Greetings, T-Boy Readers & Enthusiasts –

Music is considered the spice of life, often times indicative of the national character of a country, city and place. The sound of a Mexican mariachi band, the pounding of drums in Tonga or the jazz of New Orleans can conjure heartfelt emotions and also an education for the curious traveler. Our current T-Boy Society of Travel, Film & Music poll is devoted to domestic or international destinations in which you’d visit for its music. Once again, this allows us to see a different side of our esteemed writers who’ve been regularly delivering original content; a content that readers can only find on Traveling Boy.

Deb Roskamp | T-Boy writer and photographer:

Fado – Lisbon, Portugal

The fadista sang mournful tunes with lyrics of resignation, fate and melancholy; best defined by the Portuguese word saudade, (longing), symbolizing a feeling of irreparable loss and lifelong damage. Fado (‘destiny, fate’) is a melancholic genre whose birthplace is Lisbon’s port districts of Alfama, Mouraria and Bairro Alto in the 1820s. Initially, its musical style was performed in cafes, taverns and ‘half-door’ houses (bordellos) to sailors, bohemians, and courtesans who were mainly from the urban working-class.

Today, throughout the world, Fado is regarded as the Portuguese musical symbol of culture and tradition. The music is performed without any form of electric amplification by either a female or a male vocalist, and accompanying music, generally by guitars (10- or 12-string guitars), one or two violas (6-string guitars), and occasionally a viola baixo (a small 8-string bass viola). Most of the repertoire follows a double meter (four beats to a measure), with lyrics arranged in quatrains or in any of several other common Portuguese poetic forms.

I listened to the musicians while dining in a restaurant. The music took me back to imagining women singing these ballads to their sailors, as they set out to explore the world, disappearing beyond the horizon. I’d visited the ports and seen the Monument to the Explorers in the Belem neighborhood. Now, I would venture to the Fado Museum in the Alfama neighborhood where one can learn more about this musical genre in an interactive setting.

Ed Boitano | T-Boy editor:

Mozart – Salzburg, Austria

With its medieval city center, cobblestone streets, Baroque architecture and Hohensalzburg Fortress resting in a spectacular alpine setting, Salzburg serves as nothing less than an enchanting fairytale of a city. It is also the birthplace of one of the greatest composers of all time: Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Mozart’s narrative is well-known; he could read and compose music and play the violin and piano at five years old. Born into a musical family in Salzburg, Mozart had a unique ability for imitating music, which first became evident when he recited a musical piece by simply observing his father conducting a lesson to his older sister. This led to a childhood on the road, where the young prodigy performed before many of the royal courts of Europe. At 17, no longer a child prodigy, he returned to Salzburg where his uncanny memory of earlier travels had provided him with a plethora of musical styles and experiences, from which he used to create his own compositional language.

Mozart was never completely happy with his later career in Salzburg as he experienced little fame, and soon moved to Vienna; however, the Salzburg today is a Mecca for all things Amadeus. An essential stop is a visit to Mozart’s Geburtshaus (birthplace). This is the house where his parents lived for 26 years and young Mozart was educated. Now a three-story museum, it is filled with original instruments – Mozart’s childhood violin, concert violin, clavichord and pianoforte – portraits, family letters, and furniture and objects of daily use, including Mozart’s very cradle. I asked why were Mozart’s famous eyes so bulging? He didn’t eat his vegetables, replied my guide. Noticing the bathtub, I asked how often would Mozart bathe? Twice a year; once for Christmas and once for Easter.

Another Mozart must, a dinner concert at the famous Stiftskeller St. Peter, considered the “oldest restaurant in Europe.” My dinner concert consisted of arias performed by candlelight between food courses, prepared with traditional recipes from Mozart’s era. Period-costumed musicians, including two opera singers, performed arias from “Don Giovanni,” “Le Nozzi di Figaro” and “The Magic Flute.” Dining under opulent chandeliers and surrounded by 18th century décor, not to mention the stirring music, was akin to being transported back to the magical times of Mozart. Be sure to visit the Tourist Info in Salzburg for concerts at Mirabell Palace, the Hohensalzburg Fortress and the Salzburg Festival.

Susan Breslow | T-Boy writer:

Bette Midler – Anywhere

I would go anywhere and pay anything to see Bette Midler perform again. There’s no better all-around entertainer. Her voice can be brassy or soft, make you laugh out loud or bring you to tears (I never hear “The Rose” live without crying). The bawdy Soph & Ernie jokes are hilarious. The costumes dazzling. Her backup singers, The Harlettes, are appropriately slutty. Even the props – a motorized wheelchair for her alter ego Dolores del Lago, The Toast of Chicago in full mermaid regalia – are a hoot.

I’ve seen her multiple times at Caesars Palace, enlivening the 110-foot-long stage built for Celine Dion, in “The Showgirl Must Go On,” at “The Divine Intervention Tour” in Madison Square Garden, in Radio City Music Hall, and of course raising spirits after 9/11 in Yankee Stadium singing “Wind Beneath My Wings.” I don’t believe she performs live anymore, but this 2021 Kennedy Center honoree, who has as much heart and humor as talent, is a true G.O.A.T.

Ringo Boitano | T-Boy writer:

Irish Session Music – Doolin, Ireland

“What brings you to Ireland?” asked my friendly cab driver. “All the above and more, and with a very keen interest in Irish music,” laughed thee. The cabbie smiled, “You know, I sing too. Give me a couple pints of Guinness and I’ll sing all night fer yah.” My mood was already euphoric; now kicked up a step higher, well aware that a trip to the Republic of Ireland is a cultural immersion of living history, heartfelt poetry, ethereal landscapes and locals with hospitality in their very DNA. And, yes, I soon found my traditional Irish Session (‘seisiún’) bands, playing jigs (faster rhythms) and reels (stepdance music in ‘reel’ time), and an occasional ballad about the Great Famine and emigration.

Doolin (Dúlainn) is an Atlantic coastal village in County Clare, considered the home of traditional Irish session music. And the local attractions are not bad either, with the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and a port that leads to Aran Islands just around the corner. But what could top a Doolin pub meal washed down with a pint of the black stuff at one of the village’s rollicking establishments? Well, grab your next pint and bask in the intoxicating music of an Irish session band on the floor.

The size of the groups may vary, and members are sometimes new to one another, yet seemingly never missing a beat on the Bodhrán Drum. Traditional instruments generally included fiddle (the life blood of a session); harp; flute and whistle; Uilleann Pipes; guitar, mandolin and banjo; accordion and concertina, and the Bodhrán Drum. You’ll notice the Irish have the gift of the dance where evidence suggests that the sun worshipping Celts and the Druids practiced a circular formation pagan dance which has a commonality to the modern Irish set dancing of today. And, if you’re feeling particularly festive, you can join in on a dance; in my case, a rather clumsy and improvised one

At a conversational break, a musician informed me that the Irish dancer once carried a heavy stone in both hands, preventing them from holding hands with the opposite sex. Then adding, “I’d probably need a shackle (Handcuff, carrying alcoholic beverages in both hands at the same time).” What could I say, besides Sláinte! (Pronounced: ‘slaan-sha’) and ordering another Guinness.

Stephen Brewer | T-Boy writer:

Giacomo Puccini – Lucca, Italy

On a dark and stormy night a millennium or so ago, as legend has it, a life-sized crucifix washed up on the shores of Tuscany in an unmanned ship. This so-called Volto Santo then traversed the countryside in a driverless cart and arrived in the walled city of Lucca, where it remains to this day. Once a year citizens parade the relic, adorned with a crown and draped in fine robes, through streets and squares in a torchlit procession that without too much stretch of the imagination, evokes the operas of Giacomo Puccini. The composer of “La Boheme,”“Turnandot,”“Madame Butterfly,” and “Tosca” was born in Lucca, in 1858, in a handsome house that is now filled with his handwritten scores and other memorabilia.

Music pervades the medieval streets during the city’s many concerts and festivals, and with luck a walker might turn the corner just as strains “O Mio Bambino Caro” or “Nessun Dorma” waft from the church of San Michele, with a tiered, white-marble façade that resembles a wedding cake. At such a moment it’s easy to believe in another local legend. At the very top of the church is a statue of the archangel Michael, and it’s said that he holds a sapphire in his outstretched hand to catch sunbeams and bathe this enchanting city in grace and light.

Richard Carroll | T-Boy writer:

Billie Holiday – Capital Theatre, Salt Lake City

Traveling the world I’ve discovered (along with hundreds of other writers) that music is a marvelous guide to the culture of a destination, such as tango in Buenos Aires, New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, America’s only original art form and a gift to the world, where you can hear and dance to marching brass bands, see Tuba Skinny on Royal Street in the French Quarter and enjoy a celebration of life listening to Erika Lewis who often without a microphone sings “Broken Hearted Blues” and “Papa’s Got Your Bathwater On.”

For me, Ireland is among the most musically oriented countries on the universe along with Mexico. Traveling to Mexico numerous times over the years in the African Queen, a 1973 VW Camper, it seems every village has a guitarist or a singer and where else in the world but Mexico do gift shops offer guitars for sale. I’ve enjoyed the mariachis in the north, Banda Norteno in Mazatlan, marimba in the south of Mexico, and in Veracruz, Musica de Tropical. I found that the diverse music of Mexico is also a powerful cultural powerhouse throughout Central America, and I have enjoyed Mexican groups, often house bands, performing in Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua.

But by far my greatest musical encounter was with Billie Holiday, a long-lasting memory that unfolded on a bone-chilling cold evening in Utah when I traveled from Provo to Salt Lake City to the historic Capital Theatre in the heart of downtown. The Italian Renaissance building dating to 1913 was hosting Jazz at the Philharmonic featuring jazz greats Roy Eldridge, Flip Phillips, Oscar Peterson, Gene Krupa and Herb Ellis, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear Billie Holiday live, and an unforgettable thrill. She walked across the stage to the microphone wearing a white gown, a flower in her hair, and without a word sang “Love for Sale,” “Moonglow,” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.” With incredible musical backing, only her lips moved, her arms and body completely stationary. Her voice a spine tingling bluesy and sensual mix of love and sorrow and defiance, bending her phrases, falling behind the beat, and then her rhythm up front with perfect pitch, and a sound that spoke of her turbulent life with a surge of enormous haunting.

I heard from local musicians that after the concert there was going to be a late-night jam session happening at the Ralph Blaze nightclub with the touring greats performing. Ralph Blaze, a former Stan Kenton guitarist who fell in love with a Salt Lake City lady, opened the club with a jazz quartet, but at the time not so popular with some of the Mormon officials.

I parked my car near the rear entrance off an alley where Billie Holiday and the musicians with their instruments were huddled in a small group waiting for the door to open. Excited and with nervous chills I walked over to them and stood near Billie in complete awe. She was wearing a huge fur coat and I could smell her perfume in the icy air. She looked at me and stepping closer, smiling, eyes glowing, and holding up a cigarette in one hand said in a soft voice, “Do you have a light?” I shakily replied, “Sorry I don’t smoke.” I was so taken back that I was unable to even tell her how much I enjoyed her singing, and later wished I had said, “No, but I will find one!” And who in hell cares if I don’t smoke. Everyone was stamping their feet in the frigid weather to keep warm, while Billie was snuggled in her fur coat, as huge snowflakes were beginning to fall. The club never opened.

The musicians and Billie headed to the Hotel Newhouse an okay hotel, but second rate compared to the gorgeous five-star, palace-like Hotel Utah, where blacks were not allowed. Billie Holiday died in New York City a few years later in 1959, age 44. but for me she is a forever memory.

T.E. Mattox | T-Boy writer:

The Blues – The Mississippi Delta

The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music, which originated in the Mississippi Delta, an area between Memphis, Tennessee and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and east to west to the Yazoo River and the Mississippi River. More famous blues musicians have come from this area than any other region (or state) combined. The Mississippi Delta is historically famous for a town called Clarksdale – better known as the Blues Crossroads. Legend has it that’s where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil.

Visit the Hopson Plantation and spend the night at a restored sharecropper shack at the Shack Up Inn. The evenings are filled with blues at Ground Zero, Red’s or the Juke Joint Chapel. An amazing cultural and musical emersion you’ll want to experience again and again. Robert Nighthawk, Sunnyland Slim, James Cotton, Chester Burnett (Howlin’ Wolf), Bukka White, Charlie Musselwhite, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Big Bill Broonzy, Carey Bell, Tommy Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Charley Patton, Son House… some made their names in Chicago, some made their names in the South, but all were born in Mississippi.

Phil Marley | Poet:

Edvard Grieg – Troldhaugen – Bergen, Norway

Despite his diminutive 5 ft frame, Norwegian composer Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a towering rock star long before the expression existed. Born into a successful Bergen merchant family in 1843, his life dramatically changed when violin virtuoso Ole Bull recognized his talent and introduced him to the treasures of Norwegian folk music. Grieg studied the masters abroad but dreamed of reprieves to his beloved Norwegian countryside – a pattern which continued after he became a world-renowned composer.

With money now filling his pockets, Grieg and his wife built a home on Lake Nordås on the edge of Bergen, which he called his best opus so far. Christened Troldhaugen, the Victorian villa became a center piece for Bergen’s artistic community and visiting dignitaries. Grieg enjoyed his guests, but needed quiet to work, and built a composer’s hut by the lake. Grieg died in 1907 of chronic exhaustion. But today his legacy lives on at Troldhaugen – a living museum consisting of the Edvard Grieg Museum, the Villa, the Composer’s Hut, Concert Hall and Edvard Grieg´s tomb. My highpoint was a concert at Troldhaugen recital hall, which is discreetly built partially underground ground, complete with sod roof. The floor-to-ceiling windows behind the stage overlooks the composer’s hut where Grieg would work, superstitiously sitting on a stack of sheet music by Beethoven so that he could reach the piano. At the end of each day, he would leave a note: “If anyone should break in here, please leave the musical scores, since they have no value to anyone except Edvard Grieg.”

Fyllis Hockman | T-Boy writer:

Ah, you lose me on this one

The last time I listened to music was folk at Washington Square in the Village in high school … A lot of renditions of “We Shall Overcome!”

Skip Kaltenheuser | T-Boy writer:

Easy contenders

Trinidad, New Orleans, Kansas City, Lafayette, Louisiana International Music Festival, and the Riviera Maya Jazz Festival.

Raoul Pascual | T-Boy Contributor:

Smorgasbord Music – Los Angeles

I guess I’m spoiled here in Los Angeles, Southern California — aka Hollywood. Within a 50 mile radius, there are hundreds of concert venues. Christmas and summer time are the peak season for these events. In my hometown alone, each Thursday in August, there are free (city-sponsored) concerts at the park featuring several excellent bands. One August, they had a Rock ‘n Roll band, next week was Pop music, then Jazz and last they had Mariachi bands. Southern California overflows with talent. Many start in the local pubs and town concerts waiting for their big break.

My favorite artists are James Taylor, Carole King, Kenny Loggins, America, Earth Wind and Fire, Kenny Rankin, Earl Klugh, Toto, Journey, Sting, Swing Out Sisters, Adele, Hall and Oates, The Carpenters, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Neal Diamond, The Eagles, Louis Armstrong, George Benson, Burt Bacharach, The Temptations, The 5th Dimension, The Beach Boys, Al Jarreau, Quincy Jones, James Ingram, Patti Labelle, Serjio Mendez, Andrea Bocelli, Yo-yo Ma, The Beegees, Glen Campbell, Amy Grant, Eric Clapton, Michelle Branch, Randy Crawford, Hall and Oates, Fleetwood Mac, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago, Gladys Knight and the Pips, etc. — and the common denominator of all these stars? They all perform here in Los Angeles (at least the ones who are still breathing).

Maybe that’s why taxes in California is among the highest in the world — we pay for the amazing weather and the dream of bumping into the stars who decide to live and perform here. Californians may have a hand-to-mouth existence but who cares as long as we have our concerts, right?

Weave Cleveland | T-Boy writer:

A Zenith of Music – Los Angeles.

I have had the good fortune to spend the majority of my life directly in the music business. Sales, distribution, performance, composition, instrument repair, studio sessions, babysitting famous players, working big awards shows – and of course thousands of concerts and back stage access. Needless to say I am always excited about music.

As a player and a writer it’s impossible to listen to music the way non-players do. I am always analyzing chords voicings in my head, supposing different arrangements, trying to figure out which microphones were used, listening to my favourite recordings… sometimes for years and still discovering something I missed, a new discovery.

A person’s ear develops with practice. I can hear Bruce Hornsby’s damper pedal squeak and I can hear an edit point of Sir Georgia Martins’ on the “Sgt. Pepper’s” album.

I’ve heard great street musicians in Vienna and stellar musicianship on a summer festival stage in Krakow. Okay. It’s time to stop rambling because it’s everywhere from New Orleans to Winnipeg.

The BEST music destination I have ever been knocked out in has to be LOS ANGELES, California. My LA trips have always revolved around NAMM trade shows. I know the world comes together there but a vast majority of the performers are actually based there. Go to the Troubadour, or head on out to Laurel Canyon, or the Hard Rock in Anaheim… you’re apt to be blown away and shiver in your shoes with what you are going to experience.

Latin Jazz supreme, Avante Garde guitar based rock, finger-style glory, Heavy Metal extraordinaire, that girl who makes a theremin play like Ron Carter or Charles Mingus, Thomas Dolby putting together a band of brilliance to equal what’s in his head, the players are there! All the session musicians and the tv and movie soundtrack work. A supportive union.

I don’t know where all the talent comes from exactly, a liberated mind, a devoted practitioner, the water? Los Angeles is where I have experienced this zenith. I hope you stumble across your own experience in Los Angles so you can see what I am talking about.

The post Visiting Domestic or International Destinations for its Music appeared first on Traveling Archive.

This T-Boy writers’ poll is devoted to THE LAST PLACE in the world where you would NEVER want to visit, or revisit. The instructions were simple: it could be a nation, state, region or province, a city or town, or a place; like that fisherman’s bar in Valparaiso, where I was once thrown out of for singing the Sex Pistols’ rendition of God Save the Queen a tad too loud.

By Susan Breslow, T-Boy Writer – The Garden of Earthly Delights? Hell, no!

A travel guide to Myrtle Beach could save on photography costs by simply featuring the hellscape from the Garden of Earthly Delights on its cover to represent the destination. Hieronymous Bosch’s sixteenth-century vision of Hades is a portrait of chaos, gluttony, porcine characters, hideous body modifications, and antagonistic flags. Myrtle Beach features all of these… plus miniature golf and a beach whose water turns polluted brown after storms.

We drove into this redneck Riviera hotspot from the south, coming up from sedate Charleston. We had no way of knowing that it was Bike Week (held every May, it turns out). Harley-Davidson owners decked out in black leather with silver studs and their similarly appointed, slutty-looking molls (even those old enough to know better) preened along the main drag beside thousands upon thousands of shiny parked hogs.

Behind them, a maelstrom of marquees for bars and fast-food joints where “fried” is the daily plat du jour. These troughs stand alongside souvenir shops where skeevy-looking, gray-bearded riders of both sexes have no problem buying and wearing black T-shirts that boast, “Born to be Wild.”

Had enough of this American Grotesquerie? Myrtle Beach: For a good time, drive on by.

By Richard Carroll, T-Boy Writer – The MV Sundancer, on Alaska’s Inside Passage

I was on a cruise with my mom and I booked the MV Sundancer to Alaska’s inside passage and upon reaching the Seymour Narrows, it sank. This specific cruise is the last place I would want to return too. It was June 29, 1984, and at 8:30 p.m. I was in the main lounge interviewing a crew member while a small band was performing show songs to a few of the 787 passengers sitting about enjoying the moment, when suddenly there was a heavy jolting thug that vibrated the ship. The band instantly stopped playing, and the ship seemed to be quietly floating dead in the water, then another whack and the lights went out, fluttering dimly and the smell of oil permeating the air. The Canadian Pilot had miscalculated our position and the Sundancer had slammed twice into Maud Island near Campbell River, an attractive town with wonderful residents.

The ship was quickly taking on water from a 32-foot gash on the starboard side. I rushed to my cabin where my mother was getting ready to retire. I said, “Mom, we have a problem, and you need to get dressed and put on a life jacket.” Water was seeping into our cabin, and it seemed like it took mom forever to get dressed, I could hear people running in the corridor and shouting. I said, “Forget the panty hose,” which was a tremendously slow process with only one foot in place, “Just slip on a dress, we have to get up to the top deck ASAP.” Finally, we departed the cabin and made our way up the dark stairway, sloshing through sea water, past panicked passengers, some who were frantically crying, to the top deck that was tilted to a sharp downward slant.

Garbled messages from the captain were useless as were the lifeboats that were banging against the side of the ship. The Sundancer made it to the Elk Falls Mill pier at Campbell River with almost complete chaos on the ship. It seemed, and not a generalization, that most of the young passengers panicked, while the older ones were calm and quietly standing on deck with their life jackets. A young couple on their honeymoon were hovering near the railing, when the husband hopped atop the rail facing the water yelling “I’m not going down with the ship!” My mom grabbed his shirt shouting, “Get down from there young man!” His wife was aghast. She was looking at him in disbelief and must have been thinking, “Is this what I just married?”

