June 13th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Problem:
The first years of my memory are of Niagara Falls. We lived on Orchard Parkway in a tiny second-floor house apartment. And as I grew up in the surrounding area, I learned to think of my hometown as the honeymoon and suicide capital of the world.
I grew up with daredevils risking life, limb, and the lives and limbs of their rescuers, by plummeting in various contraptions over the Horseshoe Falls. I saw news reports of poor fools who fell and drown to their deaths on kayaks and jet-skis as they tried to conquer the cataracts. I watched national television coverage of the lawsuits connected to Love Canal, a neighborhood that was the site of one of the worst toxic-waste-dumping scandals in American history.
My first job, as a bakery assistant, was in Niagara Falls at the headquarters of Di Camillo Bakery, a family business still thriving in this city. And I watched as department stores and jewelry stores and restaurants evaporated from Main Street, turning the road into an assortment of seedy bars, adult novelty stores, and boarded up buildings, each empty as the pockets of the homeless wandering the city. And I watched as the factories closed their doors, and added good, hard-working souls to the unemployment lines– ¦.
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Make Progress:
But I also grew up next to a place where people teem to see one the natural wonders of the world. And I grew up in an area where my relatives worked the bluest-collar of jobs, but managed to put lasagna on the table (we're good Italian-Americans, after all). And I grew up where my grandfather landed after traveling the Atlantic to move to America, the same city where my father was raised and remained, the same city where my sister got married. And I grew up next to one of the marvels of electrical science, the Niagara Power Project.
And so I believe in this place. And I love this place. And it's time we all helped this treasure of not just New York, but of America, and not just of America, but of the world. We're ready, if you are, to make progress in Niagara Falls.
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Editor’s Note: Below you’ll find photos of some of our favorite locations in the city of Niagara Falls.
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The Little Italy neighborhood and business district.
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The genius that is the Niagara Power Project. To learn more about it, click here.
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Di Camillo Bakery, where they make the best Italian bread you’ll ever eat.
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The Niagara River in autumn (if it wasn’t obvious from, you know, the leaves).
June 13th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
E-mail:
We hemmed and hawed. We confabbed and powwowed amongst our entire staff. There were moments of hullabaloo and others of brouhaha. And we think we've got the best minute-for-minute way that folks can help boost tourism to Niagara Falls (excluding, of course, cajoling your best buds and extended family to hop a flight or maybe take a road trip our way). Below you'll find a letter to the editor that we encourage you to alter depending on your facts, feelings and location, then copy, paste, and mass-email the sucker to the following travel magazines:
- National Geographic Magazine: ngsforum@nationalgeographic.com
- National Geographic Traveler Magazine: traveler@nationalgeographic.com
- National Geographic Adventure Magazine: adventure@ngs.org
- Road & Travel Magazine: editor@roadandtravel.com
- World Hum: tips@worldhum.com
- Love Tripper: editors@lovetripper.com
- Travel-Travel-Travel: editor@travel-travel-travel.com
- CNN Traveler: dan.hayes@ink-publishing.com
- Vacations Magazine: contact@VacationsMagazine.com
- Family Fun Magazine: letters.familyfun@disney.com
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Dear Editor:
I recently visited Niagara Falls, New York, and I left stunned by the beauty on display on the American side of this natural wonder of the world. While the Canadian side boasted kitschy pseudo-museums, trinket stores, and family unfriendly gentlemen's clubs, the American side focuses on the gorgeous environment through the state parks, a helicopter ride, Terrapin Point, the Flight of Angels balloon ride, Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, Niagara Falls Observation Tower, and Prospect Point. On the American side, I was able to stand just feet away from all three of the cataracts that together make Niagara Falls. I also hiked down to Devil's Hole State Park to watch the Class 5 rapids stampeding through the gorge, a breathtaking site in and of itself.
I'm asking that you write an article about this location, encouraging your readers to make a trip to the side of the Falls most suited for families, honeymooners, eco-tourists, and anyone who’s never stood right next to the mighty Niagara.
