tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39114055546084812592024-02-14T13:44:35.908-05:00David's Gay DishDavid Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.comBlogger570125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-63429325816338779232014-03-17T16:45:00.000-04:002014-03-17T16:45:08.489-04:00I'm in the Big Apple this week my darlings!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPhCBNT7trm9CyY9YbERMa_zmVspq79SduQvrj2HDmzO-3u3IGHy7bDwNzyw2VQC2dJnoBpjhfztD-cSYtQLSO9PjXGxTvNAHu_dbb10wdllXJtzV-qT2p9I8ny_scJttYxDBd66Y478/s1600/51GqEqc6lKL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPhCBNT7trm9CyY9YbERMa_zmVspq79SduQvrj2HDmzO-3u3IGHy7bDwNzyw2VQC2dJnoBpjhfztD-cSYtQLSO9PjXGxTvNAHu_dbb10wdllXJtzV-qT2p9I8ny_scJttYxDBd66Y478/s1600/51GqEqc6lKL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" height="320" width="248" /></a></div>
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Hey there! I will be in New York all this week with what I call my Double-Header. <a href="http://rizzolibookstore.com/events/" target="_blank">I am at Rizzoli Bookstore at 5:30 P.M. on Thursday, March 20<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span></a> (31 W. 57<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> St between Fifth and Sixth Avenues). I understand there is a lot of scaffolding on the façade. Don’t be intimidated. Come! I am going to read from “How To Hit 70 Doing 100.” We will have fun.</div>
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And then on Friday and Saturday evenings I am at the nightclub “Don’t Tell Mama” with what I call the Cocktail version of “Rent Boy…the Musical.” It’s a frisky one hour version with a four person cast and the great Phil Hall at the piano. We are on at 7:00 P.M. and the club is at 343 W. 46<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> St. That’s Friday, March 21<span class="s1"><sup>st</sup></span> and Saturday March 22. Reservations: 212-757-0788.</div>
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On Friday we are then proceeding to the Hookie Awards, held this year at the One Hotel, 510 W. 42<span class="s1"><sup>nd</sup></span> St. Best escorts in the world competing for prizes. It’s pretty amazing!</div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-78647778005859477742014-03-05T10:27:00.002-05:002014-03-05T10:31:09.735-05:00I'm back my darlings! Book Party Alert!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>I took a little hiatus from posting on David's Gay Dish...but we're back in action my darlings! Just in time for a Book party alert! I am going to be at <a href="http://www.booksandbooks.com/" target="_blank">Books & Books</a> on Lincoln Road with my new book “How To Hit 70 Doing 100” this Thursday, March 6th at 7pm (located at 927 Lincoln Road).</b> As I tell everyone, “Be There or Be Square.” I sent out 450 invitations so we should have a roaring good time. </div>
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<b>I will be at Rizzolli's in New York two weeks later for another event: Thursday, March 20th at 5:30pm. </b>(location: W. 57<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> between Fifth and Sixth Avenues).</div>
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We are also doing a “Cocktail Version” of <a href="http://rentboythemusical.com/" target="_blank">Rent Boy the Musical</a> on Friday and Saturday nights, March 21st and 22nd at<a href="http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/" target="_blank"> Don’t Tell Mama</a> in New York. The shows will be at 7:00pm. Don't Tell Mama is located at 343 W.46<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> St. in the heart of the theater and restaurant part of town. Afterwards you can go to the Hookie Awards at the Out Hotel on West 42<span class="s1"><sup>nd</sup></span> St. on Friday night and then on Saturday get into your gear and hustle over to the Black Party at Roseland. I will be at both these events. Gee, I wish I was going to be seeing you there.</div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-3482960792453447092013-11-27T12:40:00.000-05:002013-11-27T12:40:01.149-05:00Handsomest Man in the World ~ Micheal Kors model<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here it is...Handsomest Man in the World time! I just ran across the close up of the Michael Kors guy, who is usually concealed behind dark glasses. He gets my vote. He actually looks kind of intelligent. Yes, I said, yes.<br />
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<b>Dear David,</b><br />
Who was the best looking man you've ever seen?<br />
<i>~Youth Wants to Know</i><br />
<br />
<b>Dear Youth Wants to Know,</b><br />
It was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001028/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm" target="_blank">Maxwell Caulfield</a>. An English actor who came to fame in London, then came to New York. So good looking and tall, great body. Appeared onstage completely naked. Went to Hollywood and did "Grease" and haven't really heard of him since. We photographed him (dressed) for one of my books and he was very charming. I don't know why he didn't make it big in Hollywood, he had it all. I'm sure he's somewhere out there doing fine. I know he married a somewhat older English actress and Hollywood probably wasn't for him. It isn't for everyone.<br />
<br />David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-7003564781567024432013-11-22T14:19:00.001-05:002013-11-22T14:20:07.057-05:00Travel Diary ~ Lingering in Lima Peru<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvB0cKz_BFLABFByY9cY3_aO5J425HgDSy3w2KUkFA8-FcfoP3FbhoGqB9lZPQIbfZpenQNW-d1Ql-Cp1HJu-uh3ydVs_GPpc3dZ7-4apEl6SfoTKp60aQSbMaQkn5z3C_CFidcZVuXLg/s1600/cathedral_lima_peru_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvB0cKz_BFLABFByY9cY3_aO5J425HgDSy3w2KUkFA8-FcfoP3FbhoGqB9lZPQIbfZpenQNW-d1Ql-Cp1HJu-uh3ydVs_GPpc3dZ7-4apEl6SfoTKp60aQSbMaQkn5z3C_CFidcZVuXLg/s640/cathedral_lima_peru_01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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I met Mr.
C. in Lima as it is midway between us.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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About a five hour flight for each of us. One of my friends<o:p></o:p></div>
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had recently been in Lima and liked it very much. On the<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pacific as it is, he felt it compared in many ways to Los<o:p></o:p></div>
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Angeles in weather-wise and its upscale section, Miraflores,<o:p></o:p></div>
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was for him very much better parts of L.A. also. He gave<o:p></o:p></div>
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me a list of restaurants and nightspots he had visited and<o:p></o:p></div>
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information on hotels and shopping high points. I had<o:p></o:p></div>
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Left my Peru guidebook and the hotel Antigua Mira Flores
sounded<o:p></o:p></div>
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like a very good choice. A former palatial home, now extended<o:p></o:p></div>
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to include additional rooms and at a very encouraging
nightly<o:p></o:p></div>
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prices. Overall, prices in Lima are a good bit lower than in<o:p></o:p></div>
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Miami and much lower than Brazilian cities like Rio de
Janeiro<o:p></o:p></div>
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and Sao Paulo.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I set out
on a Sunday afternoon so as to be in Lima in the<o:p></o:p></div>
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morning the next day when Mr. C. arrived. Lima and Miami are<o:p></o:p></div>
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in the same time zone and a car had been sent for me so my<o:p></o:p></div>
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passage through the very crowded airport was uneventful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although it was ten o’clock at night the airport was jammed
and<o:p></o:p></div>
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many planes were arriving. And as in all South American
cities<o:p></o:p></div>
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the entire family is always there to greet each arrival. A
mad<o:p></o:p></div>
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house but we escaped, got to the small and pleasant hotel
and<o:p></o:p></div>
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although my room wasn’t the one requested I fell into bed,
deciding </div>
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to straighten things out with the front desk in the morning.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the morning I called Mr. C. at a time when I thought<o:p></o:p></div>
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he should have cleared customs to reassure him that a car
had<o:p></o:p></div>
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been sent for him. The same driver as I had had the night
be-<o:p></o:p></div>
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fore. About an hour later I went down to the desk and heard
one<o:p></o:p></div>
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of the receptionists mentioning my name. She was on the
phone<o:p></o:p></div>
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with the driver who could not find Mr. C. I told her to
reassure<o:p></o:p></div>
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him his passenger was there as I had spoken to him at the
airport<o:p></o:p></div>
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earlier. I think called Mr. C. again and as I spoke to him
he<o:p></o:p></div>
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encountered the driver. This kind of contretemps was to
become<o:p></o:p></div>
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familiar in our days in Lima.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Peru is a country...and Lima is a city.. .that has too many<o:p></o:p></div>
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things unexplained. It’s history, it’s population, certainly<o:p></o:p></div>
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it’s traffic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I waited at the lobby entrance until Mr. C. arrived. Neither<o:p></o:p></div>
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he or the driver could explain how they had missed each
other at<o:p></o:p></div>
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the airport for more than an hour. Mr. C. suspected the
driver<o:p></o:p></div>
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wasn’t actually there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We ate lunch across the street in a quite smart restaurant<o:p></o:p></div>
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and then walked down to the edge of the city. No one told me<o:p></o:p></div>
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about Lima. It is quite dramatic. it is~ perched on a
perhaps<o:p></o:p></div>
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ten story tall]~ cliff, very raw and red with few ways to
reach<o:p></o:p></div>
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the beach below. The night before I had come in from the<o:p></o:p></div>
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airport along this beach and then drove up a kind of gully<o:p></o:p></div>
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that ran up into the heart of Mlraflores. We now walked back<o:p></o:p></div>
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to the cliff edge, across a bridge that spanned this gully
and<o:p></o:p></div>
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on to where a great hotel rose high above the cliff and a<o:p></o:p></div>
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very ultra-smart shopping mall descended downward. All the<o:p></o:p></div>
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smart international stores were represented here but not the<o:p></o:p></div>
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luxury tops like Prada and Bulgari. These may have been
across<o:p></o:p></div>
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the street at the lavish hotel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What one is struck by immediately in Lima is the traffic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The streets are packed with taxis and buses. If there is an<o:p></o:p></div>
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official public transportation system it is not readily
discern-<o:p></o:p></div>
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ible. There are large buses, small buses, and miniscule
buses. </div>
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They line up and a kind of town crier stands by the door calling
out</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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their destinations. People cram in. In the very small buses
one<o:p></o:p></div>
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can see people so tightly packed in they cannot sit up
straight.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are also few traffic lights by most big city standards.
The </div>
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many taxes also range from small to smaller and they have no meters. </div>
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You
must lean in and bargain with the driver as to how many soles </div>
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you are willing
to pay to reach your address. There are about two </div>
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and a half soles to the dollar. We found drivers were very consistent </div>
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and rides were five or ten or
fifteen soles for the most part. There </div>
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wasn’t a lot of argie-bargie with the
driver about what you were going to pay.</div>
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That night at the hotel in the room we had been given as<o:p></o:p></div>
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originally reserved we discovered that the guests were for
the<o:p></o:p></div>
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most part young back-packers on their way to Cuzco and Machu<o:p></o:p></div>
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Picchu. They were laughing, talking and marching about until<o:p></o:p></div>
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late in the evening. In the old mansion walls were not thick
and<o:p></o:p></div>
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floorboards creaked. Then in the night whoever was overhead
began<o:p></o:p></div>
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a series of hurried and panicky steps across their room. A<o:p></o:p></div>
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pause. Then hurried and panicky steps back. A pause. A
return.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A pause. They darted back and forth most of the night. Pacing?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Repacking? What. I was tempted to go upstairs, rap on the
door<o:p></o:p></div>
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and ask what the hell they were doing. I really wanted to
know<o:p></o:p></div>
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what was prompting that scuttling to one side of the room,
the<o:p></o:p></div>
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pause and then the scuttling back. I didn’t. But at breakfast<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr. C. announced, “We must go to another hotel. This hotel
does<o:p></o:p></div>
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not have enough privacy.” He was right. It was as though the<o:p></o:p></div>
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other guests were omnipresent, whether in our room or not.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We struck out and went to the Doubletree El Pardo Hotel,<o:p></o:p></div>
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not too far. We called first, they had a room, we walked
over<o:p></o:p></div>
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and booked it, then went back and checked out. The very nice<o:p></o:p></div>
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girls at the desk were sorry to see us go but didn’t
question<o:p></o:p></div>
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our departure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr. C. was much happier at the El Pardo. It had a gym, a<o:p></o:p></div>
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pool on the roof and certainly privacy. You could not hear
the<o:p></o:p></div>
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people in the next room. We explored about, made a
reservation<o:p></o:p></div>
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at the Huaca Pucliana restaurant and examined the historical<o:p></o:p></div>
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site. Here there were the remains of a giant pyramid built
of<o:p></o:p></div>
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brick sometime between the third and fourth century A.D.
