Compelling Haiku

Jeff Meller

25 Sept 13

Over the wintry

forest, winds howl in rage

with no leaves to blow.

by Soseki (1275-1351)

Commentary

To residents of climates with deciduous trees, Soseki evokes a common winter landscape: bare, grey, sapless branches, jagged against a winter sky. The wind, which in the summer would gently rustle leaves, in winter has no leaves to rustle. The wind is frustrated… and howls its frustration. If there were no branches and leaves, wind would not make any sound at all. Air molecule brushing air molecule makes no noise. Wind and forests and leaves are partners in sound.

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Sources:

http://www.haikusociety.com/11

Five Minute Opening - Revised

Jeff Meller

20 Sept 13

46 words

Five Minute Opening - Revised

Through the descending afternoon gloom he hears the airplane ascend from the small, local airport. His bags are packed; he sits on the bungalow porch, alone, waiting for his girlfriend. They are supposed to be on that plane – departing on the adventure of a life time.

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Ten Story Ideas

Jeff Meller

18 Sept 13

International

Story Idea	Publication
1.            Smithfield Meat Market, London – The market has existed in London for 800 years, first as an open-air livestock market and now as an ornate Victorian covered meat market.  Through it all the “porters” have hauled cuts of meat from abattoir to distributor.  Traditionally porter’s quitting time is 4 am.  At that time their basement pub opens after their work “day” has ended.  You can join them for a pint, that is the origin of their namesake “porter,” and a special porter’s breakfast: seven kinds of meat.	High Life (BA on-flight magazine)
2.            Hash House Harriers, New Delhi – “A running club with a drinking problem.”  Founded in Selangor, Malaysia in 1938 by a group of British expatriates it now is an open secret society of drinkers and runners with 2,000 chapters worldwide.  The running bit is based on the British children’s game Hare and Hounds and allows people of different running abilities to run together.  The drinking bit is called “down-downs.”   Hashers have many inane traditions and pride themselves on being politically incorrect.  It’s a great away to meet people in a new locale.	Outside
3.     Mongolian Olympics, Ulaan Baatar - For fans of traditional amateur athletics, the Mongolian National Olympics, Naadam, offers three events unchanged since Neolithic times: wrestling, archery and horseracing.  Three hundred matches are conducted by wrestlers clad in the national costume of jockey shorts, knee high fur-lined boots, and a half-vest of stylized eagle wings.  Male and female archers compete together with bows made of wood and bone, held together by fish glue, and strung with bull tendon.  And a fifteen mile cross-country horse race is amongst 500 horses with jockeys between the ages of 6 and 8.	National Geographic Traveler; New York Times, Travel Section; Outside
4.       Blair Athol Coal Mine, Queensland, Australia – The mine doesn’t give tours.  But if you are polite and persistent, you can cajole your way inside.  Visit inside the “overburden remover,” a piece of earthmoving equipment so immense it has its own built-in kitchen and lounge.  Touch together two wires to send an electric impulse down to the coal seam and detonate an explosion of loosening million of tons of coal from the open mine face.	Australian Geographic
5.            Levuka, Fiji – To get to Levuka from the US, you must fly five hours to Los Angeles, five hours to Hawaii, seven hours to Nadi, Fiji; then four hours by bus to Suva, an hour to Native Landing; then an hour by ferry to a place in the jungle with no name; and finally a last bus for another hour.  You have arrived at Levuka.  But getting to Levuka is not the hardest part of the journey.  Deciding to go is far harder.	Wall Street Journal; Financial Times

Local

Story Idea	Publication
1.    Ancient Ways, Martha’s Vineyard - Famous for its beaches and shopping, The Vineyard can get crowded in the summer.  But the Ancient Ways are a nearly invisible network of narrow dirt paths woven over centuries by Native Americans and colonists through 5,000 acres of the island.  On the busiest day in summer one can hike, jog, mountain bike and not see a single person.	Vineyard Gazette; Martha’s Vineyard Times; Outside; Islands Magazine
2.    Off-Beat Statues, Boston – Military men and politicians dominate the procession of statues around Boston.  Less known but more significant are monuments to: medical research - The Good Samaritan Monument memorializing the invention of ether; an explorer - Leif Ericson, a Nordic explorer reputed to be the first European to reach North America; a children’s story - Make Way for Ducklings; a heretic - Mary Dyer, a Quaker who was hanged for her beliefs outside the State House in the 17th century; a fruit - the Clapp pear, a variety developed at the Clapp family farm in Dorchester; an orchestra conductor, Arthur Fiedler; and an historian, Samuel Elliot Morrison, portrayed casually in a baseball cap and wind breaker.	Boston Globe
3.    No Witches, Salem, MA – There were no witches in Salem despite the hype and the bandwagon onto which so many Salem merchants have climbed. Less commercial and less popular is a small group of sites which tell the tragedy of the twenty innocent citizens slaughtered by their neighbors, early American conspiracy theorists.	Boston Globe
4.   The Presidential Traverse, White Mountains, NH – a 23 mile hike with 9,000 feet of elevation gain across Mounts Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe Eisenhower Pierce and, of course, Mt. Washington.  A three day hike with a group of sixth graders staying at the enchanting and comfy Appalachian Mountain Club lodges.	Outside; National Geographic Traveler
5.    Best Swimming Holes in New England – Many villages claim to have the best swimming holes: the deepest, the best diving, the clearest water, the most underwater passages, the most auto wrecks at the bottom.  A survey of the most enchanting off-the-beaten-track places to spend a care-free afternoon.	Outside; National Geographic Traveler

