Last weekend I visited the No. 1 city in America, Charlottesville, Virginia.
The week before, Frommers Cities Ranked and Rated (by Bert Sperling and Peter Sander, published by Wiley) came out and said that Charlottesville was the best place to live in the United States.
I'm not sure where Baltimore ranks... or for that matter, the communities outside of Baltimore.
Anyhow, I didn't decide to visit Charlottesville because it had been rated No. 1. Rather, I went to attend a cousin's wedding.
(In a future posting, I should try to give my impressions of the place, as well as a summary of the wedding and describe some of the people I met, there.)
just found out that my sister came back from a business trip to Papua New Guinea unscathed... I'd warned her not to go, 'cause I'd read about robberies in the capitol, Port Moresby, and elsewhere.
PNG, as it is known, is a basketcase of a nation... a more-or-less failed state, that will be rescued by Australia later this year. The Aussies will send in civil servants and police to establish governance and law-and-order. (Reminds you of another situation, doesn't it?)
The main thing that PNG has got going for it, is a copper mine project that the Chinese recently signed to set up.
A week ago, I visited Goucher College for the first time. There was a Maryland Early Brass festival going on, last weekend. I went to hear a trumpet professor from Brooklyn College (CUNY) talk about coach and post horns.
I was familiar with the images of post horns, as they're often used by European postal services as a logo. (I'm a stamp collector, albeit a somewhat lazy one.)
This past Tuesday, I visited Johns Hopkins U to check out the JHU Press book sale. The selection was slim by the time I got there (7:30pm). But I managed to find 8 books that looked worth reading. (Although when I might get around to doing so is difficult to say.)
They only cost me $26! That's only slightly more than $3 a book!