Long<o:p></o:p></div>
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before the Incas.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What you also learn in Peru is that there was a high level<o:p></o:p></div>
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of civilization before the Spaniards arrived in the 15th
century<o:p></o:p></div>
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and knocked it all apart. The Incas were only the dominant<o:p></o:p></div>
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culture in the last century before the Spanish invasion.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Before then there any number of other cultures who developed<o:p></o:p></div>
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the use of terraces for the cultivation of foodstuffs which<o:p></o:p></div>
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allowed them to live high in the mountains and on the steep<o:p></o:p></div>
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hillsides that make up much of northern Peru. I am just
beginning </div>
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to understand the geography of South America, but on the Pacific </div>
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side
of the Andes Chile to the south and Peru to the north dominate </div>
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the coast.
Bolivia is inland from Peru with only a small coastal outlet. </div>
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Then there is Colombia on the bulge
to</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the north and Ecuador on the very, top. The result is that
Peru<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ranges from mountains and valleys down to deserts and under<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
t~-ie Incas the culture also extended across the Andes into <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the tropical forests of the upper Amazon. They had no
written<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
language or use of money but kept track of the work people
did<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and they shared food and building materials and other
materials<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
according to how much work they had contributed. The family
was<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
paramount in the providing of workers. They had no horses
but<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
shipped some materials long distances by rafts with sails up
and<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
down the coast. The Spaniards pretty much demolished this
culture </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and diseases desimated the native population.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I should point out that in the streets of Lima I was. among<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the tallest people. There are an enormous number of tourists
in<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Peru, passing through Lima on their way to Macchu Picchu and<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
other historic spots. They and the many men in suits and
ties<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
about were taller. Another some 50 per cent were obviously
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Inca descendants; much shorter, large features, prominent
noses.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It almost had the feeling of an occupied country. You felt
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
native peoples were definitely here and very much in
evidence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In other South American countries I have been in the
indigenous<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
population seems much more assimilated. Even in San Salvador<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bahia in Brazil with its large black population the people<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
seemed to know each other, eat lunch together, be very much<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
more mixed together. Here, no.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At dinner that night at Huaca Pucilana we saw the monied<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lima-ites and well-dressed tourists. It really wasn’t like<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Buenos Aires or Rio, which seem much more European. This was<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
more provincial. Lima is a city of the upper class and then
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
others.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wednesday we took a taxi down to the old city to the great<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
central square where Pizzaro founded the original city. I
should<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
also add I found the weather brisk and overcast, very much
like<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
San Francisco. Lima is kind of a mix of San Francisco and
Rome<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
50 years ago. The chill of the Pacific and the hazardous madness<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of the traffic. In Rome years ago I always crossed the streets<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
implanting myself in the center of seven or eight people.
That<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
way someone else would be hit first. And there were enough
of us<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to intimidate the driver. Here one had to do the same thing
and<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
even so there were still looneys veering madly around the
corner<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
you least expected them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the vast cathedral they wanted ten soles to enter. I said<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to the ticket taker, “What do you think Jesus would have
thought </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of having to pay to enter a church?” He looked at me and
said,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You’re still beautiful and in good health. What do you have
to<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
complain about?” I said, ”Here’s your ten soles.” The church<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
has enormous side chapels filled with elaborate carvings and
gilt<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and paintings. Amazing what the Catholic church created here
in<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
this distant wilderness so long ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From the
cathedral we proceeded to the post office near<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the corner of the square. An amazing place I thought was
some<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
kind of Victorian shopping center. Very ornate facades on
each<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
side of a passage lined with tourist shops. Above are the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
postal offices. All this in a kind of orangey pink like some<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
big frou-frou cake. At the far end the real business of the
post<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
office was compress into a quite small space where you could<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
mail packages, pick up mail and buy stamps. Ahead of me at
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stamp lady were four German tourists arguing violently with
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stamp vendor. She finally reluctantly returned a miniscule
coin<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to them. I spoke Spanish to her and she looked at Mr. C. all<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the time. “She doesn’t understand a work I’m saying, does
she?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I demanded of him. He answered, “No, but she says you’re
cute.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess being tall and blond is the way to get ahead in
Lima.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We then visited the former train station, at which one<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
descends a very steep flight of stairs to a waiting room
with<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a wonderful stained glass ceiling and out onto the quay.
There<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
are no trains anymore but there is a narrow river valley
behind<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lima right here and the original tracks ran along the edge
of<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the river. All this is preserved but unused now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After this visits to two other churches which were closed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
for lunch (yes!) and then a terrible lunch in another
historic<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
square. After this a long and futile search for the national<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
art museum which when finally found only had one room open
with<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
contemporary artists. This was as much as Mr. C. was willing<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to contribute to my pursuit of historic and artistic Lima.
We<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
went back to the hotel and I wrote postcards and Mr. C. went<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to the gym and the pool. Gym:good. Pool:freezing. On to
dinner<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
at a quite nice restaurant directly across from the hjotel.
The<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
food in Lima is its big attraction. It really has very good<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
seafood and great variety on the menus, unlike the other<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
side of the Andes which is very meat oriented.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I forgot to mention about the Cathedral. There was<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a chapel dedicated to Pizzaro where his tomb is found. On
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
walls were photographs of his skeleton and the its condition<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
separated to pre-his murder and post his murder. He was
killed in<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the streets by his own people but my historical readings
haven’t<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
discovered why yet. Pre showed that he had spinal deviation,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stuff like that. Post chowed all the cuts on the bones from
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
murder. Pius very lengthy medical reports on both evaluations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found this curious and somewhat out of place in an
atmosphere<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of worship. Overall there wasn’t much feeling of piety~ in
this<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
very large cathedral, although I believe Perui s a very
Catholic<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
country.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday we walked down through the town and down the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
narrow valley that led down to the seashore. Heading to the
res—<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
La Rosa Nautica for lunch. Down and down we went. Really a
long<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and steep descent to reach the shore. Steps down through
grass<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
covered hills on each side of the highway that, rushes up
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
valley to the upper level. At the bottom I told Mr. C. that
I<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
was definitely to climbing back up, although there were
quite<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a few people doing so. We walked past the surfers, hurling
themselves </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
into the sea. My feeling that the weather was brisk was confirmed by
all</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of them in their wet suits. There were a number of people in<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
shorts walking about Lima and I counted them. “Four” I would<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
shout. “Five”. I don’t think I ever got above five and I
think~<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
they were all tourists. My. C. was striding about in a
T-shirt<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
while I was enveloped in a jacket and sweater but he is very<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
hot-blooded.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some of the
surfers had their wet suits peeled down and they<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Definitely did not have the kind of bodies one expects to
see on </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
our own East Coast. The surge was not too formidable either. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A number
were going in with instructors. A young woman </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
seemed to be the most able.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our restaurant, La Rosa Nautica, was a kind of ornamental<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Victorian gazebo at the end of a long stone pier out into
the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
water. Very charming, very expensive and the food wasn’t
great.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may be a tourist attraction here in Lima rather than
where<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lima-zines go. I kind of confirmed this as the taxi driver
wanted<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
15 soles to get back on top of the cliffs. Expensive here.
When<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
we demurred he said, ”You just ate here. You can afford it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Getting back up was major as the coast road has few turnarounds<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and had to go about two miles south to turn around and come
five<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
miles back before finding one of the few streets that mount
to<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the top. The coast road is very cut off from the cliff top.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We then went
to the shopping mall and went wild and returned<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to our hotel with the booty. That evening we ate a restaurant
we<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
had noticed during the day. La Tiendacita Blanca. Not fancy
but<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
very good food. I love a restaurant that is not crowded,
quiet,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and brightly lit enough so I can really see my food.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I should mention that our hotel was near the John F. Kennedy<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
park and we were surprised to see many stray cats in the
park.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a smallish park, very manicured with many benches and
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
children’s play areas. The cats all look clean, well fed,
calm<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and very used to all the people around. They sit under the
benches<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where people are perching ignoring them. There must be
people<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
coming to feed them every day. At another park there was a
:1:11<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
yellow cat sprawled out on the sidewalk sleeping near the entrance<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
as many people walked around. I’ve seen dogs do that in<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
South America but never cats. A first.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Friday we
were allowed to stay in the hotel until we went<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to the airport about six o’clock in the evening. We sort of<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
hung around. Mr. C. studied for a test he has coming up. I<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
rad and snoozed getting ready for my overnight flight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The airport
was an astounding mess and our plan to have<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
dinner there went awry. Mr. C. checked in as his flight was<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
just before ten o’clock. I was not able to check in for my<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
11:30 flight as no American Airlines employees were there.
