Recently in Travel Category
The Coffee House Club, St. Louis
Before about 2010 you couldn't always count on having internet access, much less high speed internet, in hotels. When traveling, I would always keep my eyes open for coffee houses with free wifi, particularly coffee houses that stayed open late, somewhere I could work on blog entries and catch up on email.
A comment on social media about the lack of late night dining options nowadays brought The Coffee House Club in St. Louis to mind. It was open noon to midnight weekdays, noon to 3 a.m. on weekends. When I visited, probably in 2007, but possibly 2009, it was at 6319 Clayton Ave. in a one-story building with a red brick facade, with the words COFFEE HOUSE inlaid in square letters of blonde brick. I'm not sure how I found it -- possibly through the Riverfront Times, the local alt-weekly, possibly through the late lamented IndieCoffeeShops.com crowdsourced map. It was comfortable and quiet; the only thing I didn't care for was that smoking was allowed.
"Not only is it the The Coffee House club the greatest cup of coffee on the planet, it is also the most relaxing. Its the only place in town to go to when you just need someone to talk to, there is always someone available! So please join us for a fresh cup of coffee and wholesome conversation!"
The Coffee House boasted a nightly AA meeting. A later version of the website stated: "Jeanarae first opened the doors to The Coffee House in St. Louis city in 1994. Her mission was to provide a safe entertainment venue for the people in St. Louis' recovery community. For over 15 years, The Coffee House has been proudly serving Jeanarae's Exclusive House Blend!" The location moved to 2625 Abbott Place, and I've found a reference to 4305 Bingham Ave on a food review website. Jeanarae Booth is mentioned as the owner in a 2001 story about a Dogtown neighborhood nuisance.
Breezewood - The Rise and Decline of a Highway Rest Stop
"Section 113(b) and (c) of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 that created the Interstate system. Section 113(b) stated that an Interstate can have direct access through an interchange with a toll road as long as access to a free alternative is available. Section 113(c) allowed for interchanges to be built with federal funds as long as the toll road operating agency agreed to retire tolls once their bonds were paid off. The other option was for the Turnpike to fund and built their own interchange. In short, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission didn't want to spend its own funds on an interchange - they had feared that the not yet complete Interstate 80 to the north would cut deeply into their revenues - and the unique setup that would give birth to over 50 different roadside businesses and services was set in stone."
"Remember, remember the Fifth of November." Early November is bonfire season in England, commemorating the discovery and thwarting of Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Sussex and Surrey, south of London, host the biggest celebrations, which also commemorate the 36 Sussex Martyrs who were put to death for their adherence to the Protestant faith during the reign of Bloody Mary Tudor. The town of Lewes, Sussex, holds the biggest bonfire celebration, so big that town officials close the train station and the roads and strongly discourage outsiders from coming to town.
At a co-worker's suggestion, I attended the bonfire in Brockham, Surrey, in 2018. There was a mile-long torchlight parade down country lanes leading to the bonfire in the center of the village green. An effigy of Guy Fawkes was hoisted to the top of a three-story-high pile of kindling in the middle of the village green, and torchlight bearers thrust their torches into the pile to start the bonfire. Live music, beer and mulled wine, a hog roast, and fireworks, all around a massive bonfire, on a clear, crisp night on an English village green.
The Secret Life of Beatrix Potter | The New Yorker
Review of a new book about Beatrix Potter. In 2018, our family visited the gallery in the office of Potter's lawyer husband, in Hawkshead, Lancashire, in the Lake District.
"In early adulthood, Potter observed her pets closely, inventing narratives about them, and filling her letters to the children of friends with their adventures. Her dispatches are playful and alive, illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings of rabbits.... Potter sent the Moore children story after story in illustrated letters, until Noel's mother suggested that she try to turn them into books. (The children had saved their copies.) In 1901, Potter self-published the first edition of 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit,' which appeared almost exactly as she had written it to Noel, down to Peter's 'blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.'... Potter believed that her first books found an audience because they were written for real children. 'It is much more satisfactory to address a real live child,' she wrote. 'I often think that that was the secret of the success of Peter Rabbit, it was written to a child--not made to order.'"
From the American Guide Series, a look at Texas in 1940.
Ash Salisbury -- My Aussie Journal
A US-based Australian citizen, Ash Salisbury was unable to return home for over a year to see her parents and her boyfriend because of the two-week hotel quarantine period imposed by Australia. A window of opportunity opened in June, and she spent two weeks isolated in a hotel in Sydney in order to get four days with friends and family in Melbourne, which she logged in a daily journal. The willingness of her fellow Aussies to sacrifice a lot of freedom for the illusion of safety was shocking to her. From her "Afterword."
"Australia got it wrong!
