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Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my radio piece on CBS’ acquisition of CNET will air on Morning Edition today (May 16)!

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).

New York - 5 am to 9 am Eastern - WNYC - 820 AM - www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC - 5 am to 10 am Eastern - WAMU - 88.5 FM - www.wamu.org
Los Angeles - 2 am to 9 am Pacific - KPCC - 89.3 FM - www.kpcc.opg
Boston - 6 am to 9 am Eastern - WGBH - 89.7 FM - www.wgbh.org
San Francisco - 3 am to 9 am Pacific - KQED - 88.5 FM - www.kqed.org

It will also be archived at npr.org and at my site if you miss it.

Lemme know if you hear it!

Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my radio piece on the one year anniversary of the Estonian cyberattacks will be airing today.

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):

New York - 3 pm Eastern - WNYC - 820 AM - www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC - 8 pm Eastern - WAMU - 88.5 FM - www.wamu.org
Los Angeles - 12 pm Pacific - KPCC - 89.3 FM - www.kpcc.opg
Boston - 4 pm Eastern - WGBH - 89.7 FM - www.wgbh.org
San Francisco - 2 pm Pacific - KQED - 88.5 FM - www.kqed.org

Will be available on The World’s site later in the day and on my site if you miss the broadcast.

Lemme know if you hear it!

Oh, snap.

Chron’s coverage here.

I’m proud to be Californian.

After basically 24 hours of traveling from Breda –> Schiphol (Amsterdam) –> CDG (Paris) –> SFO, I’m finally, and thankfully, home.

More coming soon.

Friends:

Today, I had a piece on PRI’s The World on Estonia’s nationwide cleanup day, also known as Teeme Ära! 2008 (Let’s do it!). It ran on today’s show.

Sorry I didn’t let you guys know about it sooner, but I finished the piece shortly before air and by that time it was 10 pm here in Estonia and I hadn’t had dinner yet.

Anyway, if you download today’s show here, you’ll find my piece starting at minute 42:51. I’ll post an individual link once The World puts one up.

Cheers!

Update: Link to the individual piece is here.

ZOMG, I just shook hands and got my first autograph with a head of state!

President Ilves spoke at the very beginning of a thank you concert on Sunday evening, the final day of the Teeme Ära! 2008 weekend. After speaking to the assembled crowd of a few hundred in the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, he hopped off stage and walked toward some of the standing crowd. He had one uniformed high-ranking member of the Estonian military with him, his wife, and maybe four or five bodyguards with earpieces.

Veljo, some of the Teeme Ära crew (including Rainer Nolvak and company) and I were sitting near the front row. As soon as I spotted President Ilves starting to mingle with the crowd, I hopped up from my seat and walked over to him, microphone in hand. His back was turned to me at first, but I made sure that the bodyguard saw me and knew I wasn’t threatening.

When his body turned toward me, I made a “one minute” gesture with my index finger and started blabbering away in English — THI went to high school, ugrad and graduate school in the US and used to be the Ambassador to the United States. I mentioned that I was an American radio reporter and that I knew his son, who is an undergraduate at Stanford University. That definitely got his attention.

So then he looked at me and said: “So you want an interview?”, to which I responded, “Yes, if you have two minutes.”

We talked about the cleanup day, and he compared it to his first days in the late 1960s in the US when being ecologically-conscious was just starting to hit Americans. As he spoke, I wished that the band on stage would have stopped playing — didn’t they know that I was interviewing the President? (Plus, every radio reporter hates doing interviews when there’s music playing in the background.)

And yes, I was gauche enough to ask for an autograph, but I had left my camera at my seat, and when I went back for it, a small crowd had gathered, taking photos and asking for autographs. I snapped a few shots, but didn’t get one with me and him together.

Still, pretty effin’ sweet, eh?

I’m here at Veljo’s dad, Vaino Haamer’s house out in eastern Estonia near the Russian border. We were out here today to take part in the national Estonian cleanup day, Teeme Ära! 2008 (”Let’s do it! 2008″), which I’m covering for The World.

After a hard day’s work, this is the view from the Haamer farm. Not bad, eh?