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Sources:

None

Compelling Opening: W.S. Maugham

Jeff Meller

Compelling Opening

18 Sept 13

226 words

“The wise traveller travels only in imagination.  An old Frenchman … once wrote a book called Voyage autour de ma chambre [Voyage Around My Room].   I have not read it and I do not even know what it is about, but the title stimulates my fancy.”

Thus unconventionally compelling begins Somerset Maugham’s travelogue to Honolulu. 

The writer charms the reader with the incongruous assertion that the best way to do what the writer has done, travel, is to do the opposite, that is, stay at home.

Perhaps Maugham can pull off this machination because he already is an established travel writer.  The reader is only seven words into the story when the traveller advises the reader not to travel.  If the reader knows the author is a traveller, she may suspect that her leg is being pulled, and that this particular tug of the leg is being used to draw the reader into the story.  Were this a first time travel writer, the reader might not perceive the jest in seven words.

By the second sentence the author already is enjoying a second laugh with the reader: he confides that the source of the advice - not to travel, but to use one’s imagination, the approach he is not going to take - is a source which the writer has not read.

Gentle, ironic, erudite Maugham.

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Sources:

W. Somerset Maugham, “Honolulu” [1921] in Collected Short Stories, New York, Penguin (1977).

The Gift of Travel

Jeff Meller

Classmate Profile

18 Sept 13

508 words

It can be more challenging to travel with children than without them.  But there is no more rewarding gift for a family.

Shari Wong knows.  

Despite the additional effort, Shari travels the world from her home in Las Vegas to educate her children and bind her family together. So far she and her husband, Tim, 46 and 52 respectively, have vacationed with their young children to Alaska, China and the Mediterranean.   

There are many rewards to traveling with children: seeing our world through their curious, innocent eyes and unconstrained family time without the distractions of busy lives at home. 

Some rewards hatch serendipitously when parents let children lead. In Alaska, Alex, then 6, and Lauren, then 4, wanted to see the Klondike Gold Rush.  Tim and Shari followed the kids’ instincts.  In the Liarsville gold fields they learned from a grizzled panhandler to “dip for water, shake, tip, dunk, swirl.”  Tim says that the children experienced the ruggedness required by pioneer life “as we walked through the camp visiting merchants and stores and meeting men and women … re-enacting life in the 1800’s.” 

Not every choice works out.  When young children travel naps may not follow the usual schedule.  On the Alaska trip Shari and Tim wanted to take a relatively expensive helicopter ride to see the Mendenhall Glacier.  The entire family donned flight suits and headphones, the latter so they could hear the pilot over the roar of the engine.  As they hovered over the glacier Shari and Tim were enthralled.  They looked at the children:  “Both were sound asleep,” Shari recalls.

China with kids was a special adventure.  Shari’s parents are first generation Chinese-Americans; Tim’s parents are second generation.  Tim’s parents joined the trip. His grandparents had taken Tim to China when he was young so his parents were maintaining a family tradition.  They explored the elaborate Forbidden City in Beijing and the viewed the innumerable terra cotta warriors in Xi’an.  “I don’t know if the list of wonders of the world ever is updated,” Shari observes, “but if it is, this should be added to the list.”  

This year the family took a Mediterranean cruise.  The kids now are 8 and 10.  For Alex “Rome … in third grade came to life as we walked along the Appian Way and toured the ruins of the Colosseum,” Tim recalls.   At the Vatican they saw the new Pope Francis I celebrate mass in St. Peter’s Square, blessing people and animals alike.  

Before the trip Shari borrowed Italian tapes from the library.  At a festive party in Rome she ordered the meal in Italian and conversed comfortably with the waiter.  The kids were amazed: “Our mom speaks Italian!” reports Marivi Mullen, Shari’s sister, reinforcing the value of their own language lessons at home.

The cruise also went to Greece and then Turkey, where they celebrated Lauren’s birthday.  Perhaps traveling with Alex and Lauren was extra work, but Lauren never will forget the gift of travel celebrating her 8^th birthday in Istanbul. 

Where you were on your eighth birthday?  

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Sources:

1.    Shari Wong, wongshari88@gmail.com, 702-348-6561

2.    Tim Wong.   twong@arcataassoc.com, 702-968-2221

3.    Tina Chan, tina3130@gmail.com, 703-639-7753

4.    Marivi Mullen, crimeanalystmarivi@gmail.com, 760-525-0801