“
I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!
”
”
David Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)
“
An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy.
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (Exhumations)
“
This is flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be the perfect time to disembark.
”
”
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
“
I've been to so many places and not a single one has saved me.
”
”
Jean Kyoung Frazier (Pizza Girl)
“
Anyway, she sings like a mad tropical bird, and it's just a fondue of molten wanting and grieving and the sadness of the large naked swinging breasts and soft olive skin and everything that you wish you could remember and feel and know.
”
”
Nicholson Baker (Traveling Sprinkler (The Paul Chowder Chronicles #2))
“
He met me at the airport; it was ten in the morning, Washington time, when I arrived, after having taken a plane that left Los Angeles International at 10:10 A.M. Los Angeles time. Who says time-reversal is hard to accomplish?
”
”
Robert Silverberg (The Masks of Time)
“
[...] grew up here, in what show business people, which now includes our best-known politicians and so-called journalists, often call 'flyover country.' We are somewhere between television cameras in Washington DC, and New York, and Los Angeles. Please join me in saying to the undersides of their airplanes, 'Go to hell.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young)
“
There are countries in which the communal provision of housing, transport, education and health care is so inferior that inhabitants will naturally seek to escape involvement with the masses by barricading themselves behind solid walls. The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where 'ordinary' life fails to answer a median need for dignity or comfort.
Then there are communities—far fewer in number and typically imbued with a strong (often Protestant) Christian heritage—whose public realms exude respect in their principles and architecture, and whose citizens are therefore under less compulsion to retreat into a private domain. Indeed, we may find that some of our ambitions for personal glory fade when the public spaces and facilities to which we enjoy access are themselves glorious to behold; in such a context, ordinary citizenship may come to seem an adequate goal. In Switzerland's largest city, for instance, the need to own a car in order to avoid sharing a bus or train with strangers loses some of the urgency it has in Los Angeles or London, thanks to Zurich's superlative train network, which is clean, safe, warm and edifying in its punctuality and technical prowess. There is little reason to travel in an automotive cocoon when, for a fare of only a few francs, an efficient, stately tramway will provide transport from point A to point B at a level of comfort an emperor might have envied.
One insight to be drawn from Christianity and applied to communal ethics is that, insofar as we can recover a sense of the preciousness of every human being and, even more important, legislate for spaces and manner that embody such a reverence in their makeup, then the notion of the ordinary will shed its darker associations, and, correspondingly, the desires to triumph and to be insulated will weaken, to the psychological benefit of all.
”
”
Alain de Botton (Status Anxiety)
“
The Serzone is a gift from God that frees her from the immobilising depression that would otherwise surround her and seep into her body like a poisonous fog. The drug distances the depression from her, although it is never out of sight. ... The depression she battles is not the newly acquired symptom of a young woman now living in Los Angeles on her own. It was first set in the bow in Vermont, where she grew up, and fired as a companion arrow that has travelled with her ever since.
”
”
Steve Martin (Shopgirl)
“
Having Miami in a state like Florida makes no sense. You may as well put Los Angeles in the middle of Arkansas. It's not connected, it's just bright and loud and big and... there.
”
”
Caspar Vega (Southern Dust)
“
Let everyone else travel all over the world. What they're searching for in Los Angeles and New York and everywhere else is something I already have right here in Seattle. I want it all to myself.
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
The largest Martian canyon, Mariner Valley, which is probably the largest canyon in the solar system, is so vast that, if placed on North America, it would extend from New York City to Los Angeles.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny BeyondEarth)
“
This is the beginning of your life in America,” Julio said. “We'll take a freight train from Sunnyside and go to nowhere.” “I would like to go to California,” I said. “I have two brothers there—but I don't know if I could find them.” “All roads go to California and all travelers wind up in Los Angeles,” Julio said. “But not this traveler. I have lived there too long. I know that state too damn well….” “What do you mean?” I asked. Suddenly he became sad and said: “It is hard to be a Filipino in California.
”
”
Carlos Bulosan (America Is in the Heart: A Personal History)
“
Had his room been facing west he would have noted the sparkling twenty-five-mile vista to the sea which looks almost like the Mediterranean. He would have noted how the streets of L.A. undulate over short hills as though a finger is poking the landscape from underneath. How laid over this crosshatch are streets meandering on the diagonal creating a multitude of ways to get from one place to another by traveling along the hypotenuse. These are the avenues of the tryst which enable Acting Student A to travel the eighteen miles across town to Acting Student B's garage apartment in nine minutes flat after a hot-blooded phone call at midnight. Had he been facing seaward on a balcony overlooking the city the writer might have heard drifting out of a tiny apartment window the optimistic voice of a shower singer imbued with the conviction that this is a place where it is possible to be happy.
