How’d I get to WVa? Afternoon in Harper’s Ferry

I have a certain love of ghost towns. Next to Grandma’s was the town of Ward, and everything was gone. Almost all the homes had just been left. Grandma, my mom and dad all went to dig up a plant that someone had left in their yard, which was quite old. The high school and junior high were empty buildings along the road. Yet two smaller towns with residents sat on either side, less affected. I remember a factory behind my other grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx, which had once had about twenty people working in it, abandoned.  Some of the old ivory colored fabric shades and hanging green glass lampshade covers silent.

Don’t plan to bring your gun like you normally do.

In another part of West Virginia, I was taken to a curious historical town, which makes a perfect afternoon when in the DC area. From DC head to Hagerstown, Maryland and then further west. Harper’s Ferry National Park is free. It is a unique adventure to witness history, and generally to be left alone. There are no hokey high-pitched hosts, and building retain a sense of authenticity. A little sentimentality in the old general store, and John Brown, which is why most of the people are there. But my love for rounded eastern mountains, water and a beauty in planes of ordinary buildings make this visit quite thoughtful.

No, the building from the left does not have a shadow. It is where the old building, now gone, butted before they stuccoed it.

Look how the one building just grows out of the slope.

Don’t you love this store interior?

There are buildings to go into, they recreated stores, etc. There is a lot on John Brown, and the Amory that Brown was after, as a piece of pre-Civil War history. The town became less lived in, since

The armory building.

it was an island in a river bed. Ill fortune due to flooding finished off this town. What remains are the buildings, which have been well taken care of. You go there by car and park, and buses run you to that site. You are free to walk and explore. There is a beautiful old church if you want to go. St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, up high after a climb of many original steps, has with an interior that was quite unexpected.

It Since it was July 4th and quite a nice day when we went. It is well worth the ride. You might want to read up on John Brown, and Harper’s Ferry, before you make the trip.

For more information:

http://www.nps.gov/hafe/index.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2940.html

do right.

“I fell for yo’ jive
An I took you in
Now, all you got to offer me’s
A drink of gin”

–Why Don’t You do Right? by “Kansas” Joe McCoy

“Why don’t you do right?” I went back looking one night on YouTube for the old Jessica Rabbit version. I remember, vaguely, Peggy Lee had done it. Every song has a story. I was always interested that while I knew the voice of Jessica Rabbit to be Kathleen Turner, I knew the vocal was not her. No match at all. Fast as you could Google, I found that the recording was actually of the then, Mrs. Steven Spielberg, the actress Amy Irving. Irving’s career, had already hit an odd note. Having been so fetching in Carrie, she never achieved the stardom one would have thought. Touching in Crossing Delancey, and having been nominated for Yentl, her film career seem to drift away.

There were two Peggy Lee versions on YouTube. One with Benny Goodman, which was the big hit, and a later version shot live somewhere. Lee in a goofy dress with add-on on shoulders and hips, worked well with beautiful electric guitar work. This was before she hit that Basin Street East phase, where she was a hot, full figured gal in red. Although this version is pretty hot. Story had it, she loved a record version of the song and played it so much when she was working with Benny Goodman, that he wrote an arrangement.

Both Peggy Lee and Sinatra, were disciples of Billie Holiday. That beautiful phrasing and sing behind, and ahead of, the beat was her signature. I often wondered if it was from a certain delay that happens from heroin. Both disciples, sounded more like Billie in early work, Sinatra singing some of the same songs. So you read a little of that in this version. But the real model goes to Lil Green, and the story gets more interesting.

Green was a Mississippi teenaged orphan, who found her way to Chicago. It is very interesting how Southern based blues and jazz went. One group of artists in Chicago. One group in New York. Bessie Smith called home New York, although I think part of the time in Jersey. Her mentor, Ma Rainey, mother of the blues, wound up in Chicago. Lee acknowledged the 1941 original by Green as the model of her cover for the song. But even Green, although the lyrics written for her to deliver, the story gets better.

But the original song was by Joe McCoy, husband of Memphis Minnie, who originally wrote it as a novelty song. So a pop song, comes from a blues based song reborn. And as Matt would say, does everything have to be a history lesson. Cool stuff.

