Category: Travel Bob

Flying the friendly skies

I fly. A lot. Almost 300,000 miles on Delta alone. But yesterday was a first. I was trying to fly from Knoxville to Memphis for a friend’s funeral, and my flight was delayed. For a long time. Nothing unusual there. I’ve probably spent as many hours waiting in airports as I’ve spent in the air.

After a 3 1/2 hour wait, the fine folks at Northwest Airlines called all Memphis passengers. The plane was repaired and ready to go.

I was the only person who stepped forward.

Everyone else had gotten out through Detroit, Northwestern’s other hub

So I got to fly alone on a Canadair 50-seat jet with “Princess,” the flight attendant. Very cool. Better than first class, really. Princess and I talked and drank coffee all the way to Memphis and we had the entire plane to ourselves. Though it was a little odd when she had to go through her “safety/here’s how to buckle a seatbelt” thing for only one passenger.

Just to show that karma kicks and caresses you, the flight home was a nightmare with a screaming kid in the row behind me and a Buffy in the seat next to me. Thank god for my iPod.

Tesoros Modernos …

Post author By Bob Benz
Post date February 16, 2004

We went to the San Antonio Museum of Art yesterday to see Tesoros Modernos (Modern Treasures), a collection of Latin American masterpieces from the Monterrey collection. It was impressive and included a lot of artists I wasn’t familiar with and a few I was. I think my favorite was Alejandro Colunga’s “La Muerta de un Loco.” Very dark, even disturbing. They also had a piece by Diego Rivera, something from his Cubist period, and a work by Orozco, whom I’ve always liked.

We took our friend Anita’s six-year-old with us, and as we drifted through the gallery, Emma’s pink, glitter-splattered shoes clicked across the marble floors in staccato bursts.

“That’s pretty,” the tap-dancing art critic decreed.

More clicking. “That looks like nothing,” she said, standing in front of Cesar Paternosto’s “Inti,” which is basically an orange canvas with orange rectangles on it.

Then more clicking, and a slip.

“These floors feel like butter.”

Emma’s antics definitely made the exhibit more fun.

Overall, I really was impressed by the museum. It’s one of the best I’ve been to, probably because it caters to Latin American art. After we looked at Tesoros Modernos, we went through the Nelson Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art. It’s an awesome collection that includes pre-Columbian, revolution era and modern works. Several nice pieces by Rivera and Orozco, including Orozco’s “Martirio de San Esteban I.” It features Saul watching as St. Stephen is stoned to death, suggesting a link to what the church was doing during World War II while Jews were dying in concentration camps. Very moving.

The folk art section also was great. They had molas from the Kuna Indians and lots of Day of the Dead stuff.

I came across one piece that I really liked, though I’m not sure how to categorize it other than to call it contemporary. It had a Pop Art feel to it. It was Enrique Changoya’s “Les Adventuras Des Cannibales Des Moderinistas.” I made a mental note to look up Changoya and see some of his other work.

Travel Bob

Remember the Alamo …

I’m in San Antonio this weekend after a quick business trip to Denver at the end of the week. We almost ended up stranded in Dallas thanks to a snowstorm yesterday, but the snows abated, we were moved to a new flight and we arrived here 4 hours later than planned.

That left enough time to go over to the Alamo. I’ve been to San Antonio several times and love the city, but I’d never seen the Alamo. It was pretty cool, but I really wasn’t awed by it. And I can’t put my finger on why. The grounds are really nice, and walking amid the cactus and live oak and pecan was really the highlight of the visit. There’s just something too, well, propagandistic about the whole thing. But I guess that’s half the fun of preserving shrines like this. I felt the same way in Puebla when I visited the fort where the Mexican army held off French invaders in what is now celebrated on Cinco de Mayo. The flags, monuments, cannons and jingoism are a little spooky to me. I started thinking about the death threats one historian was receiving when he posited that Davey Crockett really was executed after pleading for his life rather than dying valiantly in battle. People really get freaked out about this stuff, especially when you start questioning the legends they worship.

Overall, it definitely was worth a visit, especially if you can flash back to the battle and wonder what was running through the minds of the fighters on both sides. I read Stephen Harrigan’s The Gates of the Alamo a few years ago and thought it did a great job of presenting all sides of the conflict in highly readable historical fiction. That’s worth checking out.

Now it’s time to toss Dr. Atkins under the bus and gorge on Mexican food …