”
”
Steve Martin (Pure Drivel)
“
VERY EARLY ONE MORNING in July 1977, the FBI, having been tipped off about Operation Snow White, carried out raids on Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, carting off nearly fifty thousand documents. One of the files was titled “Operation Freakout.” It concerned the treatment of Paulette Cooper, the journalist who had published an exposé of Scientology, The Scandal of Scientology, six years earlier. After having been indicted for perjury and making bomb threats against Scientology, Cooper had gone into a deep depression. She stopped eating. At one point, she weighed just eighty-three pounds. She considered suicide. Finally, she persuaded a doctor to give her sodium pentothal, or “truth serum,” and question her under the anesthesia. The government was sufficiently impressed that the prosecutor dropped the case against her, but her reputation was ruined, she was broke, and her health was uncertain. The day after the FBI raid on the Scientology headquarters, Cooper was flying back from Africa, on assignment for a travel magazine, when she read a story in the International Herald Tribune about the raid. One of the files the federal agents discovered was titled “Operation Freakout.” The goal of the operation was to get Cooper “incarcerated in a mental institution or jail.
”
”
Lawrence Wright (Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief)
“
long. Trade has always traveled and the world has always traded. Ours, though, is the era of extreme interdependence. Hardly any nation is now self-sufficient. In 2011, the United Kingdom shipped in half of its gas. The United States relies on ships to bring in two-thirds of its oil supplies. Every day, thirty-eight million tons of crude oil sets off by sea somewhere, although you may not notice it. As in Los Angeles, New York, and other port cities, London has moved its working docks out of the city, away from residents. Ships are bigger now and need deeper harbors, so they call at Newark or Tilbury or Felixstowe, not Liverpool or South Street.
”
”
Rose George (Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate)
“
That’s how an Aerolineas Argentinas airplane, stopping in Lima (Peru) in 1991, managed to deliver dozens of cholera-infected people that same day to my city of Los Angeles, over 3,000 miles from Lima. The explosive increase in world travel by Americans, and in immigration to the United States, is turning us into another melting pot—this time, of microbes that we previously dismissed as just causing exotic diseases in far-off countries.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
“
Ben R. Rich, the ex-president of the famous “Skunk Works,” Lockheed-Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP) group, revealed the truth just before he died. In an alumni speech at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1993, he said, “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity . . . Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.
”
”
Len Kasten (The Secret History of Extraterrestrials: Advanced Technology and the Coming New Race)
“
that ideal had become as ossified as the statue of Benjamin Franklin up there. From New York to Los Angeles, American newspapers were yellow and stale before they even came off the press. Dog-beaten by a dwindling readership, financial losses and partisan attacks, editors had stripped them of their personality in an attempt to offend no one. And so there was no more reason to read them. Safety before Truth. Grammar over Guts. Winners before Losers. My eyes traveled down from Franklin to the iron sconces above the entrance.
”
”
Charlie LeDuff (Detroit: An American Autopsy)
“
In these myriad ways, we carved out our lives in Los Angeles. Yet falling asleep was often an act of travel, taking me quickly by the hand so that I am instantly surrounded by verdant foliage, the ocean's emerald roar, the voices of Alice, Mala, our grandmother. Those most familiar and beloved of women.
But there are also nightmares. Over and over I dream of a small house, a glittering lagoon, a mango tree, and a young girl. She stands before me and her large bruised eyes do not leave mine. When she unpins the sari fold at her shoulder and pulls it away from her, I see sunset-colored bruises on her delicate clavicles. When she undoes her sari blouse, I see the grenades tucked like extra breasts under her own. It is grotesque. I wake trembling, and her eyes stays with me for hours.
”
”
Nayomi Munaweera (Island of a Thousand Mirrors)
“
Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd. They say you always remember your first time, and Nina definitely did. Walking into the Los Angeles Central Library to get her first library card, when she was eight or so, was still a memory she treasured. The entry hall of the library was as beautiful as any cathedral, and Nina had looked around and realized she would never run out of things to read, and that certainty filled her with peace and satisfaction. It didn't matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine. Being surrounded by books the the closest she'd ever gotten to feeling like the member of a gang. The books had her back, and the nonfiction, at least, was ready to fight if necessary.