“Why don’t you do now
like the millionaires do?
Put your stuff on the market
And make a million too”

–Weed Smoker’s Dream, Why don’t You do Now? by “Kansas” Joe McCoy

For more on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Don%27t_You_Do_Right%3F

Another new year: For chriz’ sakes

Don’t you love the way Betty closes Bob Hoskins mouth? Three days in, sharing a cart. The kids are fine, so far, but the administrative b.s. is so bad from the county that you need a snooze or a shower before wading through it all. We are even MORE accountable this year, as we begin to move off to new standards. Rick needs MORE evaluative processes, to assess teachers. That is for that big merit pay, the “good” teachers are going to get. I wish we had some methodology, and perhaps transparency, to evaluate politicians. It starts to sound like a Michael Moore movie, faster than you can say “Koch brothers”.

More work, on less money. Well, at least it is not Wisconsin. Teachers are all beginning to have it sink in, that they are loosing 3% of their earnings for the pension. Which from my calculations dried up a lot, when Bush was playing the stock market and it took a tumble a few years back. Did anybody ever figure, it is not the brightest thing to invest in Wall Street with pension funds?  Wouldn’t it be nice if Bernanke stopped lending out cheap money, to lousy banks and creep corporations, who shouldn’t get loans to start with.

Hey, Bernanke and Rick Scott, get out of here. Give me some money, too.

Another new year: Before the countdown.

I will not say I am looking forward to this new year. I tried to get another school, and sat in on two interviews. One I wished I could have. I cannot believe where this is going to go to. Nepotism beating out competence. –What else would I expect?

Rick Scott was on CSPAN, tooting his horn on education. What an ass.

¡Hola, El Perú!:”armed robberies, rapes, other…”

COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: Peru is a developing country with an expanding tourism sector. A wide variety of tourist facilities and services is available, with quality varying according to price and location. Read the Department of State Background Notes on Peru for additional information.

When we read the full notes of the State Department, we became very wary of Peru, especially Lima. I have read even more post-trip, and the individual writings gets even wilder. Being pick-pocketed, mugged or worse IS NOT a joke. But neither is denigrating an entire country, or a city, simply because tourists forgot a foreign county, much less an unfamiliar American city, is not Disneyland. I don’t know why people who travel don’t think about that before. Spending money, is not visiting a country, being a guest is a privilege.

• Be aware of your surroundings and try to avoid unlit or unpopulated areas especially at night. There is a lot of petty crime that can turn violent. Avoid groups of male youngsters since there are many small gangs trying to rob passers-by. If you witness a robbery. be very careful before intervening, since robbers may be armed and are quite prone to shooting if they feel threatened.
• Armed robberies of tourists are fairly common.
• Sporadic incidents of Shining Path violence have occurred. . .

Oh shit, the Shining Path! When I read that one, I really started to freak out! It was like the end of Godard’s Weekend. Tourists will be captured, butchered and then eaten by the Shining Path. OMG.

CRIME: Of the approximately 375,000 Americans who visit Peru each year, a small but growing number have been victims of serious crimes. The information below is intended to raise awareness of the potential for crime and suggest measures visitors can take to avoid becoming a victim.

• Violent crime, including carjacking, assault, sexual assault, and armed robbery is common in Lima and other large cities.

• Thieves often smash car windows at traffic lights to grab jewelry, purses, backpacks, or other visible items from a car. This type of assault is very common on main roads leading to Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport, specifically along De la Marina and Faucett Avenues and Via de Evitamiento, but it can occur anywhere in congested traffic, particularly in downtown Lima. . .
• The Embassy is aware of “express kidnappings” by taxi drivers against foreign tourists in Arequipa and Cuzco.

Yipes! One report even said, have the driver pop the trunk, and check the back seat before getting in! Image trying that one in New York, Rome or Paris. The driver would put their foot on the accelerator, long before you realized how nuts he thought you were! When we went back to the airport, I thought about this smash and grab technique, so many pedestrians weave in and out of traffic, like so many New Yorkers.

But this is not to understate the importance of being aware and using your head. At one point, in our nice Miraflores area, we were walking north of El Parque del Amor, in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a bunch of potheads, which made me a little uncomfortable. The same happened at one point along Salida a Miguel Grau in Barranco, which kind of had that scrubbed down feeling of parts of LA. The standing rule should be, if you feel uncomfortable, leave. Parts of Lima, are real dilapidated and poor, reminding me of parts of the old Bronx or Brooklyn. When investment comes this sections will be bulldozed to become a new city. Places like Barranco will be gentrified and become something else.