We<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
sat together and waited until they finally showed up but
then he<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
had to go through passport and go to his flight. I was able
to<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
check in and dashed through passport to get to his departure
gate<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but just missed him. My flight wad delayed an hour. These
over-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
nights back to Miami are always the flight from hell. But I<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
departed. Called him once back in Miami. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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And that my darlings, is Lima, Peru!<o:p></o:p></div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-8727469903333529812013-11-11T14:00:00.000-05:002013-11-12T14:40:18.809-05:00My boyfriend travels a lot for his job ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQipsCaUqAodvCcqvvOCU0xskEiNaltxJgArIPBttnEsE7Jg_wh_UAbF0TdyKeANodkZXNYtmLyBYhkLucp2U_p6Bq37c7cBTt4wI0y8PSQ66k4ALZpznFOOGO3yD95U5_i_92-lyjbfY/s1600/5629714618_ConfusedQ_answer_4_xlarge.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQipsCaUqAodvCcqvvOCU0xskEiNaltxJgArIPBttnEsE7Jg_wh_UAbF0TdyKeANodkZXNYtmLyBYhkLucp2U_p6Bq37c7cBTt4wI0y8PSQ66k4ALZpznFOOGO3yD95U5_i_92-lyjbfY/s400/5629714618_ConfusedQ_answer_4_xlarge.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></b>
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<b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Dear David,</span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">My boyfriend travels a lot for his job and lately I've gotten kind of obsessed with the idea that he is cheating on me while he travels. I call his room at the hotels he stays at way too much, trying to catch someone else answering the phone. I call the desk and ask if his "friend" has gone to the room. They always say "no" in a wondering voice. I have even thought of just flying to where he is and showing up unexpectedly. Is that crazy?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>~Dee Sturbed</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>Dear Dee,</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Yes. This is crazy. We only imagine each others behavior what we are capable of doing ourselves. Should he be worried that you are fooling around while he is out of town? You should think about this. Sounds like maybe you're the one who wants to be the "cheatin' heart."</span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-21455363395696037822013-10-28T11:00:00.000-04:002013-10-28T11:00:09.791-04:00My lover likes to...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1FEAT5FYFzJNPjrC9PZPvyH4w2O0MApGit2uKhFuBoC9OcK2NloluKTiY28H9XyxFJwDiEdMJMy_djekyNIhVSluO1d1NpdPWkGGzeq5WX0emTEfNNZsjIZHaMvJ78JxY_cb3QvyA0wk/s1600/PT-Phone_Booth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1FEAT5FYFzJNPjrC9PZPvyH4w2O0MApGit2uKhFuBoC9OcK2NloluKTiY28H9XyxFJwDiEdMJMy_djekyNIhVSluO1d1NpdPWkGGzeq5WX0emTEfNNZsjIZHaMvJ78JxY_cb3QvyA0wk/s400/PT-Phone_Booth.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<b>Dear David,</b><br />
My lover likes to have sex in public places. I don't mean gay bars. I mean places like the movies. I am afraid of getting in trouble. What do you think?<br />
<i>~Fun Shy</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>Dear Fun Shy,</b><br />
I used to have a lover that favored phone booths. Fortunately, or unfortunately, they are few and far between these days. Listen, lovers are hard to come by. I recommend you never leave the house without carrying a large "raincoat". You'll be fine. Just keep covered up.David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-72189396275691323542013-10-18T11:30:00.000-04:002013-10-18T11:30:02.137-04:00I'm FALLing for fashion!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglXcYo_wsdywhzI0SIT8ovXgnIiTpspEC5EkrPHXca2cAwgsO5ltEWOAIWBAOo-M6oeM1UH1M9OS80XBd2RV8ZkwxRNZJWBUlNMG0imhXqNZHr0xNbFQsCNdXSxTi6M2qS-iSw6zEbox0/s1600/photo-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglXcYo_wsdywhzI0SIT8ovXgnIiTpspEC5EkrPHXca2cAwgsO5ltEWOAIWBAOo-M6oeM1UH1M9OS80XBd2RV8ZkwxRNZJWBUlNMG0imhXqNZHr0xNbFQsCNdXSxTi6M2qS-iSw6zEbox0/s400/photo-2.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">My fashion direction for autumn. This looks great. The shorter jacket. I am doing it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Two nono's:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQBM2XtFXx3vBVGRYbIT9U7iR7sZn2v7VoCWhgFtPVsoYkKJ6Hdh-Je60Etj4u3sN379jX7VMHjR6A0FagGjw16UsyPsM5omXvohFvt2_1dE-36SEGKnoYJ1F9x0Ekl5U7b23iyQYw0U0/s1600/photo-3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQBM2XtFXx3vBVGRYbIT9U7iR7sZn2v7VoCWhgFtPVsoYkKJ6Hdh-Je60Etj4u3sN379jX7VMHjR6A0FagGjw16UsyPsM5omXvohFvt2_1dE-36SEGKnoYJ1F9x0Ekl5U7b23iyQYw0U0/s400/photo-3.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">1. Tom Ford thinks men would be wearing fur coats. Please don't. It's as true for men as for women. Furs make you look ten years older. Avoid them.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDVh08EDDynY_WeiWHwEu-7q0Ahp9WuFEIxSm9-3SswxnA6NmALpFaZ9xGE7V2th0SOUJyi3XT1DbNo73MAZY787CshMa7xImAmdjvSGNA0FAk-fCyR2qpWPLELKhZa1L76PFNujPDjY/s1600/photo-4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDVh08EDDynY_WeiWHwEu-7q0Ahp9WuFEIxSm9-3SswxnA6NmALpFaZ9xGE7V2th0SOUJyi3XT1DbNo73MAZY787CshMa7xImAmdjvSGNA0FAk-fCyR2qpWPLELKhZa1L76PFNujPDjY/s400/photo-4.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">2. Am I the only one who is very tired of Kate moss? Please, enough Kate. Retire.</span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-1134647843848328182013-10-16T10:00:00.000-04:002013-10-17T22:21:38.956-04:00Are models getting sexier?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWtT3Jmm-AdNKk3L3X87dydgMfORYuIJXtL0KxFNkr2zJRf9Tz23PlK_vmljnBnTIHw7V1js45GusIaLV-09vcHpOjIGF7X_9YEDAVfjXPmUkPko8xQZZBjFsDxH2R3OQDVecjW9LuO7I/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-10-17+at+10.13.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWtT3Jmm-AdNKk3L3X87dydgMfORYuIJXtL0KxFNkr2zJRf9Tz23PlK_vmljnBnTIHw7V1js45GusIaLV-09vcHpOjIGF7X_9YEDAVfjXPmUkPko8xQZZBjFsDxH2R3OQDVecjW9LuO7I/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-10-17+at+10.13.53+PM.png" width="238" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">My friends, you haven't seen me for a while as I have been undergoing some dental surgery and am missing a front tooth. I would rather you not see me looking like a jack-o-lantern, even if Halloween is approaching.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Here's a little something for you this week to take a break from my travel journals. Ads and models from current magazine who are very sexy. Are models getting sexier? It kind of looks like it. Good.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-79230165384731137782013-10-11T10:45:00.000-04:002013-10-11T10:45:00.427-04:00"I'll Never Forget When David said..." ~ Memories from my "Mad Men" Days ~ Part 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">A photo of me from my "Mad Men" days</span></div>
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Hello my darlings! Below we've saved the best for last of the staff member memories from a notebook I discovered titled “I’ll Never Forget When David…”. My staff gave me at a farewell party when I was leaving Grey Advertising to go to France to work for McCann-Erickson. Leaving my client Revlon behind to work for L’Oreal, their big competitor in Europe. Please click <a href="http://davidsgaydish.blogspot.com/2013/10/ill-never-forget-when-david-said.html"><span class="s1">here</span></a> for Part 1 and <a href="http://davidsgaydish.blogspot.com/2013/10/ill-never-forget-when-david-said_10.html" target="_blank">here</a> for Part 2 incase you missed it.</div>
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<b>"I'll never forget when David and I were in the elevator.</b> I was in some man's shirt, my hair was a mess, he looked at me (I had a violent hangover) and said, "Anita, promise me you'll never get a tattoo."</div>
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<i>~Anita</i></div>
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<b>"I'll never forget when you called me Wallushka</b>...I guess it was my entry into the world of FASHION and BEAUTY!!"</div>
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<i>~Wally</i></div>
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<i>P.S. </i>I come from a third world country. Heavy accent. I am not gay and I am in Fashion and Beauty! Like Mahatma Gandhi exchanging recipe with Julia Child!</div>
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<b>I'll never forget when David said, Well </b><i><b>you</b></i><b> don't look scared anymore."</b> And I watched as the confidence and support David gave me was something he shared with everyone around him."</div>
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<i>~Steve</i></div>
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I hope you had a few smiles and laughs. Have a wonderful weekend my darlings!</div>
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David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-20781751476150899012013-10-10T10:45:00.000-04:002013-10-10T10:45:00.139-04:00"I'll Never Forget When David said..." ~ Memories from my "Mad Men" Days ~ Part 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello my darlings! Below are more staff member memories from a notebook I just discovered titled </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’ll Never Forget When David…”. My staff gave me at a farewell party when I was leaving Grey </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advertising to go to France to work for McCann-Erickson. Leaving my client Revlon behind to work </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for L’Oreal, their big competitor in Europe. Please click <a href="http://davidsgaydish.blogspot.com/2013/10/ill-never-forget-when-david-said.html" target="_blank">here</a> for Part 1 incase you missed it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"I'll never forget when I met David!</b> My friend Vicky had absolutely rhapsodized about him for so </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">long that I'd shake her for the "dailies."..."Well, my new Creative Director David said today..."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally he interviewed me. He said, "My dear, I think that the secret to doing great fashion and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">beauty advertising is just taking very seriously the relationship between men and women." I said,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Well gosh I think that sounds impossible!" He said, "I guess we'll hire you then."</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~Anne</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"I'll never forget the day David hired me. </b>He was preparing for a trip around the world, Bombay, etc. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We gathered around a desktop filled with papers, magazines, beauty products. One short phone call </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to Personnel. "This is David Leddick I would like to hire Miss Janet Modine...(squawking voice)..."Yes, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">yes. That's all well and fine but I would like to hire her." Although it was short I will always remember </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that as one of the best days of my life.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~Janet</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"I'll never forget when I showed and inadequate layout to David </b>and he said, "We'll take a <u>little</u> piece </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of paper and I'll show you how we do it in advertising." (Sounding mysterious)</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~Roman</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stay tuned tomorrow for more “I’ll Never Forget When David…”. I saved the best ones for last!</span></div>
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David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-43093729441319877112013-10-09T10:30:00.000-04:002013-10-10T10:40:53.141-04:00"I'll Never Forget When David said..." ~ Memories from my "Mad Men" Days ~ Part 1<h3 class="r" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">A photo of me above in my “Mad Men” Advertising days</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Hello my darlings! I just discovered a notebook my staff gave me at a farewell party </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">when I was leaving Grey Advertising to go to France to work for McCann-Erickson. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Leaving my client Revlon behind to work for on L’Oreal, Their big competitor in Europe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The notebook is title “I’ll Never Forget When David…” and each staff member wrote a </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">little memory. The only reason I share it with you is many of them are very funny, and of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">course I remember none of them occurring. Here goes…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“I’ll Never Forget When David said “No matter what happens, it’s only advertising.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">~Dolores</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“I’ll Never Forget When David advised me that “Stardom is the only way out.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">~Casey</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“I’ll Never Forget When David said that the reason he was spending $700 a day on </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">living expenses while we were traveling was, “Well, I have to stay alive.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">~Casey</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“I’ll Never Forget When I said to David, “You spent over $800 on limos! How can I </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">charge the client? And he said “Well Bob, next time I’ll take smaller limos.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">~Bob</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And there is more where that came from! Stay tuned tomorrow and Friday for more </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“I’ll Never Forget When David said…”, they get even better as the week goes on!</span></div>
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David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-8741709028848766532013-10-01T10:30:00.000-04:002013-10-01T10:30:27.039-04:00Travel Diary ~ Cruising Around Curacao <div class="p1">
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<b>Curacao is an island with a lot of blonds. Dutch blonds. I’ll bet you don’t even know where it is. </b>There are a string of Dutch connected islands down through the Caribbean ending with Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire in a row just 30 some miles off the Venezuelan coast. I was in Aruba last year and it was wholly dedicated to the American tourist industry, large hotels and a mass of North American clientele.</div>
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Curacao is quite different. Similar in shape to Aruba… long, skinny; some 37 miles by eight… but tourism is not its principal business. Its large harbor destined it to become an oil refinery center where Shell Oil brought Venezuelan oil to be refined and then shipped to other countries. Tourism is fourth in importance in the islands business scheme.</div>
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This has left Willemstad, the capital, relatively untouched. There is one perhaps eight-story hotel in the middle of the old fort and that is it for height. All other hotels are in old buildings and only a few stories high. Willemstad retains its many different colored buildings along the wide channel that leads to the bay. All of them built several hundred years ago; this is the traditional Holland of “Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates” except that the channel is never going to freeze over. It is mucho hot in Curacao.</div>
