If you’re ever near Eunice, Louisiana on a Saturday, you’re in for a jam-packed day of St. Landry Parish music if you know where to go….

In the morning, from 9 to 12, there’s an informal jam session at Savoy Music Center.

From their website:

“….we ask only one thing… Please, no more than ONE triangle player at a time. If you’re wondering how to find the music center, just look for thirty cars lined up Hwy. 190 between Eunice and Lawtell.

We are open for business, and admission is free, but a small box of boudin or cracklins would make you the most popular guy in there for about 2-3 minutes.”

For the uninitiated, boudin is Cajun-style sausage, and cracklins are deep-fried pork skins.

Here’s what the jam session is like (direct link to the video on YouTube if you can’t see the embed box below)

In the evening, from 6 to 7:30, it’s time for the Rendez-Vous des Cajuns weekly show at the historic Liberty Theater, also broadcast on FM 88.7 KRVS and Eunice’s own KEUN (AM 1490 and FM 105.5.)

There’s dancing at the Rendez-Vous, too, so go kick up your heels, cher.

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This year, the only people I knew who remembered Pearl Harbor died. My grandparents were in their late 90s, and were among the very many who were not in Hawaii, nor in Oahu on that day – they were in not, in other words, immediately affected by the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7^th, 1941, although it would of course shape their lives as it did everyone else’s at that point in history. I am sure that they did not need to be reminded not to forget.

But the attack on Pearl Harbor does not live in my memories. Or, to put it another way, the first memory I have of the attack on Pearl Harbor is in my junior high social studies classroom, when we were learning how to describe the reasons why nations go to war: systemic causes, proximate causes, immediate causes. Pearl Harbor was the correct example to give on the essay portion of the test defining “immediate causes for war”, the reason why the United State entered World War II. And since that war was waged against the forces that were busy annihilating most of the other side of my family in Poland at that precise moment in time, my feelings about Pearl Harbor were similar to Winston Churchill’s reaction upon hearing news of the attack: “So we have won after all!”

“You are here.” A few days before the 70^th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, I visited the newly renovated Pearl Harbor Visitor Center, at the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument in Oahu. The slate blue water of the harbor was calm as I walked beside it, reading the placards describing the attack. It was late afternoon, the soft air was losing its heat, the blue skies just a little cloudy, the palm trees swaying and the succulent shrubbery glistening. I stopped in front of a large photograph taken on the morning of the attack, raising my eyes from the shapes identified in the billowing smoke as Battleship Row, Dry Dock #1, The Nevada to the scene in front of me, and darting back down again. My position in the photograph was marked with “you are here”. It was filled dark shapes that could have been small trees or perhaps a knot of people, crouching. The sky was not filled with wispy clouds filtering the sunlight, but with debris, the larger pieces marked as “bursts of antiaircraft fire”.

I passed on to other placards, photos showing black smoke with the only spots of bright the turrets of the ships enflamed. More than 3,500 people were dead or wounded. A photo of a mass, temporary flag draped grave. A photo of a dead body of a man, in shorts and a t-shirt, face down in shallow water near the beach at Kaneohe Bay. A Navy casualty.

There was a gun on display inside the new exhibit of the visitor center, found to have been fired that day at enemy aircraft, by servicemen under attack. Those without guns threw wrenches. There was also a gas mask on display, the likes of which were issued to every person on Oahu in the days after the attack, when martial law was declared, with the instructions to have it with you, always. There was description of barbed wire strung up along the beaches. What was not pictured, I could easily imagine.

It is of course correct to describe the attack on Pearl Harbor as an immediate cause of war. But after my visit to Pearl Harbor Visitor’s Center, I understood that December 7^th, 1941 was also at its start a day like any other, a day when a wrench was tucked into a work belt, a gun slid into a holster, not just an essay answer or a symbol. What is still impossible for me to remember, after this visit, will now also be hard for me to forget.

It’s an issue of superlatives this month with Perceptive Travel webzine featuring three entertaining travel stories from around the world.

Laura Gough ponders happiness in Bhutan while trekking the ancient Druk Path through alpine wilderness and discovers a country that takes nice to a whole new level.

(flickr photo by domenicomarchi)

On the other side of the world, in Brazil, Bruce Northam wanders away from the beach resorts into Rio’s maze of favelas to discover  an unexpected world record holder in Rio.

And further south, Shelley Seale heads for the world’s highest and driest place on earth and discovers life in the past tense in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Laurence Mitchell”s world music reviews covers everything from a Yiddish witch drama, a funky Belgian outfit, and music from the historic crossroads of Europe and Asia.

Sarah Griffith’s travel book reviews covers reluctant backpacking in Central America and historic travel in Paris.

