Posts

Showing posts from 2024

Elliott Brack

-
Image
I went to Elliot Brack's funeral yesterday. He was a friend. And he was quite a character. He was one of the first people I met outside of work when I moved to Georgia. He was sort of a variation of the main character of Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full". I used to say that Elliott and I had a 50-50 relationship. He told me what to do and I did it. His 50% was telling me. My 50% was doing it. He was a fixture at my church and involved me in all sorts of things. Including organization of our "Civic Breakfast" where we invited leaders from the community for information and opinions of the community. It goes on and on. There were 260 people attending his funeral. He will be missed. https://www.crowellbrothers.com/obituaries/Elliott-Earl-Brack?obId=48440319
Post a Comment
Read more

Columbia, Guyana, and Suriname

-
Image
We are back-- again. This time from Northern South America. As we planned, we spent midnight Christmas eve in a new and interesting place. We were at 35000 ft above the Eastern Venezuela jungle. We had a flight leaving Bogota at 11:00 PM arriving in Georgetown Guyana at 3:00 AM. We have noticed at lot of what you might call "odd hour" flights outside the US. It makes sense, the Western world (West Europe, US, etc.) connects with these flights. It makes sense to schedule flights as "connecting". On our initial flight from Atlanta to Miami one of the passengers was arrested when we landed. We don't know the details, but it was noteworthy and a minor inconvenience. After we landed, the pilot came on the PA and admonished the cabin crew "Do your Jobs". He left the airplane shortly afterwards while were requested to stay in our seats. Eventually, We are allowed to deplane and the police showed up to deal with the person. Subsequent segments took us to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Central Asia

-
Image
We are back from our most recent crazy trip. This time it was Central Asia and the "five stans" - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. We made all of our objectives. And we have now been to 104 countries. Angie has 95 and I have 94 countries. Together it is 104. These five countries were packed into 12 days, 7 flights, 2 high speed trains, 1 cable car ride, 1 horse ride, and lots of hours in car trips. They are all Muslim countries, but they are better characterized as former Soviet countries. Russian langauge is a strong second language in all of these countries. There isn't much English spoken in any of them. Angie being fluent in Russian made all the difference and did intrepreting for me as well as a couple of British backpackers we met in Turkmenistan. Tajikistan is the Country with the distinct langauage being a derivitive of Persian with the others being Turkic. Ethnically, Southern Uzbecs are Tajik. Interesting, the spelling of many...
Post a Comment
Read more