not meant for Flickr, they’re ugly. I take them to save an image, so that when I look at them again, I jog my memory. I do that when it would take too long to whip out notebook.

ASW: So how did you decide on the shape of the story? I really liked how you drew a connection between the drumming and the street murals, the cars left to rust.

DD: That’s something that slowly grew as I was walking through the city. When I was there, I kept asking myself these questions — how can this city not only permit all this drumming in the streets, but why do they encourage it? Here in New York City, if you did that, the cops would come by and shut you up. So I wondered: why is this possible?  To get that answer, it took more than just watching the drummers, I thought, let’s see what’s going on in the culture of the city, what do they value? I took in the old cars, the murals — which say a lot about the artistic slant of the residents. It was a big picture way of explaining to me why they value street drumming.  Anyway, that was the only way that I could tell it –  to dig deep into the ethos of the city.

“Next morning: still coughing up essence of burning bourgeois chair leg. Someone was painting a mural on the façade of an art foundation across my hotel. I had already started a collection of mural photos from previous walks in Montevideo—Batman with a bare, protruding gut; Jesus in tighty–whities; fish with opposable thumbs. The streets were speaking. I kept listening.

I wondered what statement the rusty Studebakers and Morrises along the curb were making. Despite contributing to the city’s sooty air, the cars must have been tickling a particular aesthetic fancy. Some were junked, and were somehow entitled to parking spots as their final resting places, where they oxidized in peace: a charming respect for the elderly. It was as if removing them would be an act of vandalism.” – From A Dialog of Echoes in Uruguay.

ASW: How did you go about writing your story after you finished research?

DD: I only had a few notes in my trusty paper notepad, and once I came back,  I turned those notes into sentences on my computer. This was the first story I wrote after I typed up my notes from the whole trip.

ASW: You type up your notes as soon as you get home? That makes me feel really guilty. I know I should do that, but I never do.

DD: Yes, I type them up. I’m afraid I might lose the notebook.And when you have to type your notes, it does jog your memory  — it is a good exercise for recalling what happened.

[Pause while ASW realizes she quite agrees with this, and considers changing her ways -- but then remembers she is Conducting an Interview; this is not about her, really -- and gets back to it.]

ASW: Okay, so you type up your notes, and then what?

DD: I look at my notes and I look at my pictures, with a little help from space music which puts me in the mode.

ASW: Space music?

DD: Yeah, like Tangerine Dream, Steve Roach. It’s good for putting your mind into the thought mode.

ASW: And where do you write?

DD: Usually at my desk, although sometimes I sit on the floor, sometimes I kneel, and  sometimes I stand, so my body will stay happy with me. I’m always in front of a desk or a computer. I have a regular desktop PC, and I have a MacBook. Right now I’m sitting on the floor cross-legged sitting next to a coffee table.

ASW: I was wondering where you were on computers, since there is maybe a slight anti-technology theme? As you said, you don’t carry a laptop, and in the piece you do make a comment about iPhones: “Many Americans, for example, have become “accustomed” to their families and friends hunching over iPhones at the dinner table.”

DD: I wouldn’t call myself anti-technology, because it has a place. If I didn’t have a computer, it would have taken me a long time to type out my piece on an old fashioned typewriter. It’s a tool to get things done faster, it’s why I’m on Twitter and Facebook. But for some people, it just seems to take over their life. It was funny thing, I saw comedian doing an act when the iPad came out, and he said, people were given a choice — to get an iPad or a life. And they all chose an iPad. That’s kind of my philosophy on technology. It seems to be destroying the natural social environment for family and friends.

ASW: So I’ve got to know if you ever got back to the nutria story.

DD: Yes, I had time to research the meats as well. I’m getting to that story now, in fact.

ASW: Any advice for travel writers?

DD: As far as narrative travel writing goes, it’s a matter of honing one’s story telling skills. I would say, I usually get inspired when I read my favorite authors, whether its nonfiction or fiction.  David Byrne’s book the Bicycle Diaries — I mentioned that in the story, in fact, that was the book that I read right when I came back. That certainly cast a new light on travel writing, he’s a musician and he’s writing a travelogue book — that helped me see travel writing in a new way. Other travel writers that I like are  Rolf Potts, Bill Bryson, the Travelers’ Tales “Best of” books. For fiction, it’s anyone from Nabakov to Jonathan Lethem.

In travel, like life, things don’t always go to plan.

But even when disaster strikes, there is usually a silver lining.

You just have to find it.

So while Mom was safely tucked up in a hospital bed at the Oslo University Hospital, I decided to go and find my silver lining – the Vigeland Sculpture Park.

The park, which had been on my original list of places to see, was in walking distance of the hospital. So, armed with map and camera, I left the hospital and headed out.

