| Douglas A. Wissing is an independent journalist, who has published with The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Asia Times, The Independent on Sunday (UK), National Geographic Traveler, Forbes Life, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Details, American Way, ARTnews, Gray’s Sporting Journal and Salon.com. He can be contacted at dwissing@aol.com.
Links to a few of his articles are below:
“Tibet: An encounter with ‘the fake one’”
Last summer as our bus approached the deep tunnel the Chinese had bored through Sichuan's Erlang Mountain to ensure access to Tibet's restive Kham region, a phalanx of People's Liberation Army trucks blocked the way. Public Security officers boiled out of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs). A stern-faced soldier waved us to the side of the road.
Tsering, a young Tibetan man beside me on the bus, sat up. "Police, many police," he said, looking around with concern. Helmeted troops with semi-automatic rifles dog-trotted into the tunnel as others secured the entrance. Public Security men smoked cigarettes and stared up the road until a convoy of black SUVs with tinted windows finally rushed past. A Tibetan woman called from the back of the bus. “Panchen Lama,” Tsering reported. “The fake one. Going to Kham.”. . .
read the article at Asia Times
“Chengdu, the Panda Capital”
THE APPEALING ANIMALS are a big attraction but not the only reason to visit this Sichuan province city, where a bustling present intersects a rich past.
read the article at Los Angeles Times
"Journey to Shangri-La"
TIBET: THE BUS WAS CLIMBING into the eastern Tibetan region of Kham, said to be the site of Shangri-la, when I mentioned the mythical utopia to the tall Tibetan beside me. “Yading is Shangri-la!” he exclaimed, saying he’d trekked into Sichuan province’s remote Yading region, where he found a Tibetan monastery surrounded by three sacred mountains. “It is there,” the Tibetan said. “On the monastery, it is written. It is Shangri-la....
read the article at Forbes Life
“Brazilian Backcountry”
FAR FROM THE THICK AMAZONIAN RAIN FOREST, the African influence of Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro's sunbaked sands is yet another Brazil. As Douglas Wissing discovers, Rio Grande do Sul is cowboy country with a Continental flair.
read the article at Travel + Leisure
“Gauchos, Gucci and a World Beat”
PORTO ALEGRE is Brazil’s most European city, far removed from the beaches and social despair of Rio de Janeiro to the north. Parisian fashions are often seen on the streets here, a season before New York, and democratic thinking is far ahead of its time.
read the article at Los Angeles Times
“Dominica: Call of the Wild”
WHEN QUEEN ISABELLA asked Christopher Columbus to describe the island of Dominica, which he first encountered during his West Indies explorations in 1493, he is said to have crumpled a piece of paper and dropped it on the table. “That,” he said, pointing to the rumpled and fissured paper, “is Dominica.” A lush, rugged, mountainous land among the Windward Islands of the Caribbean, Dominica rises between the French sister islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Rivers--one for every day of the year, the Dominicans say--course through a verdant landscape. Waterfalls cascade in spumes and torrents, filling the air with the sound of arcing water. Red-orange flamboyant trees flare on the vivid green hillsides. . . .
read the article at Washington Post
"The Best of Vermont"
THE LEAVES ARE VIVID on the mountainsides, there’s a coolness in the air, tractors chug by with hay-laden wagons, and pyramids of red, red apples rise at farm markets. Suddenly it’s autumn in Vermont, and time to again explore the best of the Green Mountain State....
read the article at Journey
“Art; Erotica Whose Purpose was Scholarly”
TWO ELDERLY WOMEN pressed their noses to the display case of erect Japanese phallus fetishes while students peered at photographs of copulating couples and glistening musclemen in classical poses. Tattoo art of a naked woman grappling with a cobra and posters from stag movies like ''I Want More'' and ''Jungle Virgin'' shared the gallery walls with a Matisse odalisque and a Rembrandt boudoir scene. . . .
