The author of The Savage Wars of Peace and War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World reviews Robert Coram’s Brute in today’s Wall St. J. (subscription required):
… he has produced a valuable work that significantly revises our understanding of—but does not diminish our respect for—one of the all-time great Marines.
In Jackson, Mississippi. We stopped by after visiting Willie Morris in nearby Yazoo City. Eudora Welty (1910 – 2001) was that fascinating combination of a very private person who was certainly not a recluse. Although she lived by herself in the family home for years after her mother died, she traveled widely and loved entertaining friends.
Her house in the Fondren District of Jackson has been preserved as it was in 1990, when she was still an active author. As you would expect for a master craftsman of the written word, her place is a treasure trove of books. She was an eclectic reader, and when her house was readied for public view, curators counted over 5000 of them.
Take the E. Fortification St. exit off I-55.
Although you could walk to downtown Jackson, her home is an oasis of tranquility, and her garden still provides inspiration for any artist. Oddly, her office faced a relatively busy cut-through street, but it let her type her manuscripts while listening to the the sounds carrying over from the music department at Belhaven College across the street. It also let visitors see if she was in so they could ask for autographs.
Dwight Garner reviews Robert Coram’s new book, Brute, in today’s New York Times.
Again.
My wife and I were shocked when Willie Morris died back in 1999. A couple of years later, we went by his grave to pay our respects, and I guess I should point out that we had met Willie several times, have all his books, and have most of them autographed. Once I asked him for advice on getting published and he gave he his agent’s name and phone number. They must not have been getting along that well. [Click photo to enlarge.]
We were driving from Ginger’s ancestral home in the Delta down to Jackson today when we got the idea to stop by and see Willie again. It wasn’t hard to find the cemetery, but once we got in the place, everything seemed strange, even more than they usually do in cemeteries. After driving around for a while, we got the bright idea to Google “willie morris gravesite” on our iPhones, and after some thrashing about in the 2G world of ATT in Yazoo City, managed to find the phone number of the Yazoo Convention and Visitors Bureau.
A very nice lady told me to start walking back towards the main entrance and look for the black fountain. When I got there, she said to turn around and start walking away from the fountain and there was the grave of the Witch of Yazoo! Shivers started to run down my spine (read Good Old Boy to find out why). “Now, carefully turn to the right and walk 13 steps.” There it was, a new headstone but the same bottle of bourbon. Glad to be back, Willie. How you gettin’ along?
A colleague recently told me about a bus service between Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, about 180 miles apart.
On the Calgary – Edmonton run, the service costs $134 R/T and takes 3 hours, downtown to downtown. Their slick web site says that if you’re at the departure location 15 minutes before departure, you’ll make the bus. The leather / plush seats have power connections and offer 30% longer pitch, but the bus does not appear to offer wireless. However cell is available and so it is probably possible to connect somehow.
What about air? Air Canada is showing $194 R/T for their cheapest fare in mid-December. Flight time is 50 minutes, gate to gate. If you don’t live at the gate or don’t work there, add some extra time. And don’t forget to add something extra if you need to check a bag.
Point is that airline service has become so expensive, and the experience — not all the airlines’ fault, of course — is so bad, that they are creating their own competition. For trips up to around 300 miles, business-oriented bus is just the most obvious and requires the least capital to get off the ground.
The trick is going to be implementing a service-oriented culture within the organization so that the experience will appeal to the business or upscale leisure clientele. In other words, you’d want to be UPS and not the USPS. Might start with a long hard look at Southwest Airlines.
No. V, sponsored by Agile Vancouver.
I’ll be giving the keynote on Tuesday morning. If you’re there, stop by and say “Hi!”
Robert Coram’s biography of the last of the legendary Marine generals is now available.
A new post by our most perceptive geopolitical expert, Fabius Maximus.
He reviews the 14 “Plan Bs” suggested by pundits assembled by Foreign Policy magazine. Essentially, their recommendations amount to doing more of the same, but expecting different results. Here’s his paraphrase of #13:
(#13) Invade another god-forsaken land where we have no national interest while there’s still a few $ on the national VISA card
So what would be wrong with arresting Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has conducted a campaign of brutal terror in northern Uganda and adjacent areas of Africa for years?
Nothing — if it were done by the governments of Uganda or the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Sudan. The problem is that those entities are states only in the sense that they have seats at the UN, and they are among the most corrupt in the world. Sending in special operators to take out Kony will change that about as much as killing another narcotrafficking boss will return the rule of law to northern Mexico.
As you all know by now, Ford has posted its best 3rd quarter net income in 20 years and gained 1.3 percentage points of North American market share, putting it ahead of Toyota for the year.
A couple of observations:
“Restructuring” does not “result in strong sales.” It may lower costs, but it does not produce products that customers want to buy. If all you want to do is lower costs, eliminate R&D while you file for Chapter 11.
It may be a while before we understand the bases for Ford’s success, assuming that it is real success, that Ford continues to make money and gain market share. But my preliminary assessment is that Alan Mullaly and the folks at Ford understand the Toyota Way better than the current crowd at Toyota.
For example, consider this from the Wall St. J.:
Ford’s mid-size, front-wheel-drive Fusion sedan is now the top-ranked model in Consumer Reports’ “family cars” segment—better than the Toyota Camry, the Honda Accord, the Nissan Altima and the Hyundai Sonata. Overall, Ford is now No. 1 among the Detroit brands.
Improving quality; containing costs — starting to sound like the Toyota Way to me.
Which raises an interesting question: Look at the 14 elements of the Toyota Way, as revealed by Jeffrey Liker and think about Toyota’s current dilemma — has Mulally found something missing?
Suppose that instead of leaving home a couple of hours before takeoff to account for driving to the airport, finding a place to park, making your way to the terminal, checking baggage, allowing for potential delays in security, and arriving at the gate 30 minutes before flight time, suppose that instead of all this, you could hop on a bus with the equivalent of at least business class (reserved) seats and free wifi, and reach your destination just as quickly. Suppose furthermore that you could do this from, say, DC to downtown Manhattan for $15.00
Think that would be a threat to the airlines?
Check out the new Greyhound site.
Yeah, I know that busses have bad reputations for cleanliness and stations are often located in parts of town you’d rather not find yourself in, but given only slight fare increases — still well below airlines’ — those problems can be fixed. And long-distance service, such as the newly announced route between Chicago and New Orleans, will probably only appeal to those who cannot afford to fly.
Europe has invested heavily in high-speed trains, but given the cost of building new rail lines, this option remains impractical for the United States. Busses, however, just show up and go.
I couldn’t tell from the site whether $15 will get you one of the new busses, but even at, say, three time that price, is it still a threat to airlines, most of which will charge you that just to check bags?
Point is that dysfunctionality in our air transportation system has led not to new airlines but to alternative ways of getting from point A to point B. There will be more to come.
Slightly East of New 
You must be logged in to post a comment.