The Iron and Silk Road

Several years ago, I took a train from Beijing to Moscow. It took about two weeks, although I did make a few stops along the way. If I’d gone express, it would have taken just about exactly one week.

People always ask me if I found seven days of train travel boring, and the answer is that I really didn’t until the very last day. I’m not sure if that’s because the trip really was one day too long, or if I just didn’t allow myself to get antsy until I was within sight of the finish. In any case, I can safely say that for me, the idea of taking a week to travel from the heart of the Middle Kingdom to the edge of Europe is pretty reasonable.

Which is why I have mixed feelings about this article, announcing China’s plan to build a high-speed train that would cover the distance between London and Beijing in about two days. I can see that this would be an amazing feat of technology, and would really make life easier for people who can’t afford to fly and who don’t have the luxury of two weeks to spend on a round-trip.

But two days? That’s just too fast. Imagine sleeping through all of Siberia, or blinking and missing Poland. You’d get almost all of the disorientation and jet lag of air travel, and little of the scenery gazing and platform pierogi breaks of train travel.

(And if you think I’m indignant, imagine how horrified an actual ancient Silk Road trader would be. They’re probably already upset that the trip can now be done in a week, without even a stop to barter for fresh camels in Samarkand.)

They Loved It, But They’re Not in Love With It

Sometimes when I submit a piece to an editor, I get a nice personal rejection. Sometimes it’s more of a form letter. Sometimes I don’t hear anything. And sometimes, like yesterday, the news is delivered with all the subtlety of an eighth-grader trying to break up with someone.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent an article to the Chronicle about Shanghai. On Sunday, I opened up the travel section, and it was all about Shanghai. I wasn’t in it, though. Probably this is just bad timing on my part. Or maybe they’re just not that into me. Either way—ouch.

One Thing Down

I did get one article sent off. Not the Australian train article, although I did do enough of what I call “un-writing” (and which most people call “cutting hundreds of unnecessary words”) that I think I got that one back on track. So to speak.

No, what I sent away for publication is an updated service piece on Shanghai. I sent it once before to the San Francisco Chronicle, and never heard a peep about it. Normally, no response means “no,” and pressing the issue will only annoy the editor. But there’s been a regime change since I submitted it last, so Shanghai will be new to the current editor. Let’s hope he’s more of a fan of urban travel than the last guy was.

I Think I Can…

The Broken Hill story would be a good companion piece to a story I’m working on about the Indian Pacific train, but I seem to be stuck on that one. Does this ever happen to any of you? The more I work on the train piece, the more it just gets longer without getting any better.

Sometimes when a project isn’t going anywhere for me, I give it a rest. Usually that helps. That’s what I’ve done here. Having not thought about the train story consciously for a few weeks, I feel ready to sneak up on it and do some real writing (and probably a fair amount of un-writing) on it now. I’ll let you know when I finally get it ready for publication. (I say this mostly for my own benefit—I’ve said I’m going to finish it, so now I have to!

Oh, I Should Have Mentioned…

…That the honorably-mentioned story in question is an essay I wrote about the fading mining town of Broken Hill, Australia. This is a story that started life as a blog post written soon after my visit, which then got cleaned up and polished into something I was happier with. Now I’m emboldened to try to get the essay published.

Finishing Just off the Podium

In this Olympic season, I’m pleased to announce a minor award of my own: I earned an honorable mention in the 2010 Solas Awards travel writing contest.

Certainly it would have been nice to be one of the top three in a category, but we can’t all be Apolo Ono. Somebody has to be Turkish figure skater Tuğba Karademir, happy just to be there and to have not taken a pratfall on the big stage.

And, unlike the Olympics, the Solas Awards happen every year. I’m going to start training now for 2011.

Possible Use for Twitter

They say that Twitter is very good for complaining. We’ll soon see. I’m unleashing the power of Twitter on Comcast, who have so far been unresponsive to every form of direct communication I can think of short of semaphore. Perhaps a little public shame can get them to call me back.

Blurb.com

I’ve been meaning for a while now to mention a pretty cool website called Blurb.com. It’s a way to self-publish books, and to sell them as well. If I wanted to, I could technically claim to have had a book published, because I used the site to create a book about my trip to Australia last year that is officially for sale on the Blurb site.

Had I really intended to sell any of these books, I would have done a lot of things differently, including making the book shorter and smaller in size. The format I picked is the most expensive. This choice drove the price of the book up so far that I don’t realistically expect anyone to purchase it.

Still, the idea is great. It’s possible to create and sell very affordable books without putting any money down. Posting your book file on the site is free, meaning you avoid all of the costs usually associated with vanity publishing.

The way it works is that whenever anyone orders a copy of the book, the site prints one up and sends it directly to that person, meaning an author also avoids a lot of the logistical problems associated with self-publishing, like basements and car trunks full of inventory.

In my particular case, I also expect to avoid typical author hassles like keeping track of earnings, because I don’t think there are going to be any. If anyone should order the book, though, the site would send me my profit directly. Best of all, I get to determine how big that profit is. The site sets a base price, and I, as the author, get to say how many dollars extra I want them to tack on—I get to keep that.

Believe it or not, I actually set a very modest profit margin for myself. I just made the mistake of picking an expensive layout with a high base price. But I don’t really regret it, because I’m very happy with the coffee-table quality scrapbook I now have of my adventure.

City of Thieves

Coincidentally, I am not just snacking my way through Russian memories at the moment. I’m also currently reading an excellent book about the country: City of Thieves, by David Benioff.

This novel takes place in St. Petersburg during WWII, when the Germans were laying siege to the city. It’s a dramatic story, but the book is also very funny in a deeply dark sort of way. I’m really enjoying it, all the more because the author is a college classmate of mine. (I don’t think we ever even met. I just feel possessive of classmates who’ve done well for themselves and I feel the need to give them a shout-out.)

