Travel
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Many a restaurant in New Orleans; and many visited by us during our latest stay. Two divergent experiences. Shaya, and Venezia. Shaya: Slick, elegant, ultra-modern, carefully designed. Waitpersons stylishly costumed and coiffed. Well-trained. Reservations mandatory. Customers: jacketed and tied, or on high heels. Price: whole wallet. The place to go if you're looking for wood…
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United Airlines has announced that starting March 1, passengers will be charged for the use of on-board toilet facilities. "Charges will be nominal," according to United spokesperson Alma Santistevan, "just five dollars for the first five minutes and two dollars for every subsequent minute, but passengers must remember to bring their credit cards with them…
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Dr. M. "How long have you been a guard here?" Guard: "Seventeen years. You can't stand still. You have to change your position, move around." Dr. M. "Has anything ever happened. Someone try to steal a painting? Guard. "No nothing. Nothing has ever happened." Dr. M. "No one descending on ropes from the ceiling, trying…
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"I worked for Ethiopian Airlines in Ethiopia. I have a degree in business. One time my wife came to America and she says she wants to stay here. I had so much paperwork and investigation but now I am a legal immigrant. America is the land of opportunity. I believe that one hundred per cent.…
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At a restaurant at the corner of Jena and Freret, the over-tattooed waitress, acknowledging our appreciation of the greens, fennel and kumquat salad, said, memorably, "People do not understand the beauty of the kumquat." An excellent instance of found poetry. And all the more brilliant in context, because I myself once asserted that "kumquat" is the most obscene-sounding…
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Cheerful, lively 70ish woman: "I was alone for thirty years. I didn't even have a date. He (man in a Mardi Gras green bowler hat) grew up in a French-speaking family in Rhode Island, We shacked up for a couple of years. Then he wanted to get married. At our age it's all about finances, so I said,…
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What indeed? In Trollope's Barchester Towers, when Mrs Quiverful discovers that her husband, rector of Puddingdale, is not to become warden of Hiram's Hospital, she sets out to Barchester to confront the bishop. Not a walker, and not the owner of a horse or carriage of her own, she "begged that Farmer Subsoil would take her thither…
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Dr. M. (at the spacious Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, to a guard); "Can you tell me how to get to the new American Wing." Guard: "You go straight ahead, through the main courtyard, through two more doors, when you hit Egypt, you take a left."
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Just back from the post office, where I mailed the granddaughter her gift, a zester. What is a zester, you ask? It's a kitchen device designed to remove the "zest," that is, the outermost skin of a citrus fruit. The granddaughter's zester is an inch and a half wide and thirteen inches long, including its…
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It had been a while since I last flew Frontier –the airline with the cute furry anthropomorphic talking mammals on their tails. There have been some changes — all of them for the worse. There's now an extra charge for each piece of luggage. Those free meals are a thing of the remote past. So…