Campbell River, noted as “The Salmon Capital of the World,” was incredible in organizing a Cherry Picker to host off the elderly passengers like my mom, and were a great help overall. The ship had destroyed most of the pier, and, not by choice, I was the last passenger off the ship climbing down a rope ladder into a tug boat with a young boy from Puerto Rico who had become separated from his parents. As he clutched my arm, he told me he didn’t know how to swim. On land at the Red Cross Help Center, the Campbell River people gave the passengers clothes, blankets, hot drinks, good thoughts, and thankful that no one on the cruise died. The young man who wanted to jump ship and leave his new wife behind was strolling around shirtless sipping a cup of coffee, his distressed wife staring at him with sad eyes. Mom came up to her and with a big hug said, “Honey, give him a chance, maybe he’ll be okay.” We flew back to Southern California with no luggage. Years later I discovered my late mother’s collection of matchbooks and spotted the Sundancer souvenir from her first and only cruise, a memento I keep on my desk to this day. Inside she had inscribed, “Went on cruise with Richard. Ship sunk.”

By Peggy Polinsky, T-Boy Writer – Chaos at Versailles

Yes, chaos at Versailles, in this day and age. Unfortunately. So sad. When I first visited Versailles in 1965 with two friends (we had just graduated from college), there was an orderly line to enter the castle. Then we just walked around and saw everything under the guidance of our friend who became a successful travel agent. It was a beautiful, memorable experience. And then we visited the gardens as well – just strolling through.

The next time I went was in 2019 with my husband. We signed up for a tour. Connecting to the tour was frantic. Upon entering the palace, we discovered that there were hundreds of tours with thousands of tourists. There were so many people that the only time you could really see anything was if you looked up. But, although beautiful, not everything is on the ceiling.

And it was so loud. So, we made it through and got outside where we could see the outstanding gardens at a distance. We knew we couldn’t walk that far. No one had told us about the trams that will take you through the gardens. By then it was too late in the day. So, we made it back to the train and then the bus that took us back to our hotel. Determined not to ever do that again.

By Raoul Pascual, T-Boy Webmaster – The Horror Stories of Iran

I would never ever want to visit Iran. Because of the horror stories of head chopping and degradation of women and infidels, this is the country I would avoid at all cost (unless I want to leave this earth prematurely). It’s a Hotel California trap – you may enter any time you want but you will never leave… at least with your organs in one piece.

The Ayatollah Khomeini

“Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, (May 1900 or September 1902 -June 1989) was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician, and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.

Khomeini was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1979, and has been described as the “virtual face of Shia Islam in Western popular culture,” where he was known for his support of the hostage takers during the Iran hostage crisis, his fatwa calling for the murder of British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, and for referring to the United States as the “Great Satan” and the Soviet Union as the “Lesser Satan.” Following the Islamic revolution, Khomeini became the country’s first supreme leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death. Most of his period in power was taken up by the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei on 4 June 1989.” – From Wikipedia.

Muslin Woman in the U.S. Today

Comment by Ed Boitano: Recently I met with a Muslim woman from Tehran, who spoke of her dislike of American liberals. I began to understand that her disdain stemmed from American liberals’ support of Iran’s Holy Muslim Quran, and that it was none of our business what goes inside of their country.

As the Muslim woman from Tehran continued with her tirade, she wished that U.S. liberals and conservatives alike would bond together and try to abolish many of the words in the Iranian Constitution, whose language, based on the Quran, spoke of misogyny, inequality and abuse of human rights. And whose words led to a state sponsored theocracy, the exacty opposite of what many of us in the U.S. pretend not to believe today.

By Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Writer – Hoodwinked in Daufuskie

As our little ferry boat graced the salt marshes of Hilton Head Island, surrounded by a world of sea grass in South Carolina’s Low Country, we were on our way to the island of Daufuskie Island in search of Gullah history. The ferry ride served as our introduction to our tour vendor, Tour Daufuskie. Little did we know that this very ferry ride would be the high point of our tour.

I recall the words on Tour Daufuskie’s welcoming sign, but noticed another on the ferry dock landing, which said, “No food Allowed.” But, before I booked my tour with Tour Daufuskie, I should have remembered the sacred verbal sign, which is known to all travelers as they journey throughout the world’s land: “Investigate Tour Operator Before Booking.”

My photographer and I were escorted by a Tour Daufuskie employee to a row of golf carts by a general store. His scripted remarks included “If you want any food you better get it here, ’cause this store is the only place on the island you can get it” (later we found an independent grocery in the island’s center), and “this is our BEST golf cart on the island… I know ’cause I just rode it!”

As we rode the BEST golf cart on the island, we were more than happy to leave the Tour Daufuskie man; and, with map in-hand of historic Gullah sites, we excitedly navigated our golf cart down the dusty dirt road in search of the past culture of these remarkable people who had once called Daufuskie their home. But our excitement was tempered, due to our golf cart, lumbering along at half speed. We returned it to the less-than-embarrassed Tour Daufuskie slicker, who offered no explanation, and were given another, which broke down ten minutes later. This time, a more qualified man arrived at the spot of our breakdown, and said we should have never have been assigned the first two carts and gave us another that actually worked.

But, first, a little about the Gullah; after all, that was why we were there. Research told me that slave traders brought Africans from Sierra Leone to the chain of Sea Islands for their expertise in planting, harvesting and processing rice. During the 1700s, American colonists in the Southeastern U.S. realized that rice would grow well in the moist, semitropical country bordering their coastline. But the American white plantation slave owners had no experience in the cultivation of rice, so they purchased slaves with a preference for Africans from the “Rice Coast” or “Windward Coast,” the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa. The enslaved people became known as the Gullah (Gul-luh), perhaps derived from Gola, a tribe found near the border of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Daufuskie itself: translated to “pointed feather,” a name attributed to island’s earliest inhabitants, the tribes of Muskogean stock.

I read that when the U.S. Civil War commenced, white slave owners hurriedly abandoned their plantations and slaves, and fled to the mainland, while some Gullah were actually unaware of the war and their eventual freedom from slavery had finally ended. Due to this isolation, the Gullah were able to preserve more of their African cultural heritage than any other group of African-Americans. They spoke a unique Creole language and maintained a life similar to that of Sierra Leone. I was anxious to meet a Gullah person and hear their unique language in conversation, and, who knows, maybe even a bit of folklore.

So, we were now officially off on our expedition in search of the Gullah, though it did take awhile. The map turned out to be fairly accurate leading us to the First Union African Baptist Church, listed as a historical landmark, followed by Maryfield School (circa 1930), the primary school for the Gullah children. This is the school where author Pat Conroy taught in the late 1960s, later documenting his experience in the novel, “The Water is Wide.” Transportation only began in 1950, so the children must have had a long walk in the woods, in particular with long walks without shoes. The small Billie Burn Historical Museum was next on our agenda, with Ms. Burn considered the first true Daufuskie historian, having documented life on the island’s past in her book, An Island Named Daufuskie.

The afternoon closed, after quick looks at the Maryfield Cemetery, the largest Gullah cemetery on the island. As we returned to the petite ferry, it was obvious that we had been misled and even lied to by Tour Daufuskie employees. Nevertheless, we were happy to see and learn all we did. But, were still annoyed that we had been taken advantage of, and wondered why such a company like Tour Daufuskie could even exist. It occurred to me that South Carolina is one of the least regulated states in the U.S., a state where the establishment of forming workers’ unions was once illegal. Curiously, the Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. And it made no sense to my Yankee mindset, for at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, 96% of the population of South Carolina were African-Americans who wore the chains of slavery.

But the experience did serve as a life lesson, a lesson I had ignored; never book a tour with a vendor until you’ve thoroughly, independently, researched them and the specific tour. If not, there is a chance you might be disappointed. In conversation with others on the ferry ride back, it became clear not one of them had even a hint about the culture, let alone the existence of these proud and historic people, the proud and historic people simply known as the Gullah of Daufuskie Island.

By Fyllis Hockman, T-Boy Writer – The Most Difficult Trek We Had Ever Experienced

The eight of us huddled together, warned repeatedly to stay close and keep quiet. A soft cough escaped from one of our group, and the guide looked immediately askance. Coughing and sneezing were very much frowned upon. If you’re scraped by a stinging nettle, don’t even think about screaming – a usually fitting response. Sharing 98.4 percent of our DNA, the elusive mountain gorillas – whom we were seeking at the time – are very susceptible to human-borne illnesses and more gorillas die from such infectious diseases than from any other cause. We were carriers and they had to be protected from us. And this was before the pandemic!

Still, eight humans a day are allowed to visit these gentle giants, as they are known, for no longer than an hour, as we did during a recent visit to Uganda as part of an ElderTreks tour.

This is not exactly a drive-by photo op. With a vigorous (to say the least) trek of 1-7 hours, depending upon where the gorillas are that day, you have to REALLY want to see them. But even with visitation restricted to an hour, it is usually well worth the effort. But more on that later.

There are about 880 mountain gorillas in the world with almost half located in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a World Heritage Site clearly worthy of its name, in southwestern Uganda, an 18% increase over the last census due to increased conservation efforts, education and veterinary care. This is very good news.

The prelude to the hike is itself intimidating. Treks range from 1-7 hours according to the promotional material, with a maximum increase in elevation of 500 meters. Wear good hiking boots, don gloves for the nettles, a walking stick is mandatory, bring lots of water, don’t get closer than 25 feet – and remember these are wild animals.

Anticipation mixed closely with apprehension as every person on our tour, whether expressed aloud or not, felt “I hope I can make.” The tale I’m about to tell about my travel-writing husband Vic and myself is not the norm. The tale for the other eight members of our Elder Treks tour, from whom we were separated because of the limit of eight people to a gorilla trekking group, is the opposite extreme – also not the norm.

Boy, were we ever wrong. The trek was somewhat strenuous from the beginning, with steep climbs and slippery descents, traversing narrow ravines, but we were holding our own, feeling pretty good about ourselves. Until we entered the forest. And there was no semblance of a trail at all. The guides were trail-blazing with the help of machetes deep into the clearly “impenetrable” woods, the rocks, roots and brambles beneath our feet not even visible because of the thick underbrush. With walking stick in one hand and the porter’s hand in the other, I tried valiantly to move forward though at times the porter was literally dragging me up the precipitous slopes or keeping me from sliding down sheer declines, twigs and vines attacking from both sides of the non-trail, entangling my feet and arms to further impede progress in either direction. At times, I thought either my arm would be pulled off by the porter or my legs by the vines.

All the while, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for thinking to myself how little at that point I cared about the gorillas and how much I was worried about surviving the grueling trip back. I was seriously considering becoming a modern-day, Dian Fossey and staying with the gorillas, assuming we ever reached them, just to avoid the return trip.

I wish we could say the trip was worth it but by the time we finally dragged ourselves – or more appropriately – were dragged by the porters to the designated area where the gorillas had been, they had left. This is just not what you want to hear after what most of us on the trek agreed was the most difficult thing we had ever experienced.

By James Boitano, T-Boy Writer – Athens’ “Ammonia Square”

Athens, It’s not a terrible place: it’s just not at all that remarkable. It’s a big gritty working city that happens to have become the capital of Greece by default in their Ottoman wars of independence. I remember as breathing in all the auto fumes trying to catch a taxi on Omonia Square, we jokingly called it, “Ammonia Square.” Athens is a busy and charmless city which I rate as the most overrated capital city in Europe. There are many more lovely places to visit in Greece. But I will say it its defense: the view of the Acropolis rising above the city is its finest feature. But I never need to go back after seeing it once.

By Ed Boitano, T-Boy Editor – Beneath the Surface of Coeur d’Alene

The French name Coeur d’Alene when translated into English means, “Heart of an Awl.” Once, when I was traversing the pleasant small city streets, I remembered what “Coeur” meant, but had never heard of such a thing as an “Awl” before. Later I learned, it is a thin, tapered metal shaft, coming to a sharp point.

But then yesterday it hit me, and it hit me sharply to my core; when I read that on March 28, 2024, a Utah women’s college basketball team was seen strolling down Coeur d’Alene’s sidewalks from their sponsored NCAA Tournament hotel. They were there for fun, food and relaxation, in preparation for a NCAA Tournament game to be played later in Spokane, WA. A few passing cars packed with locals shouted obscenities at the University of Utah’s Women’s Basketball Team. But it’s not unusual for a city to mock a visiting team, but was there something more below Coeur d’Alene’s emotional surface? And then, local and national news broadcasts said that it was truly something much more.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – “On Thursday, the Utah team and another women’s team staying at the Coeur d’Alene Resort were walking to dinner at a restaurant on Sherman Avenue when the driver of a truck displaying a confederate flag began yelling the N-word and other racial slurs at members of the basketball teams, cheerleaders, the band and others in the traveling party.”

Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said, “Her team experienced a series of hate crimes after arriving at its first NCAA Tournament hotel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

“For our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA Tournament environment, it’s messed up,” continued coach Roberts.

“It’s getting to the point where people of color can’t even travel anywhere,” Spokane NAACP President Lisa Gardner said. “This is starting to be reminiscent of the ‘ 60s.”

And it really did become something much more worse than I had thought…

“Officials in Idaho tried to apologize Tuesday for the racism the University of Utah’s women’s basketball team faced in Coeur d’Alene before an NCAA tournament game at Gonzaga.

Yes, but: “Right-wing disruption shuts down Idaho’s apology for racism targeting Utah during NCAA tourney.” – Axios Salt Lake City.

And, the reason: “They abruptly shut down the news conference when a far-right operative began shouting questions at a human rights advocate.”

Why it matters: “Northern Idaho has become a hub for right-wing extremist groups.”

The latest: “Investigators in Coeur d’Alene are working with the FBI to determine which, if any, criminal violations occurred,” Hammond and police chief Lee White said at the Tuesday news conference. Idaho law forbids “malicious harassment.”

The Ridiculous and the Sad

Coeur d’Alene, like Idaho, is renowned for its recreational components where one can hike, bike and even ski right out your door. But it also has a long history of hate groups, white nationalists and exclusiveness, where realtors often market their properties for “likeminded”‘ transplants who can no longer bear to live a life in urban centers, such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. And security is essential, particularly in some cities and towns, for many properties are marketed as “bunker homes.” But, what for: THE pending doom of the Apocalypse? OR Muslim terrorists’ attacks? OR Martian invasions? OR you and me who happen to live in an urban centers outside of the state? I’m still not sure why, but did notice on my last trip to Idaho, that locals, often transplants, are fond of echoing Fox News talking points via Trump News Social, such as “Liberal urban elitists.” I was happy, though, that “Cappuccino Liberal” didn’t seem to work out, for it’s still my favorite coffee beverage wherever I’m about.

Will I ever revisit Coeur d’Alene and Idaho again? My reply is, perhaps not.

Sun Valley Resort: America’s First Destination Ski Resort

I should close and say, none of this applies to Sun Valley Resort, located in the adjacent city of Ketchum. The resort is well-known as a tower for tolerance and acceptance, where many of its employees are guest workers from foreign lands, with the intention for all of us to understand the many different cultures in the world in which we live today.

And if the liberal patriot Hemingway chose to live there, how bad could it really be.

The post The Last Place in the World Where I Would EVER Want to Visit or Revisit Again appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Destinations of the Heart

Many Fijians I spoke with could not remember when they had vision and were spellbound when the day after surgery they gazed at Dr. Beeve with better than 20/40 vision. – Richard Carroll

See Writers’ Picks Here: Places in the Heart

Favorite Destinations for Music

By Ed Boitano

My dinner concert at Stiftskeller St. Peter was adorned with arias performed by candlelight between food courses, prepared with traditional recipes from Mozart’s era. – Ed Boitano

See Writers’ Picks Here: Visiting Domestic or International Destinations for its Music

Favorite Food Destination Cities

By Ed Boitano

There is a reason why Bologna is referred to as “The Fat One.”– Deb Roskamp

See Writers’ Picks Here: T-Boy Society of Film and Music’s Favorite Food Destination Cities

The First International Destination You’d Visit in the Post Pandemic World

By Ed Boitano

We planned a fun trip to explore Wales and the Channel Islands. Of course, Covid got in the way for the past two years. So, the United Kingdom will be my next international destination. – James Boitano

See Writers’ Picks Here: The First International Destination You’d Visit in the Post Pandemic World

T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Favorite Museums

By Ed Boitano

In the reading room, I found copies of volumes by Nobel Literature Laureates and a cozy place to page through them. – Susan Breslow

See Writers’ Picks Here: T-Boy Society of Film and Music’s Favorite Museums

Top North-American-English Language Travel Novels

By Ed Boitano

Dos Passos’ political and social reflections in the novel are deeply pessimistic about the political and economic direction of the United States, but a few of his characters manage to hold onto their ideals through the First World War. – Allan T. Smith

See Writers’ Picks Here: The T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Top Five North-American-English Language Travel Novels

Best Directorial Film Trilogies

By Ed Boitano

Film is, to me, the trickster. I think I can be around a thousand years and never understand the process. – George Miller

See Writers’ Picks Here: Best Directorial Film Trilogies

Favorite Man-Made World Wonders

By Ed Boitano

As a first-grader, each day at recess I would rush out to my elementary school playground and watch the construction of Seattle’s Space Needle, marveling at its new growth and futuristic space age splendor. Little did I know that my maritime town, seemingly hidden in the northwest corner of the U.S., would become a world-class city for the rest of the planet to see. – Ed Boitano

See Writers’ Picks Here: The T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Favorite Man Made World Wonders – Traveling Boy

Friendliest Destinations in the World

By Ed Boitano

The Taizé Community in France stands for peace, unity, kindness, and reconciliation and as far as I know is the only monastic tradition officially recognized by all three historical branches of Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. During only a week there, I was told by many people of vastly different backgrounds and religious beliefs that Taizé is one place they truly feel at home. – Alex Brouwer

See Writers’ Picks Here: T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Friendliest Destinations in the World

Favorite Beach Destinations

By Ed Boitano

Jump forward to the 1960s, when Matala became a troglodyte mecca on the hippie circuit and Joni Mitchell sang, “The night is a starry dome, And they’re playin’ that scratchy rock and roll, Beneath the Matala moon.”– Stephen Brewer

See Writers’ Picks Here: T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Favorite Beach Destinations

Look for Part ll in the near future.

The post Join Us in Celebration of T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Writers’ Polls appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Our current T-Boy Society of Film, Travel and Music poll is devoted to souvenirs you purchased or found in a foreign land or country. The specifications included any item that leads to a thoughtful remembrance of your journey and still colors your thoughts today.

The intention of the poll is to offer you a chance to see another side and perspective of our esteemed staff of writers.

Bookmarks in My Pages of Travel by Deb Roskamp, T-Boy Photographer.

I love reading.  When we travel, I try to pick up some bookmarkers to remind me of where I’ve been.  That way, I can mark my books as I travel through the pages. – Deb Roskamp

The Fab 4 Invade Cambodia by Ed Boitano, T-Boy Editor.

My time in Sihanoukville, Cambodia was far too brief. But it was easy to see a fledging nation still recovering from the genocide of the Khmer Rouge regime and their own war with Vietnam. I was stunned to see such poverty in this nation attempting to make tourism an important component in their infrastructure. Animals grazed in open garbage dumps, and derelict homes on stilts tilted towards the sea. Yet young children with open smiles rushed up to me to say hello in English. I couldn’t help but to notice a rather haphazard swap meet, surprisingly blessed with items from foreign lands: Britney Spears CDs, Mickey Mouse Paraphernalia, Hollywood movie plaques, and, most ab fabulously, a vintage Beatles lunch bucket, which still adorns my kitchen cabinet today. – Ed Boitano

A Maya Pot in Remembrance by Richard Carroll, T-Boy Writer.

Driving the back roads of Mexico in the African Queen, a 1972  VW Camper, I spent weeks in Southern Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in the State of Quintana Roo. The semi-tropical landscape wraps around ancient history, and stony temples standing for some 3,000 years. Flights of fantasy and puzzlement swirled about while driving on narrow dirt roads to remote villages, and where time was firmly locked in place in a continuance of the ancient Maya civilization.

I often came upon Maya temples covered with vines and foliage, most of them not listed on maps, and the village people speaking the ancient Maya language. My Spanish produced questionable smiles. It seemed as if I was discovering centuries-old altars and shrines with sun-bleached stones and a mystic otherworldly setting where large iguanas sunbathed on the ancient structures, eyes blazing.

Easily out numbering the ancient pyramids of Egypt, hundreds of Maya sites in Mexico and Guatemala are yet to be uncovered. The Yucatan Peninsula is tropical, dense and lush, with a green coastal lowland featuring gently rolling terrain, mangrove swamps and a porous limestone base that produces caves and cenotes that were favored by the Maya.

One afternoon, the sun high in the sky, I was lost, the birdlife mocking me in a squabble of songs. I found a village but failed to communicate with anyone, my Spanish going downhill. Beyond the village was a ruined Maya site with a temple that looked as if it has been hit with a lightning strike. I walked past the temple along a stony path to a pile of stones wondering if I would ever find my way out to a paved highway with signs. I was carrying a long stick to ward off any snakes that might be lingering on the path or undergrowth, when I uncovered a small Maya pot buried beneath a flat smooth stone. It was smaller than my hand but intact, and crusted with dirt and a few ants. The classic Maya pot was a splendid omen. I wondered who held it last, what was its use, who was the potter, and how many Yucatecan sunsets had it endured?

Somehow, I found a paved road to Guatemala, the Maya pot resting on the passenger seat leading the way. Strangely enough, things stated running smoothly, no more flat tires, petrol stations aplenty, and with the Maya pot I made it home to Southern California safely. The little pot is displayed in our home reminding me of the sweeping Maya world of Middle America, full of great mystery and intrigue, a complex enigma that can lay hold of the sensibilities, and can fulfill a longing for adventure and discovery. – Richard Carroll

All That Glitters by Susan Breslow, T-Boy Writer.

On my first visit to San Miguel Allende (which Condé Nast Traveler readers named Best City in the World), I headed to the Jardín Allende, where wrought-iron benches offer a place to relax or meet friends under wide shade trees. Lining both sides of the park, vendors display their wares.