Dining-Room Chair Travel

It’s well documented that you can travel vicariously through travel literature, but who else is with me on virtually traveling the world by snacking?

Pipi and I recently found a great place for this. It’s a strange little store called the Euromix Deli on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. Although there are some western European products, most of the inventory is eastern European, and most of that is Russian. Recently Pipi picked up a mix of chocolate candies that reminded me of what a weird, wonderful place Russia is. They’re not great chocolates—Russians apparently like hazelnut (and wax) a lot more than I do, but I’m really enjoying the eccentric wrappers.

A Twit, Maybe?

What do you call one who uses Twitter? Someone who doesn’t know the answer to that question probably doesn’t have any business using the service, but I’m not letting that stop me. I have belatedly entered the Twitterverse, and you can follow me at http://twitter.com/nicoleclausing. (You don’t need to be a Twitter member yourself; you can always just go that URL on any computer for updates.)

I don’t post very often—to be honest, I haven’t really taken to Twitter yet, and at my age, Tweetspeak will probably always be a second language. But I invite you to follow my fledgling efforts anyway. I promise, no tweets about what I had for lunch, no deliberate misspellings, and, if I should ever owe anyone an apology for anything, you won’t see it there.

Last Warning

Comcast has one more day to get back to me, and then I’m going all Twitter on them.

Dawning Realization

I just don’t think Comcast is that into me.

Also Spotted

On the same walk where I spotted the demolished building, I also saw a sign in someone’s yard next to a beautiful lemon tree in full fruit. The sign said:

“To the lady up the street who helped herself to a whole bag of lemons, they weren’t yours to take.”

“We’re still waiting for our lemon bars.”

I’ll Take the Stairs, Thanks

I took this picture today while walking past a construction site (actually a de-construction site) at the corner of Piedmont and MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland. I find the elevator sign perversely amusing.

Your Call is Important to You

I spoke to Comcast on February 3. When I did, they strongly implied that someone would get back to me within 48 hours. That didn’t happen, so for fun, I didn’t call them for a few days, either, just so they’d know how that felt.

Oddly, when I did call to check on my trouble ticket, they almost acted like they were hoping I wouldn’t call at all. Some companies play hard to get, I guess. The person I talked to promised to spend the next 72 hours thinking about my problem so hard that he will almost certainly not find the time to catch up with me before Thursday.

The Oxymoron That is Comcast Customer Service

I’m starting to think I’m the only person on earth who uses the personal web page feature on Comcast. I don’t get the feeling any developer has looked at this function in years, and no one in tech support has any idea how to help me.

I chatted online with three different support personnel. Two of them had me call phone numbers that they swore were lines dedicated to helping people with their personal web pages. (The third person’s only suggestion was to restart my computer.) Each time the phone number I was given turned out to be the Comcast main switchboard--the same number I’d call if I had trouble with my cable TV. Nobody could help me. In fact, in both cases, the people I reached on the phone told me web page issues could only be handled via online chat. Of course, the chat people wanted me to use the phone. Needless to say, my problem did not get resolved today.

So I’m pretty mad at Comcast right now, and I still can’t get my web page updated, which seems like it shouldn’t be a very difficult thing to do. (The page is live online, but I can’t edit it anymore--and I think we can all agree that it needs help.) I guess it’s time to look into another web host, although I have only the barest idea how to go about that.

Utility Futility

Has anyone ever tried using Comcast’s personal web page feature? And did you find it to be the single most frustrating thing you’d done in months?

If You Really Want to Hear About It….

….J. D. Salinger is dead, and that makes me a little bit sad. I know he was about a million years old, and a difficult man, but I’m still sad. The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books of all time. It was the first novel that made me see that literature could speak to me on a level other than pure entertainment.

Before discovering Salinger, I’d always liked reading stories, but I don’t think I understood until then that a book could be expected to have something to say about the human condition. The realization that I, as a girl growing up in small-town New Hampshire, might be thinking some of the same thoughts as a boy wandering the streets of McCarthy-era New York City, was mind-blowing.

If that seems like a banal thing to cause a mental meltdown, please note that I was only about 11 or 12 at the time. I also ask you to remember what it’s like to be that age—just old enough to start to suspect that people are not always as they seem, but young enough to believe that you might be the only person who has figured this out. Think how much you might have appreciated having a streetwise older brother figure to assure you that you’re not imagining it; that people really can be phony sometimes.

I’ve re-read The Catcher in the Rye several times over the years, and I take a little something different from it every time—which is not surprising considering that I was Holden’s little sister’s age the first time I read the book, and now I’m old enough to be his mother. At the age of 12, I thought Holden was a very cool, wordly guy. Later, I realized that he’s kind of a brat. Eventually, I began to understand that he’s very troubled, and maybe even a little insane.

The thing I keep coming back to every time, no matter how I’m currently feeling about the protagonist, is gratitude to Salinger for having been the one to show me how literature is supposed to work. I’m also grateful to him for having created the remarkable character of Holden Caulfield. Though Holden, like Salinger himself, was not always completely likable, he is memorable.

The news that the author of The Catcher in the Rye has died makes me sad because in a way J. D. Salinger’s death is also Holden Caulfield’s death. Though no one really expected a sequel after all these years, now all hope of ever seeing Holden again is completely extinguished. It’s always sad to lose someone who was important to you when you were young, even if they were troubled, and even if your feelings about them have changed over time.

Rest in peace, you goddam madman genius.

A Girl Can (Day) Dream

Here’s something kind of fun: Frommer’s is having a contest designed to solicit travel photos to be used on the cover of their guides. So I spent much more of the afternoon than I should have going through vacation shots. That was a nice way to procrastinate!