Category Archives: Travel

Planes, trains and automobiles

August 31, 2010 · 8:36 am

That’s incredible!

I knew what I was doing. I even paused, but I did it anyway. I used the word “brilliant.” Again.

Yesterday I applied it to Victor Borge, who undoubtedly deserves it. But I plead guilty of overusing “brilliant,” or using it to overstate when I don’t intend to overstate.

I admit, I am easily impressed, so I find a lot of people and ideas brilliant. However, if I keep flinging “brilliant” around, its significance will become diluted.

I think I picked up this habit when I was working internationally. The international crowd flings it around loosely.

I say, “How about we meet in the lobby at seven-thirty?”

“Brilliant!” a chum responds.

“Then maybe we can get a coffee?” (Here we say “some” coffee; in Europe, it’s “a” coffee. When in Rome…)

“Brilliant!”

Is it really brilliant to get coffee at 7:30 in the morning? Is there a Nobel Prize for such a breakthrough idea?

This makes me wonder what other adjectives overstate in everyday language.

I’ve heard such statements as “I went to the park today” answered with “That’s awesome!”

How about this one? “That bagel was amazing!” I’ve eaten thousands of bagels in my lifetime, most were tasty, many were delicious, but I can’t recall any as having been amazing, in the literal sense. What could a bagel do to amaze me? Spin around on its own? Stand on end while a caper is shot through its middle from across the deli?

I feel the same way about “incredible,” “countless,” maybe even “absolutely,” though I know  that’s an adverb.

I’m as guilty as anyone of overusing all of these adjectives, but I will try to use them a little more selectively in the future. Maybe you know of a few more and would like to join me in pulling back a bit.

But you have to admit, Victor Borge really is brilliant.

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August 11, 2010 · 8:17 am

Plane folks

Do you think airlines intentionally seat well-known people beside people who don’t know them? Sometimes I wonder.

I don’t think this is the case with politicians. I’ve been seated beside former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, former Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum and current Texas Congressman Lamar Smith and I knew them all. There’ve been more, but these are the ones who made memorable impressions.

Many years ago, I was making chitchat with my neighbor on a flight from Dallas to Washington. We exchanged pleasantries and I asked what took him to Washington.

“I have some interviews,” he said.

I asked, “Job interviews?”

“Press interviews.” He went on, “I wrote a book.”

“Oh, what’s it called”?

“Run, Bullet, Run.”

“What’s it about?”

‘It’s about football.”

When I got home I told my husband I met a man, and something about a football book, bullet something.

My husband gasped. “You met Bullet Bob Hayes?” Only a two-time Olympic Gold medalist, Super Bowl winner and once considered the fastest human being on the planet.

By the way, I still don’t know what hockey legend I met in an airport in April.

Now that I’m a more seasoned traveler, I rarely take airplane conversations past the hello half-smile as I am squeezing into the seat and reaching under my neighbor’s cheek for my seatbelt.

Yesterday I walked into it again. Just a little.

About midway into the flight, after she and I rolled our eyes at each other over some boisterous passengers behind us, my neighbor thanked me for having been quiet during the ride.

We started talking, I asked what took her to the cities she was visiting and she said she was a musician.

Later in the conversation (which she probably regretted starting), I mentioned I wrote a blog. She asked the usual, what do you write about, I said language and life, and then somewhere in there I said I enjoyed writing about song lyrics.

She said she enjoys writing song lyrics and she shared how she approaches putting her lyrics with the music she writes. She shared with me some of her language peeves and gave me some ideas for future blog posts.

She was lovely and I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a plane chat more. I hope she felt the same.

She gave me the name of her group and I gave her the name of my blog.

You may have noticed Word Nymph typically doesn’t mention people by name. I will say I had never heard of my neighbor and chances are you haven’t either. Maybe one day we all will. Perhaps she’ll read my blog and introduce herself by way of a comment.

Granted, in my opening I mentioned four people by name. That’s all right because they’re famous and three of them are dead.  Now if they comment…

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July 30, 2010 · 8:05 am

In Memoriam: Darrin Beachy

Of the special things we could truly count on in life, one was going to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware–and to Espuma restaurant–and having the great pleasure of being served by Darrin Beachy.  Every year for the last 10 years, my husband, friends and I have made a point of having dinner there.  The creative fare was about 40 percent of the reason.  Darrin was the other 60 percent.

