Jeffrey Tanenhaus

"Farewell Passport" was May 19th's top story on

Apr 09: After 10 years, the time has come to apply for a new passport, and I’m suddenly turning sentimental. When the expired document is returned, its substitute arrives with big pages to fill; a decade’s worth of records is wiped clean. I’m no stamp junkie, but I can’t deny the satisfaction of having requested supplementary pages and almost using them up, too. More importantly, this passport is an abridged catalogue of my roaring 20s – the only object that links backpacking through Europe during college with two years of working in Asia to a seven-month stint in South America. Timelines are preserved in a rainbow of inks.

Happy trails have included tenser moments, notably stuffing it into my underpants in India, putting it under a pillow in Poland, and clutching it in a closet during a super-typhoon in the South Pacific. Good and bad, the memories are many. Resigned to my passport’s obsolescence, I send it off with a photographic and poetic retrospective.

  Dec 08: Jeffrey has been hired as Tripfilms' newest Video Blogger.
  Selected from among hundreds of applicants, his first assignment
  is to create a dozen short videos highlighting his upcoming
  five-week travels around Colombia.

 

  Aug 08: Jeffrey has joined the ranks of 250 Gray Line tour guides
  aboard red double-decker buses to bring New York City's storied
  skyline to life for tourists from around the world.

 
 

May 08: In memory of the 134,000 and counting victims of cyclone
Nargis that decimated some of the world's most peaceful and
deserving people. People that have made the most profound impact
on me in 45 countries visited.