The other night, I stayed up way too late reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone, a book I devoured and savored at once. Devoured: I wanted to stuff myself silly. Savored: I wanted to take small bites to make it last. I loved each small flavor and the way they worked together to create something […]
Travel
‘Content’ Isn’t Just ‘Marketing’
“Content” isn’t just things we think of as “marketing.” A great example is Virgin’s new pre-flight safety briefing, which my friend DJ Waldow Skyped from on board a Virgin flight to share with me last week. If you haven’t seen it, check it out here: There’s much to love about this video. I detailed why […]
JetBlue: When a Marketing Slogan Is More Than Marketing Slogan
Most commercial air travel experiences are exercises in endurance, not anticipation: “I suppose vacation will be fun, but I really can’t wait to spend 6 hours bouncing around in a cramped tin tube getting there!” said no one ever. I would feel this way even if I didn’t hate to fly with a passion, which […]
My Out Of Office Auto-Responder
Well, this is a disappointment. You dispatch an email to me only to have a response im-frickin-mediately — Holy cats! That. Was. Fast!! Then you realize it’s just a dumb auto-responder. Nothing remotely personal about it. The bitter truth rises in your gut when you realize: Ann’s on vacation — not holed up (as she […]
I Don’t Want to Go, But I Can’t Wait to Get There
“You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.” ―Deb Caletti, The Six Rules of Maybe Tonight I leave on an 8 PM flight for a six-day trip from Boston, Massachusetts, to Istanbul, Turkey. It’s a 10-hour flight—almost 5,000 miles—and when I say it’s a world away I mean it both […]
Same-Sex Discount
We are standing in line at Westminster Abbey, waiting to pay the admission fee. Up ahead, the cashier is housed behind glass in the entry vestibule, which is a small area with a cold, stone floor. It’s chilly and damp outside and much the same inside; when we finally slip past the door and inside, […]
Scavenged
We set off on foot, the six of us, under an azure sky as big as the ocean. The breeze off the water smelled of salt and September, and the dune grasses bent toward each other, whispering the news that fall was coming. It was a picture-perfect, precious August day, the kind of day that […]
10 Things I Hate About You, Travel Edition
The flight from Boston to Los Angeles takes six hours, during which there is a kind of caricature of intimacy that develops, at least in Coach. You might not even know the name of the guy sitting at your elbow, but still: You know his choice of reading material; what he drinks with his meal; […]
Summer on the Coast of Maine, Doggy-Style
I’m spending this week on the coast of southern Maine. If I had a choice, I’d spend most of the week as I am right now: in a low-slung beach chair, toes buried in the warm sand, and book propped open on my lap, pages ruffled by the strong wind off the water. Every few […]