Guest post by Dr. Dawn Bowen, Professor of Geography at the University of Mary Washington… Read the rest.

In January, I traveled to Guatemala to interview young Maya women who had received scholarships so continue their secondary education.  An organization, Community Cloud Forest Conservation (CCFC) run by Rob and Tara Cahill and several Guatemalans, began providing small scholarships for young women, aged 13-24, about seven years ago.  Its goal was to accomplish two things: 1) educate young women, thus producing better educated

Part One: The Arab Spring in Bahrain is posted separately. Part Two: The American Fall in Richmond Coming to America In October 2011, explicitly drawing on the methods of Arab Spring protests, the Occupy Wall Street movement began. As in Bahrain (see Part One of this blog), a continuous presence in a public place of symbolic importance was central to the movement’s message and tactics. As the movement’s name made clear, its target was the global corporate elite (which it termed… Read the rest

(Part Two: Richmond, Virginia is posted separately.) Part One: Bahrain 2011 has been a year of occupations. From Cairo to Columbus, citizens have appropriated public spaces as sites of protest. They have set up encampments and insist that they will maintain a continuous presence until their demands have been met (as in Cairo) or they are forcibly removed. This latter fate befell protesters in Bahrain in March, and, on a much smaller and less violent scale, in cities around the U.S.,… Read the rest

… Read the rest

Some of Phnom Penh’s poorest residents make a living pushing their carts around the city’s streets, gathering soda cans, plastic bottles, and anything else they can sell for recycling. This short video shows some of these hard-working people going about their daily business.  … Read the rest

In a recent blog post, I discussed various ways in which I have tried to convey what places are like through postings on my site RegionalGeography.org. I use words in writing descriptively and analytically about places, but powerful though they are, words have limitations. I can only describe my own perception and interpretation of a place, for example; I cannot describe how others might see it. Pictures can help: I can take a photograph, and while my own … Read the rest

… Read the restI love words, and I am enthralled by the power of language. There is a richness in language that goes far beyond its ability to transmit facts, opinions, or instructions. Words can convey emotion, complexity, character, ambiguity, and humor in ways that go far beyond their dictionary definitions. One of my main objectives on this site is to use words to try and give readers a sense of some of the places visit and people I meet, and to communicate

Look beyond the array of stores and restaurants, try to ignore the uncomfortable seats, and don’t stress about the latest delay in your flight. Instead, look around you carefully. You will be amazed at how much airports can tell us about places and their connections with other places. I recorded this video blog during a journey from the US to Southeast Asia, with a stopover in Bahrain.… Read the rest

The Tonle Sap must surely be one of the world’s strangest rivers. For most of the year, it originates in the waters of the Tonle Sap Lake in central Cambodia, and flows south, joining the Mekong at Phnom Penh. But during the latter part of the rainy season each year, the Tonle Sap River reverses direction. In this short video… Read the rest, I talk about the Tonle Sap, the Mekong, and their importance for Southeast Asia.

  In August 2011, I led a small group of American students on a study abroad program in South Africa. At the beginning of our trip we visited the Irene Concentration Camp Cemetery and Memorial near Pretoria, home to the remains of more than a thousand Afrikaners who died in a British internment camp during the Anglo Boer War. At the end of our tour, we spent some time at the Prestwich Memorial, a brand new repository of the recently… Read the rest