Can charity be as contagious as COVID? This was what Marlan Warren pondered during her walk home one morning after a surprising encounter with a man on the street in her East Hollywood neighborhood.
“Maybe the mark of a good traveler is the stories he experiences and retells and what he learns from those stories." - Judith Fein, Life Is a Trip
What would you do if you were a travel journalist squashed cheek-by-jowl with the sprawling/squabbling family of an unflappable Maori Elder as they pilgrimage from New Zealand through Europe in one of three breaking-down campers? If your name was Judith Fein, you’d follow each “arrow” of opportunity, take care of your sanity, find the most meaningful moment, and then write about it. This opening tale in Fein's debut book LIFE IS A TRIP: THE TRANSFORMATIVE MAGIC OF TRAVEL serves as the portal through which she invites readers to travel with her while she traverses the globe in search of adventure and meaning.
Fein has culled 14 "greatest hits" from her favorite experiences and melded them into a poignant, often funny, memoir. LIFE IS A TRIP transcends the cliché of the "Ugly American" who wishes for a ballpark frank in Tunisia and the souvenir-seeking tourist who believes foreign culture relates little to his own life. It carries endorsements by travel luminaries such as editors Keith Bellows of National Geographic Traveler and Catharine Hamm of the Los Angeles Times, as well as Shannon Stowell, President of the Adventure Travel Trade Association, and international travel journalist/filmmaker Tahir Shah.
In person, Fein comes across humble and honest, like her stories. So humble you might not guess she is an award-winning international journalist whose travel articles have appeared in over 90 publications, co-founder and editor (with Ellen Barone) of Your Life Is a Trip website, travel editor of Spirituality and Health magazine, vice-president of the Travel Journalist Guild, and former reporter for NPR’s “The Savvy Traveler.” In her non-travel life, Fein is a noted screenwriter, playwright, opera librettist and theatre director.
I caught up with the peripatetic writer while she was living her creed “I live to leave,” packing for a month-long adventure with husband, photojournalist Paul Ross. Sitting down for a moment in her Santa Fe home, Fein, took a time-out for this Q & A interview:
Q: Why did you decide to write this book at this particular time?
JF: I wanted to inspire others to have cultural adventures that can transform their lives—across the world or across their hometown. Cultural adventure is the New Wave of tourism.
I have decided to celebrate the end of every Mercury Retrograde. And might I suggest you do the same?
What is “Mercury retrograde”?
Astrologers say the planet Mercury rules communication and transportation. They call a planet “retrograde” when it gives the illusion that it’s moving backward through the zodiac. Mercury’s retrograde can negatively affect attempts to communicate or travel; appointments; contracts; mail; and Internet. It’s said to be the worst time to sign a contract, start a love affair or new job. It lasts three weeks. More or less.
Mercury Retrograde (MR) happens approximately every three months, three or four times a year. In 2009, we got hit four times. This year, we have only three to look forward to.
When I first left home, I moved into a Boston house with some astrologers. From time to time, they’d call out, “Mercury is retrograde! Nobody can communicate!” I saw them as Cosmic Chicken Littles. I thought they were a scream.
I started paying attention after my father died at the end of ’84 during an MR. His heart acted up during a trip in an RV with his wife, and he passed away days later in a Florida hospital. I woke up to a Voice Mail from my brother saying, “Dad’s brain waves have stopped.” Dad’s siblings noted it was “inconvenient” to have a funeral so close to Christmas, and put it off till January. I was in L.A., editing the last film project I had to do, getting ready for finals at USC. I heard later that Dad’s sister attended a December memorial service that my stepmom hosted, and took the Rabbi aside, asking him not to “say anything Jewish” because the friends attending were Gentiles.
I have only two words for them: “Mercury Retrograde.”
To travel or not to travel?
My friends who travel refuse to put much stock into my Cosmic Chicken Little warnings. “Well, I have to go,” they say. “So I’m going.” Afterward, they laugh as they give details of what went wrong. Usually nothing major. Lost luggage. Delayed flights. A basic pain in the Cosmic-Keester. But do-able.
"You have to come down if you want your stuff," Beatrice said. "There's termites under the building and I have to fumigate."
I can't remember what I stored with Beatrice while exiting Los Angeles for rural Kansas , but lately I've been missing certain photos, journals and scripts. In ‘04, I fled after 20 years of trying to make a career and happy love life. My friends begged me not to go:
"You're the last person in the world who should move to Kansas !" said my charming boss.
"One thing I'm hearing about where you're going...No available men," said my handsome therapist.
"You won't be able to find a job. People will see you as an outsider. Like when I moved to Florida ," said a well-meaning friend.