When I was a travel editor, writing a bi-weekly column, one of the ideas I kept in my back pocket was a column imagining a chance meeting, in some foreign backwater, between Anthony Bourdain and Rick Steves. The two most famous American travelers presented an interesting contrast in styles, not unlike Goofus and Gallant, and I thought an invented conversation between them might make for an amusing column.
I was reminded of that unwritten column while reading Ann Patchett’s essay in Sunday’s New York Times. It was about email, and like many of the Patchett essays I’ve read, it illuminated her enviable life: a highly successful author – one of email’s benefits, she says, is that it brings her unexpected writing assignments – surrounded by love. She loves her neighbors, she writes, and she loves her sister, who loves her back; she enjoys “the warmth of husband and dog.” She is blessed, as not that many writers – or, for that matter, people – are, and she is appreciative of her blessings.
So l like to imagine a meeting, at some secluded writers’ retreat, between Ann Patchett and Annie Ernaux.
Saturday, Lionel Messi played at Chase Stadium (and scored a hat trick) while Taylor Swift sang at Hard Rock Stadium (to a record 80,000-plus crowd) – two of the world’s most famous people performing on the same night in South Florida.
We skipped the Taylor Swift concert last night to attend evensong at Trinity Cathedral, where the Anglican Chorale of Southeast Florida and the Miami Collegium Musicum sang the works of, among others, William Boyd, Herbert Howells, and Anton Bruckner. Evensong is not only a beautiful service, held once a month at the cathedral, but also, in my mind, the most beautiful word in the English language.
Wherever, and whenever, I travel, temperatures are unseasonably chilly. In Warsaw a few Septembers ago I bought a scarf the day I arrived and wore it every day for the next four weeks. I remember complaining, at the beginning, that it was still summer. Last year we went to Philadelphia right after Thanksgiving and ended up buying new winter coats – with hoods. This year, we went to Washington, DC, at the end of April and it was surprisingly (though not really) cool and damp. I am a one-man defense against global warming.
Today I’m flying to Chicago and, it seems, my streak will be broken. Today is to be cool but Friday, the one day I’ll have time to walk around, temperatures are expected to be in the mid-60s. Not a heat wave, but for Chicago in late October pretty nice. Back when I planned the trip I half-expected a snowstorm.
I’ll be back here on Monday.
I was honored to be a guest on Ryan Murdock's excellent podcast Personal Landscapes. For a delightful hour we talked about Poland, the Cold War, travel books, travel writing, and even movies, including the usefulness of screenplays in learning a second language.
The sports columnist for The Spectator, Roger Alton, ended his Oct. 2 column with a note about Kris Kristofferson. He recalled, as a young man, coming home with the singer’s latest album. His father – whom Alton described as “a cricket-loving don involved with the Rhodes Scholarship committee" – noticed the cover and said warmly, “Ah, Kristofferson, a very fine left-arm bowler, as I recall.”