"They found themselves in an elimination strategy and that strategy has no exit. The only way out now is to allow a degree of the virus to be in the community. The fear that has been dished out to Australians means that it's political suicide and no politician is going to overturn the plan but will continue to toe the line. With this, their bureaucrats are now in positions where they have so much power over other people's lives and are starting to enjoy it. It's a real-life Milgram Shock and Zimbardo Experiment that is happening in Australia.
"Even the hotel manager when I checked in on Day One of my quarantine showed little emotion over concerns but clearly enjoyed his power over arrivals. The police reading us the riot act as if we were criminals for simply wanting to return to Australia is all evidenced by a new form of Australia that is massively concerning."
CITY OF DUST: Whiskey and the Devil: Taiban, New Mexico
A great "long-tail" blog post that begins with the story of the photogenic abandoned church belonging to this ghost town on US 60 between Clovis and Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and has grown over time to include photos, postcards, and more stories about this short-lived town associated with Billy the Kid and saloons.
The Pierce Pennant Tavern - Miami, Oklahoma History
From the May 11, 1929, issue of Tavern Talk, a description of the main entrance of the soon-to-open Pierce Pennant Tavern in Miami:
"Upon alighting from his automobile under a massive white pillared canopy and entering the spacious doors of the terminal, the visitor will be immediately impressed by the depth of the main waiting room. Depending upon the season, his senses will react to its cool coziness or satisfying warmth. In the chill days of late spring or early fall, he will find an open fireplace at the end of the room, logs blazing merrily, just the tang of wood smoke redolent of the Ozark backwoods hanging in the air, inviting a relaxing "stretch" before its hearth. Summer, with its heat and glare and dust, is quickly transformed by the refreshing coolness of the well ventilated lounge, huge ceiling fans silently wafting synthetic lake breezes to the massive and comfortable divans and easy chairs. This room is 50 feet long and 35 feet wide, backed by a soda fountain for soft drink and sandwich service, with tables and chairs to accommodate 50 guests."
The building later served as the administrative building for the Royal Air Force flying school during World War II and as home of Winart Pottery in the 1950s.
MORE: The Pierce Pennant chain and the Tulsa location, later known as the Bates Tourist Hotel.
New South Wales Rural Fire Service: Fires Near Me
This is an interactive map showing the extent of the burned area and the status of fires in New South Wales and neighboring parts of Victoria and Queensland. Here is the fire map for Victoria, the road closure map for Victoria, and the road closure map for NSW. There are a few contained bushfires and grass fires in Queensland at the moment.
I'm sad to see roads I drove and towns I visited under threat. Three years ago, in October 2016 during the Australian spring, I took a four-day drive that included the beautiful Australian Alps and Murray River Valley. The town of Corryong, Victoria, home to a museum about the times depicted in the poem "The Man from Snowy River," is surrounded by burned areas, and roads out of town are closed to traffic. Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales, home to the highest peak on the continent, has been evacuated and the Alpine Way scenic highway is closed through the entire park, from Bullocks Flat to the Murray River on the border with Victoria. The Falls Creek ski resort is under mandatory evacuation. Residents of Bright, a pretty resort town in the foothills of the mountains, are being advised to leave.
Boeing wrongly assumed pilots would quickly trim out MCAS - Flight Global
"Boeing incorrectly predicted the manner in which 737 Max pilots would respond to the activation of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System, by assuming they would initially pull back on the control column and then trim out the force to maintain level flight....
"Failure to re-trim the aircraft during a series of repeated MCAS activations would result in the stabiliser gradually shifting to its maximum deflection, with the crew attempting to keep the nose up with increasing force on the control column.
"When the 737 Max was being developed, simulator testing during functional hazard assessment 'never considered' the scenario of repetitive MCAS activation incrementally driving the stabiliser to its maximum limit.
"Boeing had believed repetitive MCAS activations to be 'no worse' than a single activation, because of its assumption that the pilots would trim out the forces each time, says the inquiry. It had also assumed that the crew would respond correctly, and within 3s."
Boeing's MCAS test did not simulate other cockpit effects - Flight Global
"Indonesian investigation authority KNTK says Boeing's preliminary hazard assessment of MCAS, carried out on a full-flight simulator in 2012, examined crew responses to uncommanded MCAS activation 'regardless of underlying cause'.
"This focus on the pilots' response to MCAS - rather than the reason MCAS might be triggered - meant that specific failure modes 'were not simulated', says the inquiry, and therefore neither were the cockpit effects of those failure modes.
"KNKT says a failure such as erroneous angle-of-attack sensor data, leading to unreliable airspeed alerts, stick-shaker activation, and other alarms in the cockpit were not part of the simulation....
"[A post-crash simulator] exercise [recreating cockpit conditions] found that crews could not maintain altitude with control column force alone if short activation of electric trim resulted in an accumulating mis-trim from the MCAS nose-down commands.
"'Repeated MCAS activations increased the flight crew workload and required more attention to counter it,' says the inquiry. Communicating with air traffic control was 'distracting', it adds, and crews found the non-normal checklist 'hard to get through'."