”
”
Abbi Waxman (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)
“
POEM – MY AMAZING
TRAVELS
[My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures]
My very first trip I still cannot believe
Was planned and executed with such great ease.
My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man,
He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan.
I got my first long vacation while working as a banker
One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner.
She visited my father and discussed the matter
Arrangements were made without any flutter.
We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany,
In each of those places, there was somebody,
To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places,
It was a dream come true at our young ages.
We even visited Holland, which was across the Border.
To drive across from Germany was quite in order.
Memories of great times continue to linger,
I thank God for an understanding father.
That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more,
I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe.
Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo,
Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando.
I was accompanied by my husband on many trips.
Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit.
Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah,
Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla.
We sailed aboard the Creole Queen
On the Mississippi in New Orleans
We traversed the Rockies in Colorado
And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico.
We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome,
The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum.
To explore the countryside in Florence,
And to sail on a Gondola in Venice.
My fridge is decorated with magnets
Souvenirs of all my visits
London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona.
And the Leaning Tower of Pisa
How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome?
Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born.
CN Tower in Toronto so very high
I thought the elevator would take me to the sky.
Then there was El Poble and Toledo
Noted for Spanish Gold
We travelled on the Euro star.
The scenery was beautiful to behold!
I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia,
Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina,
Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines,
Places I love to lime.
Of course, I would like to make special mention,
Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean.
Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas
Two ships which grace the Seas.
Last but not least and best of all
We visited Paris in the fall.
Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin
Amazing places, which made my head, spin.
Copyright@BrendaMohammed
”
”
Brenda C. Mohammed (Travel Memoirs with Pictures)
“
We can fly from New York to Los Angeles in a matter of hours, but we also mingle our energy fields with hundreds or even thousands of people who are strangers to us. Our physical senses report the airplane flight to us in all its details, but we receive no such report of the consequences of intermingling our energy fields with so many people. Only those few people with finely attuned spiritual senses are aware of the difficulty that such mingling may bring. In the old days we lived a quiet life. We seldom saw anyone outside the family structure. Many people lived an entire lifetime on a farm or in a small town. In 1900 many thought it was a great event to travel twice a year to a town twenty or fifty miles away in order to do the seasonal shopping. People were intimately familiar with their personal surroundings, and they kept them clean. There were few strangers among us. When strangers arrived, we knew how to cope with the energy field they brought with them. Every home had its protective charms, and every family had its household rituals.
”
”
Draja Mickaharic (Spiritual Cleansing: A Handbook of Psychic Protection)
“
Traveling broadens your horizon. It makes you see the bigger picture.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3))
“
The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous; but meanwhile nemesis [from Greek mythology] has seen to it we get our kicks as well as halfpence. For example, has the ability to travel in twelve hours from New York to Los Angeles given more pleasure to the human race than dropping bombs and fire has given pain?
”
”
Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy)
“
The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous; but meanwhile nemesis [from Greek mythology] has seen to it we get our kicks as well as halfpence. For example, has the ability to travel from New York to Los Angeles given more pleasure to the human race than dropping bombs and fire has given pain?
”
”
Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy)
“
Athens somehow manages to be bright white and grubby at the same time. The most beautiful freshly painted neoclassical homes are defaced with new graffiti. Ancient ruins are everywhere, of course, but seem to have little to do with anything else. It’s Los Angeles with a past.
”
”
Michael Lewis (Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World)
“
I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!” On
”
”
David Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)
“
Dateline is a major prime-time news show in America, reaching millions of viewers on the NBC network. So it should have been very good news when the show’s producers informed us that they wanted to do a segment on Steve, and they wanted to film it in Queensland.
“We want to experience him firsthand in the bush,” the producer told me cheerfully ove the phone.
Do you really, mate? I wanted to say. I had been with Steve in the bush. It was the most fantastic experience, but I wasn’t sure he understood how remote the bush really was. I simply responded with all the right words about how excited we were to have Dateline come film.
The producers wanted two totally different environments in which to film. We chose the deserts of Queensland with the most venomous snake on earth, and the Cape York mangroves--crocodile territory. Great! responded Dateline. Perfect!