All it took as a short ten minute walk down Kirkeveien Street and I was there.

The Vigilend Sculpture Park is a wonderland of life-size bronze and granite sculptures depicting humans, ranging from small children to closely entwined lovers, friends, families, and elderly couples, in everyday activities such as walking and playing to holding hands and hugging.

The work of one man, Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, this park has been a favorite of locals since 1940.

In a deal with the city of Oslo, Gustav Vigeland situated his home and workshop (now the Vigeland Museum) in the park and then proceeded, over two decades, to design the entire park around his obsession with the human form.

Highlights of the park include ‘The Fountain’ a controversial sculpture  of 60 individual bronze figures (children, teengages, old men, and skeleton) representing the circle of life and the highly symbolic “Monolith” consisting of 121 intertwined human figures representing human’s desire to reach out to the divine.

But it’s ‘The Angry Boy’ who draws the biggest crowds.

No one knows why he is so upset.

But everyone wants to take his photo.

(photos by Liz Lewis)

When you visit Mississippi these days, you’ll find quiet, welcoming communities in its forested hills, good food and good times along the river banks, people pitching in to rebuild from storm damage along the Gulf coast, and a highway named after Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, three civil rights workers who were murdered in Mississippi during the summer of 1964.

June, July, and August of 1964 in Mississippi. Deep south, deep summer, and deep in the midst of the changes in the ways people of different races related to and thought about each other on social, political, and spiritual fronts, changes that were shaking the soul of the deep south, and the nation. That summer, Mississippi was a crucible for this, as hundreds of white college students went south to join black civil rights workers to encourage and help blacks register to vote, and to teach children in summer schools called freedom schools. On the first day of Freedom Summer, Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney disappeared in the course of investigating the burning of a black church. It was a time when people could, and did, lose their jobs, their homes, and their lives for trying to register to vote, for speaking the wrong way to the wrong person, and for coming south as part of Freedom Summer.

Music was present in Freedom Summer. It was a connector that often provided a lifeline of hope. People found they could sing together across race and class and age and situation, and musicians came south to teach, to give concerts, and to offer their support. Bruce Watson mentions music only in passing in his recent book Freedom Summer. Reading his narrative and his interviews with people on all sides of the situation that summer in Mississippi reminded me, though, of a conversation I’d had with one of those who had put her life on the line.

Most of those who came south as volunteers in the summer projects and as musicians giving concerts were from outside the south. Carolyn Hester, though, is a southerner, a native Texan. She was top folk singer who headlined festivals, appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, and toured the country and the world with her music. She still is, and she still does.

We had been talking about her music career in the 1960s, and I asked her about Mississippi. “You almost didn’t want to stand up and say you were an American, if you didn’t go,” she said. “We sang in churches, we sang in people’s houses. It was hard, and it was scary, and we were staying in their homes, on their side of town, and making their lives more difficult and more dangerous. But it was all…” Hester paused to consider the right word “ …necessary. It was all necessary. I’m not sure we did anything except go there and say we see you, we love you, and we’re with you. I don’t know if we accomplished anything more than that. But we did do that.”

The two disc set Freedom Is a Constant Struggle is a way to hear what the music of that time and about that time and place sounds like. Voices range from the well known — Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Odetta, Phil Ochs, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Hester among them — to the less widely known, and so do the songs. It’s a thoughtfully sequenced collection that balances topical songs with timeless ones, material handed down from the long tradition of spirituals with songs written about events and people of Freedom Summer. It balances emotion, too: anger, pride, despair, sorrow, hope, and connection to what it meant, and in many ways, still means to both black and white to carry the legacies of the American south in the civil rights years.

Though it is, perhaps because it is, grounded in events and emotions of a singular place and time, the music resonates beyond that hot Mississippi summer all those decades ago. The songs reminded me of another conversation, this one with Irish singer Mary Black, who sang as the Good Friday agreement on the peace process was being negotiated in Belfast in Northern Ireland, more than three decades after the events in the American south during Freedom Summer. “When you get two people listening to a song, liking the same song, sometimes the differences between them don’t seem so important any more,” Black said. “They have a way to connect.”

I was lured in by the sound of basketballs swish, swish, swishing through a metal hoop with a chain-link net. One 10-baht coin bought me three minutes on the source of the swishing, a Galaxy Street Basketball Challenge machine in the top-floor arcade at Big C, on Bangkok’s perpetually traffic-jammed Ratchadamri Road. At the time, I had no idea that coin would lead to my informal induction into a club of thirtysomething, Thai working professionals who, despite significant language barriers, adopted me as their own and accepted me as more than just a passing farang.

First, a quick note about the basics of Galaxy basketball: it consists of four rounds that total three minutes. Made baskets count for two points until the 20-second mark, after which they count for three. The rim is stationary in round one, then slowly slides back and forth along a foot-long metal track during the remaining three rounds. Seven basketballs are used in one-player games, nine in two-player.