These beautiful structures will someday recreate the charm the district once enjoyed

From our standpoint, we walked freely around San Isidro, Barranco and Miraflores. The later at night when most times people were on the streets. We were at the Museo Larco in Pueblo Libre. No, we did not go freely to Rimac, El Centro or the notorious La Victoria. No more than I would visit Brownsville, parts of central DC, or parts of Miami or Orlando.

We were also happy in the end to be in Cuzco, which appeared to be extremely safe within the area we stayed south of Plaza Mejor, and traveled around by evening in. One fancy hotel across from Santo Domingo, I think, San Agustin Internacional, did have an armed guard. Most street people were Quechua women, who sat on the streets in the cool of evening with bags of wares to sell, and once in a while small children who sat with them.

I am glad the Department of State published a report, but scaring the bejeebers out of you, is somewhat counterproductive to visiting another country. I though traveling was supposed to be  to learn something about your own way of life in comparison to how others live. See the information below.

The table below was provided by the UN. It gives indicators of robberies per country per hundred thousand people. Check out the countries and figures in red. Peru (156) sits a little above the U.S. (142) in robberies per hundred thousand. Its neighbor Chile (180), European France (172) and North American Mexico (505), all show higher crime figures. International Human Development Indicators
Accessed: 2/2/2011,1:09 PM from: http://hdr.undp.org
Robbery rate (per 100,000)
Amount of property crime that involves the use of violence or threat of violence, including mugging, bag snatching and theft with violence, expressed per 100,000 people.
Source: UNODC (2010). ["United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems 2003-08".]
HDI Rank	Country	2008
1	Norway	34 1
2	Australia	78 1
3	New Zealand	53 1
4	United States	142 1
5	Ireland	56 1
6	Liechtenstein	3 1
7	Netherlands	84 1
8	Canada	97 1
9	Sweden	97 1
10	Germany	61 1
11	Japan	3 1
12	Korea (Republic of)	10 1
13	Switzerland	56 1
14	France	172 1
15	Israel	40 1
16	Finland	32 1
17	Iceland	14 1
18	Belgium	1,837 1
19	Denmark	62 1
20	Spain	1,067 1
21	Hong Kong, China (SAR)	..
22	Greece	26 1
23	Italy	122 1
24	Luxembourg	68 1
25	Austria	62 1
26	United Kingdom	282 1
27	Singapore	22 1
39	Bahrain	39 1
40	Portugal	195 1
43	Bahamas	..
44	Lithuania	104 1
45	Chile	180 1
46	Argentina	859 1
47	Kuwait	..
48	Latvia	64 1
49	Montenegro	13 1
50	Romania	12 1
51	Croatia	28 1
52	Uruguay	277 1
53	Libyan Arab Jamahiriya	..
54	Panama	38 1
55	Saudi Arabia	..
56	Mexico	505 1
57	Malaysia	82 1
58	Bulgaria	38 1
59	Trinidad and Tobago	..
60	Serbia	37 1
61	Belarus	69 1
62	Costa Rica	527 1
63	Peru	156 1
Footnotes
1	Data refer to the most recent year available during the period specified.
Symbols
..	Data not available
(.)	Greater (or less) than zero but small enough to be rounded off to zero at the displayed number of decimal points
<	Less than
-	Not applicable
T	Total

¡Hola, El Perú!: DiSpiriting

To show us how cool they are, they pumped in super cold air. Check the vapor right!

It may not be enough to expect on time and good service in flying today. Spirit Airlines already kind of does that. So on my recent trip to Perú, I probably needed something more of a jolt for a more Spirited experience. I was not to be disappointed.

The first jolt came with booking the flight. Checking Expedia first, then following by checking in with the actual airline, I found how creative Spirit was. I have traveled enough to know, that the fare I begin with, is NEVER the fare I end with. That great 911 tax, that the airports got tacked on to fares, as a result of the disaster after years of their own inefficiency to screen passengers, has not given the passenger the perception that they are more safe, nor more comfortable. More seems to have yielded less.

For example, in the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL), there was no apparent staff to help an Hispanic woman understand her huge gold hoop earrings might be the problem she could not pass muster through security, as she held up dozens of passengers late for flight. Nor could the same staff have taken a more sensitive approach to trying to get a wheelchair bound autistic child to walk through security. Bless the wonderful female employee, who did finally help persuade him in a cramped awful atmosphere of noise and raw nervousness. So please, before FLL pats itself on the back for 2007 safety, it should try to go through its less than adequate 2011 numbers of personal staff for the number of flights. In fact, ALL airports should be subject to numbers of staff present to numbers of passengers departing. Orlando (MCO) has been just as awful at times. That wonderful 911 airport tax, if anything, has left passengers in better running shape, due to number of flights they have had to hurdle for!

