New passport, how to I hate thee?...

I hate the new passports. I'm not just talking about the truly horrendous digitized photograph of me that makes me look like a shiny, blubbery, 450-pound rubberized simulacrum of myself. That's to be expected (though how, in the digital age, passport photos are getting worse rather than better is beyond me).

I hate the treacly, jingoistic "America the Beautiful" theme that makes every page scream USA! USA! USA! I VOTED FOR GEORGE W. BUSH!

Also why, in a document designed expressly for the purposes of visiting other countries, does every page serve as an ad to stay home and see the wonders of this country? OK, so sure, the first photo/engraving page sports my own hometown sights of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Clearly, they're trying to butter me up. Won't work.

After Philly's contributions, we get Cape Cod, Mt. Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty. We get a Mississippi riverboat, places in the west where buffalo roam beneath Teton-y peaks and men in cowboy hats wrangle longhorns, some flat place in the Midwest where wheat and handplows rule, a train in Utah, and a grizzly eating salmon in the shade of a totem pole in the Pacific Northwest, saguaro in Arizona, and a palm tree in Hawaii. This patriotic march of images culminates in a final photo which implies, by extension, that the U.S. also owns the moon and outer space in general. Nice. And we wonder why the rest of the world finds us to arrogant and self-important.

I also hate the instructions that the document is never to be folded, spindled, or mutilated for fear of damaging the Big Brother microchip embedded inside so anyone with a receiver can steal all my personal data. Don't they know what travel does to a passport? The one I sent in to have replaced resembled nothing so much as a wad of damp cardboard with a mash-up of some exotic stamps barely visible in it.

Finally: I hate the fact that I have to memorize a whole new passport number. What was wrong with the old one?

Brooklyn B&Bs

Here are the closest B&Bs and inns in Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Park Slope, Brooklyn.


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Chasing Lorenzo around Rome

The NorthWest Airlines employee at the gate assured me, yet again, in a syrup voice that our 4:15pm flight would leave on time. This despite the fact that (a) Frances had just told me the NWA.com web site was showing a 20-minute delay and, (b) it was already 4:05pm and there was as yet no actual plane at the gate.

I don't know about you, but I've never seen a flight land, taxi, offload, get cleaned, switch out crews, load up again, taxi, and take off in ten minutes.

Right after the woman lied to me about my flight, I noticed a man drop a plastic toploader folder out of his bag as he walked down the terminal. I picked it up, caught him up, and returned his folder.

This will become significant, in some small way, later on in the story of my day spent chasing Lorenzo de' Medici around Rome.... Full Story

The Winter Wolves of Yellowstone National Park

"We're going to follow that bald eagle up the river," said veteran Yellowstone guide Leslie Quinn as we watched the magnificent bird flap past. Leslie threw into gear his bright yellow Bombadier—a vintage 1960s snowcoach shaped like a gumdrop reclining on tank treads—and crunched up the snow-packed road into the heart of the world's oldest national park....» Full Story

Horseback in the Andes

Tomas Alarcon trotted his horse up to ride beside mine and pointed to the vertical layer cake of limestone and shale that rose above the ugly scar of a mining road across the valley.

"I climbed those cliffs when I was a child," said my Chilean guide. "And you know what? There are millions and millions of seashell fossils in the rock. Here, at nearly five thousand meters!"

We rode in silence for a minute, pondering the massive tectonic forces that could lift what was once the bed of the Pacific Ocean more than 16,000 feet above sea level and create the cut-glass peaks of the Andes mountains.... Full Story