Only…the host was a woman, who had to look presentable, so she needed a generator for her blow-dryer. And a Winnebago, because it wasn’t really fair to ask her to throw a swag on the ground among the scorpions and spiders. This film shoot would mean a bit of additional expense. We weren’t just grabbing Sui and the Ute and setting out. But the exposure we would get on Dateline would be good for wildlife conservation, our zoo, and tourism.
I telephoned a representative of the Queensland Tourism and Travel Commission in Los Angeles. “I wonder if you could help us out,” I asked. “This Dateline segment will showcase Queensland to people in America.” Could Queensland Tourism possibly subsidize the cost of a generator and a Winnebago?
Silence at the end of the line. “What you are showing off of Queensland,” a voice carefully explained, “is not how we want tourists to see our fair country.” The most venomous snake on earth? Giant crocodiles? No, thanks.
“But people are fascinated by dangerous animals,” I began to argue. I was wasting my time. There was no convincing him.
We scraped up the money ourselves, and off we went with the Dateline crew into the bush.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
I telephoned a representative of the Queensland Tourism and Travel Commission in Los Angeles. “I wonder if you could help us out,” I asked. “This Dateline segment will showcase Queensland to people in America.” Could Queensland Tourism possibly subsidize the cost of a generator and a Winnebago?
Silence at the end of the line. “What you are showing off of Queensland,” a voice carefully explained, “is not how we want tourists to see our fair country.” The most venomous snake on earth? Giant crocodiles? No, thanks.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
Pentagon.Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, people began to line up for a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George W. Bush went for an early morning run. For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey.Among the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine. 1.1 INSIDE THE FOUR FLIGHTS Boarding the Flights Boston:American 11 and United 175. Atta and Omari boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight from Portland to Boston’s Logan International Airport.1 When he checked in for his flight to Boston,Atta was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta’s selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft. This did not hinder Atta’s plans.2 Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45. Seven minutes later,Atta apparently took a call from Marwan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan Airport.They spoke for three minutes.3 It would be their final conversation. 1 2 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Between 6:45 and 7:40,Atta and Omari, along with Satam al Suqami,Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri, checked in and boarded American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles.The flight was scheduled to depart at 7:45.4 In another Logan terminal, Shehhi, joined by Fayez Banihammad, Mohand al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi, and Hamza al Ghamdi, checked in for United Airlines Flight 175,also bound for Los Angeles.A couple of Shehhi’s colleagues were obviously unused to travel;according to the United ticket agent,they had trouble understanding the standard security questions, and she had to go over them slowly until they gave the routine, reassuring answers.5 Their flight was scheduled to depart at 8:00. The security checkpoints through which passengers, including Atta and his colleagues, gained access to the American 11 gate were operated by Globe Security under a contract with American Airlines. In a different terminal, the single checkpoint through which passengers for United 175 passed was controlled by United Airlines, which had contracted with Huntleigh USA to perform the screening.6 In passing through these checkpoints,each of the hijackers would have been screened by a walk-through metal detector calibrated to detect items with at least the metal content of a .22-caliber handgun.Anyone who might have set off that detector would have been screened with a hand wand—a procedure requiring the screener to identify
”
”
Anonymous
“
However, the Glory of GOD can be experienced everywhere on the Earthly Plane: I remember when I went to see the Phantom of the Opera in Los Angeles, I thought it was one of the most profound Spiritual experiences of my life! I felt like I was lifted up into the fifth dimension for three hours! Traveling in Europe to visit the Sistine Chapel, Louvre Museum, the Acropolis, the Holy Land, and other sacred sites! Watching the birds, rabbits, butterflies, chipmunks from my window where I work in the mornings! Watering the garden and tuning into the plant spirits and devas! Communing with nature! GOD is everywhere!
”
”
Joshua D. Stone (The Golden Book of Melchizedek: How to Become an Integrated Christ/Buddha in This Lifetime Volume 2)
“
For decades, Amtrak ran a long-distance train from Los Angeles to Jacksonville called the Sunset Limited. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina washed out the tracks from New Orleans to Florida. The service was never restored, and the Gulf Coast has been without rail travel for nearly a decade now.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Anxious to defend his adopted city—especially his side of town, the less fashionable west end—Eli considered giving Veronica a condensed lecture on the history of Asheville, North Carolina. 1880: the Western North Carolina Railroad completed a line from Salisbury to Asheville, which later enabled George Washington Vanderbilt to construct the Biltmore Estate, the largest private residence in America. Over time, that 179,000 square foot house transitioned into a multi- million dollar company. Which lured in tourists. Who created thousands of jobs. Which caused the sprawl flashing by Eli’s window at fifty-five miles per hour.
