Stranded in Peru: A Remarkable Journey Home
Posted on 04/17/2020, 8:00 AM
In March 2020, the world shut down with surprising speed. Americans who were abroad then either got home just in time, got stuck where they were, or undertook journeys that would have challenged Odysseus. Sometimes, though, the tales of repatriation are far more Kafkaesque than Homeric. One of those intrepid travelers is a young woman named Kera (pictured), a college senior and a friend of my dau...
Samantha Brown Just Made Some Terrific New Study Guides
Posted on 04/17/2020, 2:00 AM
Travel television star and all-around lovely person Samantha Brown is schooling her kids at home right now, like so many of us. So she gets it. She knows that 23 minutes off-duty time can be an incredible gift when you're not only your kids' parent, but also the teacher, the companion, the cook, the cleaner, and the candlestick maker. Or whatever the contemporary equivalent is. To help out, Sam h...
Emirates Airlines' Boarding Procedure Now Includes a Coronavirus Test
Posted on 04/16/2020, 10:00 AM
Though testing is not widespread in the United Arab Emirates yet, the country's flagship airline rolled out testing for passengers at its Dubai hub yesterday. Before boarding a flight to Tunisia, each traveler was administered a finger-prick blood test by the Dubai Health Authority. The results were available 10 minutes later. The airline did not announce whether any passengers were denied boardi...
Team Claims to Have Set a New "Cannonball Run" Record
Posted on 04/13/2020, 6:30 PM
Earning a title that will surely go down in the annals of idiocy, a team of drivers has apparently set a new record for the so-called "Cannonball Run." The feat, based on the 1970s Burt Reynolds comedy in which lunkheads speed across the continental United States to claim the best time, supposedly took place on April 4, at the height of stay-at-home orders for most of the country. The team claims...
CDC Extends No-Sail Order for Cruise Ships Using American Ports
Posted on 04/10/2020, 8:45 AM
Late last night the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended by 100 days its prohibition on cruises using American ports. The original order was supposed to end in mid-April. The new timetable extends the ban until July 19. That's a blow to the industry—most major cruise lines had hoped to suspend operations only through the end of May. The order does not affect all cruises, o...
New York City Will Bounce Back
Posted on 04/06/2020, 8:00 PM
By the end of this week, many of New York's largest indoor and outdoor spaces will be transformed. Officials may need to start using city parks as temporary burial grounds, and already a tent hospital has been erected in the heart of Central Park. And the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center will qualify as the biggest hospital in the United States with 2,500 beds. In this city of superlatives, that...
Governor of South Carolina Bans Hotel Guests from NY, CT, and NJ
Posted on 04/06/2020, 11:30 AM
On Friday, Henry McMaster, the Governor of South Carolina, updated an executive order to include a new prohibition. As of April 3, the state's hotels, motels, campgrounds, and rental properties may no longer house guests from New York, Connecticut, or New Jersey. In addition to questions of constitutionality, this move raises the question: What will happen to those tri-staters who are staying in...
Airline Passenger Data Collection: An Essential Pandemic Tool
Posted on 04/01/2020, 8:00 PM
In the annals of "woulda, coulda, shoulda," a longtime battle between the airlines and the U.S. government has come to the fore, far too late. For the past 15 years, the U.S. government has begged the airlines to furnish contact information for all passengers so that they could be better tracked should they ever be exposed to a virus. But the industry—and its strong lobbying groups—managed to put ...
In Memoriam: Walking Guide Writer William Helmreich
Posted on 03/31/2020, 8:00 AM
In my 20-plus years as a radio talk show host, I've interviewed thousands of people. I'll be honest: I don't remember most of those conversations. But although I interviewed William Helmreich almost exactly three years ago, it feels like it was yesterday. I met him in the lobby of 77 WABC, my radio home, and walked him back to the studio. Along the way, we passed the booth where the station's liv...
Theft of a van Gogh Devastates Two Dutch Museums
Posted on 03/30/2020, 11:00 AM
March 30, 2020, marks Vincent van Gogh's 167th birthday. Coincidentally, in the early hours of March 30, thieves broke into the Singer Laren Museum in the Amsterdam suburbs to steal one of the Dutch painter's works. The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884; detail pictured above) was on loan from the Groninger Museum in the northern Netherlands. The painting was that museum's only piece by v...