read the article at New York Times
“The Man with the Naked Piano”
ERiC ROSSER HIT THE CHARTS TWICE—as a member of John Mellencamp's band and as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, sought on sex-crime charges.
read the article at Salon.com
“Little Columbus Builds a Reputation”
TRACKING DOWN ARCHITECTURAL TREASURES, from Pei to Pelli, tucked away in an artful Indiana town.
read the article at Los Angeles Times
“The Last Vaudevillian”
When I was a kid in Vincennes, it was a big deal when Red Skelton came to visit my grandfather, Clarence Stout. There wasn't much going on down there in the mid- 1950s, and Red was definitely the town celebrity. He would show up in a vast car and disappear behind the pocket doors of my grandfather's wainscoted office, which was hung with hundreds of autographed publicity photos of show business greats, and not-so-greats, from the 1920s to the 1940s. . . .
read the article at Traces Magazine
“What’s Doing in Indianapolis”
WHEN 19TH CENTURY GERMAN IMMIGRANTS joined the Southern Uplanders and flinty New Englanders already on the prairie at Indianapolis, the city's thrifty, conservative character was forged. Hoosiers still tend to make do and reuse, gently stitching new ideas onto old. . . .
read the article at New York Times
"A Surprising Utopia"
THIS PLACE COULD BE JUST ANOTHER SMALL HOOSIER TOWN basking on the banks of southern Indiana's Wabash River. It has a Victorian main street, cornfield-bordered basketball courts and Kiwanis Club meetings on Thursdays. But turn down a shady street and utopia shimmers in the soft Midwestern light....
read the article at Los Angeles Times
“New Nashville”
Sure, it's been a little bit country. But contemporary Nashville can also be stylish and sophisticated. We check up on this surprisingly modern city.
read the article at American Way
"Covington 2.0"
IT'S EARLY EVENING IN MAINSTRASSE, the old German village that’s part of Covington, KY. Gnarled sycamores cast shadows on sturdy brick buildings as the streetlamps flicker on. Couples emerge from Italianate town houses for a stroll and maybe a quick stop at a nearby café. It feels like the 19th century, until a glance down a long brick alleyway unexpectedly reveals glass-sheathed office towers and a pair of postmodern stadiums across the Ohio River in Cincinnati. A 140-year-old suspension bridge spanning the muddy river stands as inspiration to a construction crane racing to finish a curving condominium tower designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect best known for his modern work redesigning Ground Zero. That’s Covington today, one foot firmly planted in the 19th century, the other striding confidently into the 21st....
read the article at Endless Vacation
"The Great Castrator"
THE PHONE rang in sheriff Rod Jackson's house one cold Wednesday night last January. Jackson was acquainted with the caller, a local named Donald Holtz, who'd been in trouble with the law before. Holtz wanted the sheriff to know that someone was castrating men in Huntington, Indiana - and videotaping the operations. Holtz said he'd scheduled himself for the procedure, but he and his fiancee were now having second thoughts....
read the article at The Independent on Sunday (UK)
"Belgium"
I HAVE COME TO THE BROAD PLATTELAND OF FAR WESTERN FLANDERS to search for what some believe is the world’s best beer: the fabled ale of Sint-Sixtus, a small and remote Belgian Trappist abbey. Lauded by connoisseurs, the abbey’s rare Westvleteren 12 ale has repeatedly been ranked by the Web’s top beer site, www.ratebeer.com, as the finest on earth. And because the resolutely spiritual monks restrict their minuscule sales to isolated Sint-Sixtus, it’s also among the most exclusive....
read the article at Forbes Life
“My Idea of Fungus”
THERE WERE A LOT OF DANCING MUSHROOMS in the park until the jester started the parade. Then a smiling pair of giant fungi and all the other mushrooms followed him down the Victorian main street of Telluride, Colorado. A band kept up a beat with drums and rattles, conch shells, didgeridoos and Tibetan cymbals, accompanied by ululations that would have done an Iranian war widow proud. . . .
read the article at Independent on Sunday (UK)
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