But Eli refrained from being the Local Know-It-All, remembering all the times he’d traveled to new cities and some cabbie wanted to play docent, wanted to tell him about the real Cleveland or the hidden Miami. Instead, he let the air conditioner chase away the remnants of his jet lag and thought about Almario “Go Go” Gato. He waited for Veronica to say something about the Blue Ridge Mountains, which stood alongside the highway, hovering over the valley below like stoic parents waiting for their kids to clean up their messy bedrooms. Eli gave her points for her silence. And for ditching the phone, even if she kept glancing anxiously toward the glove compartment every time it buzzed. The car rode smooth, hardly a bump. For a resident of Los Angeles, she drove cautiously, obeying all traffic laws. Eli had a perfect driving record. Well, almost perfect. There was that time he drove the Durham Bulls’ chartered Greyhound into the right field fence during the seventh inning stretch. But that was history. Almost ancient.
”
”
Max Everhart
“
should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!
”
”
David Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)
“
Traveling through space-time is like driving through Los Angeles. Universes pass by like random cars on the four-level at rush hour.
”
”
Ryka Aoki (Light From Uncommon Stars)
“
The bassist hadn’t left England until he joined Duran Duran, and in 1981, he saw some of the world’s biggest cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Berlin. “It was extraordinary. And yet when we came back to Birmingham, the idea of exotica - and exotic travel - was Rio…basically we’re all suburban English kids that really are not well-traveled at all - have just traveled the world in extraordinary way. We go back home and we’re still dreaming. We’re still dreaming about a place far away - and the idea of that escapism.
”
”
Annie Zaleski (Rio)
“
What happened in 1970 in Los Angeles was the worst economic episode I’ve ever had to fight through. Unlike the post–Cold War Recession, we did not have the waves of in-migration from Mexico, nor were drug sales as great. I believe the underground economy was a silent savior of Los Angeles during 1990–94. The Kent State Massacre and the Pentagon Papers scandal didn’t help the 1970 scene. Furthermore, things didn’t get better in the early 1970s. The sharp recession of 1970 was followed by a sudden inflation caused by Vietnam spending. Nixon “slammed the gold window shut.” From 1945 to 1971, the U.S., under the Bretton Woods Agreement, had agreed to back its currency to a limited extent with gold at $35 per ounce. Other nations’ central banks were withdrawing our gold so fast that Nixon had to renege on the promise. This was followed in 1973 by the end of fixed currency exchange rates. The dollar plummeted. Traveling to the wine country of France in the summer of 1973, I was unable to cash American Express dollar-denominated traveler’s checks. Inflation jumped with the 1973 Energy Crisis. Nixon imposed wage and price controls. Then Watergate, accompanied by the Dow Jones hitting bottom in 1974. Three Initiatives to Turn the Tide Against all this, Trader Joe’s mounted three initiatives. In chronological order: We launched the Fearless Flyer early in 1970. We broke the price of imported wines in late 1970 thanks to a loophole in the Fair Trade law. Most importantly, in 1971, we married the health food store to the Good Time Charley party store, which had been the 1967–70 version of Trader Joe’s. Together these three elements comprised the second version of Trader Joe’s, Whole Earth Harry.
”
”
Joe Coulombe (Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys)
“
I think the general public has never understood the “special” kind of life that civil rights advocates had to lead in those years. Racists showed high ingenuity in developing schemes to destroy a man’s reputation as a means of nullifying his work. For example, many civil rights advocates, white and black, traveled and lectured extensively. In the early days, a number of effective men were entrapped in situations that either damaged them personally or ruined their reputations. Those who were with lecture bureaus were particularly vulnerable. Anyone could write the lecture bureau for the travel schedule of its speakers. If a man made a long flight to fulfill a speaking engagement, the chances were at least fair that when he landed at the distant airport he might make use of the rest room. It would be enough to plant one or two men in the rest room and accuse him of some indecency. This happened to a Mississippi white attorney in a case that was given maximum publicity in white newspapers. He had to fly to Los Angeles for an appearance. His travel schedule was known. At the end of this flight he went to the men’s rest room, and when he emerged, he was arrested because two men claimed he had indecently exposed himself. He was tried in absentia and found guilty in Mississippi. He was publicly labeled a pervert and his career in civil rights was effectively quashed.