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<b>I arrived on Curacao about 3:00 p.m.; a short two hour and a half flight from Miami, The same length flight as the one to New York. Mr. C. had arrived via Panama about noon. </b>Driving in from the airport we soared high over Willemstad and the entry channel to the bay on a very high bridge. Built very high to let the gigantic tankers passing into the bay clear beneath. Down below I could see the peaked gables and bright pastels of the houses lining the channel.<b> Really charming, really “another time”, nothing like any other Caribbean island I had seen.</b></div>
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<b>Arriving at the Hotel Avila I found an old yellow mansion, the former Governor’s residence. Larger additions stand on either side but the old mansion remains intact. This is where Simon Bolivar, the great South American liberator, stayed when in exile.</b></div>
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This part of Willemstad is where the city first pushed outside the old protected walls. Onto a slip of land that stood between the Caribbean and the bay. On the sea side the hotel built a promontory and a long pier crossing it like a ‘T.” This created two small semi-circle bays, which have been filled with sand to create beaches. On the end of the promontory is a nightclub called The Blues. The two beaches, quite small, are filled with Dutch burgers.</div>
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<b>The other guests were almost 100% from Holland. Upper middle class people divided between honeymooners and young couples with small children and an older group of 50 to 60 year olds. The women wore not revealing two-piece bikinis. The men wore the quite brief trunks we all wore some fifty years ago. Only some of the really young boys wore long, flappy trunks that are now always worn on American beaches by men.</b></div>
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<b>The Dutch have better bodies than Americans. </b>None of the older men were very overweight; the younger men were all very trim. Again in the style of the 1950’s. No gym built bodies here. There were a couple of married men showing off good-looking athletic bodies but it made me wonder, “Who for?” Everyone at Hotel Avila was going to sleep with the person they came with. Looking about me I wondered, “Is there an upper class in Holland, or is this it?” It’s hard to imagine the Dutch as big-spending, country-hopping, nightclub-dwelling people. I had another thought looking at, for the most part, good-looking women. “English women never know what to do with their hair. Dutch women know but think it would be in bad taste to do it.” A very conservative culture. Everyone there could easily have been at a hotel in the 1950’s.</div>
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<b>I was struck by how young some of the honeymooners were. Very early 20’s, perhaps younger. When my oldest brother married immediately out of the Naval Academy he was 22 and his bride was 19. No one lived together before they were married. These young people seemed similar. For the first time I realized how slightly embarrassing it might be to be a very young newlywed bride and everyone looking at you and thinking you have just lost your virginity. Here in Curacao one thought of these things. Thoughts that would never come up back in the United States where people marry AFTER they have had several children.</b></div>
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Our first night we ate at the hotel. The next day we ventured forth into the capital, Willemstad. The greeter at the hotel said it was about a ten-minute walk into the heart of town. As we sauntered along it certainly took more than half an hour.</div>
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Lining the way along Perstraat were many charming small tile-roofed houses in the varying states of decay. Directly across from the hotel was one I wanted to buy immediately. “Charm!” it screamed.</div>
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Along the way were many other houses in various stages of renovation and redecoration. The small Dutch buildings were being repainted in turquoise, with white trim, bright yellow, baby blue, lavender, you name it.</div>
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<b>The light in Curacao is very brilliant. The trees are vividly green, the sea a sharp and strong blue. The sidewalks, a disaster of narrow and broken tiles, made walking difficult. Watch your step!</b></div>
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<b>Between two buildings down a narrow alley I suddenly saw the ocean. Waves were breaking right at the end of the little passage. Really, Truly amazing. </b>At the end of the little walkway the waves were cresting and tossing their foam. We walked down and saw that the houses on each side were built right to the edge of the rocky reef. No beach, no slope, no gradient. This was the edge of land. In stormy weather the waves must rise and break right into the walled courtyards behind each building. It was something I had never seen before, surrealistic and great.</div>
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In town we walked through a number of streets lined with cafes. In one were two older men looking like two rugged and ravaged sea captains. Large faces, rocky profiles, as though carved out of stone. It was impossible to imagine how they might have looked when they were young. These were faces one would never see in the United States.</div>
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At the end of the street we came upon an entrance to the bridge that crosses the channel to the other side of Willemstad. This side of the channel in Willemstad is called Punda, or point. Across the bridge is Otrobanda or other side. The bridge is called the Queen Emma Bridge and is supported by boats, leading it to rise and fall and move as one walks across it. At the Punda end a small attached house contains a bridge attendant who can detach the bridge and motor it out of the way for passing ships. We saw only smaller yachts being passed through but it must be amazing when it swings completely open, lines up with the other side of the channel and allows some giant ship through. Seen from a distance, the ships are taller than the buildings on either side.</div>
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<b>This bridge is an amazing construction, another somewhat surreal aspect of Willemstad and Curacao. </b>In a photo I saw later in a museum, cars were once allowed to cross. We crossed on foot with many others to the other side. We stopped for a snack at an outdoor restaurant and then proceeded to the Kura Hulanda museum, just up the short street going uphill. K<b>ura Hulanda houses a collection of African sculpture and art collected by a wealthy Dutch businessman and placed here, as well as many artifacts left behind by slavery. The museum broke my heart. It has to be the saddest museum in the world. Curacao was a landing depot when slaves were brought from Africa. The Dutch were major importers of slaves and here in Curacao they were restored to health after a hellish sea voyage and then resold to Brazil and the United States who used slaves to a large degree, as well as other countries.</b></div>
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The museum is a circle of one-story buildings, the bulk of them with the artifact collection. They surround a large open courtyard where the slaves were assembled for sale. One building contains old engravings, slave irons and below floor level a reproduction of the hold of a slave ship. <b>People were forced into spaces three feet high and sat with someone between their legs. They were unable to stand up or fully lie down. </b>At no point is there an explanation of how they were fed or how they went to the toilet. Many died. They were handled as not even being as important as sheep or horses.</div>
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<b>Human beings’ inability to consider other humans, let’s even say “living beings”, is horrifying. You keep asking yourself “How could they?” But they did, and they were Dutch.</b></div>
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In the engravings, too, one sees the cruel punishments of hangings, whippings, and slashings. An American soldier who joined forces in Surinam to control slave uprisings wrote about his experiences and there are engravings and quotes from his diaries in the museum. <b>He wrote at one point “This awful treatment is necessary for the overall good.” The Catholic Church condoned slavery and many slave dealers quoted the Bible to justify their actions.</b> <b>So much for biblical quotations. I wonder what people who quote the Bible to confront gay rights would make of all this?</b></div>
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<b>I, of course, have known of slavery and read about it at some length but when you come up against it with this physicality it’s staggering. Something like the German death camps in World War II. “How could they? How could they?”</b></div>
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After the museum we wandered down and through the Rif Fort on the point where this side of the channel meets the sea. From the fort there is another street leading to the waterfront where the tour ships come in.<b> This street is lined with all the name shops from all over the world: Hilfiger, Swarovski, The Gap, shoes, clothes, jewelry, even a Starbucks--everything to entice that Yankee dollar. </b>This is the international face one finds everywhere in the world. It was particularly strange and a little spooky here in this very unusual world.</div>
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<b>We returned across the floating bridge, leaping to get aboard just as it was swinging out to let a boat through. Mr. C. tried to restrain me but I leapt across the gap and then he had to also.</b> We shopped a bit on the narrow streets on the Punda side of the bridge. Narrow rectangular streets where we found the Ralph Lauren shop closed for Roshashana.</div>
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Back at the hotel we called the real estate agent whose number was on the “For Sale” sign on the small house across the way. <b>It is part of a larger parcel of land with a second house on it and it was 1,700,000 gulders (or florins, you can use either name for local money), which is about $700,000. That’s a lot of moola! Curacao is already heading towards boomtown island status.</b></div>
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The agent had another small house for sale down the street so after eating at a nearby restaurant we set out to look for it. The desk at the hotel said it was about five minutes away. <b>Oh, that Curacao sense of time. </b>We walked for half an hour through a rather perilous neighborhood then asked a young man if we were headed in the right direction or not. He said it was about another half hour and offered to accompany us. We declined and returned to the hotel. It was dark and late and the streets were badly lit.</div>
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Saturday we walked into Willemstad to cross the little Wilhelmina bridge to the district of Scharlooweg (the great soaring bridge above the channel is called the Juliana Bridge. Bridges named for the last three queens of Holland. They have not had a king for three generations but now they do.) The Scharlooweg district was the Jewish quarter. Merchants were here very early on and they built large and beautiful homes now being restored. We were here to visit the Maritime Museum.</div>
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<b>This too, is a very well done museum that recounts largely the period when Curacao was the base for Dutch “privateers.” Really pirates empowered by other nations to prey upon their enemies. </b>Spain never allowed privateers under their governing system but hired ships from other countries to do their dirty work in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for them, other countries like England did too. Dutch privateers attacked the Spanish silver fleet one year, and captured it entirely to the tune of millions and millions of whatever they were carrying.<b> The entire annual income of Spain coming from Mexico and the New World fell into their hands. England also had it’s own privateers such as Sir Francis Drake. He was ennobled by Queen Elizabeth and sailed the globe but was still a feared pirate to many.</b></div>
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<b>The Dutch pirates were dramatic and dangerous beyond what we can imagine and here in Curacao they come alive. All this was at the same time the Dutch occupied that part of the Northern Hemisphere now New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York City. It was called New Amsterdam then.</b> A period of great cruelty and killing on the part of the pirates as much testified to in the art and engravings in the Maritime Museum. Again, that side of the gentlemanly, calm Dutch never talked about but I suspect is still there.</div>
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<b>Sobered again (these Dutch museums are tough) we returned across the little bridge to shop a bit.</b> We passed by the Floating Market along the way. Here many boats are tied up selling fish, and, fruit, and vegetables. We stopped by Ralph Lauren, which was now open, and made some purchases. <b>After this we took a taxi to buy some fishing equipment for Mr. C., his passion.</b></div>
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The taxi took us up into deep country, high over the Juliana Bridge and into the countryside. I suggested to Mr. C. that perhaps we were being kidnapped as we ventured further and further into the fields and narrow roads that finally led us to a distant country store. In the back was a low counter and endless arrays of fishing equipment. Mr. C. was in heaven.</div>
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Many gulders later we were returned to our hotel. Curacao is only 37 miles long and eight miles wide, true, but with it’s many lakes and lagoons, and bays it is complicated to get around. Our driver did know where he was going. After that we went to the gym, swam, ate an elaborate buffet at the hotel, and collapsed.</div>
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On Sunday Mr. C. tried out his fishing equipment on the piers in front of the hotel. We checked out places to fish and it turns out that the Avila and a sister hotel in town are the best seafront places for this kind of fishing. Mr. C. is quite content to stay here.<br />
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I lay supine in a beach chair all afternoon and Mr. C. flailed about on the piers manfully. <b>Looking about I thought again how much like the 1950’s all these guests were in their general slenderness but not overly exercised looks. </b>The woman also had waistlines and were curvier than women are in the United States. Those workouts tend to take away your curves. There was only one really fat person out there, a youngish man who was there with who I assumed was his mother. His thighs were gigantic.<br />
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Monday we manfully strode back into Willemstad. It was hot and we got pretty damp. We whirled through what must have been the outer wall of the original fort, now lined with restaurants. Surely to cater to the cruise ships when they come in and tie up in the nearby channel. The current governor’s mansion also here, was a big yellow and white edifice. Even though it was a small island and far flung, Curacao has some very impressive buildings from the 18<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> and 19<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> centuries. When ships put in from other countries it must’ve been important to look large and authoritative.<br />
