Oh the Places I've Seen! Norwegian Fjords

I love many different kinds of travel. Teeming vibrant cities are energizing. Museums and monuments satisfy a thirst for knowledge and can be awe inspiring as well. But there is something about that special combination of majestic mountains, trees, and water that is wonderfully uplifting.  Seattle or Vancouver on a sunny day. The Chilean fjords (although we had more clouds than sun when we sailed through). Or Norway.

Several years ago, we cruised from Rotterdam all the way to Nordkapp, above the Arctic Circle. We spent many days gazing at the mountains, the water, the waterfalls, the trees. From the ship, from a bus, from a train, on foot. And I never tired of it. I've felt the same way riding a ferry across Sydney harbor or through the Stockholm archipelago (even though neither has mountains). It makes me feel happy and serene.

We have yet to see the New Zealand fjords. Some Australian friends we met on our Norway trip felt that the two are tied in the beauty category. New Zealand is high on our list of places to see. We're all about finding out for ourselves.

In the meantime, when I'm in yoga class and the teacher encourages us to imagine a place that makes you feel uplifted and serene, I picture myself standing on the deck of the ship, sun in my face, breeze blowing my hair, gazing across the water at the mountains of a Norwegian fjord.

Quote of the Day -- Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Bucket Lists and Country Counting

When the movie "The Bucket List" came out in 2007, I'd never heard the term. I absolutely loved the movie, and the idea of a bucket list struck a chord with me, as it did with so many others.

I didn't spend a lot of thought in constructing my own bucket list, but I quickly discovered that it's all about travel for me. I certainly have goals -- "be more fit at 60 than I was at 50" or "start studying the piano again." And I achieved both of those, by the way. But I didn't aspire to do things like skydive or drive a race car or play a concert at Carnegie Hall. I aspired to see the world.

By the end of 2007 when the movie came out, I'd already traveled quite a bit. Starting in the late 90's, my job often took me around the world. And we did quite a bit of personal travel as well. I'd already seen many of the items that top most people's bucket lists: the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Coliseum, Sydney Opera House, and the Grand Canyon. My ultimate goal was "seeing the world," but how to translate that into a bucket list as we turned the calendar to 2008?

As much as I can remember, here's my list from 8 years ago:

• See all 50 states (I was only one short)
• Visit at least one new country every year
• Great Wall of China
• Taj Mahal
• Red Square
• Pyramids
• Machu Picchu
• Great Barrier Reef
• Panama Canal
• Stonehenge
• African safari
• Visit all 7 continents

So far, I'm doing pretty well checking items off my list.

• We've been to Hawaii (my 50th state) twice
• Since the beginning of 2008, I've been to 26 new countries
• Great Wall - 2009
• Red Square -- 2013
• Taj Mahal -- 2013
• Pyramids (and Petra) -- 2015
• Machu Picchu -- scheduled for later this year
• Stonehenge -- 2012
• African safari -- 2014
• Visit all 7 continents -- Antarctica in 2015 was our 7th

A plan to see the Great Barrier Reef last year got derailed by medical issues, so that is still on the list. And I still want to see the Panama Canal, but our forays into more exotic travel (aka developing world) have pushed the Canal further down on my list. That's an adventure we can easily accomplish when we're older and presumably a bit less fit.

Which brings me to country counting. I do have some iconic travel destinations on my list now (Panama Canal, Great Barrier Reef, Easter Island). But mostly, my list is "see the world." And one way to measure that is to count the countries that I have visited. Yes, it gives me bragging rights to say I've been to 58 countries so far. But more importantly, it's a personal indication for me that I'm reaching out and seeking new adventures.

We have a running of list of places we'd like to see and trips we'd like to take. All the travel catalogs we receive in the mail provide temptations and exciting new additions to our list.

But we also give in to serendipity. We've discovered that we enjoy traveling with friends (although we're perfectly happy going solo). So sometimes a destination pops to the top of our list because we mutually choose it with friends. Sometimes we explore a new area of a country we've already checked off. We certainly don't travel just for the sake of counting countries, but when the opportunity arises to visit a new place, why not?  

At the risk of tempting fate, our travel plans this year will take us to 4 new countries, one in Africa and three in South America, plus a repeat visit to our beloved Paris en route to Africa. Stay tuned.