Yesterday, when I told you about Darrin in my blog post, I had no idea he had passed away suddenly in June, at the age of 42.  Darrin might have been part owner at one time, or the business partner of chef Jay Caputo, but he was a big part of what Espuma does well–taking the highest quality raw ingredients, treating them with love and respect, and creating culinary masterpieces unlike any other.  The restaurant is tiny, so he also served patrons in the dining room.

As I said yesterday, while the printed menu is simple, listing only the ingredients, Darrin made the menu come alive.  Slowly and quietly, he took you through every delicious detail of how the food was prepared, in such a personal story that you were on that boat with the fishermen or in the fields picking the produce at its ripest moment.  When you ate at Espuma, you didn’t take leftovers, because you never left a morsel on your plate, but you always took a bit of Darrin with you.

When we went last summer, we were disappointed to learn that, because Darrin had won a series of bartending awards, he had moved behind the bar to serve his famous homemade cocktails.  We sat at the bar before dinner that night. Darrin’s Italian Mojito, made with his homemade limoncello and fresh basil, was the best drink I’ve ever had.  In fact, ever since last summer, I have tried unsuccessfully to replicate it and was planning to stop by in August and ask him to give me a lesson.

I cannot imagine Rehoboth without Darrin.  I just know when we go in August, it will feel a lot less Beachy.

Here’s to you, Darrin, my friend.  Thanks for giving us good times, good food and a bit of yourself.  If I could, I’d toast you with an Italian Mojito.

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July 5, 2010 · 8:11 am

The Boss

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. 

(Belmar, actually, but I wanted to open with the name of the album.)

It’s been many years since I’ve been to this stretch of the Jersey Shore.  Some good friends were kind enough to invite us to join them for the holiday weekend.  We are thrilled to see them and to be back “down the shore,” in that order.

This is hallowed ground for fans of Bruce Springsteen.  And I am definitely one.

In the summer of 1975, having never heard of him, I saw Springsteen perform at a concert hall in Norfolk, Va., and my life was forever changed.  The Born to Run album had just come out and, to a girl of fifteen, Bruce’s energy and stage presence were electrifying.  Once I knew what he was actually singing, I was inspired. 

It can be hard to understand Bruce when he sings but, within no time after the concert, I had the album and was reading and memorizing the lyrics.  That, boys and girls, was back when an album cover was large enough to print all the lyrics in readable type.

At fifteen, I was already disillusioned with the sappy pop music of Top 40 radio.  The Captain and Tennille just didn’t capture the pain and angst that kids my age were feeling.

But Bruce?  No candy coating there, his songs were real.  They were life in the streets and broken hearts and hard knocks.  They ripped your heart out and offered hope at the same time.

I’ve always considered Bruce Springsteen a modern poet.  On this occasion of my visit here, I’d like to share some of my favorite of his lyrics.

From the song, “For You”

We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar
of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore

From “Growin’ Up”

I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched

From “Thunder Road” 

There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street, your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they’re gone, on the wind, so Mary climb in
It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win

From “Jungleland”

In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners desperate as the night moves on
Just one look and a whisper, and they’re gone. 

I’m going to sign off now.  I have a lump in my throat.

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July 3, 2010 · 7:46 am

Two if by sea

As we approach our country’s 234th birthday, it’s appropriate to reflect on the significance of Independence Day. 

My educational frame of reference for American independence centers chiefly around a film we were shown in grade school.  I have been trying to remember the name so I can dig up a copy.  The film was black and white and grainy, but it painted a pretty vivid picture of the events leading up to the formation of the United States as an independent nation.  So when this holiday rolls around, that film rolls in my head.

The Fourth of July is also my younger brother’s birthday.  When he was little he used to sing, “A real live Matthew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July,” while watching fireworks at the neighborhood celebration he thought was being thrown in his honor.

Living in the nation’s capital, the Fourth used to mean hearing the Beach Boys playing on the National Mall, and a long, crowded Metro ride home.  Sometimes it’s a crab feast or a pool party or a visit to the National Archives.  Fireworks?  Don’t hate me, but I could take ’em or leave ’em. 

Even though our nation might at times seem like it’s going somewhere in one big hand-basket, with oil spills and wars and political infighting over the freedoms we hold dear, my holiday wish is that for one day we Americans can cool off with a Good Humor Bomb Pop, sing Kumbaya and appreciate how good we have it.

As I trust the Founding Fathers would have intended, I’ll be at the Jersey shore.