And given it’s the festive season, Perceptive Travel has two prizes to giveaway this month.

Guerrilla Packs is kicking in two bags to go out to two lucky travelers: a large Voltij backpack for long journeys or an Airporter backpack (pictured) that’s small enough to be a carry-on for U.S. flights.

To win, you’ll have to watch your inbox for our newsletter or follow us on Facebook. If you’re not on our monthly e-mail newsletter list, click here to sign up .

And don’t forget about the annual Passports with Purpose fundraising drive now on. It’s a great way to do some real good in the world and actually get far more than your donation back in prize value, thanks to some great sponsors.

Check out this recent perceptive travel blog post to learn more about Passports with Purpose – how it works and this year’s goals. This year, we have joined with Hyatt Hotels, who sponsored the prize of  a two-night stay at the lovely Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa in Bastrop (near Austin.)

That’s just one of the many great prizes that travel bloggers from around the world have organized. You can  see the full run of prizes (many of them in international locations) on the donate page . And it all starts with just $10 from you…

So far the response has been tremendous – $5,000 raised in the first few hours after it’s launch.

But don’t wait to donate  - it all ends in two weeks!

Story and photos by Laurie Gough

“I’m suspicious of any place this Shangri-La perfect. There has to be a downside,” I said to my fellow travelers on the first day of our trek in the mountains of Bhutan, the remote Himalayan kingdom which until recently has kept itself isolated from the modern world.

“It’s like they’ve all been drinking the same Kool-aid,” someone answered. “A bit too Stepford-ish maybe,” was another opinion.

Obviously we were jaded. We couldn’t believe any place in the world could be this, well, nice.

Bhutan, after all, is a country that measures its citizens’ Gross National Happiness, where no policy is enacted unless it passes the happiness filter first (cigarettes are banned since they lead to unhappiness, as do plastic bags, also banned; everyone owns land and if you somehow end up without any, the government gives you five acres and money to build a house.) Bhutanese, being Buddhist, don’t believe in harming sentient beings, so not only is stepping on bugs to be avoided, but so is cutting down trees. Mountaineering, as in technical climbing, is banned since it isn’t nice to the mountain. And as for Bhutanese behavior at archery contests, grown men perform a little song and dance when the other team scores, while pretty cheerleaders sing and dance demurely in traditional costumes their grandmothers would have worn.

This is a country that takes nice to a whole new level.

In fact, for a seasoned traveler, it’s almost unnerving. At a bank machine in the capital city of Thimphu—a small city hidden in a green valley where instead of traffic lights, they have a single traffic warden—I came across a young Bhutanese man who asked for my banking help. Apparently he’d never used an ATM and couldn’t get it to give him money. He showed me his bank booklet with his PIN which I keyed in for him. “Usually PINs have four digits,” I said. “Yours only has three.” He looked vaguely confused but thanked me politely before leaving without his cash. After I used the machine myself, I spotted him waiting around a corner outside. I smiled and kept walking until something made me turn around. I thought of the Mexican ATM scam where travelers had their accounts emptied by Mexican criminals using memory cards.

Rushing back to the ATM in Thimphu, I wondered if that brilliant young Bhutanese huckster was reading my card’s information now. I peered through the glass door of the ATM and sure enough, he was in there. What a scam artist! I opened the door and said warily, “Oh, hi, you’re trying it again?” He looked at me curiously and nodded.

In a flash, his sweet face told me everything I needed to know. Bhutan was the nicest country in the world and I was an idiot. Obviously I’d grown cynical from years of experiencing travelers’ scams. Here’s the thing about Bhutan which is peculiar: it’s entirely lacking in shady characters. It’s scoundrel-free. The only graffiti are happy faces.

Happy faces indeed. Business Week recently rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest in the world. Never colonized, difficult to get to, Bhutan feels like the last untouched place on earth. People really do seem happy there, but I kept wondering, are they really happier than the rest of us, and if so, will it last as they join the modern world?

Low-impact Life

Back on our first day on the Druk Path, a centuries-old five-day trek through alpine wilderness, we passed apple orchards and mountain villages where locals smiled and waved. At the end of the day, breathless from the high elevation, we reached a row of colorful prayer flags rippling in the wind near a monastery at the top of a pass. Rain began to sprinkle. Our guide Tshe Tshe turned to us excitedly, lifted his face to the sky and called out, “Blessings!” We laughed and did the same thing. What a lovely way to regard rain.

Until the 1960s, nothing about Bhutan was modern and tourists barely existed. But the third King of Bhutan, vexed by the Chinese invasion of neighboring Tibet and not wanting his country to suffer the same fate, decided to modernize Bhutan and end its policy of isolation. He’d do this, however, in a slow deliberate way, monitoring the development of other nations and avoiding the same mistakes.