Passengers be damned, security first. That goes for United, which slams doors on connecting passengers with it’s 15 minutes close the door before policy. Or it’s “I’ll-give-you-or-a-blanket-or-hotel-discount” when I am late with your connection.”  Or JetBlue, in JFK, when they told 3 out of 5 planeload of passengers to Florida in 2008, not to come up to the window, but email in for a new flight–hello! whadayado if you don’t have a laptop, or don’t know NYC? Which is how I got to FLL in the first place. If I missed a flight, I planned to rent a car and go home. I could not do that easily from Houston, Newark, Bogotá or Cual es la capital de Panama. Time has taught me not everyone is Lufthansa, which puts you up for the night!

Spirit offers on time service, leather seats and good piloting. It really does. But its creativity in pricing gimmickry is as bad as the stupid way Southwest had you line up for your “wish” seat. You know the one you wish you had after you paid 6 bucks. Spirit, of course does not charge 6 bucks. For two way national and international flights, they charged $28 for the cheapest seats. I measured the space between seat to back of passenger seat in front and it was the length of my hand stretched: 8″. Then, of course, the additional $33 dollars for one bag one way! We will not fail to mention an additional $2 charge for curbside check-in. Nor the $3 tip the employee tried to take at MCO when I handed him a five.

_______________________________________________________

Confirmation Code:	zzzzzx
Booking Date:	Fri 24 Jun 2011

Baggage Information:
Name	Bags
Mr. x	2 Checked Bags (one less than 40lb bag each way only)
Mr. A	0

Flight Information:
Date	Flt	Depart	Time	Arrive	Time	Stops
Sun 31 Jul 2011	675	Orlando, FL (MCO)	8:48AM	Fort Lauderdale, FL / Miami, FL AREA (FLL)	9:49AM	0
Sun 31 Jul 2011	977	Fort Lauderdale, FL / Miami, FL AREA (FLL)	5:15PM	Lima, Peru (LIM)	9:51PM	0
Sat 06 Aug 2011	978	Lima, Peru (LIM)	10:52PM	Fort Lauderdale, FL / Miami, FL AREA (FLL)	5:44AM	0
Sun 07 Aug 2011	338	Fort Lauderdale, FL / Miami, FL AREA (FLL)	7:20AM	Orlando, FL (MCO)	8:18AM	0

Fare & Charge Breakdown:

Fare + FET:	1360.00
Bags:	66.00
Seats:	52.00
Travel Taxes and Fees:	285.68
	——————
Total Fare Price:	1763.68
z Card :	-1763.68
	——————
Balance Due:	0.00
FET = 7.5% Federal Excise Tax

______________________________________________________

But the real fun began with finding out that not only on a national flight, but an international one that lasts 5 hours, you will not be given anything to eat or drink. Unless, you pay for it on-flight, or you brought a $2 bottle of water while you sat in the airport. Remember you are screwed because no liquid policy that we have as a federal law! So who wins? The airline or the airport? BINGO! Us, because we made like a bunch of camels and slept. Coming back we were wise and hid eats in our under the seat bag. Except for drinks that we almost bought in the Lima Airport, except, there are NO drinks on international flights!!!! People were chugging down their $2.50 bottles of San Mateo, before boarding. We noticed in Lima airport goods were often in Nuevo Sol, but food was in US$. Many said, they were tired of Spirited hidden fees upon fee, including one student who took her meds with the last gulp of someone else’ s water.

Spirit is trying for that NYC subway look, they have posted ads to junk up the cabin. Will selling space for graffiti artists be far behind?

Nickel and diming passengers may be great fun for Spirit, but it doesn’t buy much loyalty. McDonald’s didn’t make it in 50 years by checking their bottom line every minute.  Neither did Disney. Check out the fine cuisine and prices (click on photo to actually see it!). I noticed their menu was more bilingual than their flight attendants going.  Someday creeps like Microsoft and Apple will learn the power sophisticated users of Linux have. Spirit might want to do the same.

I guess if Spirit stays more creative they can have some kind of a bathroom charge. You know, like a $6 on-flight toilet paper fee: charge or debit card only!