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Random Thoughts on Travel, Education, Health, and the World in General
When I told friends I was planning a trip to Iran to do a preliminary tour in preparation for a program I would lead in April for my Educational Travel Company, Integral Expeditions, I got some immediate and varied responses.
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The air blew thick and steamy through the mini-van window. As we climbed steep mountain roads veiled in tropical fog, the exhaustion of the long journey from California to Bali weighed heavily upon me, the rice paddies passing before my eyes as distant as San Francisco cable cars. Flying into Denpassar Airport the night before, I had been quickly reminded that I was back in South Asia, in the so called “developing world”, as I waited for two hours to have my passport stamped, part of a chaotic herd moving imperceptively forward, the Indonesian officials as indifferent to the suffering, overheated tourists as those tourists were anxious to begin their beach holidays. So when I finally arrived at my hotel, tired but relieved to have a bed to fall into, I barely noticed the gentle waves brushing the shore just beyond my hotel window.
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Over the last several decades, we have seen the proliferation of many types of therapies, from Chiropractic to Acupuncture to Rolfing to Sports Medicine. Presumably, with this great expansion, we have had the opportunity to become healthier than we have ever been before. All we need to do is avail ourselves of these modalities and we will be well. So it would seem.
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We ride on elevated rails and freeways, pass through subterranean tubes, moving quickly from apartment to office, home entertainment center to computer work station, from couch to seat. We sit before glowing screens, transporting data and occasionally rise to get some water, or perhaps a cigarette, relieving ourselves of the sedentary strain of our working lives. We notice the ache in our shoulders, the stiffness in our necks, that we have gained a few pounds, and feel one of our “normal” headaches coming on. “Must get back to the gym,” we tell ourselves. “It’s been a few weeks.”
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I grew up in an apartment complex on the north side of Queens, in an urban New York City outpost called Bayside. And though given its name, one might imagine a gentle port, lined with restaurants and cafes, of strolling crowds taking in the salty night air, the reality was something else. Clusters of identical buildings, mixed with low rise “garden” apartments and parking lots, a few trees and some flowers. My mother told me to shut the curtains as I gazed out of my bedroom window at the speeding cars on the four lane Expressway only yards away. “If you don’t look out, it sounds like the ocean”, she said.
Berkeley, California. The bastion of free speech, of Bay Area beauty, of progressive thinking, a socialist enclave wrapped warmly in a blanket of greenery, organic nouvelle cuisine, and a world class university. And while all of these descriptions contain some truth, Berkeley is also much more. A place of intense diversity—ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural—of mass media intoxication, hip hop and urban political consciousness, bookstores and bakeries, and a place of sudden violence.
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In the heart of Manhattan, a group of women come together to drink and eat and talk about life and business in the modern digital world. Formed in 2006, Women In Digital Media (WIDM), was founded by Cindy Charles, General Counsel of MediaNet, Aileen Atkins, General Counsel of Napster, Amy Lauren, Music Attorney at EMI, and Heather Moosnick, a VP at Warner Music Group. Begun loosely as a social gathering of women rising through the emerging digital ranks, it quickly became clear to a core group that this was something to be formalized, so they might create a space for the building of community.