Patty’s blog
All for a Good Cause
Aug 29th
My husband and I like to attend charity auctions. We enjoy supporting a good cause while having the opportunity to purchase goods and services (especially travel packages and getaways) we can put to good use. I’m not talking about auctions for large foundations that bring in millions of dollars – there aren’t too many of those in our neck of the woods – generally, our churches, local schools and community foundations are the beneficiaries of the three or four auctions we attend each year.
Not only do we bid on items for these auctions; we also like to contribute something to be bid upon as well. Our go-to item is an evening of wine and food for eight to twelve in the winning bidder’s home. Over the course of our married life together, Harry and I have hosted countless parties in our home for family and friends, so we’ve developed a pretty well-honed routine and built up our repertoire of recipes. Our 500-bottle wine storage unit is always bursting at the seams, with new acquisitions never quite keeping up with our consumption. So it’s become a natural for us to replicate the format of our favorite evening with friends for someone else’s group of buddies to benefit our favorite charities.
This morning we are recovering from the labors of providing such an evening. Last spring the Rogue River High School’s FFA group held their annual Beef Feed and Auction, and a local couple bid on our wine tasting party. Last week they called, asking if, on such short notice, we might be able to pull together the event for this Saturday evening, when they would have friends in town. Well, Harry rallied and graciously said, “Yes, of course,” while I was thinking, “What? When?!!”
Harry provides the brains and talent behind these things, planning the selection of wines and doing most of the cooking. I do prep work, shopping, clean up and, most important, questioning some of Harry’s choices: “Don’t you think we should have some fruit? What about veggies? Isn’t that a lot of wine? Are you really going to cut the zucchini that way? (You can tell we’ve been married a long time.) He manages to maintain his cool, we refine the menu and, in the end, everyone has a great time.
The hosts and their guests last night tell us they indeed had a marvelous time. They enjoyed two white wines, four reds and two dessert splits. We served up a variety of cheeses and crackers followed by a host of hot and cold “heavy” hors d’oeuvres and concluded with a decadent dessert. We enjoyed ourselves, too, sharing our love of good wine and food with some lovely folks and seeing them enjoy each other’s company. But I gotta say, I am happy to be able to put my feet up today!
– Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor
Working Relationships
Aug 28th
As I believe I’ve written previously, all of us on Global Traveler‘s editorial staff (editor in chief Lisa Matte, senior editor Janice Hecht, art director Tracey Cullen and I) work from home offices. What’s more, we live in four different states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Oregon — and two different time zones. Through the wonders of modern technology, though, we’ve developed a very efficient process for producing a beautiful and informative magazine every month (as well as a number of supplements each year).
We’ve only all come together once, on the occasion of GT‘s fifth anniversary celebration, so you might think that ours are strictly business-like relationships. However, over the years we’ve interspersed work-talk with more personal matters, and shared aspects of our lives and interests apart from the magazine.
Working alone at home can be a somewhat isolating experience, so it’s nice to be able to develop a warm and friendly partnership with those linked to you by computer and phone. We swap stories involving families, trips and gardens and commiserate with each other over weather (too cold, hot, wet or deep!) and car and home repairs.
I especially enjoy the sharing of just-this-moment bits of interest. Earlier this summer Jan reported she was under a tornado warning (in Connecticut?!), and we waited to hear that she was in the all-clear afterward. This week, Tracey sent a great photo she’d just taken in her backyard. She reported having heard a lot of commotion out there in the preceding days, with the birds being literally all a-twitter over something. That morning she discovered the cause of all the ruckus: a hawk had been hunting, and she snapped him in a tree feasting upon an unlucky mole. (Tracey actually had little sympathy for the mole, as her husband had been trying to eradicate them from the yard for weeks.) Jan then replied with a possible identification of the bird (complete with a description of its cry) and stories of her own encounters with the raptors. I shared my own humbler version of backyard battles: I’d been distracted that day by aerial dogfights, that would have made the Red Baron proud, between two hummingbirds battling over the choicest flowers.