I know—it sounds like a a silly theme-park amusement where you pay a few bucks for a chance to win a knock-off Bart Simpson doll or maybe, if you’re lucky, a stuffed, oversized pink flamingo. This, however, was a game dominated by adults; by big kids seeking a temporary escape from the everyday responsibilities and banalities of adulthood.

An officially sanctioned tournament was to take place about a month after I stumbled onto Galaxy basketball and, later, the dedicated group of regulars who fanatically played it. During that month, I watched them practice on mid-week evenings and weekend afternoons—and I practiced with them, communicating through my broken Thai and their sporadic English and learning some of the nuances of the game from these, the game’s most ardent players. Some friendships were formed, some acquaintances were made.

My scores slowly improved to semi-respectability.

Then 30 years old, I was one of the youngest competitors in the tournament. The field included guys nicknamed Boy, Nong, and Lion, the last a 42-year-old travel agent who splits his time between Bangkok—where his girlfriend competes as his Galaxy doubles partner—and his hometown of Taipei.

Dook, a bespectacled 36-year-old structural engineer and one of the most sociable guys of the bunch, was also on hand. I laughed when he’d confessed that he trained at home by regularly doing bicep curls with 7-pound weights; I wasn’t laughing, however, when five hours into the tournament my hands were shaking, my arms felt as taut as stretched-out rubberbands, and my shoulders were aching like I’d been bench-pressing oak trees. Dook’s scores were also, of course, nearly twice as high as mine were.

Kob, a lanky, affable guy with a quick smile who works at Asia Insurance and spends most nights practicing at the arcade, was the reigning tournament champion. Dressed in khaki pants and a blue-and-white striped polo, he was as cool as a cucumber that morning, and smiled wide once he found out that I’d arrived 15 minutes early: Thais notoriously run on their own clock and are rarely on time for anything.

His main competition was Nom, who swept into the arcade with an air of confidence, focus, and determination. He carried a Nike duffle bag and two water bottles, and was accompanied by Joe, his friend, doubles partner, and unofficial trainer who during the weeks preceding the tournament kept track of Nom’s scores round by round, game by game, in a small black notebook filled with pages and pages of numbers. Nom was dressed in his standard Galaxy “uniform”: a black nylon shirt, fitted Lee jeans that ran about 3 inches too long and bunched up around his mid-ankle Nikes, and a tan wristband on his left forearm.

Kob and Nom both take this hobby especially seriously—and they’re very, very good.

Countless tourists wandering towards the Big C food court have stopped and shaken their heads in disbelief at the flurry of basketballs these two launch with the dizzying speed and accuracy of a tennis-ball machine. One night I kept track: each of them averaged around 325 shot attempts per game: that’s 1.8 attempts per second, or about 108 per minute.

Of course, speed isn’t the only key to success in Galaxy basketball: these two consistently sunk those 325+ attempts at above a 90% clip; ridiculous, really. In the weeks following the tournament, Kob and Nom began taping the tips of their fingers before playing. Better grip? Less calluses?

The tournament wore on for nearly seven hours; none of my scores were remarkable, many were embarrassing. In the end, the final four players left in the singles competition were Lion, Kob, Nom, and Bond, a demure 30-year-old with cartoonishly boyish looks. Based on a complicated scoring system that only the operating officers of Galaxy Company, its highly trained scorekeeping officials, and the world’s top mathematicians could possibly make sense of, Lion and Bond would compete for 3rd and 4th place, Kob and Nom for the title.

The highly anticipated championship match went back and forth between Kob and Nom, with Nom eventually sealing a narrow five-point win. A sense of disbelief splashed across his normally stoic face: after all those nights practicing, all those coins he’d pumped into the machine for hours on end, he’d unseated his friend, his foe, the reigning champion. Kob was of course the first one to congratulate him with a big smile and a pat on the back. It was one of the sweetest, most sincere displays of sportsmanship I’d seen in a long time.

Soon after it was time to move past Nom’s win and to collectively share in the feel-good moment the afternoon had been building towards: the medal ceremony. With digital cameras flashing, one by one the winners were called to the front and awarded their prizes. Though everyone didn’t leave with Galaxy medals slung around their necks, each of us went home happy—there were no losers, a fact which Thas was quick to reinforce as she rushed over with a stuffed animal and Galaxy t-shirt that’d been set aside for me in advance, last-place finish or not.

It was this touching gesture of sincerity that nearly brought me to tears as we bid each other farewell and returned to our adult lives. Maybe this is a kid’s game. But to me and the Galaxy Street Basketball Challenge crew, this game, and that tournament, meant so much more.