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Mr. C. wanted to revisit the floating market that lines the smaller channel leading to the eastward lagoon. By the time we got there most of the fish were sold and the markets were closing down.</div>
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<b>Confirming my feeling that we were back in the 1950’s we discovered most of the stores had been closed the day before on Sunday, as well as the museums. We had done well to hang out at the hotel. </b>We pursued and found some more fishing supply sources and did some shopping. I discovered that Mr. C. does not like sports shirts with broad horizontal stripes. (Perhaps he feels they make his broad shoulders look too broad?)</div>
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We ate on high stools on an outdoor terrace trying to catch the fitful breeze. It was very hot! We walked back to the hotel, went to the gym (I seem to be stronger and less given to fatigue here despite the heat.), swam and then there was some additional fishing out on the piers. Mr. C. continued to fish as the sunset and it got dark. <b>A large tanker entered the channel in the distance. It passed dramatically in front of the sun as it set. Later storms brewed out to sea and there were flashes of lightning in the dark distance.</b> The seas had been building all day and now waves were breaking over the piers and dripping into the lagoons on the other side. We were late getting to dinner in the really excellent restaurant down the street and then returned to pack.</div>
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<b>Departure day Mr. C. began it early with another gym workout while I slept. We breakfasted and away to the airport. Mr. C. then departed for Panama on his way homeward. I returned a bit later to Miami.</b></div>
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<b>A strange, beautiful place, Curacao. Beautiful in it’s bright light and heat and yet with the feeling of it’s past violence, a past that has not left entirely. A Dutch thing. Correctness on display everywhere, but underneath, what?</b></div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-90664423389753371832013-09-26T11:00:00.000-04:002013-09-26T11:00:00.866-04:00Travel Diary ~ A Short Visit to Salta, Argentina ~ Seven Flights in Seven Days<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Certainly I have never been in a city before jammed with tourists where no one was speaking anything but Spanish. This is Salta, Argentina where all the tourists are from other parts of Argentina. </b>Some from a few other South American countries. I encountered two American families, the parents in ex-hippie mode, the children teenagers somewhat sulky and uneasy about being seen in public with their parents. They spoke English. Other than that, <b>Salta is not international.</b></div>
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Salta is in the north of Argentina near the Bolivian border. This is high, flat desert country, surrounded by mountains. The Andes one must cross to get to Bolivia begin here. Argentina runs very far south to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world; the jumping off spot for Antarctica. South America runs much further south than Africa or Australia. There are direct flights from Sydney, Australia across the Pacific to Santiago, Chile but Chile runs much further south to Cape Horn. Still a very difficult passage for ships.</div>
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The exploration and domination of South America is fascinating. The Spanish came down from the North from Mexico in search of silver and gold. They came by land. The Atlantic coast was unexplored until much later. Down the Pacific side of the Andes they came in the 16<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> century, less than a century after Columbus discovered North America. They crossed the Andes and founded Salta in 1589. A good 50 years before my ancestors, the Sumners, came to the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts.</div>
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<b>I don’t know if I could have ever been a pioneer. One had to be dauntless. </b>Of course, one’s life in one’s hometown was one of growing crops, heating with fireplaces, illuminating interiors with candles. Pioneer life was only a simpler version. But even so, to plunge across the Andes, stumble into the desert, establish a town? The Catholic church is owed a great deal in these adventures. The priests were always the first to go forth into these unknown, unexplored places.</div>
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Although Salta supposedly has a good climate all year round for growing the food supplies that supported the Bolivian silver mines, I wonder. <b>This may be wine country but it looks pretty deserty. </b>The guidebooks also say that the main business activity here in Salta for many years was the raising of mules which were used as transport and labor all over this side of South America through the 18<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> and 19<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> centuries.</div>
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<b>Even though the cell phone is omnipresent in Salta, it still feels like a frontier town, even with its 300,000 inhabitants. </b>There are a few buildings of up to ten stories in Salta but it is for the most part a flat, spread out town. Its old city center has several very old, large churches, an archeological museum which I skipped (I don’t care much for history where there is no fashion), a very interesting historic museum in the old Cabildo, whatever a Cabildo may have been. It houses furniture, paintings, and in an interior courtyard a collection of wagons, stagecoaches and one car, a very large French-made car belonging to an important judge. The largest car ever made by the manufacturer. There was only one other, made for the President of Bolivia. In 1909. Very early. The chauffer sat out front without cover, the steering wheel was on the right, English style, and the back was large and roomy and outfitted with cushions now hanging in sagging tatters.</div>
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There was a stagecoach that made the run from Salta down to Alemania in the south. A four-day run. We did it in two hours in the car the next day. It took four months to go to Buenos Aires. I imagine one was really tired after that adventure. The driver and horses changed very regularly. The poor passengers didn’t.</div>
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<b>Buenos Aires, interestingly to me, was founded long after Salta when the southward push of exploration went on and on. True also of Montevideo, where I live. Some two hundred years later than Salta, both of these now much larger cities.</b></div>
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Finally in the middle of the 19<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> century the connection to Europe was made regularly by ship and that is when the tides of Italians and Portuguese came in the Rio Platte area to Buenos Aires and Montevideo and became the dominant force in that part of South America.</div>
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Another Museum, the Museo Casa Uriburu, was a family residence for an important family for nearly two hundred years. Built at about the time of our Revolutionary War, it is stark in its white plaster and dark beams. It has some very early heavy oak furniture brought in from Spain. <b>One imagines a donkey with a heavy bureau on its back laboring over the Andes. It was no joke getting furniture this size or quality way out into the vastness of Salta.</b></div>
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<b>There are very handsome and beautiful people here, but not as we know them in North America. There are women with strong, clear features of our early movie stars. Many great profiles, strong noses, beautiful chins and jawlines. There are men, too in the Spanish tradition. Great profiles, great sweeping eyelashes. Again a look of early film stars. </b> </div>
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Also, the nose is prominent. It seems to me when I was very young there were more prominent noses. Many here are beaked and sweep downward and made me think of Michigan in the 1930s. I wonder if the nose job has condemned North America to a look of some kind of uniformity.</div>
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<b>Many of the women are tall here. Some very tall. I’ve seen any number of young girls with long legs, great faces, and strong profiles who could work in the modeling industry. Perhaps it is their good fortune that there is no one in Salta to encourage them to pursue this destiny.</b></div>
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There is also a very high proportion of inhabitants descended from the original Indian inhabitants. Tan, dark hair and eyes, tending to be shorter, with strong interesting features. It’s strange, but in the United States exotic locals intermarried and became part of the national gene pool. In the U.S. we like blondes but everyone is considered American and we pay little attention to racial background. Black people excepted, of course.</div>
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In South America racial background continues to be very important. And even has some connection to class level. The upper classes are certainly fairer and have lighter hair. Without discussing it ever I think they are very aware of the connection between class and racial descent.</div>
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<b>I should mention also that there are no black people or anyone of Asian background in Salta at all. None. I did see one Chinese restaurant but that seemed to be it. Everyone here is from the original Spanish settlers or Indians. Not at all like Montevideo, which is very international in its inhabitants.</b></div>
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<b>Overall impressions:</b></div>
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<b>1. There are a lot of dogs and babies here.</b> In the central square of the Plaza 9 de Julio with its trees, grass and national monuments it also has many sizeable dogs who lounge around on the lawns and under the trees and many sprawl out to sleep in the middle of the sidewalks and you must dodge around them. I think they have owners somewhere and are well fed, although quite dirty. As I was walking down the street along the square one came up from behind me, bumped my hand. I pulled away and scratched his ears and petted him. He romped a bit, munching my hand as dogs do and accompanied me to the corner and there wandered off to be on his own.</div>
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<b>2. There is also an enormous presence of small children, many of them babes in arms. </b>Argentina must be going to have a vast population jump as every young couple has at least three children. There are many young mothers under 30 with three children, which would have been a pattern in the United States some hundred years ago. My mother married rather late for the period (at 24) and had four children by the time she was 34. There are many strollers about and on all the South American flights we took lots of babies on the plane. True also of the Montevideo to Miami flight. There are some small children about in Miami Beach but not to the point where they are almost equal to the adults, which is true in Argentina.</div>
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Other interesting things in Salta. The trees in the streets are orange trees. The oranges, perfectly edible, fall into the gutters and onto the streets. <b> Mr. C. said “If you’re going to be a street person this is the town to do it in. You will stay alive just eating the oranges that fall from the trees.”</b> There is so much evidence of this also, with a lot of orange peel littered about. Somehow it didn’t really look like litter.</div>
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<b>Salteanos (I think that’s what they’re called) also like their pastries. </b>The croissant is very present although called “media luna” (half moon). Which, of course refers to the same moon the croissant is named for. The crescent moon. Smaller but very tasty, some are plain and a little salty, some are sweet. Breakfast at the hotel was presented with many croissants and other pastries I found less tempting. No bacon and eggs. As in Europe, breakfast here is largely a cup of coffee and a pastry of some kind. It’s not a big meal.</div>
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<b>I should also mention there is a high level of police about and a large percentage of policewomen. We stumbled into the main square one morning and found there was a kind of police event occurring with ranks of police people about four deep on three sides of the square. They came to attention at the sound of whistles and had a variety of uniforms, one group looking like paratroopers. Mr. C. thought they might be a special attack group, plunging from the sky. I rather doubt it.</b></div>
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The women of Salta are rather prominent bosomed and full buttocked but not in an overdone way. They looked fine in uniform, hair pulled tightly back into buns, forepiece caps pulled down over their eyes. Patrolling the streets, frequently alone, they didn’t look like people you wanted to fool around with.<b> There are not a lot of overweight people in Salta either.</b></div>
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Our second day in Salta we drove to Cafayate, the heart of the vineyards. About 200 kilometers to the south, maybe about 125 miles. We estimated about a three hour drive. However we did not anticipate that the road would be two lanes and very winding. A double yellow line was almost always present in the middle of the road, and frequently twelve or so cars would be backed up behind a slower driver, unable to pass. We had gone almost eighty of the miles when we reached Alemania, the town that had been the end of the stagecoach run from Salta to the south. Now Alemania is only three of four buildings, one of them the former train station. This is now a small restaurant. Other buildings that had been warehouses had a garage and what seemed to be dwellings. The railroad tracks, and there were three or four different pairs in front of the station, had not been used in some time. There was even a fairly large tree growing in the middle of one pair. There were a number of tourist cars parked about to look at the metal railroad bridge that crossed a small river quite near the station. At one time this must have been a busy hub, probably for shipping grain, or wine or whatever they were raising in the fertile area to the north.</div>
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The little restaurant only had empanadas, the little meat pastries, but we ordered about four each and some soft drinks. <b>There was a black mother dog and her gangly black pup hanging about the restaurant and my heart went out to them. I played with the pup and rubbed his stomach, as I do to my dog Sophie in Miami Beach. </b> Both dogs were very thin and one could only hope that passing tourists gave them food. The Argentineans are very dog prone but even so, I thought of that pup a lot and still do. All the dogs we saw were so friendly and playful you felt you owed it to them to take care of them.</div>
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<b>As soon as we left Alemania we understood why the train line stopped there. We immediately were plunged into a mountainous landscape where the road wound perilously along the edge of a snakelike river. There had been volcanic upheavals here long ago and the mountains were tipped on edge with striations revealing the centuries of earth accretians. The earth’s shuddering upheaval had tossed them about in gigantic scraps and bits. Mr. C said they looked like gigantic pieces of cake, tilted this way and that, layers all exposed, rising high above our heads.</b></div>