Word Nymph doesn’t post on Sundays, but she wishes you a Happy Independence Day.

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June 22, 2010 · 7:50 am

Behind the curve

Where have I been, under a rock perhaps, that I have never heard of “lingua franca?” 

Do you ever notice a word or phrase for the first time and then, all of a sudden, you read it everywhere? 

Recently, I was rushing to finish my June issue of Vanity Fair, as July had just arrived, and I ran across this phrase, lingua franca.  Because I was on a plane, I was unable to look it up.  My guess at a literal translation was “French tongue,” but that didn’t seem to make sense.

In an article called Playing for the World, preceding the start of the World Cup, A. A. Gill wrote, “It isn’t music or movies or pizza that is the lingua franca of the globe. It’s the Beautiful Game.”  Then, I confess, I lingered unduly on the 12-page photo spread of the World Cup athletes.  Annie Leibovitz, I want your job, if just for one day.  But I digress.

I later noticed, in the same issue of the magazine, in different places and in different contexts, lingua franca appeared twice more.

Yesterday I remembered to look it up.  An hour’s worth of cursory research confounded me further. 

You may already know this, but lingua franca is the term for a hybrid language, like pidgin, that is spoken by persons not sharing a common native language, to communicate with one another.  There seem to be dozens of different forms spoken in Europe, the Middle East and South America.

Okay, so I got that.  But now all of a sudden it’s a simile.  It’s a metaphor.  And it’s everywhere.

Again, my research was cursory, so my findings may not be exact, and the sources are obscure.  Either way, here are some examples I dug up.

“The Dow is certainly Wall Street’s lingua franca.”

“T-shirts are the lingua franca of Silicon Valley.”

“Movies are the lingua franca of the twentieth century.”

“Sarcasm is the lingua franca of the Internets [sic].”

More literally, in some faiths, a language called Adamic “is the lingua franca of Heaven.”

I read further that Lingua Franca is the name of a literary magazine that closed down in 2001, one I think I would have liked.  It’s also the name of a band out of Flint, Michigan; the name of a CD by an Australian group called The World According to James; and the names of lyrical movements in several countries. 

I hate it when something is cliché before I ever become aware of it.  Reminds me of the “What’s In and What’s Out” list that comes out every January 1st.  Far too often, it’s already Out before I knew it was In.

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June 21, 2010 · 7:48 am

Character study

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was delicious reading.

Last week, while my body was on a barrier island in North Carolina, my spirit was living in 1946, in the coastal town of St. Peter Port, in the Channel Islands, between France and England.  Fate takes the main character, a writer, to Guernsey, where she chronicles the stories of its people, who had survived—some not—the German Occupation of their island during World War II. 

It’s hard for me to shake a book.  Same thing with movies.  I linger in the setting for a bit, enjoying the company of the characters as if they were my closest friends, even adopting their speaking styles.  After reading the book, it was hard to resist the tendency to use “fancy” as a verb and utter words such as “twaddle” that don’t otherwise roll off my pedestrian American tongue.  I loved every page of this book and beg you to pick up a copy and dive in.

While on the Outer Banks I also enjoyed early morning coffee at the ocean’s edge and an occasional champagne at sunset.  I ate as much fresh seafood and key lime pie as humanly possible.

Also on this trip, my husband and I undertook a social experiment.  When eating out, instead of sitting at a table, we pledged to eat at the bar of each restaurant we visited, and get to know the people on either side of us.  Sometimes we sat long enough to get to know several rounds of patrons.

Our dining practice did indeed spur some fascinating conversations. 

At one place, we happened to sit next to a man we had met the previous summer—a retired high school basketball coach from the county where I grew up.  We met a sober-looking woman who ordered a cocktail made of six different liquors.  Another night we were drawn into giggling group of women in their sixties, away for a girls’ weekend. 

At Awful Arthur’s Oyster Bar, I struck up a conversation with a woman who had ridden to North Carolina on a motorcycle from Middle Tennessee.  I was familiar with Middle Tennessee because I have two very smart, clever and well-read friends from there.

This woman asked me where I was from.  I replied that I was from the Washington, D.C., area. 

She raised her eyebrows.  “Washington, D.C.?  Ain’t that where the president lives?”

Guernsey 1946 or Kill Devil Hills 2010, over potato peel pie or key lime, it doesn’t matter.  Interesting characters are everywhere if you just pull up a stool and ask, “where y’all from?”