I was attracted by the variety of earrings, many of which incorporate hearts, an iconic symbol of the city. Before I left, I’d acquired a collection of pressed-tin danglers, and none cost more than $5. Mexico is also known for Oaxacan embroidery, and San Miguel offers everything from clothing to furnishings enlivened by colorful threadwork. In this area, just about everything was affordable, including the variety of tasty ice cream flavors sold from pushcarts. Those with a taste for more upscale shopping are advised to visit Fabrica la Aurora, a collection of galleries, shops, and restaurants inside a renovated textile mill. For sustenance, take a break at Chocolate and Churros San Agustin, which offers an extensive menu of chocolate drinks and just-made churros to dip. That, you can’t take with you… just the memory. – Susan Breslow

Postcards From Everywhere by James Boitano, T-Boy Writer.

Back in the olden days, there was no Facebook or Instagram. When you traveled, you were cut off from your friends and family back home. It wouldn’t be until you returned home and you got your rolls of film developed that you could share your travel experiences with them.  To create a bridge of contact, post cards were invented: a tangible cardstock souvenir literally from that place, printed with a colorful set of photos of the place and adorned with an exotic postage stamp. This little rectangle of cardstock though would be personalized with your own message and handwriting, and then laden on an airplane, barge, to be delivered weeks or even months later to the loved ones back home. Often, the sender would have returned long before the post card arrived. But who cares? What a unique souvenir for the recipient: a little piece of ‘over there’ which would never disappear. Of course, now on we can connect instantly and send blanket greetings on social media. But long after our profile pages fade away, these little post cards will remain.

So, I still send postcards when I travel. I try to send them from the farthest and most interesting destination, I try to find the most interesting card, the most colorful stamp. And years ago, when I would send out a batch of post cards to my friends and family, I’d always mail one to myself as well. I have dozens of these now, and they are all in one big binder, a wonderful souvenir from my years and years of travel. – James Boitano

A Fashionable Souvenir by Tom Weber, T-Boy Writer.

I brought back “fashion” as a souvenir from Oz on our just-concluded, month-long vacation. The fashion is a handcrafted pair of wooden eyeglasses by a Queenslander, via Germany, boat maker who also dabbles in eyeglass frames (Fritz Frames) and furniture when he’s not restoring wooden boats. Be on the lookout the next couple of weeks IF my glasses arrive soon by DHL courier. – Tom Weber

Not the Running of the Bulls by Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Writer.

With the advent of bulls, introduced by the Spanish to Peru, no longer would the pre-Columbian populace have to use human strength in dragging their stones and materials over 500-year-old Incan terraces. I noticed many life size bull decorations on rooftops in the Sacred Valley, intended to bring good luck, prosperity, crops and livestock fertility. Though never a fan of knickknacks, I couldn’t resist purchasing a small ceramic Toritos de Pucará (Pucara Bulls), readily available by artisans, as a souvenir and symbol of the Andean farms. Plus, I never shied away from good luck. – Ed Boitano

Magnets of Memories by Fyllis Hockman, T-Boy Writer.

After decades of traveling the world, my walls and shelves are covered with mementos and souvenirs. I finally reached the point where I hesitated to buy anything more simply because I knew I had nowhere to either hang or put it. So now I simply buy an appealing magnet and relive memories every time I access my refrigerator. – Fyllis Hockman

My Own Laughing Buddha by T.E. Mattox, T-Boy Writer.

Back in the 70s when I was still in uniform and stationed in Asia, I drew two weeks of R&R. I thought I’d visit some countries nearby, so I picked Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand. Being a young sailor, Hong Kong and Singapore were pretty much an alcohol-infused haze, hey it was R&R and I still had most of my liver. 

But Thailand was sobering. As our plane touched down in Bangkok, our pilot informed us that a coup d’etat was currently underway throughout the country. He also stated it shouldn’t be a problem but we should stay alert, stay in groups and have a nice visit. 

I’m not the brightest bulb in the lamp, but coup d’etat and have a nice visit don’t belong in the same conversation much less the same sentence. After clearing customs and boarding the bus to our hotel, wouldn’t you know about six to eight very angry young men all carrying Kalashnikovs, waved our bus to pull over and stop. After yelling at our driver through the closed door, he relented and opened it. Collectively, we all wished he hadn’t. Three of the armed individuals came aboard the bus, very animated, yelling at the driver. Not understanding a word of any of the three main Thai languages, I can assure you my underwear immediately recognized the AK-47s. Then I heard the bus driver say clearly… tourist followed by the word, American. After another heated exchange and a few more angry scowls, the head ‘coup’ conspirator yelled something at all of us and pushed his way back off the bus. The driver closed the door and drove us straight to the hotel. Every single one of us walked directly into the hotel bar. The rest of the visit was non-eventful…

The following day near Patpong Road I found my favorite souvenir. It is a 14 lbs. solid teakwood carving of a laughing Buddha that I have to this day. With my dog tags still hanging around its neck, it reminds me that tomorrow is never guaranteed and you should enjoy every minute that you have. The next rounds on me. – T.E. Mattox

An Old Poncho in Old Bogota by Skip Kaltenheuser, T-Boy Writer.

Traveling overland with a big backpack from Kansas to South America in 1975, I wildly overpacked. Scout motto “Be Prepared” echoed in my mind. Along the way, I shed items that proved not worth their weight on my back, gifting or trading them. By the time I hit Bogota in the Andes, the third highest capital in the world, I’d shed too much. Morning chills had me envying the ponchos worn by local sheepherders. A blanket with a hole for your head, brilliant! Still have that first poncho, a tear just repaired, wearing it to keep down my DC thermostat. Harkens back to a trip that changed my perspective on the world through young eyes. Also, to buying emeralds in a bar on Bogota’s notorious Emerald Row, one of the world’s most dangerous pieces of real estate before Colombian authorities shut it down. Emeralds intended for a girl with green eyes. I still have the stones. And the memory of being chased at night through the narrow, winding cobblestone streets of Old Bogota by a one-legged beggar, but no time for that here. – Skip Kaltenheuser.

Pinatubo Pebbles by Raoul Pascual, T-Boy Webmaster & Illustrator.

My wife and I went to visit family several years ago and our son tagged along. My wife and I were content to catch up with loved ones but our spritely son was gung ho to explore. After days of nothing but family time, he realized he was surrounded by old foggies. And so he did research on Philippine tours and booked us for a trip to Mount Pinatubo, one of the most powerful volcanoes in recent history. The eruption was so terrifying, several nearby towns were covered by volcanic ash. In one town, the only visible remnant was the church steeple. For years, a left wing political movement cried for the ouster of US bases (personally, I did not agree with their politics) but within a few days Pinatubo covered Clark Airbase and Subic Naval Base with so much ash the US decided to abandon its operation there. The Pinatubo ashes drifted over the Pacific and even reached California.

We almost died walking up to the mountain to reach the lake inside the huge crater that had formed. Along the trail were yellow powdery phosphorous stones and other volcanic rocks. I picked up a few and I’ve given some to friends. But a few still remain in my collection. – Raoul Pascual

The post Souvenirs of Travel appeared first on Traveling Archive.

T-Boy’s Top 20 Films for Halloween Viewing

Critics: Michael Rand, Jim Gordon, Brent Campbell, Raoul Pascual & Ed Boitano

20. It’s Alive (1974)

Written, Produced & Directed by Larry Cohen

Cast:

• John P. Ryan
• Sharon Farrell
• Andrew Duggan
• Guy Stockwell
• James Dixon
• Michael Ansara

Lenore goes into a particularly rough labor with her second child. Her husband Frank Davis dutifully waits in the waiting room. Something unimaginable happens in the delivery room. The baby is gone and the medical staff are all dead.

19. The Richest Man in Bogota (1962) The DuPont Show of the Week (TV Series)

Directed by Ralph Nelson

Cast:

• Lee Marvin
• Miriam Colon
• Richard Eastman
• Jennifer Gillespie
• Eugene Iglesias

Based on H.G. Wells’ short story “In the Country of the Blind”, Juan De Nunez finds himself in South America, trapped in a remote mountain village where the people (and the animals) have no eyes. In an old book, which they can neither “see” nor understand but regard as a sacred object, he discovers that there is something in the water that has caused this. The old book, written by the early settlers, indicates that their children were born blind, and that THEIR children were born (not only blind) but with no eyes! His love interest, Marina, is somehow different. When he holds a torch in front of her, she can actually follow the light. He determines that she has eyes under her skin, and he believes that he can take her back to the outside world, and with an operation, she would be able to see. This is against the community’s wishes, where De Nunez is considered a freak of nature due to having sight. Plans are made to alleviate him of his eyes.

18. Carrie (1976)

Directed by Brian De Palma

Cast:

• Sissy Spacek
• Piper Laurie
• Amy Irving
• William Katt
• John Travolta
• Nancy Allen
• Betty Buckley

Carrie White, a shy, friendless teenage girl who is sheltered by her domineering, religious mother, unleashes her telekinetic powers after being humiliated by her classmates at her senior prom.

17. Paranormal Activity (2007)

Directed by Oren Peli

Cast:

• Katie Featherston
• Micah Sloat
• Mark Fredrichs
• Amber Armstrong
• Ashley Palmer

After moving into a suburban home, a couple becomes increasingly disturbed by a nightly demonic presence.

16. Dead of Night (1945) Segment “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy”

Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

Cast:

• Michael Redgrave
• Allan Jeayes
• Elisabeth Welch
• Hartley Power

Architect Walter Craig senses impending doom as his half-remembered recurring dream turns into reality. The guests at the country house encourage him to stay as they take turns telling supernatural tales.

15. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Directed by Robert Aldrich

Cast:

• Bette Davis
• Joan Crawford
• Victor Buono
• Maidie Norman
• Wesley Addy

A former child star torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion.

14. Spirits of the Dead (1968) Segment “Toby Dammit”

Directed by Federico Fellini

Cast:

• Terence Stamp
• Salvo Randone
• Marina Yaru
• David Bresson

Anthology film from three European directors based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe: a cruel princess haunted by a ghostly horse, a sadistic young man haunted by his double, and an alcoholic actor haunted by the Devil.

13. The Changeling (1980)

Directed by Peter Medak

Cast:

• George C. Scott
• Trish Van Devere
• Melvyn Douglas
• Jean Marsh
• John Colicos
• Barry Morse

After the death of his wife and daughter in a car crash, a music professor staying at a long-vacant Seattle mansion is dragged into a decades-old mystery by an inexplicable presence in the mansion’s attic.

12. Let the Right One In (2008)

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Cast:

• Kåre Hedebrant
• Lina Leandersson
• Per Ragnar
• Henrik Dahl
• Karin Bergquist

Oskar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl.

11. The Birds (1963)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Cast:

• Rod Taylor
• Jessica Tandy
• Suzanne Pleshette
• Tippi Hedren
• Veronica Cartwright

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

10. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Directed by Roman Polanski

Cast:

• Mia Farrow
• John Cassavetes
• Ruth Gordon
• Sidney Blackmer
• Maurice Evans
• Ralph Bellamy

A young couple trying for a baby move into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, but find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.

9. Spider (2002)

Directed by David Cronenberg

Cast:

• Ralph Fiennes
• Miranda Richardson
• Gabriel Byrne
• Lynn Redgrave
• Mrs. Wilkinson
• John Neville

A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood.

8. The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Directed by Charles Laughton

Cast:

• Robert Mitchum
• Shelley Winters
• Lillian Gish
• James Gleason
• Peter Graves
• Billy Chapin
• Sally Jane Bruce

A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid the $10,000 he’d stolen in a robbery.

7. Vampyr (1932)

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

Cast:

• Julian West
• Maurice Schutz
• Rena Mandel
• Sybille Schmitz
• Jan Hieronimko

A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.

6. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

Directed by Fritz Lang

Cast:

• Rudolf Klein-Rogge
• Thomy Bourdelle
• Gustav Diessl
• Otto Wernicke
• Rudolf Schündler

A criminal mastermind uses hypnosis to rule the rackets after death.

5. Near Dark (1987)

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Cast:

• Adrian Pasdar
• Jenny Wright
• Lance Henriksen
• Bill Paxton
• Jenette Goldstein
• Tim Thomerson

A small-town farmer’s son reluctantly joins a traveling group of vampires after he is bitten by a beautiful drifter.

4. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Directed by George A. Romero

Cast:

• David Emge
• Ken Foree
• Scott H. Reiniger/li>
• Gaylen Ross

Following an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia S.W.A.T. team members, a traffic reporter, and his television executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.

3. The Shining (1980)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Cast:

• Jack Nicholson
• Shelley Duvall
• Danny Lloyd
• Scatman Crothers
• Barry Nelson

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.

2. Nosferatu (1922)

Directed by F.W. Murnau

Cast:

• Max Schreck
• Gustav von Wangenheim
• Greta Schröder
• Janet Leigh
• Martin Balsam
• Ruth Landshoff

Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence in Murnau’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel.

1. Psycho (1960)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Cast:

• Anthony Perkins
• Vera Miles
• John Gavin
• Janet Leigh
• Martin Balsam
• John McIntire

A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer’s client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.

READERS, feel free to offer comments on you own selections of favorite films for Halloween watching.  Please send to **@Tr**********.com , and we will post in our Readers’ poll.

READERS’ POLL (as of today)

Ramon; St. Louis, MO: What no Exorcist!? I couldn’t sleep for a week after seeing it.

Charles; Miami, FL: 1. Halloween, 2. Friday 13th, 3. Carrie, 4. The Hills have Eyes, 5. Psycho

Wendy; Hollywood, USA: The Kardashians

Jamaal, Berkely, CA: 10 Best Halloween Movies of All Time 10. Halloween III: Season of the Witch 9. House 8. Tales of Halloween 7. Poltergeist 6. The Guest 5. The Nightmare Before Christmas 4. Trick ‘r Treat 3. Evil Dead 2 2. A Nightmare on Elm Street 1. Halloween

Linda; Seattle, WA: How ’bout some classics… Dracula (1931), 2. Frankenstein (1931), 3. Dracula (1992); 4. Bride of Frankenstein (1935); 5. The Black Cat (1934); 6. Night of Terror (1934); 7. The Raven (1935); 8. The Walking Dead (1935); 9. The Fly (1958); 10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); Honorable mention: Young Frankenstein (1974)

Tom; Vancouver, BC: Ghost Story… the one from 1981.

Alicia; LA, CA:  Bride of Chucky, Halloween, Blair Witch P

Jackie; Burbank, CA: Monster House (2006) 2. Shaun Of The Dead (2004) 3. The Cabin In The Woods (2012) 4. The Innkeepers (2011) 5. The Witches (1990) 6. Coraline (2009) 7. The Poltergeist (1982) 8. The Honeymoon (2014) 9. Scream (1996) 10. The Others (2001) 11. Hocus Pocus (1993)

Jose; Redland, CA: Halloween II (directed by Rob Zombie) (2009)

Erin; Belfast, No. Ireland:  1. Shaun Of The Dead (2004) 2. Psycho 3. The Cabin In The Woods (2012) 4. The Innkeepers (2011) 5. The Witches (1990) 6. Coraline (2009) 7. The Poltergeist (1982) 8. The Honeymoon (2014) 9. Scream (1996) 10. The Others (2001) 11. Hocus Pocus (1993)

Jackie; Burbank, CA: Monster House (2006) 2. Shaun Of The Dead (2004) 3. The Cabin In The Woods (2012) 4. The Innkeepers (2011) 5. The Witches (1990) 6. Coraline (2009) 7. The Poltergeist (1982) 8. The Honeymoon (2014) 9. Scream (1996) 10. The Others (2001) 11. Hocus Pocus (1993)

Jose; Redland, CA: Halloween II (directed by Rob Zombie) (2009)

The post Top 20 Films for Halloween Viewing appeared first on Traveling Archive.

A trilogy is often defined as a series of three books, plays or films that have the same subject or the same characters. But, for the T-Boy Society of Film, Travel & Music, film trilogies must absolutely include the same filmmaker allowing them to expand on their cinematic themes. Granted, an auteur’s filmography includes those very personal themes and visions throughout their entire body of work, but many directors, critics and film scholars often pinpoint three films that accent their themes.

At a recent T-Boy conference the following film trilogies were selected as among the best in the history of the cinema.

The links to director’s names and films courtesy of IMDB.com

Roberto Rossellini: The War Trilogy

I try to capture reality, nothing else. – Roberto Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy

• Rome, Open City (1945)
• Paisan (1946)
• Germany Year Zero (1948)

Michelangelo Antonioni: Modernity and its Discontents Trilogy

My work is like digging, it’s archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. – Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Modernity and its Discontents Trilogy

• L’Avventura (1960)
• La Notte 1961
• L’Eclisse (1962)

John Ford: The Cavalry Trilogy

My name is John Ford and I make Westerns. – John Ford

John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy

• Fort Apache (1948)
• She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
• Rio Grande (1950)

Satyajit Ray: The Apu Trilogy

Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. – Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Thrilogy

• Pather Panchali (1955)
• Aparajito (1956)
• The World of Apu (1959)

Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy

Sex and violence was never really my cup of tea; I was always more into sax and violins. – Wim Wenders

Wim Wender’s Road Trilogy

Alice in the Cities (1974)

Wrong Move (1975)

Kings of the Road (1976)

Fritz Lang: The Mabuse Trilogy

I am profoundly fascinated by cruelty, fear, horror and death. My films show my preoccupation with violence, the pathology of violence. – Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang’s Mabuse Trilogy

• Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)
• The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
• The Terror of Dr. Mabuse (1960)

George Stevens: The American Dream Trilogy

The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument. – George Stevens

George Stevens’ American Dream Trilogy

• A Place in the Sun (1951)
• Shane (1953)
• Giant (1956)

Ingmar Bergman: Trilogy of Faith

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.– Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s Trilogy of Faith

• Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
• Winter Light (1963)
• The Silence (1963)

Sergio Leone: The Dollars Trilogy

As an actor, Clint Eastwood has two expressions: with and without the hat. – Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy

• A Fistful of Dollars (1964),
• For a Few Dollars More (1965)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: The BDR Trilogy (Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house. – Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BDR Trilogy

• The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)
• Lola (1981)
• Veronika Voss (1982)

Anthony Mann: Frontier Justice Trilogy

Geniuses sometimes end up very unhappy, without a penny. – Anthony Mann

Anthony Mann’s Frontier Justice Trilogy

• Winchester ’73 (1950)
• The Naked Spur (1953)
• The Man from Laramie (1955)

Alan J. Pakula: The Pakula Paranoid Trilogy

I am oblique, I think that has to do with my own nature. I like trying to do things which work on many levels, because I think it is terribly important to give an audience a lot of things they might not get as well as those they will, so that finally the film does take on a texture and is not just simplistic communication. — Alan J. Pakula

Alan J. Pakula’s Paranoid Trilogy

• Klute (1971)
• The Parallax View (1974)
• All the President’s Men (1976)

George Miller: The Mad Max Trilogy

Film is, to me, the trickster. I think I can be around a thousand years and never understand the process. – George Miller

George Miller’s Mad Max Trilogy

• Mad Max (1979)
• Mad Max 2 – The Road Warrior (1982)
• Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) is eliminated due to its co-directorial status with director George Ogolivie.

Krzysztof Kieślowski: Tree Colors Trilogy

If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I’ll never achieve it; in the same way that I’ll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying. – Krzysztof Kieślowski

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors Trilogy

• Three Colors: Blue (1993)
• Three Colors: White (1994)
• Three Colors: Red (1994)

Nicolas Roeg: The Rock Star Trilogy

Movies are not scripts – movies are films; they’re not books, they’re not the theater. It’s a completely different discipline, it exists on its own. – Nicholas Roeg

Nicholas Roeg’s Rock Star Trilogy

• Performance – Written & co-directed by Donald Cammell (1970)
• The Man Who Fell to Earth ( 1976)
• Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)

SPECIAL MENTION

William Wyler: The Pacifist Film Trilogy

Dedicated to John Hartl, former Seattle Times film critic, who coined the term.

I’m here to make good pictures. If I don’t see it, I won’t touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it! – William Wyler

William Wyler’s Pacifist Film Trilogy

• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
• Friendly Persuasion (1956)
• Ben-Hur (1959)

In Memory: John Hartl

John Hartl was the Seattle Times film critic from 1966-2001. John died peacefully on the morning of June 3, 2022 at the Seattle home he shared with his husband, Michael Upchurch. A cinephile since his childhood in Wenatchee, WA, he would save money from his paper route to buy 8 mm films. He once invited me to his house for a screening of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of the Nation; a film he adored for its form and innovations, well aware that cinema is a visual medium, not a literary one, corrupted by plot.

I’ll always remember John as a kind and thoughtful man, who never stopped loving the cinema, even when he walked away from the Times due to his disdain of corporate driven movies and hyperbolic marketing, where only the bottom line mattered. Near-criminal foolishness has always been a large part of this business, he wrote in his farewell piece. It’s the escalating hype surrounding the release of the junkiest stuff, the willingness of the press to play along, the lust to be ‘No. 1 in America’ on thousands of screens. Nevertheless, he was still committed to film as an art form, and would write freelance reviews and features until 2018.

John graciously appeared in my 1977 film, Seven Days in a Movie Town in an interview section discussing his insights on cinema. He never once commented on the poor film exposure in some of his footage that I shot. He was that kind of guy. John donated brain tissue to the UW for research into brain activity in the elderly, including those with dementia, in his final act of generosity.

– Ed Boitano, T-Boy Editor

The post Best Directorial Film Trilogies appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Our latest T-Boy Society of Film & Music poll will be of discovery; that is the first time you ate an unknown (to you) International or Domestic food.

It’s always fun to see our esteemed members’ selections, giving us a unique insight into their world.