Quote of the Day -- David Allen

You can do anything, but not everything.

-- David Allen

Quote of the Day -- Benjamin Franklin

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

-- Benjamin Franklin

A Travel Blog Worth Reading

So many blogs, so few worth reading... And yet the internet is populated with a few great blogs by people who have information and insight worth sharing. I've taken to surfing the Web a bit more in recent weeks, and I am starting to discover some nuggets. I have stumbled upon travel blogs that are awful, both visually and verbally. But I found a fun site that is primarily a video blog by a young (from my perspective) couple whose livelihood is seeing the world and reporting on it. 

As this picture demonstrates, a visually attractive and eye-catching blog post, or, more importantly, the tweet or Facebook post that points to it, can be very effective. Who wouldn't want to read about high-kicking soldiers from India and Pakistan? 





I was impressed enough that I went in search of more by "Captain and Clark" and found their blog. They visit great places and inspire me to continue to travel and to embrace the unexpected. The photos are luscious, and their engaging personalities come through in their writing and videos. Indulge yourself whether you're an aspiring traveler or a temporarily home-bound traveler planning your next adventure.

Quote of the Day -- Alexander Pope

Order is Heaven's first task.

-- Alexander Pope

Quote of the Day -- Susan Sontag

I haven’t been everywhere. But it’s on my list.

-- Susan Sontag

Knowledge for the Sake of Knowledge -- A Thing of the Past?

At first reading, a recent Forbes article, "What Happens When Business Starts Accrediting America's Colleges," seems quite reasonable. The impetus for the article is a new report by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. The report criticizes accreditation as “operated by higher education for higher education” rather than as a quality measurement in tune with the needs of employers and would-be employees. The report sites a recent survey that only 11% of business leaders believe college graduates are equipped for entering the workforce. 

Self-evaluation as the primary means of measuring success certainly seems like a flawed system. But the Chamber proposes that because this measurement is most probably not sufficient, it should be completely abandoned in favor of an alternative.

According to Forbes, "The report argues that higher education should use the principles of supply chain management, with colleges and employers working together to develop performance measures to assure that graduates have the workforce skills they need."  Hmmm... So as an alternative to the status quo, we're turning colleges into trade skills for business to completely free them of any need to train employees on the job?

I'm both the proud and reluctant owner of liberal arts degree. I relish the cultural literacy and critical thinking skills that I acquired in college and graduate school. At the same time, I bemoan the complete lack of practical skills that I possessed when I graduated. I was fortunate that "back in the day," IBM was hiring liberal arts majors and training them. Something unheard of today. My fellow liberal-arts colleagues and I quickly learned the necessary skills both in training classes and on the job. We weren't crack accountants by any means but it wasn't that hard to learn the basics of creating or analyzing a balance sheet and income statement. And my previously little-trained logical mind took to programming like a fish to water. Plus, we came to the table with a depth of knowledge, flexibility, and agility of mind that our business-major colleagues were challenged to match. Businesses today say that they value innovative thinking and flexibility, but how do you measure those things (or develop them) in the supply chain that the Chamber is proposing.

[Disclaimer: My higher education coincided with the Viet Nam era, when business was a "jock major" and the best and brightest chose fields of study that were frowned on by the "military industrial complex." So perhaps the comparison above is a bit unfair.]

With the mushrooming costs of higher education, parents and students alike feel compelled to ensure that a good paying job awaits. But does that have to mean that colleges become trade schools? Whatever happened to aspiring to cultural literacy that was so in vogue after the publication the book by of E.D. Hirsch, Jr? We learn so much from a good historical novel, but who will be the authors in the next generation if our best minds are trained to meet the specs of the business supply chain?

Despite the dynamics of this era of polarity and intense distrust between academia and business, I think a compromise is in order. Economics and competition dictate that the majority of our graduates have some employer-ready skills. But employers also need people to be innovative, adaptable, self-motivated, and, let's face it, just plain interesting. What we need is a well-rounded curriculum with both breadth and depth that teaches students to think and to do along with a joint measurement system that evaluates a broad spectrum of capabilities.

Quote of the Day -- Carl Jung

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. 

-- Carl Jung 

(via Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper for the Soul)