Schools were introduced in the 60s and just recently a new policy sees that every child, even in remote areas, goes to school. The internet and TV were introduced in 1999, although several channels, including MTV and international wrestling, neither of which the Bhutanese feel do much for happiness, are banned. Tourists are now allowed, but the total amount they spend daily must be at least $200 (US), and they must be on organized tours with a local guide. I’m doing mine through California’s Bio Bio Expeditions, which works locally with Xplore Bhutan. “High quality, low impact,” explained Xplore Bhutan’s Ugyen Dorji on his country’s philosophy of keeping the environment pristine and not overrun with tourists and debris like in Nepal.

Indeed, one of the four pillars of happiness in Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index is care for the environment. Strict conservation laws are enforced, which is natural in a country where Buddhism permeates and mountains, trees and rivers are sacred. Seventy-two percent of Bhutan is forested, and the country absorbs three times as much carbon as it produces. Bhutan’s main source of revenue is hydroelectric power sold to India. Tshe Tshe told us that the few factories they do have are all in southern Bhutan on the Indian border, “since India is already polluted anyway,” he giggled.

OK, so they’re not entirely perfect. Nonetheless, this environmental pillar of happiness resonated strongly with me. Over the past year, my regular happiness levels have slowly depleted from fighting to save a spring, a forest and a river in my hometown of Wakefield, Quebec. Suffering burnout, I wanted an escape, and in Bhutan, a country the size of Switzerland that almost nobody has heard of, I found a place where they understood that the preservation of the natural world is a source of happiness for all. Bhutan, only newly coming into the modern age, is light years ahead of us.

Continue to Page 2 – Travel Bhutan

Wherever you might experience it, the season of winter holds contrast, from light to dark, from celebration to contemplation, from appreciation of frosty night to longing for spring afternoons, from time spent alone to gatherings with family and friends. Those contrasts all form parts of the music on Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra ‘s album Song of Solstice.

Celtic music for ancient moderns is what composer Jennifer Cutting calls her work with the Ocean Orchestra. The Celtic, the ancient, and the modern all come into play in the six original pieces on Song of Solstice, and they are present too through the arrangements of seasonal music from French, English and Scottish traditions. These are all realized through fiddle , bouzouki, accordion, keyboard, whistles, bodhran, harmony, choral, solo voices of men and women, and on occasion a touch of electronic instruments and the distinctive sound of bagpipes.

“My role models are master sound weavers like Mike Oldfield, Danny Elfman, and Alan Parsons, “ Cutting says. “The way they realize the basic material, the way they imagine an elaborate new sound universe for it, thrills me beyond words. So I know that my path in life is to create songs, and beyond that, to create whole sonic worlds for them.” Cutting was for a number of years the arranger and bandleader with the Washington DC based Brit folk band the New Saint George, where she applied this idea to songs from the folk tradition. ”In the New St. George, I took basic traditional melodies and created alternate dimensions for them. Now, in the Ocean Orchestra and in my own production company, I’m doing it with my own songs as well, and it’s the ultimate fulfilling work.”

Song of Solstice traces a winter journey, opening with a traditional tune from Shetland, in the far north of Scotland, and following on with Song of Solstice, a lively original song with lyrics that set a roadmap for the lessons of winter and a melody and engaging choral treatment that invite you to sing along, and to come along on the journey. There are several pieces from French traditions, and a high spirited evocation of Celtic winter legends of rejuvenation in The Green Man. Though they are very different in music and tone, the ideas in The Green Man resonate with Fall Leaves Fall, a celebration of autumn and winter changes created when Cutting set to music a poem by Emily Bronte. There’s is time for reflection in the quiet Christmas song In the Bleak Midwinter, while celebration comes in through Light the Winter’s Dark, in which Cutting considers how Buddha, Christ, and others, including each of us, bring light to earth. Things draw to a close with a Scottish lullabye and a song of looking forward and the lessons of that called Summer Will Come Again.

All this is realized through connections and collaborations among many musicians, most from the Washington DC area. Lisa Moscatiello and Steve Winnick, as well as Annie Haslam, John Roberts, and the members of of the Washington Revels are some of the voices. Sue Richards plays Celtic harp, Zan McLeod adds bouzouki and acoustic and electric guitars, Cutting plays keyboards and accordion, Rico Petruccelli keeps a steady rhythm on the bass, and Steve Hickman is one of those who adds his fiddle talents to the project.

There are quite a few layers, both musically and with ideas, on Song of Solstice, all well worth exploring. If you think you’ve had a bit too much of the holiday season, there’s something for that too: when you play the disc through your computer, you’ll have a good laugh with the bonus music video called Bah Humbug.

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