Travel

Guilt doesn't just eat parents of kids with special needs alive -- it disembowels us, especially when we think about taking time for ourselves. How can we go away? What if we're the only ones who can take care of our kids' needs? Or our absence would be a very big change, and any change results in air raid siren-volume tantrums? Or we know so many other parents who never get a break, who have no ability to take a break, who need a break worse than we do? How can we even think of getting away when ours lives are so intertwined with our children's? How can we possibly be so self-indulgent, so cavalier?

What's a better fetish for a traveler than maps? I love them -- not just maps of where we're going right now, but maps of other places, maps of imaginary worlds, maps redrawn to show what things are really like. When I first moved to Seattle and learned about the Great Outdoors, I was still a working artist and much of the best work I did at that time was on topographic map -- I'd acquired a great pile of them from a friend who had been unable to throw them away. I've also been picking up old guidebooks here and there, and while the information they include is wildly out of date, the maps of walled cities and mountain elevations are enchanting. We have a handful of atlases, too, states have changed, borders are not in the same place they once were, whole countries are divided and redivided and divided again.

We’ve all seen it: that one lonely suitcase on the baggage claim track at the airport that goes around and around with no owner in sight. What happens to it if no one shows up? Well, it might end up at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. That’s where you can visit a store that takes up an entire city block and find everything from the expected (clothing, toiletries, books) to, well, the unexpected. Here are 10 of the strangest items that have gone unclaimed. -- Mental Floss

“Hey SouthwestAir: you bring that same row of seats to the ‘Daily Show’ and I’ll sit in ‘em for all to see on TV ... If I don’t fit, I’ll donate $10K to charity of your choice. But when I do (& buckle the belt as well)? 1) You admit you lied. 2) Change your policy, or at least re-train your staff to be a lot more human and a lot less corporate.”-- PopCrunch

"Man, that was a difficult labor!" That was the husband, yesterday, after we left the store with my new iPhone. He's right. It took me nearly a year decide what phone to get. Why the hesitation? A bunch of reasons but mostly because I think the cell-phone industrial complex is evil, evil, evil. That's a story for another time.