Happy New Year from me and my pigeon friends in Venice

Huge Trees, Bronze Medals, New Guidebooks

A quick round-up of Interesting Things over here:

1. Holy #$%@!! Redwoods. Amazing. Utterly Amazing. 

Maren and I headed out to northern California for our honeymoon. We did a little road trip among giant trees, hillside vineyards, and a certain infamous island prison. The highlight, without question, was the ten-mile hike we impulsively decided to do at Prairie Creek State Park, home of some of the tallest living things on the planet.

Redwoods. Go there. Put away all your Eight Gazillion Things to Do Before You Die guidebooks and trust me on this one: You've gotta see these forests. Photos don't begin to do them justice. It's like ... it's like I want to take back all the other times in my life that I've used the word "majestic," because nothing else seems worthy.

Also: fern-walled canyons, like something out of The Lost World. 

Actually, Spielberg came here to film scenes for Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World. But you don't even need to know that, or to have seen the movie, to be awe-struck and struck, in an elemental and abiding sort of way, by how wondrously, mesmerizingly primeval this place is. As Maren put it, "If a Tyrannosaurus Rex ate me right now, I wouldn't even mind, because it would feel so appropriate."  

Redwoods. I'm telling you, begging you. Go. See them. You can thank me later.

2. An award for Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day

The day of our trek through the Land Of The Giants And Maybe Some Dinosaurs just so happened to be the same day that the Society of American Travel Writers announced the winners of their annual Lowell Thomas Awards. When we got back to the hotel, I logged onto the internet for just a sec to check the announcement and ... Hey! Sweet! 

I'm delighted and honored to say that Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day picked up the bronze for Best Travel Book!

3. Back to basics: The Return of Frommer's Guidebooks

I'm not one for fantasy football, but if there were a fantasy league to keep tabs on guidebook publishers, I'd be all in. I mean, you've all been following this as closely as I have, right? The ups and downs and power plays and intriguing goings-on?  

For anyone who hasn't been been hanging on every detail, here's a quick run-down of my own favorite publisher:

August 2012: Google buys Frommer's

March 2013: Google quietly says that well, y'know, there's a chance that ... ummm ... Yeah, we're not gonna keep publishing Frommer's as a hard-copy guidebook line. Sorry about that but, well, changing world and all that. 

Two weeks later: Arthur Frommer buys his guidebook line back from Google. (As a friend of mine said, incredulously, "I didn't know you could do that--buy something from Google.") Frommer announces plans to start printing new guidebooks in the autumn. 

Hey, you know what it is right now? Autumn 2013. And true to his word, Frommer is relaunching his new guidebooks. As he told the Los Angeles Times, “Fifty-seven years later, I’m returning to what I originally did. ... I'm probably the oldest fledgling publisher in world history.”

Full article: "Now reinventing the Frommer guidebooks: The Frommer family."

That weird honking noise is me blowing my party horn. While wearing a paper party hat, natch. In my world, this is big, exciting news. 

The Craziest, Coolest Real Mail Yet

Do not get into a creative mail competition with Jeff in Aurora, Colorado. 

He's been sending me postcards and aerograms for a while, as I mentioned a few weeks ago. And after that shout-out, he responded with this: 

Tube o' Mystery

Tear off the face to reveal the prize

A film canister impaled with a pen. And Scooby Doo has a message for you.

Wait. Really? There's a scroll in there? How long could it possibly be?

In the neighborhood of EIGHT FEET, ladies and gents. An eight-foot-long letter--or, as Jeff calls it, "Rollergram." (Trademark and patent pending, I'm sure.)

Take a bow, Jeff. 

And to everyone else, including me: The creative correspondence gauntlet has been thrown down. 

An Open Letter to Congressional Republicans From a Guy With a Gaping Hole In His Side

Hey, Remember that time Congressional Republicans shut down the government for the express purpose of halting Obamacare? Yeah. That was pretty messed up, especially since it was before the whole website debacle, so it's not like they even had that as a talking point; it was just Socialism and Death Panels blah blah blah. As someone who values being healthy but whose body often seems to have other ideas, I was more than a bit pissed. 

Dear Congressional Republicans,

Hi there. I'm a guy with a gaping hole in his side--not even slightly kidding about that. You're killing me over here.