Susan Breslow | T-Boy writer:

The physical sensation was psychedelic.

The first time I bit into a Szechuan pepper, I thought my friends would have to call the EMTs. This was at Szechuan Taste, a long-gone Chinese restaurant on Chatham Square in New York’s Chinatown. My mouth was on fire, and the physical sensation was psychedelic; I could practically feel concentric rings of flame. Neither water nor milk could quell the heat; it simply took time. And I learned my lesson to always check for peppers in Chinese food so that the experience would never recur.

T-Boy note: The application of Sichuan Peppers (English, Szechuan) to food in China dates back more than two millennia. When eaten, it produces a tingling, numbing effect due to the presence of hydroxy-alpha sanshool.

Weave Cleveland | T-Boy writer, musician, composer and Travel Guys cinematographer:

I hate your kind but I’ll eat your food.

I have a Filipino friend who grew up in Texas. He was used to prejudice. He’s a very funny guy. He made a run of T-shirts that read I HATE YOUR KIND BUT I’LL EAT YOUR FOOD. To this day I regularly run into people that have racist views but love ethnic foods.

When I was 17, I joined my 16-year-old girlfriend on a trip to Vancouver to visit her Scottish relatives. At dinner we were eating something delicious but had no idea what it was. Her aunt replied, Haggis. I remember liking it but I also never plan to eat it again.

T-Boy note: Haggis is a savory Scottish pudding containing sheep’s pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal’s stomach, though today generally in an artificial casing. As the national dish of Scotland, Haggis is traditionally served with “neeps and tatties,” and a wee dram of whisky.

James Boitano | T-Boy writer:

Oysters on the Half Shell on the Atlantic Coast of France.  

While I’d certainly heard of and even eaten oysters before, they were always cooked. The idea of cracking-open a live oyster and eating it raw on the half shell was something this 17-year-old had never imagined. That’s until this Seattle boy was spending a year as an exchange student in France. During my year, I visited a family in Bordeaux. The host mother treated me like an adult and one day when everyone else was busy, took me to the seaside resort of Arcachon.

There for a mid-afternoon snack, she took me to a beachfront café where the oysters were served, live and on ice, with a freshly sliced baguette, salted butter and even a glass of chilled white wine. My goodness, I sure felt like quite a grown up. As the sea air blew over me, I tasted the salty oysters as they went down my throat. It was delicious and such an adult experience that I will never forget. But they never again tasted quite so good as that first time when I was just a young lad.

T-Boy note: Arcachon Bay oysters had long been savored since Roman times, but it was not until the 19th century that the oyster became popular. Today, the Arcachon Bay has 26 oyster farms, and about 700 acres of oyster beds that produce 8,000 to 10,000 tons of oysters per year. Rich in minerals and vitamins, this shellfish with delicate and tasty flesh, particularly popular at New Year’s Eve, is eaten raw, plain or with a squeeze of lemon.

Ruth J. Katz | T-Boy writer:

I’m not terribly adventurous with food.

But, I remember vividly my first time faced with an artichoke. I was young and completely flummoxed. I had actually seen them growing at our neighbor’s house, in his vegetable garden–on long stems. For the record, in Italy, when you buy artichokes, you get that long stem. Here in America, you do not.

So, there I was, faced with this “flowering” green thing. I waited and watched what everyone was doing — and then I just copied how they attacked the beautiful, verdant orb. To this day–and I make artichokes a lot when I see them in the market–I think of that day. They served them cold, with sour cream as a dipping accompaniment. Soon, I was off and running, serving them more traditionally, with melted butter. And these days, I do not need anything with them–they are so sweet and meaty. I love when the green grocer has HUGE ones–the size of a football (well, not quite), and then I’ll cook up three or four of them and keep them in the fridge–each makes a wonderful luncheon. And since that time, I have taught so many friends how to prepare and make them. They are utterly delicious.

T-Boy note: The artichoke is a 3,000-year-old vegetable believe to be found in the Mediterranean area. Renowned for its potent medicinal properties, the ancient Greeks and Romans valued the edible blossom as ‘food for the Gods’ and reserved for the aristocratic alone.

Michael Rand | T-Boy writer, musician & filmmaker:

Beef Tongue at Canter’s Deli, Los Angeles.

I was 8 years old. My mother tricked me and told me it was corned beef. I didn’t ask for seconds.

T-Boy note: Beef Tongue has a long history, with archeological evidence that East Africa’s were enjoying wildebeest tongue as long as 2.5 million years ago. Canters, a deli in Los Angeles, is famous for its selection of meats, and also as the birthplace the rock band, Guns N’ Roses.

Fyllis Hockman | T-Boy writer:

Something with whom I was making eye contact.

So I was at a travel writer banquet in Guilin, China faced with a vast variety of unidentifiable food — some of which I braved through; others not. I gingerly picked up a fried bee with my chopsticks and as I brought it towards me, I paused. I clearly could not eat something with whom I was making eye contact. Gingerly, I put it back.

T-Boy note: Throughout the history of humankind, eating insects has been popular in utilizing this valuable commodity. Bee larvae are commonly eaten in many countries as they are edible, don’t taste bad, and are packed with nutrients. It turns out eating the larvae is probably the safest and more nutritious way to eat bees. They are moister, less crunchy, and don’t have a stinger!

Sandy Lorrigan | T-Boy writer & former director of Sitka Tourism:

Raw oysters at the Judge Roy Bean Saloon in Daphne, Alabama.

It was a LONG time ago and these cobwebs are pretty broken inside, but I believe my first “unknown to me” were raw oysters (ewwwww and gross) at Judge Roy Bean’s in Daphne, Alabama. The saloon-styled wood and tin hangout, burned down in 2005. It was neat place — used to have goats in the back enclosed area, and was the first time I heard of some “guy” named Jimmy Buffet come in and play (unscheduled and I didn’t know who he was, but he lived in the area).

Richard Frisbie | T-Boy writer:

I Was a Fava Bean Virgin.

As one of seven Journalists in a group of 180 travel agents I got to experience a cattle-car FAM trip to Sardinia firsthand. If it wasn’t for the exotic destination, an off-the-beaten-path Italian island in the Mediterranean just below Corsica, I never would have agreed to that rat race. But Italian Tourism promised separate chauffeured limousines for the journalists, and upgraded accommodations and special culinary events, so I couldn’t refuse.

Sardinia is breath-takingly beautiful. Our personal guide knew everyone and everyplace to take us to experience island life and culture. Most of the time we had our own car and driver, choosing to go to some amazing places, but on one occasion we were joined by the busloads of travel hoi polloi in a rustic agrotourism farm for some local, farm-to-table fare.

It was a walled compound, charming with covered trestle tables along one side facing an interior grassy planting of fig trees. A similar open-sided shed sheltering farm equipment that looked at least a century old commanded another side, and the white-washed residence, with what must have been a huge kitchen, took up the third side, with only bare walls and a huge wooden gate on the fourth. There was no planned seating, so we journalists commandeered an out-of-the-way table near the kitchen which we figured would be quieter and with the best service, leaving the others to fend for themselves in a fight for the scenic outside tables. When it started to rain we laughed because our “undesirable” table was the coziest and driest spot on the farm.

The serving was like the seating, family-style. I sat at one end with the most engaging and glamorous woman named Olivia at the other. She looked and acted like she should be presiding over a huge Italian dinner, making her a gracious hostess. It was a delight to look down the table at her, admiring from afar. We had some empty seats, so I found the nicest couple in the travel agent section and invited them to join us, making us a party of ten counting our guide. They turned out to be part-time travel writers as well as travel agents, so we all got along like peas in a pod.

I liked the company and the food, but nothing stands out today except for one vegetable. Olivia was gushing over a bowl of beans, exclaiming everyone had to try them and circling the table clutching a dish, spooning ordinary looking very large lima beans onto our plates. One taste of the buttery and brothy beans – fava beans to be exact – and I was as excited as Olivia.

These were nothing like the dried or canned fava beans usually found in the states, no – these were freshly grown and harvested and cooked simply to show off their exquisite flavor and texture. Eating them was a transcendent experience. Looking around, I noticed many tables that did not share our enchantment, leaving their fava beans untouched. Of course, I rescued the beans from the philistines and shared them with my enthusiastic friends. While I was at it, I did the same with the untouched pitchers of earthy red wine scattered around the compound. Travel Journalists know how to party.

It was that meal that brought our tableful of strangers to the realization that we were all family, sharing the camaraderie and country cooking of Italy together as if we were born to it. I’ve tasted fava beans many times since, searching for that elusive essence of perfection I found in that rural farm, but I never felt the same lusty rush as on that rainy day in Sardinia when Olivia ladled fava beans onto my plate from a bowl cradled in her bosom.

Skip Kaltenheuser | T-Boy writer:

Endless culinary delights…

But not for me!

Raoul Pascual | T-Boy writer, illustrator and webmaster:

My first reaction to first foods.

SALADS – Growing up in the Philippines, I didn’t eat a lot of vegetables. I ate like a horse … well … more like a carnivorous horse. So when I came to the US and I saw salads as a meal item, I didn’t understand how something so light and tasteless would be even considered a meal. Until now, the most unfulfilling salad for me is a Caesar Salad. Without the dressing, that is not even a desert.

STEAKS – Now you’re talking. When I sunk my teeth into my first ever steak, it awakened the Neanderthal in me. When the fatty juice oozed out, I knew what I’d been missing all my life. Add a glass of red wine and buttered greens and I knew what heaven was going to be like.

BEVERAGES – I grew up with a tight budget. So, I always savored ice cold Coca Cola and freshly squeezed orange juice which were rare. But I had never tasted fresh milk until I arrived here in the US. Prior to that, milk was always powdered, condensed or evaporated. I loved it so much I drank half a gallon in one sitting. I drank it like water. I overdid it the first time (I think I’m lactose intolerant) so I was grateful that there was a bathroom nearby.

FISHES – I had always had fish growing up but it was mostly salted or boiled in a soup — never fresh. I was a teenager when I first tasted Japanese sushi with wasabe. I appreciated the clean fresh taste more than the taste which was too subtle for my buds. (Maybe it was the wasabe that burned my taste buds). It was also very expensive. One summer, I went to a semi-private beach resort in Quezon province in the Philippines. dragging a fish line as we sailed on a motor boat, we caught a 6-foot barracuda. They laid that sucker down a mat made of fresh banana leaves and cut that baby open. I had never had so much sushi in my life. It was amazing.

BEER – My Mom bought a large can of powdered Yeast because she read it was healthy for us. She mixed it in a glass of powdered milk and it was the worst thing I ever tasted. None of my siblings would drink it. It was also very expensive. So, being the official garbage collector, I gulped down every single milk-yeast concoction. Halfway through the can, I had gotten used to the taste so by the end of that nightmare it wasn’t that bad anymore. Years later, my brother and I were handed a bottle of beer for the first time. He didn’t like the bitter taste. I didn’t particularly like it but the taste reminded me so much of that milk-yeast drink so I was able to finish my bottle. To this day, I’m not really a fan of beer but it’s something I drink in social gatherings.

T-Boy note: Wasabi, also called Japanese horseradish, is a plant of the mustard family, which features pungent due to its ground rhizomes. The plant is native to Japan, South Korea, and Sakhalin, Russia, and its cultivation is limited because of its specific growing requirement.

Ringo Boitano | T-Boy Writer:

Fresh anchovies (acciughe) at the Cinque Terre.

In the early afternoon I would watch local fishing people almost stumbling into restaurants and bars for an espresso. The stumbling, I should add, the result of an important day-long of rest due to the intense nocturnal hours of fishing, often times on a rugged sea. Later, I was rewarded by their catch of the night for an introduction to a small, green fish called acciughe, which soon blessed my dinner plate each evening. And, yes, they are different than those packed into a tin can.

Earlier, after I’d completed my trek to each of Cinque Terre’s terraced hillside towns – Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore – I noticed that some featured unique culinary styles of preparation. And I had to try them all: acciughe marinated, acciughe salted, acciughe butterflied and deep-fried acciughe, with a full-flavored garlic/vinegar sauce called Giada. My favorite main course was Tegame alla vernazzana, a layered, casserole-like dish of whole acciughe, potatoes, tomatoes, white wine, oil, and herbs.

Upon my arrival back to the states, I decided that canned anchovies were only fitting for a Caesar Salad. But then remembered that Caesar Cardini, who created the world’s first Caesar Salad at his Tijuana sports bar in 1924, only added canned anchovies months later (some say it was his brother who secretly slipped them in). Though designed as a snack, Cardini insisted that the salad be prepared by a waiter at your table, often times himself, with the protocol of smearing condiments on long, unchopped leafs of romaine lettuce, intended to be eaten with your fingers. Perhaps I should add that chopped lettuce eaten with a fork is only a Caesar Salad imposter.

T-Boy note: Cinque Terre’s anchovies, referred to acciughe in standard Italian, are considered by some to be the most delicious in all of Italy. Due to the saltiness of the Mediterranean Sea, they are endowed with a strong but harmonious taste. They are also called bread of the sea or in the local dialect, “u pan du ma.” The small fish, though much larger than those from a tin can, arrive to the Italian Riviera’s Cinque Terre by way of the Atlantic Ocean every June. The best catch can be expected on the day of San Pietro, June 29.

Tony Chisholm | T-Boy Writer:

 Fresh scallops from the sea.

Several years back I and a group of adventurous Canadians had embarked on a week-long sea kayak adventure in the Baja Mexico on the Sea of Cortez. Our jumping off spot was Loreto in the Baja. This was our second trip, and we loved the place. Especially being the on sea which was full vast varieties of fish and sea birds. At one point we were surrounded by a huge school of fish being chased by a much larger predator. The school near the surface split in two to throw off the marauder and one half took to the air all around us! Not a sight you see every day.

One day crossing a large bay, we came across a very noisy and smelly small fishing boat. Our guide explained that the noise came from a compressor on board supplying air to someone below walking on the bottom of the sea. Really? Yes, he was collecting scallops on the bottom. As he walked along with a bag, he picked up scallops that were then hoisted to the deck of the boat when the bag was full. On deck another person cracked open the shell (shucked) – which was then thrown overboard. These were sea scallops, and the edible part is the white adductor muscle. The rest of the scallop is discarded.

One of the guides was local and as we kayaked alongside the fishing boat, he bartered for some fresh scallops for us which had just been shucked. They were plentiful and huge. That night we cooked them over an open fire on the beach. They were so big we had to cut them into pieces to cook and I’ve never tasted anything so wonderful. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact we were camping on a perfect but very remote white sand beach. Or perhaps the flavour was enhanced by our hunger after a full day of kayaking in the sun on the open sea. Naaaa… they just tasted spectacular.

That night the fisherman came ashore at the other end of the beach. They slept all night under blankets and were gone early in the morning before the rest of us enjoying our holiday. The guide told us the men did not own the boat and they only received a very small pay for this gruesome job. The boat owner evidently made all the money. That explained why the men were so eager to deal directly with us for precious American dollars.

What a way to earn a living. Weighted down, walking on the bottom of the sea, breathing compressed air full of diesel fumes and searching for scallops all day. Probably fighting off sharks, just for a few centavos.

Those scallops were amazing and we ate them for four nights.

T-Boy note: The Silken Scallop (Leopectensericeus), is a member of the Pectinidae Family of Scallop Shells, known in Mexico as vieira de satinada. They are a classic fan shaped scallop with a rounded profile with a straight hinge and equal sized ears. To prepare: place one scallop in half-shell, along with a trickle of olive oil, a sliver of chili and garlic, and a splash of wine. Place the shells directly over the fire embers until ‘nearly cooked.  Remove from the heat and they will continue to cook in the hot shells while you sprinkle over the parsley. Don’t throw away the juices in the shell, they are like nectar!

Ed Boitano | T-Boy editor:

A Tase of Ostalgie in East Berlin.

It was a fascinating step back into history, akin to traveling by a time machine to a preunification GDR restaurant. Nostalgia (Ostalgie) restaurants are now spread across the former GDR, popular with locals for a taste of their past, and curious tourists in understanding the simple dining experiences at the East German table. I looked at my menu and opted for pork chops, with sides of two epic boiled potatoes, and a spinach salad, dressed with a unique concoction from a tube of unknown substance. The chops were tough and rather grisly, and the boiled potatoes tasted like, well, boiled potatoes. The spinach salad was simple and unimaginative. And, the unknown substance in the tube, still remains a mystery to me today, but I was appreciative of the overall meal’s authenticity.

T-Boy note: Since the early 2000s, there has been a wave of nostalgic Ostalgie (a combination of the German words for “east” and “nostalgia”) restaurants opening in East Berlin and the former GDR. The key term is ‘ingredient restrictions,’ where communist comfort food was often born out of necessity. For more Ostalgie experiences, visit Berlin’s colossal war memorials, Checkpoint Charlie, drink Soviet-inspired soft drinks, and drive a smoke-belching Trabant, the GDR’s answer to the West’s Volkswagen, designed as “the people’s affordable car.”

Phil Marley | Poet:

Eating Alligator with the Seminoles.

I was welcomed like a long-lost friend. Several members of the Seminole Tribe shared their thoughts on pride, identity, and the preservation of their culture… and also their tradition of eating alligator. The tradition also included seemingly eating anything else that moved in the Everglades, plus a variety of carefully cultivated grains, vegetables, roots and fruits. Their diet was also endowed by recipes from runaway African-American slaves who found refuge among the Seminoles. And how did the floured and fried alligator taste? Well, dare I say a bit like chicken, though I tried to ignore the repugnant pieces of alligator fat. Sorry, Mr. Boitano; everyone has their limit.

“Respect was our Creed with loyalty and trust. Now we crest new addiction with the white man’s lust. This is no longer a war it’s a Genocide. They’re slowly tearing us apart, this is my war cry.” – Author unknown.

T-Boy note: The Seminole people’s relationship with alligators developed 200 years ago in southern Florida. When the tyrant Andrew Jackson issued the illegal Indian Relocation Act, the Seminole Tribe found safety in the Everglades. By the 19th century, the tribe had practically (strategically) disappeared from Euro-American’s eyes; living in isolation deeper into Everglades, where they had learned to adapt to the dense, bug-infested, sweltering swamps. They never surrendered, never signed a peace treaty. The Seminoles are nothing less than a profile in courage, who outsmarted the U.S. government, whose aim was to forcibly relocate them to Oklahoma “Indian Territory.”

The post First Foods for Thought When Traveling appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The genesis of our poll was highly influenced by Christina Newland’s thoughtful piece in BBC Culture, entitled, Why 1971 was an extraordinary year in film – BBC Culture

Number 10: Duck, You Sucker!

(aka Fistful of Dynamite)

Director: Sergio Leone; Writing: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone; Cinematography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini; Music: Ennio Morricone. 

Players: Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Romolo Valli, Maria Monti.    

Synopsis: A Mexican bandit and an I.R.A. explosives expert rebel against the government and become heroes of the Mexican Revolution.

Memorable Lines:

• James Coburn as John H. Mallory: Where there’s revolution there’s confusion, and when there’s confusion, a man who knows what he wants stands a good chance of getting it.
• Mallory: When I started using dynamite… I believed in… many things, all of it! Now, I believe only in dynamite. I don’t judge you, Villega. I did that only… once in my life. Get shovellin’.
• Rod Steiger as Juan Miranda: Please, don’t try to tell me about revolution! I know all about the revolutions and how they start! The people that read the books, they go to the people that don’t read the books, and say “Ho-ho!” The time has come to have a change, eh?”

Behind the Scenes:

• When James Coburn was offered the role of John Mallory by Leone, he was initially reluctant. He had dinner with Henry Fonda (star of Once Upon a Time in the West) and asked him what he thought of Leone. Fonda told him that he considered Leone the greatest director he ever worked with. Coburn then took the part. Similarly, Fonda himself had been reluctant to take the part Leone offered him, but was persuaded by his friend, Eli Wallach, the co star of The Good, The Bad and Ugly (1966). Earlier, Wallach had asked Clint Eastwood what to expect when working with Leone on The Good, The Bad and Ugly. Eastwood replied, Never believe an Italian special effects man when he says the explosion won’t hurt you.
• The chanting of Shon shon shon in composer Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack was the suggestion of Leone’s wife, Carla Leone, who thought it would sound better than the original Wah wah chants. Morricone himself said the chants do not represent the names of characters but are just part of the soundscape like the chants in all the other Sergio Leone westerns. Morricone also said that Leone asked him to compose a film’s music before the start of principal photography – contrary to normal practice. He would then play the music to the actors during takes to enhance their performance.
• Rod Steiger demanded that his scenes be filmed with natural sound. This was virtually unheard of in Italian cinema and led to much tension between Steiger and Leone. Steiger had prepared for the role by taking accent and language lessons with a Mexican woman with the goal to use inflections that would imply Juan’s difficulty with speaking English instead of his native Spanish. To create Mallory accent, James Coburn vacationed in Ireland for five weeks. After the film’s completion, Steiger was content with the final result, and praised Leone for his skills as a director.

CRITICS:

• Underrated large canvas Leone; Steiger and Coburn as a revolutionary odd couple. – Dan King, T-Boy Film & Music
• Though not the towering masterpiece of “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968), but still with Leone’s difficult to imitate directorial style of extreme closeups, generally followed by silence and violence (in this case explosions), and then cutting directly to sweeping panoramic shots of a scorched Spanish desert. And, Morricone, always on board, having contributed to all original musical compositions in Leone’s films since “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1961), including the Leone executive produced, “My Name is Nobody.” (1973). – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Film & Music
• Leone’s means are occasionally too complicated, his themes are rendered with a unique lyrical force as the leitmotifs of Morricone’s memory music. Thus, whereas the theme of “Once Upon a Time in the West” was revenge in all its ultimately futile ramifications, the theme of “Duck, You Sucker” is betrayal in all its hopelessly unresolved ambiguity. Leone is nothing if not ambitious and audacious, and I say more power to him in this era of emotionally paralyzed filmmaking. – Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice

Number 9: Macbeth

(Original title: The Tragedy of Macbeth)

Director: Roman Polanski; Writing: Roman Polanski, Kenneth Tynan, based on play by William Shakespeare; Cinematography: Gilbert Taylor; Film Editing: Alastair McIntyre; Production Design: Wilfrid Shingleton; Art Direction: Fred Carter; Set Decoration: Bryan Graves; Music: The Third Ear Band.

