Welcome to the International Café. Grab a cup of joe, kick back, relax and enjoy these stories and photos from Ashlanders traveling around the nation and world. To submit your own stories and photos, please see our submission guidelines.
Stories:
A step back in time
Moments after arriving at our campsite in Amboseli National Park in Kenya, our 9-year-old daughter, Skylar, was kicking her soccer ball around with a Masai man. Wrapped in red-checked cloth, John stood over 6 feet tall, carried a carved ebony walking stick, and spoke three languages. Over the next few days, John returned to visit us, teaching the girls Swahili and Masai words and telling us about his village.
Defining New York City
As Ashlanders, we live in a tourist town. We know what tourists look like, clutching maps and playbills in their hands, with cameras dangling from their necks. Although we celebrate the tourists (and the money they pump into our economy), when we travel, we strive not to be like them. Instead, we aim to blend in like locals, seeking the particular destination's defining experience.
On this trek, inexpensive airfare prompted me to haul my husband and our three young children to New York City. After months of reading, planning, and pre-purchasing tickets to must-see attractions, we flew Jet Blue from San Francisco. Slinging backpacks over our shoulders and lugging Pullmans behind us, we set out in search of the archetypical New York adventure.
The taciturn cabbie who squished us into his sedan and charged the standard $45-plus toll gave us our first impression of the city. Upon re-evaluating his route into Midtown, he threw the gearshift into reverse and backed our taxi out of the traffic-choked middle of a Lexington Avenue intersection. That was an event!
Once more into the desert
Three years ago, my buddy Glenn and I set off into the desert, enduring 111-degree days, exorbitant water prices, hostile event organizers and Los Angeles, all in the name of music.
Every year, since 1999, the city of Indio, Calif. has played host to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The festival is held at the Empire Polo Field, a place designed for two things: Polo and heat stroke.
A college degree and a few good jobs later, we decided to do it again, and this time we'd bring more people to share our misery with.
Harder than it looks
Earlier this year, Scott Douglas found himself without the one and only plane he uses to make a living.
His Cessna 172 crashed in January. Douglas said the pilot flying that day did a superb job getting the plane down. Although the plane was totaled, the occupants walked away without a scratch. Local photographer Fred Stockwell, one of the two men aboard the plane, took pictures on the way down.
Since 90 percent of his work involves teaching pilots, it goes without saying he needed another plane.
Douglas found his replacement in Fredericksburg, Va., and made plans to pick it up, which is just a touch harder than ordering something on the Internet, or buying products on eBay. The small airplane had to be flown back across the country.
MOMS midwives return to Sierra Leone in June
MOMS, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to improving maternal/child health and maternity outcomes, is returning to Sierra Leone, West Africa in June to provide training to the Traditional Birth Attendents.
MOMS sent three delegates to Sierra Leone last December to do a needs assessment on the training of the Traditional Birth Attendants. While they were in country, they met with the Ministry of Health, the U.S. ambassador, local and regional leadership, and the TBA's in the Jawei Chiefdom.
Spring break at home? You bet.
Ashlander prepares for trip to southern Africa
Laura Campbell is going to Zambia. When Laura was a freshman in high school, she traveled to Brazil with her youth group at the First United Methodist Church of Ashland. There she helped remodel a day care center. During her sophomore and junior years at Ashland High School, she worked with handicapped students. She wrote her senior project on Glide, the San Francisco church committed to serving three meals a day, 365 days a year, to the poor and homeless.
Journey to New Zealand
With a son who makes his home in New Zealand, we have wanted to journey there for a long time. Besides the visit we wished to learn about the culture, technologies and history of the islands.
We arrived in Auckland after a 17-hour flight from Los Angeles. Customs/immigration was interesting. We had to declare every bit of food we had or be fine. So we declared the cookies, the processed nuts, etc. We were still thoroughly checked.
Teacher finds new learning experience on remote island journey
Retired Ashland teacher Julie Romberg, joined several others from around the nation for a visit to the sandy beaches of Cook Islands.
But Romberg's vacation wasn't a walk on the beach. Rather the group she worked with spent three weeks tutoring children in reading skills, befriending individuals with disabilities and tackling labor and library projects on the picturesque South Seas island of Rarotonga. Romberg was one a seven-member team with Global Volunteers, a St. Paul, Minn.-based nonprofit organization that offers short-term service opportunities in 19 countries, including the United States.