Sincerely,
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Instead of entering all the addresses into the email as you normally would do, we recommend placing one address in the address bar, and adding the rest as BCC, also known as “blind carbon copy.” You might also send a variation of the letter to your newspaper of choice (you can find a complete listing of newspapers by clicking here). But if you could do us a favor: please don’t send these letters to the good folks at the Niagara Gazette, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, Tonawanda News, The Journal-Register, The Grand Island Record, or The Buffalo News. We're pretty sure they know about the grandeur of the Falls. Thanks.
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Editor’s Note: You can contact Travel and Leisure by clicking this sentence.
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April 14th, 2007 by Matt
I don’t even know where to begin writing about Hal Taussig. Okay, I do. It goes like this: Taussig could appear on a episode of MTV’s Cribs if he wanted to, but instead he dolls out his millions to the poor in the form of low-interest loans.
He considers the wealth he could be amassing “an embarrassment.” He doesn’t own a car. He owns one suit. He works three jobs. Oh, and he’s 81.
After a trip during which he drove a car all around Europe, he decided to start a travel agency, Untours. Through Untours, travelers get to live in a country instead of just visiting it, by shacking up for two weeks in an apartment, farmhouse, villa, or cottage. Plus, by using this agency, travelers can know that their hard- or not-so-hard-earned ¢ha-¢hing goes to an amazing cause and not someone’s bloated coffers.
According to an article by Art Carey in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
In the early ’80s, Taussig was making more money from the tour operation than he needed or wanted. He decided to accept about $20,000 a year for his basic expenses.
First, Taussig gave the excess profits back to his customers. The next year, he split the profits among his employees. Finally, he decided to channel them into a foundation.
The motto of the Untours Foundation is “a hand up, not a handout.” It provides low-interest loans, here and abroad, to create jobs, build low-income housing, and support fair-trade products: goods such as coffee that are sold at a price that guarantees producers and workers a fair wage and decent livelihood.
And how much money has he poured into this foundation? 5 million over the last 15 years.
His work with Untours Foundation calls to mind both Kiva (the non-profit micro-loan organization we’ve already mentioned on our pages) and the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. The founder of the latter, Muhammad Yunus, snagged the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the theory and practice of micro-loans, and has said: “Poverty in the world is an artificial creation; it does not belong to human civilization. We can change it. Poor people are not asking for charity; charity is not a solution for poverty.”
Says Taussig: “This is my way of finding meaning. This is how I get joy out of life. The widening gap between the rich and poor is not sustainable. I fear there will be a violent revolution if we don’t find a solution to poverty in the world.”
Meaning, joy, hope, peace, equality. Yes, more of this. Yes, please.
February 11th, 2007 by Matt
I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon; I’ve only seen it from a jet, streaming overhead at some ridiculous speed. Nonetheless, I remember being in awe. No, it was more than awe. It was so beautiful my reaction was like forgetting, for a moment, who I was. I’m determined, one of these days, to make my way back there, to hike to the bottom and camp out under stars, each slightly higher from that lower ground.
And then I read this article on NationalGeographic.com, and let’s just say that the urgency for a real trip has magnified:
Members of a Native American group based in a remote part of Arizona are hoping to entice more tourists by inviting visitors to step off the edge of the Grand Canyon. The 1,500-member Hualapai tribe announced last week that the Skywalk– ”a giant, 30-million-dollar steel-and-glass walkway– ”will open to the public in March 2007.
The Skywalk will jut out 70 feet (21 meters) from the canyon rim, allowing tourists to go for a stroll with nothing between their feet and the Colorado River– ”4,000 feet (1,220 meters) below– ”except for four inches (ten centimeters) of glass.
The Hualapai, or “People of the Tall Pines,” are working with the Las Vegas, Nevada-based Destination Grand Canyon to market the Skywalk and draw in valuable tourist dollars.
As the article indicates, the Skywalk (you can find construction photos here) is linked up with casino tourism (something we find fairly repressive most of the time) and some of the tribal leaders are rightfully concerned that the development will damage sacred ground and graves (something we are also concerned about). Collectively though, this Native nation is allowing the Skywalk to be built, and, well, I’m going to go. I’m going to go and not gamble a dime. I’m going to go and stare down into the gorge below. And I’m going to respect this world of ours even more.
* Photograph courtesy of Destination Grand Canyon (click to enlarge)
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