Players: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayle, John Stride, Nicholas Selby, Stephan Chase, Paul Shelley.

Synopsis: A ruthlessly ambitious Scottish lord seizes the throne with the help of his scheming wife and a trio of witches in this chilling adaption of William Shakespeare’s play.

Memorable Lines: 

• Jon Finch as Macbeth: False face must hide what false heart doth know.
• Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth: Things without all remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done.
• Macbeth: Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day. And with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse while night’s black agents to their prey do rouse

Behind the Scenes:

• Director Roman Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of Charles Manson’s Family two years before the making of the film. It is believed that due to this traumatic event, Polanski developed the story to be a more violent representation of Shakespeare’s play. For instance, the scene in which Macbeth murders King Duncan was not in the original play and was instead implied.
• The scene in which Macbeth’s thugs massacre Macduff’s household was based on Roman Polanski’s memory of Nazi SS officers ransacking his house as a child.
• Filming began with four grueling weeks in Snowdonia National Park. Richard Vetter’s TODD-AO 35 lenses won an Academy Award for reducing anamorphic distortion in close-ups.

Critics: 

• Polanski’s “Macbeth” is more interesting than if he had done your ordinary, respectable, awe-stricken tiptoe around Shakespeare. This is an original film by an original film artist, and not an “interpretation.” It should have been titled “Polanski’s Macbeth,” just as we got “Fellini Satyricon.” – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com
• We’ve had remarkable film adaptions of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in the past with Orson Welle’s “Macbeth”  (1948) and Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” (1957) which both remained true to their own directorial sensibilities. This is also the case of Polanski’s adaptation where, in many respects, the images are jolted up to an almost hypnotic and hysterical level. Yes, the period detail and violence are profound; as it often was in the Middle Ages – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• People ask why I do things, this or that film. Why? Why do I eat fish and not steak for lunch? I don’t know why. There are layers of experience, and not only artistic experience. Making a film is separate from life, but it is made by a human being and whatever happens to me has got to have an influence in what I do. A film sums up the experiences of my life. You absorb the experience, you assimilate it and you make a decision. A film sums up everything—whom I see, what I drink, the amount of ice cream I eat. It is everything. Do you understand? Everything. – Roman Polanski, taken from interview with  Bernard Weinraub of the NY Times after the release of Macbeth.

NUMBER 8: Murmur of the Heart (Le souffle au Coeur) 

Director/Writer: Louis Malle; Cinematography: Ricardo Aronovich;  Music: Sidney Bechet, Gaston Frèche, Charlie Parker, Henri Renaud.

Players: Léa Massari, Benoît Ferreux, Daniel Gélin, Michael Lonsdale, Ave Ninchi.

Synopsis: As France is nearing the end of the first Indochina War, an open-minded teenage boy finds himself torn between a rebellious urge to discover love, and the ever-present, almost dominating affection of his beloved mother.

Memorable Lines:

• Léa Massari as Clara Chevalier: I don’t know. Begin at the beginning. Wait to experience things yourself. And there’s plenty of time. I’m not rushing you. Everyone has to discover love for himself. Lots of things can happen between a man and a woman. Better to find out for yourself, not from a book.
• Benoît Ferreux as Laurent Chevalier: I’m tired of the old jazz. Always the same thing.
• Laurent Chevalier: The music store has the new Charlie Parker. Let’s go.

• Louis Malle based many aspects of the protagonist Laurent’s life on his own experiences growing up. This included his love of jazz, curiosity about literature, the “tyranny” of his two older brothers who tried to introduce him to sex, and having a heart murmur.
• While the incest aspects of the story were not autobiographical, Louis Malle did in fact end up sharing a hotel room with his mother as a child while on a trip to treat his heart murmur due to “bizarre” circumstances.
• Malle asserted in interviews that the incest, in particular, is fictional. He claimed that in writing the script, he had no intention to include incest, but ended up doing so as he explored an intense mother-son relationship

Critics: 

• Breaking a taboo, ever so gently, is just part of the magic of this very French take on coming of age. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• “Murmur of the Heart”  is mellow and smooth… but with the kick of a mule—a funny kick, which sends you out doubled over grinning.- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker.
• The boy is played by a nonactor, Benoit Ferreux, whose puzzlement about growing up, and whose admiration at the possibilities of life, remind us of young Jean-Pierre Leaud in Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows.” The two movies deserve comparison in more ways than one. And yet “Murmur of the Heart” isn’t really about the boy, but the mother. Lea Massari (you may remember her as the girl in “L’Avventura”) is so irrepressible, so irresponsible, so much a girl and not quite an adult, that her performance takes scenes that might have been embarrassing, and makes them simply magical. – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com

Number 7: Straw Dogs

Director: Sam Peckinpah; Writers: Sam Peckinpah, David Zelag Goodman, based on novel by Gordon M. Williams; Cinematography: John Coquillon; Music: Jerry Fielding; Film Editing: Paul Davies, Tony Lawson, Roger Spottiswood.

Players: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, David Warner.

Synopsis: A young American man and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment.

Memorable Lines: 

• Susan George as Amy Sumner: Those straw dogs were practically licking my body outside, so… Dustin Hoffman as David Sumner: I applaud their good taste. Amy Sumner: It’s not funny. David Sumner: We’ll, maybe you should wear a bra.
• David Sumner to brutes: Ok, you’ve had your fun. I’ll give you one more chance, and if you don’t clear out now, there’ll be real trouble. I mean it.
• David Warner as Henry Niles: I don’t know my way home. David Sumner  (last line in film): That’s okay. I don’t either.

Behind the Scenes:

• Sam Peckinpah’s adaptation of the novel drew inspiration from Robert Ardrey’s books, African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative, which argued that man was essentially a carnivore who instinctively battled over control of territory.
• Before shooting, Sam Peckinpah instructed Dustin Hoffman and Susan George to live together for two weeks, with co-writer David Zelag Goodman in tow. Some of their interactions during this period were worked into the film’s script.
• In the scene where David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) first enters the local pub, director Sam Peckinpah was unhappy with the other actors’ reaction to this stranger entering their world. Eventually, he decided to do one take where Hoffman entered the scene without his trousers on. He got his reaction, and these are the shots shown in the final film.

Critics: 

• I can think of no other film which screws violence up into so tight a knot of terror that one begins to feel that civilization is crumbling before one’s eyes. – Tom Milne, Sight & Sound 
• Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” is the first American film that is a fascist work of art. The movie follows an American mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) and his wife (Susan George), who become the subject of an escalating series of attacks by a gang of locals; its graphic depiction of rape and murder crystallized the filmmaker’s worldview that humans are instinctively attuned to violence. – Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
• You have to understand, first of all, that the movie ends with maybe 20 minutes of unrestrained bloodletting, during which people are scalded with boiling whisky, have their feet blown off by shotguns, are clubbed to death and (in one case) nearly decapitated by a bear trap. The violence is the movie’s reason for existing; it is the element that is being sold, and in today’s movie market, it should sell well. But does Peckinpah pay his dues before the last 20 minutes? Does he keep us feeling we can trust him? I don’t think so. – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com

Number 6: The French Connection

Director: William Friedkin; Writing: Ernest Tidyman, based on the book Robin Moore; Cinematography: Owen Roizman; Music: Don Ellis; Editing: Gerald B. Greenberg; Art Direction: Ben Kasazkow. 

Players: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco, Marcel Bozzuffi.

Synopsis: A pair of NYC cops in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a drug smuggling job with a French connection.

Memorable Lines: 

• Gene Hackman as Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle: All right, Popeye’s here! Get your hands on your heads, get off the bar, and get on the wall!
• ‘Popeye’ Doyle: Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?
• Roy Scheider as Buddy ‘Cloudy’ Russo: Mulderig! You shot Mulderig! (a police detective). ‘Popeye’ Doyle (Ignoring him, last line in film): That son of a bitch is here. I saw him. I’m gonna get him.

Behind the Scenes:

• Cameras and equipment would often freeze during shooting due to near-freezing temperatures during the winter shooting in New York City and Brooklyn.
• According to William Friedkin, the film’s documentary-style realism through hand-held photography, use of real locations and editing style were inspired by the movies, Z (1969) by Costa Gavras, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. (1960).
• The famous shot of the chase is made from a front bumper mount and shows a low-angle point of view shot of the streets racing by. Director of photography Owen Roizman, said that the camera was undercranked to 18 frames per second to enhance the sense of speed. Roizman’s contention is borne out when you see a car at a red light whose muffler is pumping smoke at an accelerated rate. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film.

Critics: 

• “The French Connection” answered the question, can Gene Hackman do anything bad? No, some films may not be great, but Hackman, always committed and solid. – Jim Gordon, T-Boy Society of Film & Music.
• The movie is all surface, movement, violence and suspense. Only one of the characters really emerges into three dimensions: Popeye Doyle’s Gene Hackman, a New York narc who is vicious, obsessed and a little mad. The other characters don’t emerge because there’s no time for them to emerge. Things are happening too fast. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com 
• A hugely successful slam-bang thriller that zaps the audience with noise, speed, and brutality. The movie, about police detectives tracking down a shipment of heroin in New York City, is certainly exciting, but that excitement isn’t necessarily a pleasure. The ominous music keeps tightening the screws and heating things up; the movie is like an aggravated case of New York. It proceeds through chases, pistol-whippings, slashings, murders, snipings, and more chases for close to two hours. This is what’s meant to give you a charge. – Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Number 5: Death in Venice

Director: Luchino Visconti; Writing: Luchino Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, based on novella by Thomas Mann; Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis; Film Editing: Ruggero Mastroianni; Art Direction: Ferdinando Scarfiotti; Costume Design: Piero Tosi; Music: Gustav Mahler.

Players: Dirk  Bogarde, Romolo Valli, Björn Andrésen, Silvana Mangano, Marisa Berenson, Mark Burns, Nora Ricci, Carole André, Franco Fabrizi.

Synopsis: In Visconti’s adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella, avant-garde Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to a Venetian seaside resort in search of repose after a period of artistic and personal stress. But he finds no peace there, for he soon develops a troubling attraction to an adolescent boy, Tadzio on vacation with his family. The boy embodies an ideal of beauty that Aschenbach has long sought and he becomes infatuated. However, the onset of a deadly pestilence threatens them both physically and represents the corruption that compromises and threatens all ideals.

Memorable Lines: 

• Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach: You cannot reach the spirit with the senses. You cannot. It’s only by complete domination of the senses that you can ever achieve wisdom, truth, and human dignity.
• Gustav von Aschenbach: Madame, will you permit an entire stranger, to serve you with a word of advice and warning, which self-interests prevents others from saying. Go away! Go away, immediately. Don’t delay. Please, I beg you.
• Gustav von Aschenbach: You know sometimes I think that artists are rather like hunters aiming in the dark. They don’t know what their target is, and they don’t know if they’ve hit it. But you can’t expect life to illuminate the target and steady your aim. The creation of beauty and purity is a spiritual act.

Behind the Scenes:

• Second part of Visconti’s German Trilogy, which also included The Damned (1969) and Ludwig. (1973).
• In the Thomas Mann novella, Gustav von Aschenbach is an author, not a composer.
• While Gustav Mahler may have inspired the character of Gustav von Aschenbach, many of the plot points in the novella were inspired by Thomas Mann’s own experience. According to Mann’s widow Katia, the two were vacationing in Venice in 1911, when Mann noticed a beautiful young boy staying at their hotel.

Critics: 

• Lots of self-obsessed pondering on beauty and intellect is set against a soundtrack by Mahler, with moody canals and crumbling palazzi as backdrops. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music.
• While “Death in Venice” is indifferent to the plague (“Asiatic cholera”) as a condition in itself, the film’s intensive focus on its protagonist vividly raises the question of self-isolation. As the sole three-dimensional character, Aschenbach is necessarily solitary; his standoffish personality follows on this structural sequestration: he has to be a loner. Even in flashbacks to more gregarious times with wife and daughter, he is “a man of avoidance,” the “keeper of distances.” The friend who makes these charges gets even blunter: “You are afraid to have direct, honest contact with anything!” D. A. Miller, from My Lockdown with Death in Venice.
• The physical beauty of the film itself is overwhelming. The world of the Lido of sixty years ago has been re-created in painstaking detail. The fashions, the entertainments, the table settings reveal Visconti’s compulsion for accuracy. The photography is almost the first I have seen that is fully worthy of the beauty of Venice; the pink-and-gray city rises from waters of a glasslike smoothness, so that the water and the quality of light itself seem to suggest the presence of the plague-bearing sirocco wind. The wind brings both plague and beauty, which is its function in the Mann novel, and Visconti’s mastery of visual style almost succeeds in creating the very ideas and feelings that his heavy-handed narrative entirely misses. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

Number 4: Dirty Harry

Director: Don Siegel; Writing: Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner, based on story by Harry Julian Fink & Rita M. Fink; Cinematography: Bruce Surtees; Music: Lalo Schifrin; Film Editing: Carl Pingitore; Art Direction: Dale Hennesy; Makeup Department: Gordon Bau.

Players: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon.

Synopsis:When a madman calling himself the Scorpio Killer menaces the city, tough-as-nails San Francisco Police  Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and find the crazed psychopath.

Memorable Lines: 

• Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan: Now you know why they call me “Dirty Harry”…
  every dirty job that comes along.
• Harry Callahan: Uh uh. I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk??
• Harry Callahan: You know, you’re crazy if you think you’ve heard the last of this guy. He’s gonna kill again. Josef Sommer as District Attorney Rothko: How do you know? Harry Callahan: ‘Cause he likes it.

Behind the Scenes:

• Serial killer Scorpio was loosely based on the Zodiac Killer, who used to taunt Police and media with notes about his crimes, in one of which he threatened to hijack a school bus full of children. The role of Harry Callahan was loosely based on real-life detective David Toschi, who was the chief investigator on the Zodiac case.
• Before each of Harry’s three combative encounters with the Scorpio Killer, there is a cross and or a reference to Christ. The Scorpio Killer (Andrew Robinson ) wears a belt with a peace symbol buckle throughout the movie. According to producer and director Don Siegel, It reminds us that no matter how vicious a person is, when he looks in the mirror, he is still blind to what he truly is.
• Don Siegel ultimately directed Clint Eastwood in five films, and also appeared as an actor in Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (also released in 1971).

Critics: 

• Eastwood as the definite Siegel outsider struggling against the system. – Dan King, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Dirty Harry” is very effective at the level of a thriller. At another level, it uses the most potent star presence in American movies — Clint Eastwood — to lay things on the line. If there aren’t mentalities like Dirty Harry’s at loose in the land, then the movie is irrelevant. If there are, we should not blame the bearer of the bad news. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com
• Don Siegel’s cop movie was received as a right-wing fantasy on its release in 1971, and it probably made a lot of money on that basis. But now that the political context has faded, it’s easier to see the ambiguities in Clint Eastwood’s renegade detective-who, in the usual Siegel fashion, is equated visually and morally with the psychotic killer he’s trampling the Constitution to catch. A crisp, beautifully paced film, full of Siegel’s wonderful coups of cutting and framing.- David Kehr, Chicago Reader

Number 3: Just Before Nightfall (Juste avant la nuit)

Director: Claude Chabrol; Writing: Claude Chabrol; based on Edouard Atiya’s crime novel, The Thin Line, later issued as Murder, My Love. Cinematography: Jean Rabier; Music: Pierre Jansen; Film Editing: Jacques Gaillard.

Players: Michel Bouquet, Stéphane Audran, Marina Ninchi , François Périer, Jean Carmet.

Synopsis: Charles Masson, an upper-class French advertising executive, is having an affair with Laura, the wife of his best friend. Charles strangles Laura when one of their S&M games crosses the line and she dies. Though reeking in remorse, Charles realizes that the police do not seem to have any clues about the crime, but has difficulties coping with the situation, trying to live a normal life with his two children and loving wife. Just Before Nightfall is another Chabrol film that focuses on infidelity and again it’s an intriguing drama and an excellent exploration of the human condition.

Memorable Lines: 

• Michel Bouquet as Charles: My darling, I’d like you to understand. With you, love is simple and clear. With her it was a sort of…insane drama. She forced me…she made me participate. It wasn’t love, it was violent and humiliating. She wanted me to rape her. She forced me to be brutal to her. That’s what was so horrifying… it was she who tortured me and took pleasure in seeing me suffer.
• Charles: Justice doesn’t spare a guilty man because his family will suffer.
• Charles: I confessed. I unburdened my conscience. And you absolve me. I could have committed suicide. It would have been better for all. But I would’ve been a coward… a coward.

Behind the Scenes:

• This is the last film of Claude Chabrol’s Hélène cycle, in which actress Stéphane Audran starred, playing characters called Hélène in La femme infidèle (1969), Le Boucher (1970), and La Rupture (1970).
• Stéphane Audran appeared in 24 Chabrol films. In 1964 they were married which lasted for 16 years until divorce.
• Claude Chabrol, initially a film critic for Cahiers du Cinema, became one of the cornerstones of the French Nouvelle Vague.

Critics: 

• Former French film critic Claude Chabrol is the ultimate Hitchcockian director, but with a profound Gallic twist. Along with Éric Rohmer, he wrote the very first book about the Master of Suspense: ‘Hitchcock – The First Forty-four Films.’ Like the Beatles and the British Invasion, who taught North Americans about their own music, the French Nouvelle Vague directors made us appreciate our own Hollywood films. Unlike Brian De Palma, Chabrol used his Hitchcockian influences as a starting point to transcend his own style and meaning. And, of course, there is a Hitchcock thing called, ‘Guilt.’ – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• His (Chabrol’s) characters are the molds from which the French bourgeoisie is cast. They’re terribly respectable, they live in comfortable homes and work in well-paying professions, they present a facade of total respectability. But underneath there are dark passions and well-kept secrets and, frequently, the ultimate embarrassment of murder. They aren’t killers; that’s the whole point. They’re people who commit murder to their own astonishment. – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com
• One of the great films of the 1970s, this is Chabrol’s most representative film, and arguably his masterpiece. The first moments of the movie, with the camera intruding upon a blinds-drawn window, again invites comparisons with Hitchcock, and the opening shot of “Psycho.” But that tip of the hat only serves to underscore the extent to which Chabrol has moved on, as “Just Before Nightfall” situates us in a fully realized and now plainly recognizable Chabrolian universe. – Jonathan Kirshner, Bright Lights Film Journal

Number 2: A Clockwork Orange

Director: Stanley Kubrick; Writing: Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess dystopian satire novel; Cinematography: John Alcott (lighting cameraman); Film Editing: Bill Butler; Production Design: John Barry; Costume Design: Milena Canonero; Music: Wendy Carlos, electronic music, realized by Walter Carlos.

Players: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke.

Synopsis: In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn’t go as planned.

Memorable Lines: 

• McDowell as Alex: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
• Alex: It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect ending was a bit of the old Ludwig van.
• Alex: So I waited. And O, my brothers, I got a lot better, munching away at eggi-wegs and lomticks of toast and lovely steaki-wakes. And then one day, they said I was going to have a very special visitor.

Behind the Scenes:

• Because of the limited budget, various techniques had to be used such as dolly shots on wheelchairs, sound recorded live on set, the use of natural light and some scenes in handheld cameras. However, at that time the new camera zoom control was first used in the picture.
• Malcolm McDowell’s eyes were anesthetized for the torture scenes so that he would film for periods of time without too much discomfort. Nevertheless, his corneas got repeatedly scratched by the metal lid locks.
• The film was unavailable for public viewing in the UK from 1973 until 2000, due to Kubrick and Burgess death threats. British video stores were so inundated with requests for the movie that some took to putting up signs that read: No, we do not have “A Clockwork Orange” It was released the year after Stanley Kubrick’s death.

Critics: 

• Whereas Altman’s style was loose and free, Kubrick was the new visionary whose attention to detail in every aspect of his film rivaled that of Hitchcock. Where Altman pulled his audiences in with small, nuanced answers, Kubrick pushed his audiences with big bold questions. Kubrick saw a dystopian future where government gaslighted and conditioned the minds of the youth, ironically set to classic works by Beethoven and Purcell. “Clockwork” is a nightmare, but never a horror.  Mike Rand, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Stanley Kubrick’s ninth film, “A Clockwork Orange,” which has just won the New York Film Critics Award as the best film of 1971, is a brilliant and dangerous work, but it is dangerous in a way that brilliant things sometimes are. -Vincent Canby, New York Times
• “A Clockwork Orange” manifests itself on the screen as a painless, bloodless, and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy. The first third splashes out of a wide-angle lens like a madly mod picture-spread for Look magazine where Kubrick toiled briefly long, long ago. The middle third provides a moderately engrossing indictment of B. F. Skinnerism in action. But the last third of the movie is such a complete bore that even audiences of confirmed Kubrickians have drowned out smatterings of applause with prolonged hissing. – Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice

Number 1: McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Director: Robert Altman; Writing: Robert Altman and Brian McKay, based on novel McCabe (1959) by Edmund Naughton; Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond; Film Editing: Lou Lombardo; Music: Leonard Cohen; Production Design: Leon Ericksen; Art Direction: Al Locatelli, Philip Thomas; Sound Department: John W. Gusselle.