These little tidbits from our daily lives are hardly earth-shattering, but they comprise the building blocks of a positive working relationship between far-flung individuals. I have no doubt that this same kind of sharing occurs between business people on every continent all over the world – the exchange of children’s pictures at dinner, the swapping of battle stories across the aisle on a jetliner, a tip for a great place to visit as a meeting adjourns – bringing each of us a little closer to another.
– Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor
Books Prompt Travel . . . and Vice Versa
Aug 22nd
Several best-selling books in the past few years have led their fans to travel to the locations in which the plots are set. A whole industry seems to have sprung up offering tours and packages built around the settings of Elizabeth Gilbert‘s memoir Eat, Pray, Love – which will likely go into overdrive with the recent release of the movie based on the book. Popular excursions based on sites mentioned in Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium series of thrillers are selling out in Sweden. One community which has perhaps benefitted the most, proportionately, from fan interest in the locale of their favorite books is tiny Forks, Wash. Ever since the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series was published, the community at the edge of the continent which had suffered through severe economic decline as the logging and fishing industries sagged has enjoyed a welcome influx of tourist dollars.
Certainly, this is not a new phenomenom in the worlds of publishing and tourism. Readers of Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes for years have sought locations in London and throughout the U. K. mentioned in the books penned by J. K. Rowling and Arthur Conan Doyle. (I remember my girls being thrilled, several years ago, to be traveling through King’s Cross Station, from which the Hogwart’s Express departs for the wizarding school in the Potter series.) Surely, any writer who has the skill to describe a foreign place in intriguing and enticing prose (and populate it with enchanting characters in a thrilling plot) will likely set his readers to dreaming of visiting that spot. Indeed, for many of us, our first introductions to worlds outside our familiar circuits probably came through the pages of a book.
Conversely, the memories of and lessons learned by travelers have for centuries led them to share their experiences in books that have become literary classics — and in turn sent their readers off on explorations of their own. John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways early gave me a desire to hit the road and explore our country. Even more ambitious journeys such as those related in Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft and Honeymoon with My Brother by Franz Wisner can set one to dreaming and considering the possibilities of life-changing travels of one’s own.
Do you have a favorite travel book? Is there a book, fiction or nonfiction, which has spurred you to journey to see the sights it describes (or at least dream of doing so?)? Have you chosen to read a book based solely upon its setting? How have books affected your travel plans?
– Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor
Green Amenities
Aug 21st
I joined my husband this week for a couple of days at the Seven Feathers Casino and Resort in Southern Oregon, just off of Interstate 5. He spent his days in meetings at a conference related to work while I spent mine doing a little work and a little more relaxing. We’ve driven past the place numerous times but had never stopped before (it only being about an hour from home and neither of us being avid gamblers).
Owned by the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe, it’s a very nice complex, including hundreds of guestrooms, a full-service spa, fitness center, indoor pool, several restaurants and lounges and a number of conference and meeting rooms — aside from the large casino floor. Our room was large, spic and span and nicely furnished. In addition to the king-sized bed and console topped with a large flat-screen TV, I was more than happy with a good-sized desk and — best of all — free WiFi. Whenever we travel together, Harry and I are also acutely aware of bathroom counter space, and we were pleased with a very expansive vanity in the spacious bath. And here I had my first encounter with another product meant to have a lighter, kinder impact on the environment.
The resort features Gilchrist & Soames bath products, but these were not presented in the standard little rigid plastic bottles. Instead, the BeeKind Collectioncomes in what the company refers to as paper bottles. According to the company, this translates into a 59 percent reduction in packaging material weight (less weight = lower costs and less fuel for transportation) and a 92 percent reduction in after-use waste space (landfill space) compared to those little bottles. That alone sounds good, but additionally Gilchrist & Soames is proud that its formulas are free of those polysyllabic, unpronounceable, “unnatural” components and artificial colors and dyes.
Finally, the collection is dubbed “BeeKind” for a very good reason: Proceeds of the net sales of these products go to support honey bee and sustainable pollination research at the University of California, Davis. I was pleased to see this new and environmentally sensible kind of packaging from a manufacturer of these high-quality and well-respected amenities. I’d be curious if any of our Global Travelers have seen similar product lines in their travels.
– Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor