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<b>They reached off in all directions and the light was beautiful. The mountains were striped across in pale brown, yellow, red, lavender. The soft light veiled them so they were pastel-like and every few miles the colors would shift and suddenly they would be largely yellow, then in a few miles shifting to rust with stripes of dark brown and beige. </b>There were also leafless small trees along the road that were brilliant chartreuse. A bright yellow-green I have never seen in nature before. The road was also lined with crosses and shrines. <b>There had been many accidents along this treacherous route. “This is really driving.” Mr. C. said. “Not just drifting along holding the wheel for miles and miles.” He is an excellent driver but the road required his complete concentration. </b>Again, just two lanes and whipping around sharp cliff corners and under looming overheads with signs warning of falling rocks. The falling rocks were often huge boulders as large as a small house precariously perched on the mountainside above. A few smaller rocks seeming to hold them in place. I wouldn’t want one suddenly bolting down the hill, rolling and tumbling, as I drove beneath it. We are rarely in what we can call real danger when driving. But this road seemed to be. And it made you think that the early settlers faced this kind of thing on a daily basis. How many of the passengers on the four month run from Buenos Aires didn’t make it at all?</div>
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It took about an hour and a half to get to Cafayate, a small flat town that is evidently heavily visited by tourists from the south as it is the center of the wine industry in this part of the country. They had quite a remarkable museum brilliantly designed and lit, ultra-modern, to tell the story of the history of this region’s vineyard and then a second section really detailing how wine was made and is made, showing all the many antique tools and kegs and bottles from the past. Very well done and surprising in this very isolated and not well known town. <b>With Mr. C. there was much scouting about from museum shop to store to vineyard buying some of the wines that are grown here. There is a business to be made of importing Argentian wines and making them as well known and sought after as French wines. </b>They are of excellent quality and as they are completely different from European wines, the Malbecs and Tannats and other types could become very popular I think. My own favorite is Tannat, a red wine that is actually best grown in Uruguay. You can buy a vineyard in Uruguay now for not much money. For anyone who longs to own a vineyard, now is the time to decamp for Uruguay.</div>
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We drove back from Cafayate more rapidly than we descended. It was still daylight and I wanted to at least get through the canyon road while it was light. It was like driving at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for overall effect and not to be taken casually at any time, let alone night. We were almost back in Salta before nightfall but then got trapped in the endless backups behind slow drivers and got to our hotel after dark. But then a lovely supper in the elegant dining room! But no, it was Sunday and the dining room wasn’t open. We marched across the square to the Alejandro Primero (Alexandre the First) hotel, a much larger enterprise but with a less ambitious dining room. Lots and lots of families with many older parents and one or two adult or later teen children along. There were many really lovely daughters with relatively nondescript parents. There was something almost late-Victorian about it. Beautiful girls being launched in society.</div>
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On Monday, our last day in Salta, we did some shopping after returning the car. A very handsome young man was reluctant to believe us when we said there had been a gas leak during our drive and we were hesitant to refill the tank completely as we feared it would just leak out. He had that Tyrone Power style of many young men in Salta. His cohorts finally got him to agree to charge us for the gas to be put in at the rate of a gas station, not the normal high Hertz price.</div>
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We then tackled the telepherique that was to carry us onto the very high hill looming over Salta. It was not really a mountain, but high enough to see the city down below. And popular enough that it required a two and a half hour wait in line to board the little six passenger car. We were plenty high in the air as we creaked and tottered up to the top. <b> I looked up at the smallish cable supporting the car and wondered if they regularly checked it. Yikes! At the top there were ornamental gardens and a tightly packed little restaurant flooded with hungry tourists. We lunched there anyway. </b> Service was so slow that families would come, occupy a large eight person table, wait a long time and then depart having never ordered. We managed to catch a waiter’s eye and did all right. I think it might be able to earn a spot as the worst restaurant in the Western Hemisphere. Certainly up in the top ten, but then again it <span class="s2">was</span> on top of a mountain. </div>
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<b>Once we regained the ground we walked back to the hotel and passed the consulate for Serbia and Montenegro. I was startled. How many consulates for Serbia and Montenegro must there be in the world if there is one in Salta? Much of the population of these tiny countries could be assigned to the consulates if they have one in a far-flung spot like Salta. Or perhaps this is a desirable destination for Serbians and Montenegrins. Who know? I love mysteries like this.</b></div>
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<b>After dark Mr. C took me up to the open air swimming pool on the roof so we could see the lights of Salta reaching out and out through the valley. </b>We were as high as any building in town and there were only a few at this height. We packed that night and the next morning dashed about town to do some last minute shopping and buy a knee brace for Mr. C. at a medical supply store which had stretch things not available in Uruguay. Mr. C. is a handsome, fit young man with a myriad of physical problems from having been battered about playing soccer. Or “futbol” as it is called there.</div>
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We flew back to Buenos Aires in the early afternoon, lunched at the airport and replaned for Montevideo across the Platte River. About a half an hour flight. And there the trip was done. <b> May I add, Mr. C is the best looking, most capable, great at planning, decision-making guy with whom I have ever been involved. Great trip.</b></div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-58970566786705141842013-09-18T11:30:00.000-04:002013-09-18T11:30:00.153-04:00Travel Diary ~ A TRIP TO CANCUN ~ Cancun is very much like Miami Beach on drugs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Here’s my Cancun Travel Diary, thought you’d like to see it!</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">My initial impression of Cancun,
the Mexican resort in the Yucatan peninsula, was that it was very much like
Miami Beach on drugs.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">On the outward
coast of the peninsula facing into the Atlantic Ocean, Cancun is the mainland
town with a large lagoon and a great strip of beach on the other side of the
lagoon.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Very much like a miniature
version of Miami and the large bay that separates it from the long peninsula of
Miami Beach.</span></b></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><b>I was in Cancun, meeting up with
Mr. C., who made a much longer trip up from deep down in South America’s tip.
</b>Winter is approaching there and he wanted to go somewhere the sun was shining
and swimming in the ocean was possible. Hence Cancun.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I have relatives who own property in nearby
Playa Del Carmen so I knew a little about it.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><b>What I didn’t know was that all the other guests would be from Wichita
and St. Louis and Minneapolis and that they would all be forty pounds
overweight.</b></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Cancun calls the long peninsula of
oceanfront The Hotel Zone and well may it be called that.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">There must be at least twenty very big hotels
along that beach.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Most of them representing
major hotel chains.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">We stayed at the
Sandos Exquisite Beach Experience Resort.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Which actually was one of the nicest hotels in that long chain of
caravansaries. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And it was all paid for
by my American Express travel points!</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">True.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I had piled up a lot of
points and my very deft assistant, Reniel Diaz, wangled the entire holiday on
points.</span></div>
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<b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I had never really done anything
like this before.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Everything at the
hotel was paid for in one fell swoop.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">All the meals, all the drinks, all the room service, the room, all was
prepaid.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">A red band was fastened about
your wrist and you signed in and the rest was gratis.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">You didn’t have to search the prices on the
dinner menu.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Or check out the wine
list.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Have what you want.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">You have already paid.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It was kind of swell to just relax and sail
through.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And since we weren’t in a city
or town, there were no restaurants or cafes or shops to go to across the
street.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Just a drugstore.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I say that Cancun was like Miami
Beach on drugs because of the other guests.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I had never really ever been in a hotel with this kind of mix
before.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Firstly were the younger
group.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Not just out of college, maybe 25
to 30 years of age.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Unmarried, sort of
semi-attractive guys behaving like fraternity brothers on the loose.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And quite good-looking slender women who
behaved wildly but I think were there to separate one of these men from the
herd.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This crowd used their prepaid
status to drink heavily almost all of the time.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> <b>
</b></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><b>Champagne at breakfast, wine at lunch and lots of tequila at the bar
after dinner. </b>In that bar there was non-stop entertainment in the evening with
a D.J. and lots of games where people had to try to build a house of cards,
balance things on their chin, etc.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">At about ten in the evening the
other side of the guest list emerged in the bar.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">These were older couples heading towards
sixty and maybe already beyond.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The
couple usually consisted of a male who stepped heavily forward, something like
a battleship being herded out to sea by a small tug.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The small tug was the wife who circled
around, heading her spouse this way or that.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It struck me with both groups that Americans are almost always ill at
ease in public.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The younger group
behaving in a kind of frantic way I believe they felt appropriate for their
“wild and crazy” single young adult image.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The older group much more contained but again all very similar to one
another, all exchanging banalities, all drinking very heavily until they
woozily oozed towards the elevators sometime after midnight.</span><b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I also noticed the older couples never
touched each other in a fond or familiar way.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">They were ill at ease with each other too.</span></b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I only visited the bar a few times.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Mr. C. loves to watch North Americans and sat
in a corner nursing a Coca-Cola for several hours each evening while I
slept.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And slept and slept.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I love sleeping and these hotel excursions
are no exception.</span></div>
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<b>I had one big question which was never satisfactorily
explained.</b><b> </b> How did these young people
afford the three hundred or four hundred dollars a night room rate? Mr. C. thought they were all the children of
the older crowd. I was not so sure. I did not see them eating together or
mingling at the pool.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mixed
in this mob were a certain number of foreigners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were Asians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite a few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some families with grandparents, parents and quite a few children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overhearing them talk I was surprised to hear
they were speaking Portuguese.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inquiring
of friends in the hotel management, they reported, that these Asians were from
Brazil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Asian families have been established
in Brazil for quite some time and if they were from the southern part of that
country, winter could be approaching there too, too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence up to the tropics in Cancun. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>And there were
clutches of Asian young women, three or four together and one group of three
very beautiful girls from somewhere in the Near East.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saudi Arabia somewhere.</b><b> </b> The young Asian women got really drunk in the
bar every night and the little group of Near Eastern beauties reveled in not
wearing burkas and had beautiful bathing suits, sarongs, short shorts,
t-shirts, you name it. <b>They seemed quite
young and it surprised me that they were here, very evidently not husband
hunting but truly more to just show off their fashionable beauty. Perhaps before it disappears from public view
in some place like Bahrain. The Asian
women too may have just been having a high old time before they too, were
sentenced to arranged marriages and family responsibilities and role playing. </b> I noticed these groups were not at all ill at
ease in public. They ate, swam, spirited
about with much pleasure and obviously weren’t wondering what other people
thought about them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Mr.