Players: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Corey Fischer, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Hugh Millais.

Synopsis: A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Pacific Northwest mining town in 1902, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.

Memorable Lines: 

• Warren Beatty as John McCabe: I tell you, sometimes, sometimes when I take a look at you, I just keep looking and a-looking. I want to feel your body against me so bad, I think I’m going to bust. I keep trying to tell you in a lot of different ways. If just one time you could be sweet without no money around. I think I could – well, I’ll tell you something. I’ve got poetry in me. I do. I’ve got poetry in me!
• Julie Christie as Constance Miller: Listen, Mr. McCabe. I’m a whore, and I know a awful lot about whorehouses. And I know that if you had a house up here, you’d stand to make a lot of money. Now, this is all you’ve got to do: put out the money for the house. I’ll do all the rest. I’ll look after the girls, the business, the expenses, the running, the furnishing, everything. And I’ll pay you back any money you put in the house, so’s you won’t lose nothin’. And we’ll make it fifty-fifty.
• John McCabe: If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass so much, follow me?

Behind the Scenes:

• For a distinctive look, Robert Altman and Vilmos Zsigmond chose to “flash” (pre-fog) the film negative before its eventual exposure, as well as use a number of filters on the cameras, rather than manipulate the film in post-production; in this way the studio could not force him to change the film’s look to something less compelling. However, this was not done for the final 20 minutes of the picture, as Altman wanted the danger to McCabe to be as realistic as possible. Note the change when McCabe wakes up, grabs a shotgun, and starts off to the church.
• Though the film takes place in the fictional town of Presbyterian, Washington State, it was actually shot outside of Vancouver, BC.
• During post-production, Altman was having difficulties finding a proper musical score, until he attended a party where the album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) was playing. He noticed that several songs from the album seemed to match the mood and themes of the movie. Cohen, who had been a fan of Altman’s previous film, Brewster McCloud (1970), allowed him to use three songs from the album: The Stranger Song – which Cohen added a bridge – Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady. Altman was dismayed when Cohen later admitted that he didn’t like the movie. A year later, Altman received a phone call from Cohen, who told him that he changed his mind after re-watching the movie with an audience and now loved it.

Critics: 

• A rich kaleidoscope of landscape, rain and smoke; a family of regular Altman players speaking in overlapping sound, accompanied by the haunting music of Leonard Cohen makes “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” feel like an opium induced dream.- Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Altman’s cool, loose style lets his camera lens roam in and out of the lives of his characters while his soundtrack captures every little nuance in the social landscape of the Pacific Northwest during the end of the Old West. Altman’s melting pot of sights and sounds is every bit as American as Ozu’s Tatami- style camera setup is Japanese. Without the flash of Scorsese or the drama of Coppola, Altman carved his footprints into America’s modern cinematic landscape. – Michael Rand, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Less Altman’s take on the Wild West than life in an isolated Wild West community. – Dan King, T-Boy Society of Film & Music

See The 20 Best Films of 1971, Part One 

If you have a favorite film from 1971 and it’s not listed above, you can access it on IMDB’s  Feature Films released between January 1, 1971 through December 31, 1971. (Sorted by Popularity Ascending)
Send us your own list, at ad*@Tr**********.com and we will publish it in our Readers’ Poll.

The post The 10 Best Films of 1971 appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s latest poll is devoted to our 20 favorite films of 1971. Part One in the series focuses on films voted by our members from eleven to twenty. Part Two will feature the final top ten.

The genesis of our poll was highly influenced by Christina Newland’s thoughtful piece in BBC Culture, entitled, Why 1971 was an Extraordinary Year in Film.

Ms. Newland writes, In the late 1960s the Hollywood film industry was floundering financially, and many of the struggling major studios were bought out by non-media companies. By ’71, film admission in Hollywood had slowed to less than a quarter compared to the heyday in the 1940s. There was no set path for studios to follow, and no certain road into the future of filmmaking.

When critics and scholars talk about the remarkable artistic flowering that came from the “New Hollywood” of the ’70s, it’s often about how artists slipped through the cracks in the chaos between the old guard fading away and the new guard taking over. By 1971, this seemed to be precisely what was occurring.

Yes, we agree with Ms. Newland’s assessment that the abundance of unique 1971 films were the tip of the iceberg, where young Hollywood filmmakers responded to the decline of U.S. optimism, reflected by the political assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the continuation of the amoral War in Vietnam, complete with napalmed children and unpunished U.S. war criminals a fixture on the evening news. The studio brass was confused, and it seemed that anyone who was young with long-hair and a beard was handed a camera to make a movie. But, keep in mind, most of the new films were of literary content, not necessarily form or visual style.

So, it’s important to note that the young Hollywood directors were highly influenced by the French Nouvelle Vague’s use of new lightweight cameras and sound equipment, natural lighting and high-speed film which allowed shooting on the streets, as director Jean-Luc Godard and photographer Raoul Coutard once did when they pushed a hidden camera in a shopping cart while filming Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg on the Champs-Élysées in À bout de souffle (1960).

But, the Nouvelle Vague influences – similar to how Italian Neorealism effected the French filmmakers – did initially impact the early visual style of certain new Hollywood directors; in particular Francis Ford Coppola, John Cassavetes, Arthur Penn, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, Hal Ashby and Brian De Palma. Akin to the Beatles and the British Musical Invasion of the 1960s who taught us to appreciate our own music, the Nouvelle Vague did the same with our Hollywood movies with many of its filmmakers previously film critics on the journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who had an understanding of the works of Hollywood masters such as Hitchcock, Hawks and post-Citizen Kane films by Orson Welles. In Peter Biskind’s landmark text, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, he explains that  Warren Beatty first offered the screenplay of Bonnie and Clyde to Godard and Truffaut before Arthur Penn, which reinforces the influence of La Nouvelle Vague on the new Hollywood directors; where Godard himself is considered the most influential filmmaker of the post-World War 2 era.

But, with that said, our list of top films of 1971 is not made at the expense of established masters such as directors like Don Siegel, Stanley Kubrick, Franklin J. Schaffner.

So, once again, the T-Boy Society of Film and Music’s list of our 20 favorite films of 1971 begins with Part One; films from eleven to twenty.

Initial Comments:

• For me, it’s all about change, realism (not the aging studio, “shot-on-the-backlot” attempts at realism). – Jim Gordon, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• I spent much of my time at college in the dark, at a movie theater steps away from my apartment. A roll of ten tickets cost ten dollars. That might have been the best investment I ever made, because I honestly believe I learned more from these and other films I saw there (a special nod to Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, Rossellini, and Visconti) than I did from all that fancy education. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Fifty years ago, with both the industry and wider society in turmoil, an astounding set of movies was born – which offer pause for thought about cinema today. Amid US films, there was often a fascinating split between pro-establishment works and those which embraced the spirit of the counterculture. – Christina Newland, BBC Culture
• Violating the boundaries between life and art to make their material their own was a dangerous way for these filmmakers to work. It was successful for a while, enriching both the life and the art, but as the two became more extravagant and interchangeable, New Hollywood directors lost the detachment of artists, and their lives and art sank into quicksand, joined in a fatal embrace. – Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
• “Born again Christian” Johnny Cash was asked why he recorded a cover version of the Nine Inch Nails’ song ‘Hurt,’ which focused on heroin addiction. His reply was simple: “A good song is a good song.” That echoes my selections of films that stand alone devoid of 1971 cultural and literary sensibilities. – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• A movie is a movie is a movie. – Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine

Number 20: TWO ENGLISH GIRLS

Director: François Truffaut; Writers: François Truffaut, Jean Gruault (adapted from Les deux Anlaises et le continent by Henri-Pierre Roché); Cinematography: Néstor Almendros; Music: Georges Delerue; Film Editing: Martine Barraqué, Yann Dedet; Production Design: Michel de Broin; Costume Design: Gitt Magrini.

Players: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Kika Markham, Stacey Tendeter, Sylvia Marriott, Marie Mansart, Philippe Léotard, Mark Peterson, David Markhm, Georges Delerue (the film’s music composer in small role).

Synopsis:

At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Roc, a young middle-class Frenchman meets in Paris, Ann Brown, a young Englishwoman. They become friends and Ann invites him to spend holidays at the house where she lives with her mother and her sister Muriel. During the holiday, Claude, Ann and Muriel become very close and he gradually falls in love with Muriel. But both families lay down a one-year-long separation without any contact before agreeing to the marriage. So, Claude goes back to Paris where he has many love affairs and sends Muriel a farewell letter.

Memorable Line:

Stacey Tendeter as Muriel Brown (in letter): Dearest Claude, I came to see you to bury this thing. I’m glad you were the first, because it’s you, because you wanted it. I shan’t cry. Listen to me as you once did when I told you love was stirring in me. Now I tell you that it must die. So that I may live.

Extras:

• Truffaut had earlier adapted another Henri-Pierre Roché novel, Jules and Jim.
• Anne’s last words in the film are, If you send for a doctor, I will see him now. These were writer Emily Brontë’s last words before she died. We assume that Truffaut probably used her words in the film as an homage or to compare her to the character of Anne.
• Jean-Pierre Léaud ultimately appeared in seven films directed by Truffaut.

Critics:

• Truffaut’s “Two English Girls” is a film of such beautiful, charming and comic discretion that it isn’t until the end that one realizes it’s also immensely sad and even brutal, though in the non-brutalizing way that truth can sometimes be. – Vincent Canby, NY Times
• As a man obsessed with memories of the past, Truffaut continues with his tradition of period pieces. Even many of his contemporary genre films feature flashbacks to earlier days. – Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Because Truffaut doesn’t strain for an emotional tone, he can cover a larger range than the one-note movies. Here he is discreet, even while filming the most explicit scenes he’s ever done; he handles sadness gently; he is charming and funny even while he tells us a story that is finally tragic. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

Number 19: NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner; Writing: James Goldman, screenplay (based on the book by Robert K. Massie); Cinematography: Freddie Young; Film Editing: Ernest Walter; Production Design: John Box; Art Direction: Ernest Archer, Jack Maxsted, Gil Parrondo; Costume Design: Yvonne Blake.

Players: Michael Jayston, Janet Suzman, Ania Marson, Lynne Frederick, Candace Glendenning, Fiona Fullerton, Tom Baker, Jack Hawkins, a young Brian Cox as Trotsky, and Daniel Day Lewis (uncredited).

Synopsis:

Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.

Memorable Line:

Michael Jayston as Tsar Nicholas II: The Russia my father gave me never lost a war. What shall I say to my son when the time comes? That I had no pride? That I was weak? I’ve always thought God meant me to rule. He put me here. He chose me, and whatever happens is His will. We shall fight on until victory.

Extras:

• Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin of Great Britain’s King George the 5th and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm the 2nd.
• Director Franklin J. Schaffner deliberately cast unfamiliar leads (Jayston, Suzman, Baker) so the audience would focus on the storytelling.
• Schaffner had Michael Jayston, Janet Suzman, Roderic Noble, Ania Marson, Lynne Frederick, Candace Glendenning, and Fiona Fullerton live together during filming so that the actors would form a family-like bond, in an effort to make their scenes together more authentic.

Critics:

• The writing is excellent. “Nicholas and Alexandra” is a slice of history and intriguing. –  Richard Carroll, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• There’s always a kind of fascination in royalty. We democratic Americans even seem to like royalty more than those nations who have some. Nicholas and Alexandra may not have been the flashiest of czars and czarinas, but maybe they weren’t entirely to blame; the muted tone of the age was set by Queen Victoria, who (as Vincent Canby notes) was the grandmother of practically everybody in World War I – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

Number 18: THE DEVILS

Director: Ken Russell; Writing: Ken Russell, screenplay (based on the play by John Whiting & novel by Aldous Huxley); Cinematography: David Watkin; Music: Peter Maxwell Davies; Film Editing: Michael Bradsell; Art Direction: Robert Cartwright; Costume Design: Shirley Russell; Set Design: Derek Jarman.

Players: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian.

Synopsis:

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier seeks to protect the city of Loudun from the corrupt establishment of Cardinal Richelieu. Hysteria occurs within the city when he is accused of witchcraft by a sexually repressed nun.

Memorable Lines:

Oliver Reed as Grandier: Lies! Lies and heresy. The Devil is a liar, and the father of lies. If the Devil’s evidence is to be accepted, the most virtuous people are in the greatest of danger, for it against these that Satan rages most violently. I had never set eyes on Sister Jeanne of the Angels until the day of my arrest, but the Devil has spoken, and to doubt his word is sacrilege.

Vanessa Redgrave as Sister Jeanne: Oh, Christ, let me find a way to you. Take me in your sacred arms. Let the blood flow between us uniting us.

Grandier: My lords, I am innocent of the charges. And I am afraid. But I have the hope in my heart that, before this day ends, Almighty God will glance aside and let my suffering atone for my vain and disordered life. Amen.

Extras:

• Soon to be a director in his own right, Derek Jarman’s sets are modeled on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).
• Ken Russell wanted to avoid the clichéd look of period films and insisted on anachronistic, even futuristic, design.
• Russell’s guidance to Jarman was that it should echo the ‘rape in a public toilet’ line from the Huxley novel that inspired the film.

Critics:

• Two years before “The Exorcist” hit the screen, Ken Russell puts the Catholic Church in the spotlight by filming one of the most disturbing films of all times. Except from being a sheer technical and aesthetic masterpiece, “The Devils” provokes as a film with its relentless sense of anarchy. Religious hysteria and illusions, the horror of human arrogance and depravity and the love that turns to cherishing that turns to hatred. – Vassli, IMDB.com
• Though Russell wrote the screenplay for “The Devils” his scripts and by others are only a starting point for him to transcend his own personal vision. Frustrating for many, but glad he was around. – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music

Number 17: WALKABOUT

Director: Nicolas Roeg; Writing: Edward Bond, screenplay (based on novel by Donald G. Payne and story by Nicolas Roeg); Cinematography: Nicolas Roeg; Music: John Barry; Film Editing: Antony Gibbs, Alan Pattillo; Production Design: Brian Eatwell Art Direction: Terry Gough.

Players: Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, David Gulpilil, John Meillon.

Synopsis:

Two city-bred siblings are stranded in the Australian Outback, where they learn to survive with the aid of an Aboriginal boy on his walkabout, a ritual separation from his tribe.

Memorable Lines:

Jenny Agutter as the Girl: I don’t know why you are telling him all this. He can’t understand. He doesn’t know what a ladder is. I expect we’re the first white people he’s seen.

Luc Roeg as White Boy: He didn’t say goodbye to us. The Girl: Yes, he did. That’s what the dance was about. It’s there way of saying goodbye to people they loved.

Narrator (last lines from “Poem XL” by A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad”): Into my heart an air that kills, From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went, And cannot come again.

Extras:

• In Australia, when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land. For months he must live from it. Sleep on it. Even if it means killing his fellow creatures. The Aborigines call it the walkabout.
• In his first screen role, David Gulpilil spoke no English at the time of filming.
• Director Nicolas Roeg’s son, Luc Roeg, in his first film role, was actually sun-burnt in the scene where the aboriginal boy treats his back by rubbing him with fat from a wild boar. Nicolas Roeg thought it would make a good scene for the film so he picked up the camera and shot it.

Critics:

Roeg’s desert in “Walkabout” is like Beckett’s stage for “Waiting for Godot.” That is, it’s nowhere in particular, and everywhere. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

Roeg revels in the hallucinatory, creating a wilderness that exists as much in the mind as it does the land. – Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian Australia

Number 16: GET CARTER

Director: Mike Hodges; Writer: Mike Hodges, screenplay (based on the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis); Cinematography: Wolfgang Suschitzky; Music: Roy Budd; Film Editing: John Trumper; Art Direction: Roger King.

Players: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne, Tony Beckley, George Sewell, Geraldine Moffat.

Synopsis:

When his brother dies under mysterious circumstances in a car accident, suave London gangster Jack Carter travels to his working-class hometown in Newcastle to investigate his death in this chilling neo-noir.

Memorable Line:

Eric the gangster: So, what’re you doing then? On your holidays?
Michael Caine as Jack Carter: No, I’m visiting relatives.
Eric: Oh, that’s nice.
Jack Carter: It would be… if they were still living.

Extras:

• Mike Hodges’ work was influenced by Raymond Chandler and Hollywood tough guy films such as Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), as they showed “how to use the crime story as an autopsy on society’s ills.”
• Mike Hodges favored the use of long-distance lenses (as he had used previously on ITV Playhouse: Rumour.
• The role of mobster Cyril Kinnear is played by writer John Osborne, whose play Look Back in Anger ushered in the British cultural movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, known as the Angry Young Men or kitchen sink realism. The movement changed the artistic landscape of contemporary Britain, which reflected the disillusionment of society, anger and an impatience for change.

Critics:

• Mike Hodges has thrown his actors into real life – the faces of the old men in the pubs and betting shops, and the revelers at the dancehall take the movie into something akin to cinéma verité, even as mayhem erupts in the foreground. – Michael Hann, The Guardian
• No one can play a tough like Michael Caine; a disturbing mix of charm, kindness and savage restitution. – Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• “Get Carter” is Hodges’ best film, where the coaly Northeastern English Industrial Revolution town of Newcastle actually serves as a character in the film. Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music

Number 15: SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY

Director: John Schlesinger; Writing: Penelope Gilliatt; Cinematography: Billy Williams; Film Editing: Richard Marden; Art Direction: Norman Dorme.

Players: Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, Murray Head, Peggy Ashcroft, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vivian Pickles, Frank Windsor, Daniel Day-Lewis (uncredited).

Synopsis:

A Jewish doctor, Daniel Hirsh and a middle-aged woman, Alex Greville are both having affairs with the same male artist, Bob Elkin. Not only are Hirsh and Greville aware that Elkin is seeing the other but they actually know each other as well. Despite this, they are willing to put up with the situation through fear of losing Elkin who switches freely between them. Schlesinger’s film highlights some worrying facts about how much people’s attitudes to relationships and each other have changed over just two generations.

Memorable Lines:

Peter Finch as Daniel (speaking to the camera): When you’re at school and you want to quit, people say, “You’re going to hate it out in the world.” Well, I didn’t believe them and I was right. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be grown up, and they said “Childhood is the best time of your life.” Well, it wasn’t. And now, I want his company and they say, “What’s half a loaf? You’re well shot of him,” and I say I know that… but I miss him, that’s all and they say “He never made you happy” and I say, But I am happy, apart from missing him.

Critics:

• A story of a ménage à trois is a sad reflection on settling for less than we want, with London drizzle setting the mood and an onscreen, same-sex kiss crashing through barriers. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• I think “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is a masterpiece, but I don’t think it’s about what everybody else seems to think it’s about. This is not a movie about the loss of love, but about its absence. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com
• Director John Schlesinger reportedly used the approach associated with Alain Resnais in preparing this film; he asked Penelope Gilliatt, a writer with a definite and highly developed fictional world, to produce an original screenplay, and he influenced the work through discussions but did not contribute a single word himself. – Walt Munkowsky, Traveling Boy, Time Capsule Cinema

NUMBER 14A (Tie): CARNAL KNOWLEDGE

Director: Mike Nichols; Writer: Jules Feiffer; Cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno;
Film Editing: Sam O’Steen; Production Design: Richard Sylbert.

Players: Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Rita Moreno, Carol Kane.

Synopsis:

Chronicling the lifelong sexual development of two men who meet and become friends in college.

Memorable Lines:

Jack Nicholson as Jonathan (narrating his slide show): Marcia, 13 1/2 or thereabouts, I kissed her one night at a spin-the-bottle party. This one’s Rosalie. Rosalie looked just like Elizabeth Taylor in “National Velvet.” I had a crush on Rosalie from 14 to 15 and I never went near her. In those days, we had illusions. Here’s Charlotte. Not much on looks, but great tits for 15. Here’s Gloria, the best-built girl at Evander Childs. I took her to the Bronx Zoo once and on the bus, copped a cheap feel. Here’s Bobbie! My wife. The fastest tits in the West and king of the ball-busters. She conned me into marrying her and now she’s killing me with alimony.

Extras:

Jules Feiffer said Mike Nichols told him he was considering Jack Nicholson for the role of Jonathan. Feiffer went to see Easy Rider(1969) and thought the guy with the “hip Henry Fonda stance and twangy New Jersey drawl” had nothing in common with “the young Jewish misogynist” at the center of his script. Nichols told him: “Trust me, he’s going to be our most important actor since Brando.”

Critics:

• “Carnal Knowledge”‘ was ahead of its time (as was Mike Nichols). – Jim Gordon, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• The structure of the film, as well as the visual form given it by Nichols (lots of soliloquys in tight close-ups), is that of a Feiffer cartoon, or, more specifically, like a series of cartoons that cover the 1940s (when Jonathan and Sandy are in college), the 1950s (when Sandy is married and beginning to envy Jonathan’s bachelor freedom), the 1960s (when Sandy begins to wander from his suburban paradise), and the 1970s (when the only way in which Jonathan can successfully overcome his impotency is by elaborately pre-arranged masquerades). – Vincent Canby, NY Times

Number 14B (Tie): FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

Director: Norman Jewison; Writing Credits: Joseph Stein, screenplay (based on stories by Sholom Aleichem, with further adaptation by Arnold Perl); Cinematography: Oswald Morris; Music: Jerry Bock (based on music for the stage play by Alexander Courage, and Sheldon Harnick, lyricist for the stage play by Isaac Stern); Music Department: Jerry Bock, orchestrator; Eric Tomlinson, violin soloist; John Williams, conductor and music adapter.

Players: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Molly Picon.