I’ve just arrived here in Tallinn, fresh off the boat from Helsinki. I’m sitting here at one of Veljo’s favorite bars in downtown Tallinn, Molly Malone’s, in the Raekoja Plats (Town Square). I’ve been pleasantly greeted to an American car show and outdoor concert:

I kid you not, an Estonian band, Casakama, is singing “Johnny B. Goode” right now. They also hit favs like “Jailhouse Rock” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

It’s a much smaller version of what I saw last summer in Haapsalu, minus the Stars and Bars.

Also:

Dear Tallink,

Mad props for providing free WiFi the entire way from Helsinki to Tallinn. Big ups!

-C

I’m here until May 1 to report for PRI’s The World.

I’m staying at the Stadion Hostel, where there’s free WiFi. So far, I met a friendly Greek student who’s studying abroad here on the bus back from the airport, and an Iranian engineer who works for Nokia and lives in Mashad, but is here to visit Nokia HQ. Small world.

Off to find dinner and explore a little bit!

Friends:

As my gift to you before I head out on my two-week reporting trip on The World’s dime to Finland/Estonia, I am proud to announce that I’m going to be on The World and Morning Edition on Monday, April 28.

My piece on NPR is on online food maps, while my piece on PRI’s The World is about the internal dispute within the One Laptop Per Child community.

NPR’s Morning Edition airs on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).

New York - 5 am to 9 am Eastern - WNYC - 820 AM - www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC - 5 am to 10 am Eastern - WAMU - 88.5 FM - www.wamu.org
Los Angeles - 2 am to 9 am Pacific - KPCC - 89.3 FM - www.kpcc.opg
Boston - 6 am to 9 am Eastern - WGBH - 89.7 FM - www.wgbh.org
San Francisco - 3 am to 9 am Pacific - KQED - 88.5 FM - www.kqed.org

PRI’s The World airs on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).

New York - 3 pm Eastern - WNYC - 820 AM - www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC - 8 pm Eastern - WAMU - 88.5 FM - www.wamu.org
Los Angeles - 12 pm Pacific - KPCC - 89.3 FM - www.kpcc.opg
Boston - 4 pm Eastern - WGBH - 89.7 FM - www.wgbh.org
San Francisco - 2 pm Pacific - KQED - 88.5 FM - www.kqed.org

It will also be archived at npr.org and theworld.org and at my site if you miss it.

Also, be sure to check out The World’s new podcast of the entire show, available here.

Laters!

I was on two podcasts that went out over the series of tubes today. (Yes, it’s 2 am on April 26, but in my head it’s still April 25.)

I was on The World’s Tech Podcast Episode #192, talking about my upcoming trip to the Baltics.

And I was on the latest episode of Chuck Joiner’s new podcast, The Mac Jury.

Enjoy!

With origins in Mexico, a dash of Americanizations and a kitchen on wheels, taco trucks are the perfect metaphor for California. They represent cheap and quality street food that has spread from Calexico to Yreka and beyond. Anyone who loves an honest horchata, a good burrito and solid torta knows where to find these roving brigades of deliciousness.

California Taco Trucks was started as a way for five Californians to explore this intersection and confluence of geography, culture, photography and, of course, tacos.

Join me and four of my fellow taco lovers for a new blog about all things taco truck.

These banners are hung in two windows of the same house, less than a block north of my own. I think it pretty much sums up the entire election.

Music: Blue Scholars - Fire for the People
12:08 am Pacific Time
March 30 2008

I’ve heard that you can take the temperature of Iranian social freedoms by a quick glance at how young women (teenagers, mid-20s) wear their hejab. In the early days of the Islamic Republic, the chador (large black cloak) was enforced. Nearly 30 years later, it’s migrated to a simple hejab (headscarf). Very religious women will have it tightly wrapped around their heads and will usually stick to very conservative colors, like dark blue or usually, midnight black. There’s a direct relationship between how much hair a woman shows and how religious she is. Some women will show a tuft or two up front (maybe bangs, on occasion), but others will push the limit pretty far.

Cousin Amir’s wife, Azadeh, for example, tends to wear her hejab basically in the middle of her head — directly above her ears, and is so loose to the point that it falls off sometimes, like when she’s driving. (Of course, most of the time, when women are indoors amongst family, the hejabs come off.) Most women I’ve seen tend to be somewhere in the middle, with maybe an inch or two showing up front.
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