C., being dashing and very sociable, soon made friends with the quite beautiful
woman who was the manager of the hotel and her handsome second-in-command.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told them he was my bodyguard, which
immediately gave me a great deal of allure in the eyes of the management, who
were constantly inquiring if I was happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If I am with Mr. C. I would be fine in the Sahara desert, so all went
well.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The high point of the Cancun visit was out trip to Chichen Itza, the Mayan city
some two and a half hours to the west of Cancun in the center of the Yucatan.</b></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What I began to understand as we
headed west in a small tour group is that the Yucatan Peninsula is one big
swamp.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Mayans had to build rock
roads some ten feet above the level of this swamp, which is true today for more
recent road builders. Today’s roads sail along above the swamp grass, low
bushes and small trees below the level of the car wheels and road edge.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">These roads are in many places
built upon the Mayan roads which were built with slave labor as long as a
thousand years ago perhaps more. The mind boggles at the effort to bring rock,
probably on men’s backs, from many miles away.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This idea becomes even more difficult to comprehend when one arrives at
Chichen Itza the city itself.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The
foundations of the entire city are built on this same rock in a giant
square.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">On this square there is a huge
pyramid, great lengths of sculptured wall, a number of lower but still very
large stone buildings.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><b>The Mayan culture
was anything but primitive.</b></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The stone
work is beautifully chiseled, the very large stones of the pyramid and walls
and buildings built with great craft, smoothly fitting together.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The pyramid has great flights of steps
running up it, dizzying to think of climbing and now forbidden to
tourists.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">There were workmen up on the
terraces that lift and set back, lift and set back all the way up to the
pinnacle where sacrifices were conducted.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Mayans did not have the wheel or metal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Stone was cut with flint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Evidently the great stones were brought rolling them on tree trunks, as
the Greeks and Romans did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As with the
Great Wall of China, the work effort is hard to comprehend.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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There
was also a very large playing field where the origin of soccer began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soccer goal however is a circle of stone
high on each sidewall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And another
difference; the losing captain was executed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Really made you want to win.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The
Mayan calendar was only 260 days long (this was the tropics with no real
seasons passing) and they reached high levels of astronomical understanding,
studying the skies with great intensity and calculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their culture was one of violence and death
on every hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They believed everything
was alive and at the same time did not value life highly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also at Chichen Itza is one of the giant sink
holes where young women were sacrificed annually to the rain gods, as their
lives depended on rain as there were few water sources such as rivers, even
though they lived in a swamp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did
learn that if you happened to survive being thrown into a sinkhole as a
sacrifice (swam to the side and clung to it?) you were allowed to live.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>The
Mayans had a curious history in that they would create large cities which would
thrive form some centuries and then suddenly be abandoned.</b><b> </b> Or the population would die in large
numbers. Something historians are unsure
about. And then another large city would
grow up in yet another part of Mexico.
All these cities were lost in jungle overgrowth by the mid-nineteenth
century. The Spanish had destroyed those
that were still existence when they arrived in the sixteenth century. The great city of the Mayan kings on its
island in a lake is now sunk beneath contemporary Mexico City. Although most of the cities have been
discovered and partially restored there still remain many square miles of Mayan
cities lost in the jungle, yet to be explored and restored.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
read a good deal about their culture and others in South America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to go see the Nasca Lines in Peru,
where the early tribes drew great figures in the sandy desert which can only be
seen from the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are no
mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The figures sometimes overlap
which indicates they were done at different times and depict birds, monkeys,
different other animals and are sometimes just shapes.</b><b> </b> Historians have no explanation how they were
able to draw these accurate designs in the sand on a gigantic scale and why
they were done. I like to think they
were done so others out in space could see what resident animals on earth
looked like. There are no figures of
humans of course because we came from outer space. I love this thinking. So contradictory to scientific thought. Come on! Explain this stuff to me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr.
C. and I made several exploratory trips to shopping malls on the way to the
city and one day went to a very large small in the city of Cancun on the
mainland. A huge mall with every amenity
and most of the shops that we would have in the United States. <b>As I walked through the great food courts
where restaurants line the outer edges and a horde of tables and chairs hold
the tribe that comes there to eat are in the center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The food court is designed to trap you as you
pass from one side of the mall to the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is all very thoroughly thought out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It occurred to me, “This is the future.”</b><b> </b>
As with everything being on your computer or i-phone, your real world
will all be pulled together in one place and you will just move from one shop
to the other, all exactly like any other mall you might visit. <b>Will young people in the future revolt
against all this sameness someday and start to want to grow their own food,
make their own clothes, read and write instead of always being an onlooker to a
life that is created for them by other people to see and feel? </b> None of this would exist if it wasn’t what
humans wanted. It’s not being forced
upon them. Curious, curious, curious.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One
thing I noticed was that in the shops the sizes were smaller, none for someone
as tall as I am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Mexicans are not as
big as the people of the United States, which of course I true in Europe
also.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the time I lived in France I was
always one size too big for the clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My French clothes were always made for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I
just finished reading the remnants of an autobiography by Marsden Hartley, an
American artist who was given a grant to work in Mexico in the 1920s. He did not like it and was actually
frightened by it. He felt it was a
country of volcanoes and earthquakes and mystery and that the Mayan culture was
the only one that was generic to the topography. Which gave me the idea that cultures are
frequently the outgrowth of the area of the world they rise from. The Mediterranean gave birth to cultures that
loved living and were tolerant of others.
Life was much easier there. The
further north, the more people depended upon each other, they were concerned
about what the neighbors thought. Hence
Germany, England, the foundations of our own country. Hartley felt the Spanish invasion of Mexico
and the destruction of the Mayan culture left the country with a very
artificial governing class, trying to be like Europe in a country that had few
physical similarities. I thought this
was very interesting. <b>There is something
violent underlying the Mexican world as we see it today with the drug gangs,
the murders, the inability of the government to really control the
corruption.</b><b> </b> They just don’t value human
life as much as we do. All those
celebrations with skulls all over the place.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Even
spending most of our time with the Middle Western overweight as we did in
Cancun, I still came away with some feeling of what Mexico is truly like and
its great differences from other worlds I visited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>South America is so near and yet so unknown
to most North Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be very
important in this century with Brazil becoming a world power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The one thing they don’t do is have a lot of
wars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s a step in the right
direction.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-83709571710387455242013-09-17T11:30:00.000-04:002013-09-17T11:52:30.323-04:00Spicing things up here at David's Gay Dish!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Hello my darlings! We are spicing things up here at David's Gay Dish. I am going to post a few times a week instead of everyday and focus on those posts being more interesting and still answer questions as they come in. So if you have a love, life or career question please email: davidsgaydish@gmail.com.</b></div>
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There are few films I want to see as I always find my own life more interesting. I sit in the theater and think, <b>"Why am I here, my life is more interesting than this!"</b> But I did want to see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FER3C394aI8" target="_blank">Blue Jasmine</a> to see the clothes. According to the New York Times Woody Allen gave the stylist a budget of $35,000 to dress Cate Blanchett in French Couture. A Hermes bag costs more than that but the stylist did it. Everyone loaned things and the clothes were excellent. She repeated them a lot and you got the feeling of someone down on their luck wearing clothes from a better time over and over again. The casting and performances were great but I came away sort of deflated as the central character really never gets it together. And the plot depends greatly on an unexpected meeting in front of a jewelry store. I like reality. Life rarely hinges on an unexpected meeting at a jewelry store. That's a forced plot device that makes you think immediately, "This isn't real."</div>
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Walking the dog this morning I wondered if there is a social world for Mrs. and Mrs. Woody Allen. He married his adopted daughter. What do you chat about with someone whose wife used to be their daughter?!</div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-27544167600553543552013-08-28T10:30:00.000-04:002013-08-29T11:01:58.265-04:00Handsomest Men in the World ~ Male Models<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We have something new this week. I have noticed that the male models are getting more and more mature looking. Evidently the aging of America is showing up in garment sales. Atleast men don't seem to want to look like skinny teenagers anymore. Here's a whole batch for you to peruse. Definitely more mature, no?David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-48755957713842202222013-08-22T12:30:00.000-04:002013-08-22T12:30:03.661-04:00Fashion Day ~ MaxMara, Dsquared & Bulgari<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It's fashion day and today is primarily for the ladies. I have been very taken with MaxMara's looks for Autumn - all in shades of light browns. I think these all look really grown up and not all that mix and match stuff that is supposed to be fashion and makes you look like you were trapped in a thrift store.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>1. Four looks from MaxMara:</b></span><br />
