Wanda HennigLeverage. Ubuntu. Sustainability. Transitions.

An inner journey can be more spectacular — and revealing — than a trip around the world. And a weekend spent doing something you really would prefer not to be doing can change the course of your life.
By Wanda Hennig

Can this really be me writhing around the floor in a large, darkened room with a number of other should I call us crazies? I have my eyes glued shut but I know the others are out there because I can hear grunts and whines and hisses and the odd …

By Wanda Hennig — See full story in Oakland Magazine, November 2009 and Alameda Magazine, November 2009

By guest Africa correspondent Graham Linscott

Photos by Wayne Matthews

TEMBE Elephant Park, a wilderness in the remote north-east of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, offers visitors the opportunity to step back 200 years into unspoiled pre-colonial Africa.

It also offers the opportunity to spot southern Africa’s largest tusker, a giant bull elephant named Isilo who is about 65 years old …

Vicki Gutgesell loves animals and she loves to travel. She goes to see wildlife, birdlife and marine life au natural wherever she can. On a recent trip she went to cuddle cheetah cubs. Sweet, yes. But it was also about species survival.
Story Wanda Hennig
Photos Vicki Gutgesell

Vicki Gutgesell was doing a volunteer shift at the Oakland Zoo in California when a notice pinned to the info board caught her attention. On it she read that someone near Cape Town, South Africa, was looking for volunteers to help hand-raise cheetah cubs. …

By Wanda Hennig
A veteran print journalist and editor — turned online writer, blogger and social media buff — embarks on a real-life travel writing-cum-social media project and invites you along for the ride. Tips, hints, pitfalls to avoid, good practices to aspire to, facts, fallacies and all the write stuff.

“Dear Wanda
 — Love is in the air at Air New Zealand as the airline prepares for the world’s first Matchmaking Flight. On October 13, an estimated 100 singles will journey from Los Angeles to Auckland, each with the hope of finding a match in air,

On a Saturday morning in late July, just after a flock of white pelicans arrived for an extended stay at Lake Merritt, a group of activists, bloggers, would-be bloggers, vloggers, Twitter gurus, print journalists transitioning to the web in the age of social media, high-tech nerds, and others, gathered at Tech Liminal in Oakland for the East Bay’s first Beast Bloggers Bar Camp.

People at the event, hosted by journalism micro-funding project Spot.Us, Oakland technical hotspot and salon Tech Liminal and Oakland’s must-read independent politics and development blog, A Better Oakland had been advised to arrive:
With coffee mug and a laptop (or notebook and pen);
prepared to talk blogging

What is it like to return to your roots, your soil, for the first time after you’ve emigrated and made a new life in Australia?
By special correspondent Lois Nicholls
Editor of JournoNews

Alive! The word pops into my head as we enter Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport. Ironic really, isn’t it, for a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world. Yet I feel it. Sense it. Am reminded of a friend who says he comes alive every time he returns – feels boring, bland and disconnected for weeks …

Story and photos by Wanda Hennig
All travel has a culinary flavor, given that one has to eat. True culinary travel, however — I’d say what defines it is the focus. It’s about eating the specialties of a place. Learning about the food traditions of the people. It doesn’t imply eating lavishly, isn’t necessarily about haute cuisine, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot. Visiting a farmers market and creating a picnic from the produce stall … Read more

Story and pictures: Wanda Hennig

Fort Bragg a hotbed of conscious creatives and sustainable agriculture activists? That wasn’t how I remembered it from previous visits. Good camping, yes, at the MacKerricher State Park three miles north on Highway 1; and the legendary Glass Beach that’s more interesting to read about than to visit; and unmemorable meals in the quaint harbor; and Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout at the North Coast Brewing Company. But now a foodie friend was telling me about their active Slow Food group and saying things like, “I went to Italy and saw what they were doing with agritourism in Tuscany and thought …