”
”
John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me)
“
Tesla already has huge stations with coffee, restrooms, and other services available in-between cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, which didn't exist before people started using its electric cars to travel those multi-hundred-mile distances.
”
”
Irena Cronin (The Infinite Retina: Spatial Computing, Augmented Reality, and how a collision of new technologies are bringing about the next tech revolution)
“
You may have had a thousand bad breaks, but don’t use that as an excuse to be negative. One good break can make up for all the bad breaks. One touch of God’s favor can catapult you further than you ever imagined. You may feel like you’re getting behind. You’re not where you thought you would be in life. Don’t worry; God knows how to make up for lost time. He knows how to accelerate things.
Now you’ve got to do your part. Shake off a negative mentality. Shake off pessimism, discouragement, and self-pity. Get your fire back. Life is passing you by. You don’t have time to waste being negative. You have a destiny to fulfill. You have an assignment to accomplish. What’s in your future is greater than anything you’ve seen in your past. We need to get rid of Murphy’s Law and live by just the opposite. Your attitude should be: “If anything can go right today, it will go right and happen to me at the best time. Nothing will be as difficult as it looks. Nothing will take as long as it seems.”
Why? You are highly favored. Almighty God is breathing in your direction. You’ve been anointed, equipped, and empowered.
Some may claim I’m just getting hopes up, and trying to get people to be more positive. It’s true, and here’s why: God is a positive God. There is nothing negative about Him. If you’re negative, sour, or pessimistic, you’re going against the flow of God.
When we fly from Houston to Los Angeles, it always takes thirty minutes longer to get there than it does to come home. It’s because the jet stream flows from west to east. When we’re headed there, there’s a large mass of air always blowing against us, slowing us down. The other day we had a 120-mile-per-hour headwind. The plane has to work harder, use more fuel, and expend more energy.
But when we travel back home, it’s just the opposite. The jet stream is working in our favor, pushing us forward and making it easier, saving us time and energy.
The same principles apply in life. When you are positive, hopeful, and expecting good things, you are in the jet stream of almighty God. Things will be easier. You will accomplish more, live happier, and see increase and favor. But when you are negative, discouraged, everything’s a struggle; you have to work harder and you can’t enjoy life.
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Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
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Chicken Salad à la Danny Kaye YIELD: 4 SERVINGS TO MOST AMERICANS, Danny Kaye is remembered as a splendid comedian and actor. I think of him as a friend and one of the finest cooks I have ever known. In every way, Danny was equal to or better than any trained chef. His technique was flawless. The speed at which he worked was on par with what you’d find in a Parisian brigade de cuisine. Danny taught me a great deal, mostly about Chinese cuisine, his specialty. Whenever I traveled to Los Angeles, Danny picked me up at the airport and took me to his house, where we cooked Chinese or French food. His poached chicken was the best I have ever had. His method was to put the chicken in a small stockpot, cover it with tepid water seasoned with salt, peppercorns, and vegetables, and cook it at a gentle boil for only 10 minutes, then set it aside off the heat for 45 minutes. As an added touch, he always stuck a handful of knives, forks, and spoons into the cavity of the chicken, to keep it submerged. The result is so moist, tender, and flavorful that I have used the recipe—minus the flatware—ever since. CHICKEN 1 chicken, about 3½ pounds ½ cup sliced carrot 1 cup sliced onion 1 small leek, washed and left whole 1 rib celery, washed and left whole 1 teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon black peppercorns 2 sprigs thyme 2 bay leaves About 7 cups tepid water, or more if needed DRESSING 2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper ½ teaspoon Tabasco hot pepper sauce 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
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Jacques Pépin (The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen)
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Chicken Salad à la Danny Kaye YIELD: 4 SERVINGS TO MOST AMERICANS, Danny Kaye is remembered as a splendid comedian and actor. I think of him as a friend and one of the finest cooks I have ever known. In every way, Danny was equal to or better than any trained chef. His technique was flawless. The speed at which he worked was on par with what you’d find in a Parisian brigade de cuisine. Danny taught me a great deal, mostly about Chinese cuisine, his specialty. Whenever I traveled to Los Angeles, Danny picked me up at the airport and took me to his house, where we cooked Chinese or French food. His poached chicken was the best I have ever had. His method was to put the chicken in a small stockpot, cover it with tepid water seasoned with salt, peppercorns, and vegetables, and cook it at a gentle boil for only 10 minutes, then set it aside off the heat for 