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<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br /><br /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>2. Recently Dsquared is only using black models and I think this looks great.</b> Great leather stuff and these models make impact. Very smart.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEtCQaH9F70aAY3ufTz0aO6RDsDYmS2LG5p_dz1lNXkmNNJA45RIdyVIpJNa9Q3scTOhO1m0tvOKpGNq7kVsHlS7N03b_8C7kJ56FP-EkCsNjDoxhYxkviqJ_LOLbtZGBFIL8amOydJ279/s1600/photo-4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEtCQaH9F70aAY3ufTz0aO6RDsDYmS2LG5p_dz1lNXkmNNJA45RIdyVIpJNa9Q3scTOhO1m0tvOKpGNq7kVsHlS7N03b_8C7kJ56FP-EkCsNjDoxhYxkviqJ_LOLbtZGBFIL8amOydJ279/s640/photo-4.JPG" width="480" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>3. Poor idea of the week. Carla Bruni is back modeling for Bulgari jewels.</b> She is the wife of the former Prime Minister of France. Really Carla. You represent France to the Queen of England and you're back in front of the camera?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-242885874445791012013-08-21T10:30:00.000-04:002013-08-22T10:49:23.507-04:00Handsomest Man in the World ~ Express Model<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Why do I think this very handsome guy modeling for express must be very tall? What a great face. What a great mouth. This is your handsomest man in the world this week. Great hair, too. And wearing a great coat. This is not an express P.R. boost, but this is a very good look for you.</span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-49911896222645715792013-08-20T16:00:00.000-04:002013-08-20T16:00:03.263-04:00Need help with weight loss...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Dear David,</b></div>
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I am so fat. Help!</div>
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<i>~Ballooning</i></div>
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<b>Dear Ballooning,</b></div>
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It's no fun, that's for sure. I don't want to explore any of the psychological reasons. I think you should concentrate on how you feel when you eat. Sore the second you're not hungry. I know all about the starving in China and Africa. You can't help that in Indianapolis. Leave that milkshake half done. Take one bit of your pie and push it away. Keep a bag of small hard candies at home. When you MUST eat something sweet, take one and that feeling will go away. And kind of get used to feeling hungry. Drink more water. Just remember what ten pounds of hamburger looks like on your body. Not a good look. And if you're home alone, eat breakfast for dinner. I want you to like yourself. Don't bury your sexual parts under fat where nobody can find them!</div>
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David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-17791475363734212732013-08-19T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-20T15:13:45.164-04:00Do you think men vary sexually from country to country?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8RyNpfCLxFsyjTi_5RE11k7t85Vj4EVO5r6ocNYbQuOKknlboFMWG6xNrsvUP5P93R07cH-BQBxivzo4RLGaq3ROhWzx03Tp1__xa5SaHfztoxMGQU3BNohzmuhYgEux_ZVs32vREPat0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-08-20+at+3.13.56+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8RyNpfCLxFsyjTi_5RE11k7t85Vj4EVO5r6ocNYbQuOKknlboFMWG6xNrsvUP5P93R07cH-BQBxivzo4RLGaq3ROhWzx03Tp1__xa5SaHfztoxMGQU3BNohzmuhYgEux_ZVs32vREPat0/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-08-20+at+3.13.56+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>Dear David,</b></div>
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Do you think men vary sexually from country to country? I ask you, because if anyone ought to know it would be you. </div>
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<i>~Curious Fellow</i></div>
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<b>Dear Curious Fellow,</b></div>
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I don't know whether that comment is an insult or not. I am going to take it as a compliment. Definitely "YES". American men are not very experimental but what to do the same thing over and over and then they get brad. French men see it scientifically and are removed emotionally. France, the only country that has the "baize de dante" or "the health f$%k." It's for you, not the other person. </div>
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In South America I find they are the least repressed and the do it because they must! </div>
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In Morrocco they walk through the streets looking like they will go crazy if they don't have sex in the next half hour. With anyone. That's a little scary. Quite clearly, I prefer South America.</div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-69926353154375415762013-08-16T13:30:00.000-04:002013-08-17T13:33:04.464-04:00Come On Out! with David Leddick ~ Episode 79<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/668TVJDIjjY?list=UUy8A1Cdkxx7eYNQ3Jsa1oiA" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Happy Friday my darlings! Today I'm
talking about interesting subject - did you know that 1/4th of the
world's prisoners are here in the US? Something to think about...<br /><br />davidsgaydish.blogspot.com</div>
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David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-49349446204033108662013-08-14T11:00:00.000-04:002013-08-14T17:38:04.843-04:00Handsomest Man in the World - James Franco<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtD-3yXbucRmADoadwmz8Kw_tVLkNrmwAv5uVyPVpxftG3RNs_2z1rkuPNUfOwSUh3gz6giO9neNgQWsmS7xQ3XfYmT5O7F8D4rva6nidurQfAdJzjo2HjircIIKPnV9mBvDd0rJdHQFZL/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-08-14+at+5.38.09+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtD-3yXbucRmADoadwmz8Kw_tVLkNrmwAv5uVyPVpxftG3RNs_2z1rkuPNUfOwSUh3gz6giO9neNgQWsmS7xQ3XfYmT5O7F8D4rva6nidurQfAdJzjo2HjircIIKPnV9mBvDd0rJdHQFZL/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-08-14+at+5.38.09+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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You are going to think my Handsomest Man in the World choice this week is really strange, but the new photos of James Franco for "Made to Measure", the new Gucci's men's fragrance are very haunting. It's his eyes.</div>
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__________________________</div>
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<b>Dear David,</b></div>
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As you get older would you say you are becoming more "spiritual"?</div>
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<i>~Getting Older II</i></div>
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<b>Dear Getting Older II,</b></div>
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I don't know if you can call it "spiritual" but I am more and more aware that we are on this ball whirling around through space that is quite beautiful and that we should really enjoy being here and experience our life as completely as possible. This means not caring what the neighbors think and not being as competitive with others. Only with yourself, to be as terrific as you can be doing the things you really want to do. Really, don't worry what others think of you. Only about what you think of them!</div>
David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-48501105260772174772013-08-13T15:00:00.000-04:002013-08-13T15:00:01.396-04:00Rejecting the label "gay"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4m5ikxj80qteZMGoo8-EqH1nzGWf8TpKnDHR02AlcJ7pPxxYrvmd62NS5XGCd6ylQfBoUTS0WIw6Z1h2PYBiDFkQzdt3vMLUxF8wp7JDcEOco0ojuDFQWqdC8IScxe7_jF72eE5LvYX1D/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4m5ikxj80qteZMGoo8-EqH1nzGWf8TpKnDHR02AlcJ7pPxxYrvmd62NS5XGCd6ylQfBoUTS0WIw6Z1h2PYBiDFkQzdt3vMLUxF8wp7JDcEOco0ojuDFQWqdC8IScxe7_jF72eE5LvYX1D/s400/images.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>Dear Know-it-all-David, </b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Do you think really fat people just can't help it or is there more to it than that? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>~Wanda-ering </i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>Dear Wanda,</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I just read a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/andre-leon-talley-gay_n_3743253.html" target="_blank">magazine interview</a> with the Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley, who was once very sexily trim and now has ballooned to something near 400 pounds, always draped in couture kimonos the size of circus tent. In his interview he says he rejects the label "gay" but also he says he has "had very gay experiences". He was brought up by a strict and religious grandmother and my take is that he has guilt. I think many overweight people bury their sexual organs beneath fat so they can barely find them and no one else can either. I think it is a sexy barrier, all that fat. However, it is their right to do so. Tally is quoted as saying, "I can create this magic, so why don't I have a lover?" My response is, "You don't really want one, and how could he find you under all those kimonos and that tonnage?"</span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-42266391113791253602013-08-12T13:00:00.000-04:002013-08-13T13:52:42.879-04:00I have a friend who has not had sex in a very long time...<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>Dear David, </b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I have a friend who has not had sex in a very long time because he is afraid of catching some disease. My take is that he is not really living because he is afraid of dying. I'm sure you have thoughts about this. I should add, he lives with his mother. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">~Being Nosy</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>Dear Being Nosy, </b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">You aren't really. I think your point is something to think about. Yes if you live with your mother and your sex life is haphazard encounters with someone met online - you might do well to think it wasn't worth it if you become ill. On the other hand, if you are seeking a love relationship I think you must take some chances, protected as thoroughly as you can. I don't just think experience and love is important, I think it is essential to having lived your life!</span>David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3911405554608481259.post-51681770811039166222013-08-01T11:00:00.000-04:002013-08-01T11:00:03.552-04:00FALLing for Fashion!Fashion Fashion Fashion! It's kind of extremes today. A really excellent summer jacket and then directions for Fall. Here goes:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQFFp7vt0Pm9zIHhfyEBV06uMEr7ziKwKsUR4VTBOxD3uNR38nVFfsOd5_7DE76Cf8kxtfjOmMoutccppeD7Sef1Zk5_Y9mFNXTtDYRkb-yxoPzfpQipzurAi-av7QN6YQXNc5PmrCkt5/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQFFp7vt0Pm9zIHhfyEBV06uMEr7ziKwKsUR4VTBOxD3uNR38nVFfsOd5_7DE76Cf8kxtfjOmMoutccppeD7Sef1Zk5_Y9mFNXTtDYRkb-yxoPzfpQipzurAi-av7QN6YQXNc5PmrCkt5/s640/photo.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
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1. This funky light blue striped jacket is from Undergear. I ordered it and won't get it until September so it must have been in much demand. Quite girly but if worn with navy blue T-shirt and pants, or white top and bottom could look really new. And comfortable.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1yDV1PBTuilFqXbEYofWQY1Zto7mrURXIc0FPaSngNbbSscOcwRG44speMNz4Ugwcwx7KrN4fbafUXOY9UC8Kw3hZiR8geLP7Wy3uvxghc4ZaMUiEgpG1VubDcdyuiRz3Aw_oF5IsIT5c/s1600/photo-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1yDV1PBTuilFqXbEYofWQY1Zto7mrURXIc0FPaSngNbbSscOcwRG44speMNz4Ugwcwx7KrN4fbafUXOY9UC8Kw3hZiR8geLP7Wy3uvxghc4ZaMUiEgpG1VubDcdyuiRz3Aw_oF5IsIT5c/s640/photo-1.JPG" width="480" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMx0lP_gOB_TG8qm-Hfq-ZM5YpByfPkIDEJS5P6_3B4tkpDj-FZyBeLFNRLdOfgMW63VM2x28K_K2TjOm0TwLQf4etgoD0801yzwdYCqEB4vYooTkH6cyr78pYN_AdquCp8Qgo9TJFTa_f/s1600/photo-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMx0lP_gOB_TG8qm-Hfq-ZM5YpByfPkIDEJS5P6_3B4tkpDj-FZyBeLFNRLdOfgMW63VM2x28K_K2TjOm0TwLQf4etgoD0801yzwdYCqEB4vYooTkH6cyr78pYN_AdquCp8Qgo9TJFTa_f/s640/photo-2.JPG" width="480" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6BL7SqJYKEX7U--d4W3shNlB0dB1O52jfzXd1APolsmJLUGbOXHbeu1K1xi6MwK_Z-Js_00lq6vm_vwEz0wi8HgCaVMs9P6yp4sZBI6Qq4glpHeRYPPvtMHtY1f_obc8eNHAvvOozkyz/s1600/photo-3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6BL7SqJYKEX7U--d4W3shNlB0dB1O52jfzXd1APolsmJLUGbOXHbeu1K1xi6MwK_Z-Js_00lq6vm_vwEz0wi8HgCaVMs9P6yp4sZBI6Qq4glpHeRYPPvtMHtY1f_obc8eNHAvvOozkyz/s640/photo-3.JPG" width="480" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB666SvwkV1-twMlWtBC8Mpt4Nx9iGuXUodtW2XCkuPulULph1JfanXQ2eYWTXuZC-spD0bEqMkumzN2b5O9u_36PMVSju0Nh_PpLppkjBhjS6AQ-nZrNDHfU744cJFRWtN6bBC62xM4Gx/s1600/photo-5.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB666SvwkV1-twMlWtBC8Mpt4Nx9iGuXUodtW2XCkuPulULph1JfanXQ2eYWTXuZC-spD0bEqMkumzN2b5O9u_36PMVSju0Nh_PpLppkjBhjS6AQ-nZrNDHfU744cJFRWtN6bBC62xM4Gx/s640/photo-5.JPG" width="480" /></a><br />
2. Here's a whole new selection of fuzzy coats and jackets. This seems to be really big. Very girly in fact, but I but you're going to see it a lot on non-girly men this winter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRsEvW8zjnE3S-cds43eZdytEGpSWSPjH6KlNssIQ8_WVj90PH_aCVP0ysS4COlq2iFCcWGbEo6Hk3BWn5BtpjnMpXshKgWWoZRscenpsrwSUC-wsU833g2kKXWcTJ4gF1hXK-zr1BJxSP/s1600/photo-4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRsEvW8zjnE3S-cds43eZdytEGpSWSPjH6KlNssIQ8_WVj90PH_aCVP0ysS4COlq2iFCcWGbEo6Hk3BWn5BtpjnMpXshKgWWoZRscenpsrwSUC-wsU833g2kKXWcTJ4gF1hXK-zr1BJxSP/s640/photo-4.JPG" width="480" /></a><br />
3. Lastly, the sweater with the big anchor on it. You never see anything really new in sweaters. I liked this a lot.<br />
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<br />David Leddickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00961186355415588988noreply@blogger.com0