Coronavirus Special

We do not plan to stay here but the coronavirus has dramatically changed the hospitality landscape.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 9, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 82 Adult children are worried about killing their parents. Their heartfelt concern is endearing. It can at times be annoying. Welcome to yet another coronavirus backflip, a reversal of roles in familial relations. Parents are supposed to worry about their children. But kids are in charge now and many older Americans are following rules of Covid-19 behavior designed by their deeply-concerned 20 and 30-year-old offspring. Our four adult sons have been very loving but firm in a quiet, controlling manner since the virus rocked the world in March. We have friends whose children have been much tougher; establishing rules well beyond the CDC guidelines and getting angry when their parents stray from them. I first noticed the phenomenon back in late March when we were in quarantine following our drive across the country. Our second son and his girlfriend were hunkered down in Brooklyn as New York was emerging as the coronavirus epicenter. We begged ...
Read more
Day One Tucson, Arizona We are finally headed east. First we went west! Our trip actually began yesterday when we drove our original rental 70 miles west from Riverside to Los Angeles. As we did not expect to drive home, I rented a Nissan from “Cheapo Car  Rental.” It was a fine car but we could not take it out of state. So we lumped the rig back to LAX where we hoped to get a long distance rental from a more reputable company. Hoped! No such luck. A midsize from LAX to Boston was about $1,000 without insurance. The same car, from the same company at Palm Springs Airport was $476. So we jumped in a Lyft car back to Riverside and today kind nephew Andy drove us to Palm Springs where we picked up another Nissan. The airport was pretty empty. The smiling Hertz agent was unoccupied and happy to help. She explained the cost differential. Everyone is leaving Palm Springs, she said, no one is flying in. Their business is off by half, down to 175 customers a day. The are swampe...
Read more
May 26, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 68 Farming is not for everyone, especially if you plan to make your living that way. We have been farming since 1983. My then teenage nephew who had been milking cows in Massachusetts since he was 12 heard we were leaving DC to return to Vermont and farm.  He offered sage advice well beyond his years: “Rob, if you want to be a successful farmer, you have to keep one foot in the real world.”  In other words make sure you have a real job.  Of course I did work off the farm in Vermont, for about 35 years until I retired in 2015. From the outset the farm was more than a hobby but less than a full-time job.  We milked cows by hand and once I got viciously kicked in the chest while doing so. I was knocked on my butt 30 years ago by a feisty ram named Bernie, after Vermont’s most famous politician. The ram earned the name because he was always angry and had a shaggy mane like Bernie Sanders who at the time was an unsuccessful, fr...
Read more