Obamacare will literally change my life, improving my lot, along with that of millions of other people like me. And when you threaten to shut down the government in hopes of preventing this life-saving, money-saving program from ever coming to fruition, well, I kinda take that personally.

*

Credential Check, or Who The Hell Does This Guy Think He Is?

Don't you dare lecture me about the value of hard work and sacrifice and aspiring to be your best. I know it, I've lived it.

About that hole in my side. I have an ileostomy. Translation: my colon was surgically removed and now I poop into a bag. It's not something I particularly wanted to say here on my blog--or to anyone, anywhere. Hello, I'm Doug, I poop into a bag. What's your name? 

But you, Congressional Republicans (and with a special shout-out to Senator Cruz), seem pathologically incapable of understanding that there's a vast world of people and experiences beyond your own. So here you go; here's mine. I’m thirty-two years old, healthy, active, clean-living ... and I poop into a bag. Health care isn't some abstract thing for me. It's a weight that I carry every day--for years, a weight of constant, debilitating pain and anxiety, and now a literal weight, in the form of the poop-bag attached to the hole in my side.

Real Mail Week, Part 4: Aerograms As Travel Guides

It takes you a while to discover the secret. The reason this letter is not just interesting but kind of brilliant.

David in Edinburgh, a guy you've never met or heard from before, sends you this homemade aerogram:

You unfold it. Inside, it looks like this: 

You keep unfolding and find an evocative story of wandering around Dublin.

Welcome to Dublin. You're going to love it. ... 

Big open field on the campus, tonnes of people lazin' about on a Friday evening. Sun turnin' orange and about twenty minutes left before it disappears behind the buildings on Dame Street. Smiling now, thinking back on it. You know that blue tint the sky gets on a hot evening in the early summer ...

You think: This is kinda trippy and definitely awesome. Writing with a serious sense of place and voice.

As you opened the aerogram, more sheets of paper, loose paper, fell out. You line up the sheets, take a picture.

Real Mail Week, Part 3: Aerogram Awesomeness

I know I'm far from the only person who loves aerograms, those wonderful sheets of paper that combine correspondence with (super easy) origami--"the height of epistolary convenience," as Don George put it on Gadling a while back. (See also Evan Rail's essay "An Aerogram From Berlin" for World Hum.) 

And judging from the fact that my aerogram template has been downloaded some 9,000 times, it's clear that there are more than a few people looking for ways to continue sending aerograms, even if they're no longer available at any given post office or stationery store. (I did recently discover a form of aerograms, called Mailblok, hidden under a table at my favorite stationery store. Don't let the packaging fool you, though--it may say "Blue Airmail Paper" but the paper itself is that shade of blue known as "actually just plain ol' white.")

Anyway. I get excited anytime anyone sends me anything, but I do a special little Mail Nerd Dance when an aerogram shows up in my mailbox. Sometimes they use my own template. Sometimes it's one of the ones from Mailblok. Sometimes it's just a standard piece of paper that's been folded in on itself carefully. And sometimes it's a work of art. The master of the artistic aerogram--and postcards, for that matter--is Jeff in Aurora, Colorado, who gets points not just for creativity but also for diligence--he persists in writing even when the other correspondent (me) doesn't hold up his end of the bargain.

Here are some of Jeff's masterpieces:

Real Mail Week, Part 2: Hemingway, Che, and a Bagpiper Go Into a Post Office ...

It's International Real Mail Week! I decreed it so, even if I'm the only one observing it (I sent letters to 104 heads of state, but they all must've gotten lost in the mail ... which is mighty ironic, if you think about it). Yesterday was all about the epic Pantone Postcard Conspiracy that has been filling my mailbox for over a year. 

Today: More postcards. Here are some of my favorites, as many as would fit onto my coffee table (about a third to half of the cards I've received since the last postcard gallery update). 

Click for larger version.

Now, the main reason I love postcards is that they're art plus narrative in one compact package that you can hold, feel, put on your refrigerator, or arrange on your coffee table. Beyond that, though--and I'm gonna get all writer-nerd on you here--I also love how they force you to tell a story succinctly and even give you a writing prompt on the other side. I particularly enjoy sending postcards from places OTHER than what's on the front, and then tying that image into my commentary on the real things I'm seeing around me. But then, I'm weird.