Synopsis:

In prerevolutionary Russia, a Jewish peasant contends with marrying off three of his daughters while growing anti-Semitic sentiment threatens his little village of Anatevka. Among the traditions of the Jewish community, the matchmaker arranges the match and the father approves it. The milkman Reb Tevye is a poor man that has been married for twenty-five years with Golde and they have five daughters. When the local matchmaker Yente arranges the match between his older daughter, Tzeitel, and the old widow butcher, Lazar Wolf, Tevye agrees with the wedding. However, Tzeitel is in love with the poor tailor Motel Kamzoil and they ask permission to Tevye to get married that he accepts to please his daughter. Then his second daughter Hodel (Michele Marsh) and the revolutionary student Perchik decide to marry each other and Tevye is forced to accept. When Perchik is arrested by the Czar troops and sent to Siberia, Hodel decides to leave her family and homeland and travel to Siberia to be with her beloved Perchik. When his third daughter Chava decides to get married with the Christian Fyedka, Tevye does not accept and considers that Chava has died. Meanwhile the Czar’s troops evict the Jewish community from Anatevka.

Memorable Lines:

Topol as Tevye: Traditions, traditions. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as… as… as a fiddler on the roof!

Tevye to God: I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?

Tevye: You are just a poor tailor!
Motel: That’s true, Reb Tevye, but even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!

Extras:

• Canadian director Norman Jewison was brought into the project by executives at United Artists who thought he was Jewish. His first words to the executives upon meeting them were, “You know I’m not Jewish, right?”
• The title comes from a painting by Russian artist Marc Chagall called The Dead Man which depicts a funeral scene and shows a man playing a violin on a rooftop. It is also used by Tevye in the story as a metaphor for trying to survive in a difficult, constantly changing world.
• To get the look he wanted for the film, Jewison told director of photography Oswald Morris to shoot the film in an earthy tone. Morris saw a woman wearing brown nylon hosiery, and thought, “That’s the tone we want.” He asked the woman for the stockings on the spot and shot the entire film with a stocking over the lens. The weave can be detected in some scenes.
• Morris nabbed the Best Cinematography Oscar for his work.

Critics:

There are some contrived and artificial moments in “Fiddler,” but it becomes more convincing, naturalistic, and involving as it goes on, and finally builds to a powerful climax. It ranks high among the best musicals ever put on film. -Paul Sargent Clark, The Hollywood Reporter

Number 13: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Director: Peter Bogdanovich; Writing: Peter Bogdanovich & Larry McMurtry, screenplay (based on Larry McMurtry novel); Producers: Stephen J. Friedman, Bert Schneider; Cinematography: Robert Surtees; Editing: Donn Cambern, (Peter Bogdanovich, uncredited); Production & Costume Design: Polly Platt; Music: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Phil Harris, Johnny Standley, Hank Thompson.

Players: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, Clu Gulager, Randy Quaid, Sam Bottoms.

Synopsis:

In 1951, a group of high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, North Texas town.

Memorable Lines:

Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion: You boys can get on out of here, I don’t want to have no more to do with you. Scarin’ a poor, unfortunate creature like Billy just so’s you could have a few laughs. I’ve been around that trashy behavior all my life, I’m gettin’ tired of puttin’ up with it. Now you can stay out of this pool hall, out of my cafe, and my picture show too. I don’t want no more of your business.

Sam the Lion: If she was here I’d probably be just as crazy now as I was then in about 5 minutes. Ain’t that ridiculous? Naw, it ain’t really. Cause being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do. Being an old decrepit bag of bones, that’s what’s ridiculous. Gettin’ old.

Timothy Bottoms as Sonny Crawford:  Nothin’s really been right since Sam the Lion died.

Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper (last line in film): Never you mind, honey. Never you mind.

Extras:

• Ben Johnson was persuaded to accept the role of Sam the Lion by his friend, director John Ford. Johnson had turned the part down three times because, according to Peter Bogdanovich, the part had too many words, but Ford reportedly persuaded him by asking if he only wanted to be playing John Wayne’s sidekick for the rest of his career.
• This film was one of the first to use already popular recordings by original artists to score a film that included songs by Frankie Laine, Hank Williams, Jo Stafford and others.
• Cloris Leachman’s last scene in the movie was printed on the first take without any previous rehearsals. She wanted to rehearse the scene, but director Bogdanovich thought it would ruin the scene if it was rehearsed. After she completed the take, she said to him, I can do better. Bogdanovich replied, No, you can’t; you just won the Oscar. Ultimately his sense of direction paid off, as Leachman won the Academy Award for her performance as Best Supporting Actress.

Critics:

• A relentless look at the banality of life manages to be energizing and affirming. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Bogdanovich was more than a director, having embraced the “Auteur Theory” in 1963. With his reviews of earlier Hollywood genre films made by masters, he too taught us much about our own films. – Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music

Number 12: FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER (quatre nuits d’un rêveur)

Director: Robert Bresson; Writing: Robert Bresson (loosely based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights); Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme; Music: F.R. Daid, Louis Guitar, Chris Hayward, Michel Magne; Film Editing: Raymond Lamy; Production Design: Pierre Charbonnier.

Players: Isabelle Weingarten, Guillaume des Forêts, Jean-Maurice Monnoyer, Giorgio Maulini.

Synopsis:

Loosely based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights, the lead character is Jacques, a young painter, who by chance runs into Marthe as she’s contemplating suicide on the Pont-Neuf in Paris. They talk, and agree to see each other again the next night. Gradually, he discovers that her lover promised to meet her on the bridge that night, and he failed to turn up. Over the next couple of nights, Jacques falls in love with her, but on the fourth night her original lover returns.

Memorable Lines:

Marthe as the woman: ” What’s the matter?
Jacques as the dreamer: ” I love you. That’s the matter.

Extras:

• Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc…) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create. – Robert Bresson
• To be constantly changing lenses in photographing is like constantly changing one’s eye glasses. – Robert Bresson

Critics:

• Though considered to be Bresson’s ‘lightest’ film, “Four Nights of a Dreamer” offers an intense emotional experience that began with “Diary of a Country Priest” and ended with his last film, “L’Argent.” Due to the economy of his directorial style, many consider his films slow, when in fact they are remarkably fast. Each image is ironed out, with no image taking on a greater significance than the other. Bresson frees himself from what he calls ‘postcardism,’ which he considers a forced, superficial aestheticism. – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• ” Four Nights of a Dreamer” is a rare Bresson film where the mainstream audience actually laughs along with the film as opposed to laugh at it, due to a lack of understanding of Bresson’s deeply personal style. The staged ‘movie premiere’ is the closest he’s ever come to a comedy. – Phil Marley, T-Boy Society of Film & Music

Number 11: KLUTE

Director: Alan J. Pakula; Writing: Andy Lewis & David E. Lewis; Cinematography: Gordon Willis; Film Editing: Carl Lerner; Music: George Jenkins, Michael Small.

Players: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, Roy Scheider, Dorothy Tristan, Rita Gam.

Synopsis:

A small-town detective searching for a missing man has only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute.

Memorable Lines:

Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels: Men would pay $200 for me, and here you are turning down a freebie. You could get a perfectly good dishwasher for that. And for an hour… for an hour, I’m the best actress in the world, and the best fuck in the world.

Bree Daniels: Tell me, Klute. Did we get you a little? Huh? Just a little bit? Us city folk? The sin, the glitter, the wickedness? Huh? Donald Sutherland as John Klute: Ah… that is so pathetic.

Extras:

• The first installment of what informally came to be known as Pakula’s Paranoia Trilogy. The other two films in the trilogy are The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976).
• According to her autobiography, Jane Fonda hung out with call girls and pimps for a week before beginning this film in order to prepare for her role. When none of the pimps offered to “represent” her, she became convinced she wasn’t desirable enough to play a prostitute and urged the director to replace her with friend Faye Dunaway.
• Jane Fonda said that she had to throw up while preparing for the scene where Bree goes through photos of dead prostitutes to identify her friends. She actually had gone to the city morgue too and it came as a great shock.

Critics:

• “Klute” showed the world Jane could act (though I always knew she could). – Jim Gordon, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• “Klute” is Fonda’s movie, and both Pakula and Sutherland seem to recognize that. It is not an argument in favor of sex work per se, even though it does the necessary service of combating the cliches and stigmas around the practice. But Fonda’s Oscar-winning performance as Bree does argue for a fullness of character – and of womanhood – that feels radically open to different possibilities and a wide spectrum of emotional experiences, including moments during therapy where she expresses uncertainty about her future and the choices she’s made. – Scott Tobias, The Guardian

END OF PART 1
Stay Tuned for the Top Ten Films of 1971 in PART 2 of our series which proves to be both mind boggling and hopefully educational.

If readers have a favorite that’s not listed in Part One or Two, no doubt you can access it on Feature Film, Released between 1971-01-01 and 1971-12-31 (Sorted by Popularity Ascending) – IMDb.

Send us your own list, at ed****@Tr**********.com and we will publish it in our Readers’ Poll.

The post The 20 Best Films of 1971, Part One appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The enduring Celtic Cross. Photo courtesy Tourism Ireland.

Richard Carroll – T-Boy writer:

Sightless Fiji

Fiji has a profound long-lasting effect on my heart and soul. An island country deep in the South Pacific where nature comes miraculously alive with cloud rain forests, a lush tropical mountainous terrain, 333 islands, hundreds of islets, and sweeping views of a dark blue crystal clear sea, all of which seem to be suspended in time. Fiji’s dramatic setting of upscale island holiday hideaways offering pollution free skies, an unrelenting sun shimmering on glistening water, and palm-lined beaches, have attracted visitors from all parts of the world.

I experienced a heart-tugging dilemma on one of numerous visits this time with Dr. Beeve, a noted eye physician and surgeon based in Glendale California and his wife Dorothy an RN, that unfortunately this ideal scenario of sun and sea is also a huge negative for the Fijian’s creating blinding cataracts affecting a huge number of Fijians of all ages along with other troubling eye difficulties.

Fijians travel from island to island in canoes and boats, fish and farm the ocean, swim before they can walk, and are living an island lifestyle which from birth seriously affects their eyesight. The stinging contrast is the Fijians might not be the happiest people on earth, but are affable and forthcoming, welcoming visitors with open arms, regardless of personal difficulties, of which are usually overlooked or ignored by tourists.

I found this distressing and heart-tugging drama unbelievably touching. Men unable to work and support their families because they are sightless, children born with eye deficiencies, a grandmother who has never seen her grandchildren, Fijians unable to leave their island because of poor eyesight, and young mothers who see their offspring as a milky blur. I noticed that even most of the dogs had cataracts too.

Joyful Fijians in recovery after a Dr. Beeve eye operation. Photo courtesy of Beeve Foundation.

Since that visit in 1991 when the Beeve’s established the Beeve Foundation, Dr. Beeve and his staff quickly realized that the Fijians were receiving very limited eye care and medication, and had no access to modern medicine. On their first mission with a small staff which included an anesthesiologist, ophthalmic surgical technologist, a dental hygienist, and an assistant who helped with pre and post op care, and patient education and vision testing, set up a makeshift eye clinic in Bure 2 on upscale Turtle Island. The word quickly spread and hundreds of sight-impaired Fijians formed a long line patiently standing in the blazing sun, some arriving via canoes days in advance, the line of canoes stretching to the horizon. Many Fijians I spoke with could not remember when they had vision and were spellbound when the day after surgery they gazed at Dr. Beeve with better than 20/40 vision. The Beeve’s said, “When we complete a cataract operation it’s like resurrecting someone from the dead. It’s an incredible feeling.”

The Beeve Foundation Team in Fiji. Photo courtesy of the Beeve Foundation.

In 2017 the Beeve’s were honored for their more than 25 years of medical missions; 28,503 eye exams, issuing 27,714 pairs of glasses, 1,756 cataract extractions with lens implants, 55 corneal transplants, and 1,005 other procedures for more than 30,000 Fijian patients, the majority of whom were legally blind. Dr. Beeve and his wife Dorothy finally retired with Loma Linda University continuing the Fiji missions. In 2018 with a team of world-renowned cataract surgeons Loma Linda performed 137 surgeries in six days.

The Fijians live in a tropical paradise but with an ironic twist, but for a writer the unpredictability of travel can often leave a lingering memory, such as the Beeve’s and their Foundation successfully treating over three percent of the entire Fiji population.

Halina Kubalski – T-Boy writer and destination photographer:

A Memory of My Father

My father, Wiktor Surmacz joined the Polish Army in 1934. After a few years he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in the Polish 179th Infantry Regiment, working closely under the command of General Franciszek Kleeberg when defending the Polish city of Kock, a town in eastern Poland about 120 kilometers southeast of Warsaw with a large Jewish population at the time.

On September 9, 1939 the German’s dropped bombs on the town and a fierce battle with the Germans took place. The Poles were badly over matched by the German 13th Motorized Corps and 60th Infantry Division, but fought gallantly lastly running short of ammunition with both sides suffering huge casualties. The final battles were fought October 2 – 5, and on October 6th after bombardment by heavy German artillery and outnumbered by the thousands, General Kleeberg surrendered.

The Germans sent my father to the infamous Mauthausen Concentration Camp located on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen located 12 miles east of Linz. The Germans never released the accurate death toll at Mauthausen but it was calculated that between 130,000 to 320,000 perished in Mauthausen during the war years. My father never spoke about his five years as a prisoner but did say to his wife, my mother, Maria, “There was no food at Mauthausen.”

Survivors at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Wikimedia Commons.

He was later sent to a sub concentration camp, a farm labor camp that was bad if not worse than Mauthausen. Possibly the transfer took place due to the fact that dad spoke German. He was liberated in 1945 at the end of the war by U.S. troops weighing all of 80 pounds.

My father’s one and only visit to the United States, he was astonished at the boundless selection of food in the supermarkets. He passed May 8, 1984, age 73, after six weeks in a Warsaw hospital, his health badly damaged by his years as a prisoner of the Germans.

Fyllis Hockman – T-Boy writer:

One of the Most Impactful Experiences in my Travel-Writing Career

First a little background. As a teenager I had my first visual exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust in some newsreel depictions of the liberation of some camps after the war – the emaciated survivors with their sunken eyes, gaunt bodies and harrowed auras. I called my mother, who had told me of the Holocaust my whole life, and said: “Mom, I finally understand.” Now six decades later, I came to understand even more.

The International Monument at the former Mauthausen concentration camp reads,
“The living learn from the fate of the deceased.” Wikimedia Commons.

Mauthausen, one of the largest of the camps, was built high upon a hill in Linz, Upper Austria, where Hitler was once a resident, near a large quarry. The rationale behind concentration camps evolved over the war years from imprisoning people, enslaving them and engendering fear among the general populace to simply one of extermination. And that was carried out in so many ways. Mauthausen was considered a Level 3 Camp where the guiding principle was that no one left – everyone was to be killed in some way or other. The SS excelled at very efficient methods of mutilation and annihilation.

The roots of genocide, according to our guide, were fostered in anti-Semitism, an us vs. them mentality, a de-humanization of others who are seen as “less.” It was hard not to draw some parallels to today’s world…

The “Stairs of Death” at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Wikimedia Commons.

Other cases involved prisoners forced outside during winter over whom cold water was poured – a particularly appealing entertainment for the SS guards who delighted in “showering” people to death – outside the actual gas chamber showers, that is…. Because any SS who shot an inmate trying to escape got extra days off, a favorite party trick was to entice prisoners into situations where they might appear to be escaping – and then shoot them. Stomach cringing continues.

Starved prisoners pose in concentration camp in Ebensee, a sub-camp of Mauthausen, used for “scientific” experiments. Wikimedia Commons.

Others, sick and beaten, simply died during daily roll call, a grueling process of standing in the heat or cold for 4-5 hours at a time, and being forced to do exercises when most of them could no longer stand. It is hard to hear all of this – and my stomach clenched and my eyes teared and I was overcome by a sense of helplessness and disbelief that these things actually happened – and no one cared.

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler of the SS at Mauthausen. Hitler authorized Himmler to create a centralized concentration camp system. Wikimedia Commons.

In the barracks hundreds were housed in such horrendous conditions the term unsanitary does not begin to describe the degradation. On the wall is a quote depicting the “wheezing, hissing, moaning, sobbing, snoring” that filled the night-time air in 20 languages. “The noise fused into a single, terrible sound produced as if by a giant monstrous being that had holed up in the dark.” Another quote: “Anyone who hadn’t been brutal when they entered the world became brutal here.” More gut-wrenching stomach-churning.

And then we went through the gas chambers where thousands were killed and then the ovens where their remains were buried, with a side visit to the infirmary where unspeakable “experiments” were carried out.

And yet the neighbors and surrounding community ostensibly didn’t know what was happening, despite being within earshot of the thousands of prisoners suffering and screaming. In fact, some complained about the noise – but not about why it was occurring. The grandmother of our guide, who was seven at the time, said she could smell the stench of the burning bodies; she knew something bad was happening but nobody talked about it.

Survivors greeting US soldiers at Mauthausen. Wikimedia Commons.

Of the 200,000 prisoners who occupied Mauthausen from 1938-1945, about half were killed. There were only 20,000 survivors when liberation finally came on May 5, 1945, with another 80,000 already too ill to benefit from the end of the war. Not surprisingly, the liberators were shocked at the condition of the prisoners. I imagine so too were the community members when they were finally exposed to what was really happening in their backyard. At this point, my stomach was in perpetual decompression mode.
There were signs on walls from visitors in multiple languages: RIP, Never Again, and You won’t be forgotten. A simple drawing of an eye with a tear coming down was the one I most related to.

Most of the guards went home after the war suffering no consequences and little was said about what they had done. No one talked about it. According to our guide, it took Austria four decades to acknowledge its part in the Holocaust.

The Mauthausen Thought Area of today. Wikimedia Commons.

There were multiple school groups of teenagers at the camp and I felt thankful they were learning of the atrocities they otherwise would probably have no knowledge of. I wished I could understand what they were saying about their experience. History will now change as there soon will be no survivors, no one to say this is what actually happened, and the Holocaust will be relegated to the status of other historical occurrences which the young will learn about in school but will not relate to. Who really cares about the Crusades? There will be no visceral understanding. It will have nothing to do with them. There will be nothing to keep it from happening again. I only wish I could call my mother and tell her once again, that now I REALLY understand.

Stephen Brewer – T-Boy writer:

On the Lasithi Plateau

I saw Bartholomew for the first time when I was traveling around Crete twenty years ago. He was standing placidly, shyly almost, a fine long neck slightly bent beneath a mop of thick shiny black hair, sturdy legs planted firmly in the grass of a meadow on the Lasithi Plateau.

Lasithi Plateau in Crete. Photography by Stephen Brewer.

No, this was not a starry-eyed meeting with an Adonis. Bartholomew is a donkey. I have no idea what his real name is. The only other donkey I have ever known was Bartholomew, so that is what I call this one, too. I’ve been back to the Lasithi Plateau at least a dozen times since I met the Greek Bartholomew, who’s usually grazing outside a modest white house at the edge of Tzermiado, a village of just a few streets. I’ve encountered him plodding along the lanes that lace the fields, with bundles of earth-covered vegetables hanging from either side of his back. The cargo looks light and the weathered, bearded man leading him never seems to be in no hurry to get anywhere. I’ve also passed Bartholomew on the road that skirts the edge of the plateau. He’s been pulling a little cart driven by an ancient-looking woman dressed in black, a shawl around her shoulders despite the heat, and a kerchief concealing her hair. Bartholomew has been sauntering lazily and it’s always looked to me as if his companion has nodded off to sleep.

Bartholomew is a noisy animal, and I’ve become accustomed to listening for his hee-haws when I walk on the paths that skirt his pasture. If motorbikes aren’t idling in the broad intersection that passes as the village square, I can sometimes hear him when I’m sitting in the Cafe Kronio late in the evening. The homemade raki is usually taking effect by this time, and I can almost mistake Greek Bartholomew for the Bartholomew of my youth.

The first Bartholomew belonged to Franny, an artist friend of my mother’s who lived on a rose and holly farm her Dutch stepfather established back in the 1920s. Franny liked to throw parties on summer holidays. My parents and their friends would drink cocktails on the trim little lawn in front of Franny’s house as Bartholomew snorted from the other side of a hedge and my brother, sister, and I and any other children who were around ran through the fields and explored the two huge barns. Occasionally my father and a few of the other men would hitch Bartholomew up to a cart. They were unlikely farm hands in their white shirts and dress slacks, and I doubt they had any idea of what they were doing. They managed, though, probably because Bartholomew was docile and patient. We youngsters would clamor aboard and Bartholomew would pull us up and down the long gravel drive that led from the house and barns to the road.

Taverna Cafe Kronio, Tzemadio, Crete. Photograph courtesy of Christine Kargiotakis

One evening Vassilis, who runs the Kronio with his French wife, Christina, handed me a napkin on which he’d sketched a map. “Tomorrow you should make this walk,” he said. “I can’t go with you, but you should be fine.” He poured me some more raki and rummaged in a bookshelf to retrieve a reprint of a scholarly article about Karfi, a Minoan settlement in the Ditka mountains high above the village.

“It all uphill. Am I fit enough for a hike like this?” I asked Vassilis, who is a skilled mountaineer. “Probably. You are not as fat and lazy as many men your age.” I assumed he was implying American men. Over the years he and Christina have told me stories of Americans who have come into the Kronio, usually involving their size and peculiar culinary habits. An exceedingly large American woman on one of the bus tours that brings tourists up from the big resorts on the north coast made an impression when she asked Vassilis to top her baklava with ice cream. “Of course I told her ‘no.’ One does not eat ice cream with baklava,” he reported, shuddering theatrically with indignation. “Incroyable,” Christina added from the desk where she does the accounts.