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June 12, 2010 · 8:25 am

Slipping away

(s-bt-kl)

Even Word Nymphs need an extended rest now and then.

This one is running off to a secluded cottage for seven days without Internet, while her permanent home is guarded by two Sumo wrestlers, an Army Ranger and Mr T.

In recent times, “sabbatical” has come to mean any extended absence in the career of an individual in order to achieve something–in this case, enjoying a little sun without burning, perfecting her Skee-Ball game, beating her husband at 500 Rummy, filling up on seafood, catching up on sleep and reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Thanks to readers who sent in their favorite summer songs, her iPod is locked and loaded for a week of sunset-gazing on an amazing ocean-front deck.

While away, the Word Nymph will be dreaming up all kinds of new wordish topics for her online forum.  She’ll also be leaving behind for her readers a favorite quote each day.  So, if you don’t subscribe, check in periodically and enjoy the words of some of her favorite writers.

If you’d like to suggest topics for future discussion, by all means, send them as Comments.

Thanks for reading.  See you on June 21st.

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June 11, 2010 · 7:19 am

It’s time

This week I have been spending a fair amount of time in the air. 

I don’t travel as often as George Clooney in Up in the Air but, like George’s character, I am robotic in my process.  I go through security like a zombie—that’s the best way to do it, actually—and seldom get rattled.  I often rent cars on the other end and that too has become rhythmic.

I don’t even travel as often as many of my colleagues.  I have one client who flies out of Philly so often she’s been offered the airport employees’ discount at Auntie Anne’s.

Erma Bombeck wrote a popular book entitled, When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home.

While, sadly, I haven’t used my passport in quite some time, Erma’s book title swooshes through my head during some of my busiest domestic travel weeks.  In fact, during time spent recently in a boarding area (no, not that time), I drew up a list of it’s-time-to-go-home triggers.

It’s time to go home when:

  • you check the Departures monitor for your gate and have to look at your boarding pass to remember where you are going
  • you and the US Airways flight attendants recognize each other–and smile fondly
  • you use your travel toiletries more than the ones at home
  • you sit down in a restaurant and look for the seat belt
  • you achieve frequent shopper status at Taxco Sterling and HMS Newsstand (and Auntie Anne’s).  The woman at the Taxco counter at National Airport knows which pieces I already have.
  • you spot the same set of identically dressed adult twins twice (not yet, but it’s bound to happen!)

How about you?  When is it time for you to go home?

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June 9, 2010 · 7:13 am

Joined at the unbelted waist

If ever I was tempted to ask a stranger’s permission to snap a photograph, it was yesterday morning.  I still regret not doing so.  Definitely my loss–and yours. 

I had just taken a seat on the shuttle bus to an early plane when I saw a tall, well-dressed man boarding the bus.  I looked down for a split second, looked up and saw him getting on the bus, again.  Déjà vu?  I rubbed my eyes and shook my head and wished for a second cup of coffee.

I got on the plane and found my seat. 

I saw the same man, I’d say he was between 45 and 50 years old, walking down the aisle.  He was tall, wore a very good charcoal micro-plaid suit, a starched white shirt, gold cufflinks, odd-looking large-framed glasses and a bright red silk tie with a windowpane design and yellow accents.

Right behind him was another man, between 45 and 50.  He was tall, wore a very good charcoal micro-plaid suit, a starched white shirt, gold cufflinks, odd-looking large-framed glasses and a bright red silk tie with a windowpane design and yellow accents.

The two men found their seats across the aisle and one row back from me, but before they sat side by side, each took off his suit coat.  I confirmed the identical designer suits, shirts, ties, cufflinks, pocket squares, glasses, shoes and haircuts.  I strained my neck trying to compare the monograms on their identical French cuffs.

They had identical faces.  They were 45-year-old identical twins.  Dressed identically.

Then, as the suit coats came off, I saw that one was wearing red suspenders and the other, yellow.  Clearly, they were expressing their individuality.  In identical ways.

The plane took off.  As I looked over my shoulder, I was almost willing to risk air safety and turn on my camera phone, just to capture it—two oversized men, seated tightly side by side in Row 6 of a puddle jumper, impeccably and identically dressed, discussing college baseball.  And then, at exactly the same time, they fell asleep, their heads dipped forward, chins resting on their identical red silk ties.

Oh, to know their story.

The only clue they provided — each carried on board a paper shopping bag.  One from Brooks Brothers, the other, from the Supreme Court gift shop.

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