The quaint little town of Ely north of Minnesota—past Lake Superior, one tip of the US (a few more miles, and you could trespass into Canada)—comes as a neat surprise, all wrapped in lush green on a rain-soaked evening. Our first road trip in the US with pitstops on Highway 61 and Dylan playing on the stereo, at Finland (it’s just a town, no relation to the country), or even contemplating a $20 bet to swim in icy water, all add to the curiosity that is Ely. The cold rush that greets us at this little spot on the Vermilion Iron Range, also a gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, ends soon with the warmth of the fireplace. Our hosts Retta and Frank have a house in the middle of a pine-and-redwood forest. Beautiful and sort of cavernous. We are treated to a meal of cream chicken, garden-fresh salad and strawberry shortcake.
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With some 3,000 residents, Ely is quintessential small-town America: well-to-do farmers, a lot of love for nature, backpacking, canoeing trails, pot-luck dinners and a busy art scene with the Blueberry and Harvest Moon festivals. Ely’s famous Steger Mukluks and Moccasins are almost perfect for the winding trails. “We had a couple of Russian guests who’d take long walks, swim in the lake and then soothe their nerves in the sauna,” they say, in cheerful banter.
As the church bell chimes on the St Thomas University campus in St Paul, we wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. There’s Minnesota Public Radio airing a Somali community special. Lawyer-activist Nekima Levy-Pounds talks of #BlackLivesMatter, a hotly debated issue on radio. When we meet her, she speaks of protests at Oakland, Baltimore and Fergusson, and how a lot of Blacks feel they live in the Jim Crow era. Tom Gjelten, religion and belief correspondent of NPR, tells us more about the robust radio and podcast scenes in America: “Foreign coverage has grown dramatically and nearly 25 million people listen to NPR. The buzz is around the immigration crisis, antics of Donald Trump or the Republican fan base in Texas.” The American police, too, seem to be riding the radio bandwagon, speaking animatedly about gun laws and penalties, or even body cameras.
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An evening soiree at the plush Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan with everyone turned out in their sartorial best is followed by a lavish dinner at Algonquin Hotel, New York City’s historic landmark. In June 1919, the hotel became the site of daily meetings of the Algonquin Round Table—a group of journalists, authors, publicists and actors who gathered to exchange bon mots over lunch in the main dining room. Vanity Fair writers like Dorothy Parker and Robert Sherwood were regulars, as were literary figures such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Together, they founded the New Yorker magazine. We dine at the actual ‘round table’ where the members originally met for decades. Our hosts, the Morgans, regale us with stories and picture postcards of that time. “Besides the three Matildas, seven male cats—all anointed Hamlet by the legendary thespian John Barrymore—have ruled the roost at the Algonquin,” we are told. A visit to the Big Apple, though, ain’t exactly over until you check out some of the most interesting museums in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Chelsea. So, we spend a languorous afternoon at Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art boasting rich art from Medieval Europe. The early 15th-century French illuminated Book of Hours and stained-glass windows from Castle Chapel in Austria are quite eye-catching.
At the South Beach in Miami, we are surrounded by a staggering number of watering holes, dance clubs, spas and Latino restaurants. We meet this gorgeous Cuban, Fernand Amandi, an expert on Hispanic culture who helped Barack Obama brush up his Spanish and reach out to the ‘Dreamers’ (immigrants who want to apply for legal status). By 2030, he says, the Hispanic population might jump to 85.9 million. Later in the day, we head to a very South Beach theme restaurant to slurp Miami’s famous Classic Mojito and medianoche (panini-like sandwiches). Miami is ‘down-time’ for us, so we soak up the sun on the white sands and take a tour of a carnival cruise ship. The city stands out for its cosmopolitanism and an easy way with foreigners or same-sex couples. Colombians, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Venezuelans intermingle in this cool milieu. We head to this groovy samba club to really soak up Miami cool.
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We met Washington Post editor Martin Baron, now the star-protagonist of Spotlight, at a party in Capitol Hill. He held forth on the power of journalism to change the world.
Special Correspondent and the only Asian journalist to be chosen World Press Institute fellow, 2015
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