Tag Archives: Travel

No Frigate Like a Book

By Robin Bates | Published: January 4, 2019

Friday To end the week, I share one of Ilya Milstein’s enchanting illustrations, along with the Emily Dickinson poem that it reminds me of. We start off in a library and, next thing we know, we have been transported “lands away.” I haven’t always admired “There is no frigate like a book,” perhaps because I […]

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Vacations Must Be More than Photographs

By Robin Bates | Published: May 26, 2015

Wendell Berry warns that photographs can come between us and a profound vacation experience. I’ll keep that in mind in my upcoming trip to Machu Picchu.

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New Orleans, Kind to Strangers

By Robin Bates | Published: May 26, 2011

For me as a tourist, New Orleans was a study in contrasts: the best live music I have ever heard performed in seedy bars, old world charm a block away from Bourbon Street decadence, the elegance of the Garden District mansions clashing with the boarded-up Katrina-ravaged houses of the Ninth Ward. There is a similar study of contrasts in the most famous literary work connected with the city.

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At Films Abroad, Why Do I Laugh Alone?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 30, 2010

Film Friday Vic: What film are we talking about?
 Lin: Does it matter what film?
 Vic: Of course it does.
 Lin: You choose then.  Friday night.  Not in a foreign language, ok.  You don’t go to the movies to read.                                […]

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Europe and America, Fantasy Projections

By Robin Bates | Published: July 19, 2010

North Americans have regarded Europe as a cultural Mecca for a long time and often use their summer vacations to travel there as though on a pilgrimage.  This has been true of a number of American writers, including Mark Twain, Henry James, the ex-patriots of the 1920’s (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein), and T. S. Eliot.  […]

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