"It's such an incredible organization," Romberg said. "I'm planning on going back again next year. I'm a firm believer in this."
An eye for philanthropy
Southern Oregon eye surgeon finds need and satisfaction in remote Honduran clinic.
Capitol Hill
Ashlanders in Guatemala
We wound into the hills towards Antigua with the full moon rising above the lights of sprawling Guatemala City below. It took an hour to get through the rush hour traffic surrounded by colorfully painted old buses belching fumes with people hanging on inside and outside...
Rediscovering Goose Hollow
Retro is back in fashion most everywhere, so it is no surprise that Portland's increasing revitalization of urban neighbors has finally landed on the nearby streets known to locals as Goose Hollow.
Goose Hollow, roughly the teen-numbered streets just north of I-405, near the renovated PGE Park, is classic Portland, circa 1950.
Oregon's largest city has been virtually transformed in the last decade or so, led by the uber-chic Pearl District, home to luxury high-rises, trendy restaurants, state-of-the-art public transportation and the largest of landmark's, Powell's City of Books.
The Pearl is not the only gentrified neighborhood in Portland, just the most successful. When I used to live near Portland, Powell's stood virtually alone among industrial blocks, next to the Henry Weinhard's Brewery that still actually brewed beer.
Portland has much to offer the Ashland palate
The Portland/Ashland connection is a strong one, despite the two cities serving as bookends on the extreme north and south of Oregon's I-5. Portlanders make up the largest share of Ashland's visitors, while Ashlanders in search of an urban escape are quick to depart for the city of roses. Transplanted Portlanders often end up in Ashland, and visa versa.
For Ashland restaurant-goers, another thread in this bond has been woven with the opening of a new restaurant in the Goose Hollow neighborhood of Portland. Gracie's Restaurant, located in the Hotel deLuxe, bears a familiar signature.
When the restaurant at the historic Ashland Springs Hotel was renovated and re-opened as Lark's, the owners hired Portland-area consultants to help start Lark's and train the staff. Patrick Bruce lived in Ashland for a few weeks in this capacity, developing deep bonds with the both the city, and the Lark's staff. Now Bruce serves as a shift manager for Gracies. His stamp of customer service is evident in both places.
Finding a familiar friend (part 2)
It's a travel day so we have to get motivated sooner than either of us would desire. The driving rain greets us as we leave, making us wish for one more day in our newfound ocean hideaway.
The rains let up as we crest the mountains and descend into the lush Willamette Valley. I lived here for nearly a decade so feel confident that I can weave my way through the backroads into the wine country for a lunch date with my father. My confidence is misplaced, however, as the signposts (you know, like the old post in M*A*S*H with arrows, names of towns and numbers to indicate the distance remaining) fail to direct me to the cut-off I know exists. We spend 30 extra minutes weaving through the Dundee hills, a trek which not only makes us late but pushes the gas needle precariously close to empty.
My wife, Lori, knows this routine. She only tenses when the gas station up ahead, the one that caused an almost reflexive sigh of relief in me that betrays my claims of absolute confidence, is closed.
Dundee has changed in the 10 years since I visited last. My father used to live here, right along the busy highway. I used to play pool in the little local tavern after a hard day landscaping. Now, yuppified wineries, restaurants and delis dot the mile-long stretch of this small, yet burgeoning wine town. I have to admit, I like it, though I'm sure many of my anti-sprawl Ashland friends would cringe.
Finding a familiar new friend
About six months ago a friend sent out a broadcast e-mail to many of us asking for references for a new place to stay on the Oregon Coast. He briefly listed the type of place he and his wife were looking for and basically asked, "We had our favorite place, but now we'd like to know about yours."
For a writer who has spent a lifetime traveling, and often writing about it, I was immediately caught up in the reason for the e-mailed inquiry, and, in these days of unlimited travel information only a Web click away, the rather dated approach for references.
My friend explained he and his wife had recently decided the place they returned to each year for the last two decades or so on the Southern Oregon coast had simply failed them one too many times. He just didn't think he wanted to return. But, he wanted the annual ocean sojourn to continue despite the loss of his familiar lodging friend.