A historic paved road on the edge of Tzermiado in the Lasithi Plateau. Wikimedia Commons

The next morning I walked past Bartholomew’s pasture so he could bray at me and soon I was picking my way up a steep, stone-strewn path that climbs a shoulder of the mountains. The mind wanders when you’re struggling up a hot hillside, and I thought again of the first Bartholomew. One of my early memories was being thrilled to see his picture on the front page of the newspaper when Franny lent him to the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign for a photo-op during a whistle stop. I don’t know what became of Bartholomew. Franny sold the farm when I was still in grade school, and I remember being embarrassed because I burst into tears as my dad and I drove around the cul-de-sacs of split-level houses in Holly Hills, the subdivision that replaced the familiar fields.

I was now high enough to see the plateau spread out below me, a tidy patchwork of fields, comfortable and welcoming, enclosed within an unbroken circle of mountain peaks that keep the outside world at bay. White sails of windmills that pump water through irrigation channels moved with the wind. After leveling off a bit the path rose again to the crest of a rise. Just across a gully was a jumble of rocks that are the remains of Karfi, cradled in a fold of barren terrain and indistinguishable from the gray landscape. Far below, the Sea of Crete appeared as a bright blue expanse on the horizon.

Karfi was a sanctuary for the last of the Minoans, who took refuge in these heights about 3,000 years ago, and the civilization that built vast palaces and painted fanciful frescoes of dancing ladies died out on these barren slopes. I could make out faint traces of their single-story houses and gridlike streets, and I could almost see the phantoms of Minoans among the rocks. It was easy to imagine the mountainside humming with the chatter of human souls who no doubt laughed, told stories, shared meals, fought and made peace with one another. Residents out for an evening stroll must have scrambled up to the knoll where I was standing and gazed out to sea.

The return was on a longer route, across a high ridge then a gradual descent on a stone-littered track that herders use to goad goats up and down the mountainside. I’d been picking my way across the rocks for at least half an hour when I began to hear the tinkling of bells and bleats that grew louder as I neared a tall, wide tree. My thoughts of resting in the shade were dashed when I came close enough to see a large herd of goats crowded beneath the branches, sheltering from the sun.

The stunning landscape of the Lasithi Plateau.  Photograph by Stephen Brewer.

A little farther along the scrub gave way to dense, unkempt olive groves. I heard him before I saw him, a loud hee-haw from the overgrowth. Then Bartholomew appeared, grazing in grass almost as tall as him. I noticed he was saddled, and the bearded man I’d seen with him before was working a neatly plowed patch of earth tucked away among the trees. I sat down against a gnarly trunk, not far from Bartholomew, who raised his head to acknowledge my presence. There I soon dozed off, thinking about donkeys and those Minoan ghosts floating around on the mountainside above me.

Tammy Skinner – T-Boy writer:

Rediscovering my Heart and Soul

Expectation burnout. Oh, it’s a thing my friends. A very real one. Which is why when I was asked to ponder the theme of Heart and Soul travel and what that means to me, I instantly knew where I had to go to rediscover my heart and soul which has most definitely been squeezed out of me like a tired dirty mop that has barely any drips of water hanging from its threads. Point blank. I was slightly… just a little teensy OKAY a whole lot depleted. I know I’m not the only one by any means. Who of all of us hasn’t found themselves stretched with oh too many expectations over the past year and counting? Whether it was the expectation of pulling internet connectivity out of thin air when in midst of a zoom call that goes dead or the 40th call from your kids’ teacher that they were falling behind on their fractions and division… we were ALL in some way, shape or form in survival mode. And all of that on top of playing the game of KEEP AWAY with a deadly virus.

For more than 80 years the Little River Inn has been welcoming guests to experience the beauty of the Mendocino Coast. Photograph courtesy of Tamara Skinner.

As my husband and I drove up the Mendonoma Coast after dropping off the kids at their grandparents at Sea Ranch, I could feel a little bit of an exhale coming on. Then we got to Mendocino and the azure blue ocean waters started to cry out my name. TAMMY it called…YOU’RE FREE LIKE THE SEA. Soon we caught glimpse of the spot we had picked for our refuge from incessant expectations – the Little River Inn which is an inviting 80-year-old hotel that has a restaurant (with a full bar) on site and hospitality like no other. It’s been in the family over five generations and the warmth of the owners trickles down to every single employee who seem intent on doing only one thing-to nurture you back to well-being.

Central Californian coastline looking south, with the McWay Rocks in the foreground, and McWay Cove in the center. Photograph courtesy of Diliff.

We also specifically picked Little River Inn for its’ special rooms that come with a hot tub on the deck along with a built-in special back rolling massager (I can’t even talk about this without rolling my eyes to the top of my head). Because of the covid craze, I hadn’t been comfortable getting a human massage so I couldn’t wait to get in the tub and get my machine massage. Oh boy! I don’t know how to describe the pure bliss of sitting in a hot tub overlooking the deepest blue majestic water, soaking in the negative ions and having my muscles pounded releasing the tension which felt like a thousand rocks settled into the river inside my body. As I sat in the tub longer and felt more and more of the rocks dissipate, slowly my own flow started coming through as I was able to hear my intuition again. It had been a while! I missed that trusty guide of mine that I used to be able to access so easily. Turns out over a year of incessant snack demands and frustration tantrum sighs coming from my “zoombies” from their “bedrooms/classrooms” had drowned out that melodic voice of guidance.

Mendocino, California. Photograph courtesy of Jef Poskanzer.

Mother’s Day upon us, newly restored and with exploration vibes drawing us out of our heavenly room, my hubby and I got in the car and drove to the picturesque Mendocino village to see what my heart had in store for me there – revelation wise. Found in the backdrop of many films due to it being established in the 1850s and filled with New England styled Victorian homes (which have been restored into shops, inns and restaurants), we lazily strolled up and down the streets of this peninsula/bluffs surrounded land and wandered into the shops that called to us.

There was one in particular that summoned me in by its décor alone. I seemingly floated into Loot & Lore and found myself instantly surrounded by my favorite things-jewelry, tarot decks and books. I glanced at a beautiful Saints and Mystics deck that begged me to pick a card and picked a message from St. Paul who (according to this deck) was the Patron Saint of writers and spiritual searchers! The synchronicity was not ignored by me who had just told my husband that I’d like to get an intentional sign of a way to release my writer’s block. Finding two intriguing little zines (one on making vision boards and the other entitled GETTING OVER IT: Move on from the Bullshit That is Holding you Back) I decided to buy them along with a pen that had a quartz attached to the end of it with “Be the Light” etched on the side of it. At check out, I befriended the lovely store owner, Cynthia, working the register who told me this pen would cure my writer’s block. Yes please! And thank you! Enchanted by the flow and feeling of effortlessness languishing type roaming my soul told me I was healed.

Animals on display at the Little River Inn. Photography courtesy of Tamara Skinner.

I have often pondered on the fact that like machines we as Americans specifically are programmed to produce. Produce results. Produce good grades. Produce promotions. Produce babies. Produce retirement funds. But what if all of that is just one really really long inhale? What if the answer involves us also concentrating just as much on the exhale? For our waves to recede back in the waters after thy maniacally crash onto the shore? What if we just want to talk? To laugh? To have fun? Be known and understood? Feel the sun on our bare legs, drink champagne, embrace for too long? Mendocino healed me and it didn’t take much. Okay maybe it did. Ocean view+hot tub+negative ions from the waves crashing+genuinely caring employees concerned with my needs+magical stores offering guidance and hope. Most important, this stunning coastal wonder found me in the silence and without interruptions long enough to sneak its guidance in, and voila just like that I find myself back on California’s Highway 1 heading south to pick up our children, eager to practice this new mantra of “producing” less while “allowing” more.

Weave Cleveland – Travel Guys cinematographer:

Super Cool York

It’s surely timing and serendipity that set any particular place in our reverie forever. For me I will forever say that York, England is the most fascinating and enchanting place I have ever visited. You can instantly get lost in history at the walled city of York, and I mean instantly!

York’s city walls (circa 1890 and 1900). Wikimedia Commons.

You can stand in one spot and see Medieval, Gothic, Roman, and Edwardian architecture each direction your eyes are drawn… and more. Not the oldest part of town but the most compelling part is ‘the Shambles.’ Named so for the meat shelves and hooks where butchers and sellers displayed their meats for sale. Those were days long ago. Nowadays it is the ‘must see’ area of the city. It looks like a movie set. You can even spot Turkish architecture mixing in with the Tudor stylings. These narrow, tangled cobblestone streets also have something unique which I have never seen or heard of before – Snickleways. A Snickleway is a narrow tunnel-like passage to get you over to another street without having to walk around the block. An ‘enchanting’ short cut. I think there’s five of them.

Five Snickelways lead off the Shambles in York. Wikimedia Commons.

York has some serious Viking history and I learned something there that now makes sense even in my own city. The Viking word for road is gata. In English, gata gets translated to gate. So, even though I have spent my life imagining a garden gate or front yard gate, etcetera, in this case it actually means road. Bathgate, Helmsgate, Fossgate, Coppergate, Newgate, etcetera. I think that’s cool.

Another fascinating fact was how much time the Romans spent there and all the work they did. Constantine the Great was in York when he became a Roman emperor in 306 A.D. and started his rule from there. He was pretty great, he had a city named for himself – Constantinople (now Istanbul). The magnificent York Minster Cathedral has underground excavation of Roman ruins going on right now since workers in the 1960’s discovered them when trying to shore up the foundation of the Minster.

Bronze statue of Constantine the Great outside York Minster, looking down upon his broken sword, which forms the shape of a cross. Wikimedia Commons.

Now, here’s something really special, especially because I am Canadian and have grown up with these: KitKat, Rolo, Aero, Smarties, York Peppermint Patty… and the list goes on – they all came from York. Terry’s and The Rowntree Family and a few others all started in York. In fact. Mr. Rowntree even helped MacIntosh financially to keep his toffee business going. MacIntosh is still on store shelves today. Not to be confused with the MacIntosh raincoat maker or the Glaswegian designer/architect. The giant firm Nestlé may own them now but these candy bars all came from York.

If you visit York you can see the National Railroad Museum or the birthplace of Guy Faux or visit an old English pub smaller than your current bedroom and even learn all about the horse thief and notorious criminal Dick Turpin… but most of all it will be tangling your way through town that will steal your heart. What a super cool place York is.

Brom Wikstrom – T-Boy writer and mouth painter:

The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Proust

It was a revelation to me when visitors to our Seattle home would marvel at our views of Mt. Rainier, the Olympic Mountain Range and Puget Sound. Likewise, guests from other parts of the country would delight in the majesty of towering cedar trees or the red flash of a robin’s breast. These are common sights to us and register appreciation but not the awe-inspiring experience that we have witnessed in others.

View of Mount Rainier National Park from Dege Peak Spur Trail. Wikimedia Commons.

The abundant natural beauty along our shorelines, in our national forests and even the arid portions on the eastern side of Washington State have always moved my spirit in ways that are renewing and I’ve always considered myself fortunate to live in the Pacific Northwest for that reason.

With that in mind, my wife and I began taking winter trips to be with family in St. Petersburg, Florida several years ago and were equally inspired by what to us is exotic wildlife and natural beauty. Because of my wheelchair, I am always in search of accessible trails, promenades and boardwalks where I can engage with nature and Florida offers many such opportunities. We stayed near two local parks that became regular destinations and offered wheelchair accessible trails that highlighted nature and native history in unique settings.

Weedon Island Preserve. Wikimedia Commons.

Sawgrass Lake Park and Weedon Island Park have miles of accessible boardwalks and trails and kayaking options and are treasures of natural wonder. I have enjoyed many peaceful hours in rapt wonder watching the diverse wildlife that call them home. Alligators ply the placid waterways along with turtles, lizards egrets, herons, and pelicans and though these are relatively common sights for residents, I am continuously amazed at the diversity and abundance present at these and other public parks in St. Petersburg.

Salvador Dalí Museum at St. Petersburg, Florida. Wikimedia Commons.

St. Petersburg is equally renowned for its beautiful beaches and the iconic Salvador Dali Museum along with the newly reopened pier and those are surprising, beautiful and culturally dynamic, but give me a few tranquil hours among mangrove swamps and leaping mullets and my heart will sing.

James Boitano – T-Boy writer:

Slovenia

As a geography buff, I’d always wanted to go to Slovenia. Its relative obscurity made vis-à-vis its better-known and more war-torn former constituent republics of the former Yugoslavia made it all the more appealing. I like obscure even more than well known Why go to France when you can go to Luxembourg or better yet, Andorra? And what was this little country of 2 million people like there tucked at the crossroads of the Germanic, Italic and Slavic worlds? I just had to wait for my chance.

Slovenia’s capital city of Ljubljana. Wikimedia Commons.

So, in 2002 while attending the Eurovision music event in Riga Latvia, I met Samo. He was a rumpled, brilliant, and kind high school teacher, a fellow Eurovision fan, and the first Slovenian I’d ever met. We so hit it off as friends, spending hours until late at night, engrossed in conversation at the hotel bar after the events and day’s rehearsals. We met again at Eurovision in 2005 in Kiev and again at Eurovision in 2007 in Helsinki. And each time, he invited me to stay at his home in Slovenia’s little capital city of Ljubljana. I finally took him up on his offer in 2011 for a 10-day visit. And you know what? I returned for another 10-day visit in 2012, And another in 2014 and my 4th x 10-day visit in 2017 (Covid prevented my last trip in 2020). Needless to say, Slovenia won my heart. During my 40 days of visits, Samo showed me every corner of the small country: from the mighty Alpine valleys to the Venetian Adriatic Coast, the rolling hills of the wine region, the little villages of the Pannonian Plain. For a small country, you can reach any region within 2 hours of Ljubljana. But most of all I met Samos friends and family.

Lake Bled, Slovenia. Wikimedia Commons.

Every night we would sit at a café and a crowd of a dozen would join us. The bar we went to was one owned by the father of the most famous Slovene, the father of Melanija Trump and they ironically called it the ‘First Lady Café’. I felt like so accepted by the people, the opposite of a tourist. Small countries so appreciate the attention, they are so often overlooked. And in small country, even a high school teacher is bound to know many people.

A traditional double straight-line hayrack in Slovenia. Wikimedia Commons.

During my visits I was a guest on Slovenian National Radio (during the coveted 1:00 am to 2:00 am spot!). Samo just knew the guy there and when he heard there was captive foreigner, I was invited. And during my 4 visits I attended several birthday parties held by his relatives and a wedding, at each being made to feel like a guest of honor. One day, I got to go on rounds with his friend who picked up produce at local farms and delivered them to grocery stores. We spent all day and crossed half the country. Imagine doing that as a ‘tourist’? And so, after all this, Slovenia has a big place in my heart…and I will return as soon as this post-Covid world allows.

Ed Boitano – T-Boy editor:

Ireland’s Romantic West Coast

My wife and I woke up to the smell of rich morning coffee. It was to be part of our breakfast on our first day in Ireland’s wild west coast. It has been said that all Irish homes become a bed and breakfast during the summer, and this Donegal County cottage with one spare room was no exception.

Full Irish breakfast. Wikimedia Commons.

The owners fussed over us at the table as we enjoyed a full Irish Breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausages, black and white pudding, fried potatoes and homemade rolls with marmalade. They told us of the area’s attractions and educated us on the Irish Potato Famine, that began in 1845 and lasted for six years, killing over a million men, women and children and caused another million to flee the country. The owner explained, the Irish in the countryside began to live off wild blackberries, nettles, turnips, old cabbage leaves, seaweed, roadside weeds and, towards the end of the Famine, green grass. The owner added you could always identify a Famine victim by the green grass stains around their mouth. He suggested that we read his favorite book about the Famine, The Silent People by Walter Macken.

To this day no one knows who these people were and how they were able to move such mammoth rocks. Photo courtesy of Nicolas Raymond & Brin Kennedy Weins, Wikimedia Commons.

We followed his instructions and found a Famine Pot in the middle of a forest, where some locals placed food for the displaced victims. It felt like we were walking through history.

We had already anticipated a trip to Slieve League Cliffs on the far west coast of Donegal, and were not disappointed once we arrived. Towering over 2,000 feet from the Atlantic Ocean, it is one of the highest sea cliffs in Europe. Its visual splendor gets my vote for the most striking site in Ireland.

We headed down the road to County Sligo for a pilgrimage to the gravesite of our favorite poet, W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), and soon found ourselves stuck in the car, avoiding a heavy downpour. We didn’t mind, we read Yeats and listened to an Altan CD, our favorite traditional Donegal music group, while basking in awe at the stunning green countryside. We read where the lyrical name “Emerald Isle” arrived from William Dennan, an Irish physician, poet and liberal political radical, in his poem When Erin First Rose in 1795.

Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery. Wikimedia Commons.

Once the weather cleared, we stumbled upon Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, the largest burial site of Megalithic tombs in Ireland, built around 4600-3900 B.C. To this day no one knows who these people were and how they were able to move such mammoth rocks. We both could feel the power of the setting and something came over us; before we knew it, we were renewing our wedding vows. After a Sunday pub meal of  Irish fjord lamb, potatoes and Guinness we found another B&B, where (once again) we were the only guests. We wanted to take the owner home with us, and to this day remain in contact. From her window we could see cattle swimming across a river.

The striking ‘terrible’ beauty of the Connemara. Photo courtesy of Chris Hood, via Wikimedia Commons.

The next day, it was a drive through the sweeping Connemara in County Galway, a stunning landscape where author Charles Dicken once described as a place of “terrible beauty.” We pulled off the road to study a Famine Trail named for the Doolough Tragedy of 1849. Scores of destitute and starving people staggered through horrendous weather for 15 miles to a manor’s house in the hope of food, only to be turned away. Apparently, the owner was too busy having lunch to be bothered. Later, corpses were found by the side of the road with grass in their mouth, while others desperately crawled to a local church where they could die on consecrated ground.

The annual Doolough Famine Walk. Photo courtesy Tourism Ireland.

Once a year a famine walk takes place on the trail to commemorate the victims. As we departed down the road, we both commented that we had not seen a single car for over half an hour. A second later there was a rumbling on the road. We had a flat, not unusual on these rock-strewn Irish roads, but faced with having to unpack our little rental’s cram packed trunk just to find the spare tire was a daunting thought. Before we knew it, two cars, each arriving from the opposite direction, appeared out of nowhere. The drivers both hopped out and quickly changed our tire. They barely stuck around for a handshake. Such is the hospitality of the Irish.

It was pitch black when we arrived at our next bed and breakfast accommodations, and laughed in wonder on how the owners managed to get the bed into our little room. But where were we? In the morning, with the blazing sun illuminating this piece of paradise, we realized our B&B was nestled on the banks of a breathtaking fjord. We were in the town of Liane, where the film, The Field was made. In one of the local pubs a huge painting of the film’s star, Richard Harris, hangs above the fireplace. On our dinner plates was lobster caught that very day in the fjord. A tablemate explained to us that in pre-EU Ireland there were no taxes on food, books and children’s clothing. Upon hearing this, my wife literally held back tears.

A traditional music session at the Gus O’Connor Pub in Doolin.
Photo courtesy of Chris Hood, via Wikimedia Commons.

Eventually we made it down to the musical town of Doolin, a coastal fishing village in County Clare on the Atlantic coast. Coined the traditional music capital of Ireland, this was an adult Disneyland for us where a number of pubs specialized in Irish session music each night. We joined in with locals and like-minded tourists, had big pub meals of more lamb and potatoes, bacon (think ham) and cabbage, then nursed pints of Guinness as we listened to reels, jigs and haunting ballads, many about the Famine and emigration.

Our daytimes were spent on trips to the Aran Islands, a landscape once so cruel and unforgiving that it consisted solely of solid limestone rock, where rugged locals actually had to produce their own soil, made of seaweed and smashed rocks to grow potatoes, their only source of subsidence; then the windy, yet curiously tranquil Cliffs of Moher, standing 702 feet with a stretch of five miles, featuring panoramic views of the Atlantic as far as the eye can see; a massive Dolomite burial site located on a livestock farm (its only explanation, a note from the farmer, “Mind the Gate”); exploring additional archaeological wonders in the Burren as well as its castles, some now converted to private residences. We carry the memories with us wherever we go. Yes, Erin Go Bragh!

Postscript:

The Hand of Human Kindness: The Irish and American Indian Tribal Nations

In 1847, the Choctaw People in the U.S. collected $170 – the equivalent of several thousand dollars today – to send to the people in Ireland who were starving during the Potato Famine. The senseless deaths and struggles  experienced by the Irish was familiar to the tribal nation: Just 16 years earlier the Choctaw had embarked on the forced 5,043 mile-long Trail Of Tears, due to tyrant and American President Andrew Jackson’s illegal Indian Relocation Act. Thousands of their own succumbed to death from starvation, disease and freezing temperatures. Though the Choctaw People had meager resources, they gave on behalf of others in greater need.

A dignified Choctaw family. Photographer unknown. Wikimedia Commons

The Irish have long felt a debt of gratitude to American Indians. When current news broke that the Navajo and Hopi tribes were being ravaged by the coronavirus, Irish journalist Naomi O’Leary tweeted that now would be a good time to return the favor. That tweet went viral, and soon donations were pouring in from the Irish people, along with messages of gratitude and support.

In 2017, the Choctaw Native American Monument was erected in Midleton, Ireland, to honor the American Indian tribe that aided the Irish during the Great Potato Famine in 1847.

Kindred Spirits sculpture in Ireland, dedicated to the Choctaw Nation for their aid during the Great Irish Famine.
Credit: Photograph courtesy of ChoctawNation.com.

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