Flying High with Hemispheres Magazine

November 2010 issue

EN ROUTE TO ORLANDO, FLORIDA, I spent the first 20 airborne minutes browsing the November issue of United’s inflight magazine, Hemispheres, which boasts over 7 million readers worldwide. Here’s a sampling of the pieces that caught my attention, with an eye, of course, toward nature and writing themes:

DISPATCH: Notes from All Over--a good place to submit very short, human interest tidbits. This month’s story, "Country Seats: Growing Couch Potatoes," written by Joey Rubin, came from Isleworth, England where the average British family spends an appalling 43 hours a week slouched indoors on sofas. A charity dedicated to preserving historic houses and gardens decided to literally ‘take the couch outside."  Using hay bales and grass turf, they erected giant grass living room sets in 11 different garden locations in the British Isles.  Guess that's what we've become: outdoor couch potatoes.  Reading this dispatch made me itch to get off my derriere, which wasn't easy to do flying couch--I mean coach.  Check out the story and illustration of grass-grown recliner. 

Rift Valley, Kenya from Leakey Collection

HERO—short inspiring anecdotal pieces featuring heroic people. "In the Tall Grass," this month’s story, features heroes Philip Leakey (son of famed paleoanthropologist Louis and Mary Leakey) and his wife, Katy Leakey. When a disastrous drought hit Kenya, devastating the cattle-based economy and lifestyle of the Maasai people, the Leakeys (with deep roots in Kenya) began teaching the Maasai women the art of making jewelry from grass and fallen acacia wood. Go to http://www.leakeycollection.com/ to buy online and help the Maasai women feed and educate their children. Thank you to Sharon McDonnell for this submission to Hemispheres. Look around for the heroes in your life, and send a query.

THE BIG TEN: What to Watch, Read, and Listen to this Month:  #6 of the big 10 features Dennis Lehane’s new novel Moonlight Mile, sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone. This one caught my eye because I heard Lehane speak in Denver about a month ago, and he was great. “A character in a novel,” he said, “should always have a question that he or she is wrestling with. The trick," according to Lehane, " is that the character knows what that question is, but the reader doesn’t."  Click HERE to go his website, and view video with Dennis talking a bit about himself and Moonlight Mile.

The November issue of Hemispheres also features the full-length article "The Long Walk" by Grant Stoddard--an interesting piece on Karl Bushby, a former British paratrooper who decided, when he was in his late 20s, to walk home to England from the tip of southern Chile--a 36,000 mile journey.  Read about this astounding journey.

A NOTE ON SUBMISSIONS:  If you contact Hemispheres regarding a submission, they’ll want to know if you’re a PR professional, or a freelance writer. No guidelines were available online, other than what I found at Freelance Writing.com.