45 minutes. As an added touch, he always stuck a handful of knives, forks, and spoons into the cavity of the chicken, to keep it submerged. The result is so moist, tender, and flavorful that I have used the recipe—minus the flatware—ever since. CHICKEN 1 chicken, about 3½ pounds ½ cup sliced carrot 1 cup sliced onion 1 small leek, washed and left whole 1 rib celery, washed and left whole 1 teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon black peppercorns 2 sprigs thyme 2 bay leaves About 7 cups tepid water, or more if needed DRESSING 2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper ½ teaspoon Tabasco hot pepper sauce 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil GARNISHES 1 dozen Boston lettuce leaves, cleaned 2 dozen fresh tarragon leaves FOR THE CHICKEN: Place the chicken breast side down in a tall, narrow pot, so it fits snugly at the bottom. Add the remaining poaching ingredients. The chicken should be submerged, and the water should extend about 1 inch above it. Bring to a gentle boil, cover, and let boil gently for two minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, and set it aside to steep in the hot broth for 45 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot, and set it aside on a platter to cool for a few minutes. (The stock can be strained and frozen for up to 6 months for use in soup.) Pick the meat from the chicken bones, discarding the skin, bones, and fat. Shred the meat with your fingers, following the grain and pulling it into strips. (The meat tastes better shredded than diced with a knife.) FOR THE DRESSING: Mix together all the dressing ingredients in a bowl large enough to hold the chicken salad. Add the chicken shreds to the dressing and toss well. Arrange the Boston lettuce leaves in a “nest” around the periphery of a platter, and spoon the room-temperature chicken salad into the center. Sprinkle with the tarragon leaves and serve.
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Jacques Pépin (The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen)
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This is an important announcement. This is flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be a perfect time to disembark
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Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
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That afternoon, I wrapped up my latest round of calls to agents, requesting callbacks for a part in a TV show. Thanks to my reputation, a premium cable network had contracted me for one of its racier shows about a cadre of Los Angeles party girls who travel to New York City for a bachelorette weekend. The girls go to an invite-only strip club—as one does—for its “Parade of Firemen” night. My task was to find five smoking hot actors who could be the best “firemen” in New York City
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Lauren Blakely (The Pretending Plot (Caught Up in Love, #1))
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The combined activities of our enormous population are already producing breathtaking effects. Our planet is only 12,700 kilometers in diameter—about three times the distance between New York and Los Angeles—and we can easily travel halfway around it in less than a day. We have turned much of its land surface into a patchwork of cities, industrial parks, farms, and rangeland. We have laid on this land a web of roads, canals, and pipelines. We have dug out of it hundreds of billions of tons of material, moved this material around, processed it, and dumped it. Our factory ships and trawlers crisscross the world’s oceans to exploit every valuable fishery. Our planes and satellites weave themselves around its sphere. We are moving so much rock and dirt, blocking and diverting so many rivers, converting so many forests to cropland, releasing such huge quantities of heavy metals and organic chemicals into air and water, and generating so much energy, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen compounds that we are perturbing the deepest dynamics of our global ecosystems. Between one-third and one-half of the planet’s land area has been fundamentally transformed by our actions: row-crop agriculture, cities, and industrial areas occupy 10 to 15 percent of Earth’s land surface; 6 to 8 percent has been converted to pasture; and an area the size of France is now submerged under artificial reservoirs. We have driven to extinction a quarter of all bird species. We use more than half of all accessible fresh water. In regions of major human activity, large rivers typically carry three times as much sediment as they did in pre-human times, while small rivers carry eight times the sediment. Along the world’s tropical and subtropical coastlines, our activities—especially the construction of cities, industries, and aquaculture pens—have changed or destroyed 50 percent of mangrove ecosystems, which are vital to the health of coastal fisheries. And about two-thirds of the world’s marine fisheries are either overexploited, depleted, or at their limit of exploitation. The decline of global fish stocks has followed a predictable pattern: like roving predators, we have shifted from one major stock to another as each has reached its maximum productivity and then begun to decline.30
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Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Ingenuity Gap: How Can We Solve the Problems of the Future?)