Italics are mine

Janis Joplin Bio: "Scars of Sweet Paradise"

Sometimes you start a book with a bit of curiosity about the main protagonist but low expectations overall, and end up spellbound by both the compelling life story and the great writing. "Scars of Sweet Paradise" by Alice Echols, about singer Janis Joplin, is one of those books. Joplin is famous now both for her remarkable musicianship and unique voice (she was the first female rockstar), and for her death of a heroin overdose at the age of 27 in October 1970. (Read her obit in the New York Times here.)

What I loved most about the book was that Echols makes Joplin come alive as a human being whose brashness and loudness hid severe insecurities about her physique and who struggled with a loneliness she could never overcome. Echols also gives a remarkable portrayal of Joplin's long descent into drugs, in spite of her attempts to get clean, in addition to her abuse of alcohol. You can't help but empathize with Joplin when you read the parts about her childhood and teenage years in Port Arthur, her short-lived attempt to fit in after she returned to Texas following her first San Francisco stint -- engaged to be married to a con artist who had another girlfriend on the side and had no intention of marrying her, if you can believe it --  as well as the spectacular failure of her 10th year high school reunion where she continued to face sneers, contempt and disapproval.

My sense is that her alienation in Port Arthur played a key role in Joplin's developing the musicianship that made her famous - people who fit in, the homecoming king/queen types who are popular in high school, just don't offer a novel way to view the world that would make them compelling artists or creative types in general. Yet, plenty of alienated teenagers dream of moving to San Francisco but never turn into world-famous musicians. Echols's narrative doesn't give Joplin's rise to stardom a sense of inevitability - we struggle with her every step of the way - but she doesn't diminish her protagonist's drive either: Joplin's determination shines through at every page. 

It is hard to imagine now what life and career she would've had, had she lived. If she had survived the OD in October 1970 (45 years ago in a few months!), would she have changed her ways? would she have sunk into irrelevance? We're left with a couple of timeless songs such as "Piece of my heart" and a greatest-hits collection.

Rating: five stars out of five.

Gordon Parks photographs at @mfaboston

(Photo credit: Gordon Parks Foundation/MFA mfaboston.org) The MFA in Boston is currently showing a remarkable series of black-and-white photographs by Gordon Parks, the first African-American photographer to be hired full-time by LIFE magazine. The photographs were commissioned by LIFE but never published, and depict former elementary-school classmates of Parks in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas around the year 1950, when Parks was in his late 30s. Those former classmates are often photographed with their spouse in front of their house, and more rarely inside their home. They are accompanied by short texts that tell the stories behind the pictures and make the photographs even more compelling. (Some of those captions are truly stunning, such as the one that goes with the picture of a couple and their 4-year-old son, and says something along the lines that the couple had later sent an update that nothing much had happened to them since "except the death of their son." Runner-up is the caption of a picture of a classmate with her husband in a squalid building, with the note that as he was leaving, Parks robbed held at gunpoint by the husband. Parks promptly surrendered all his money.)

The power of the pictures lies in the variety of outcomes for Parks' former classmates at his all-black elementary school: some lived in poverty and drug addiction, others had found modest prosperity, but the photographs also document in some way segregation in America in 1950. In the words of the New York Times review: "The lives of the classmates... present a miniature snapshot of African-American aspiration and struggle in the years before Brown v. Board of Education or the civil rights movement."

You can read more about the show from WBUR, Aperture and Slate.

Travel Adventures

I returned today (February 2) from a weekend in DC... This is an account of my airline adventures. I was notified yesterday that my mid-day flight from Dulles to Boston today was canceled. Fair enough. I rebooked - I actually found a seat on a earlier plane that same morning that had not been canceled. This looked a bit suspicious because the plane was supposed to land at the time Boston was supposed to have heavy snow, but there was no other same-day rebooking option so that's what I picked. I adjusted the SuperShuttle reservation and found my way to IAD (Dulles Airport) early on this morning. Of course, it turned out the flight had been canceled and United had no other flight. They rebooked me on American (US Airways, it turned out) flying out of DCA. Before I actually made my way to DCA, I waited at IAD a bit and sure enough, that flight got canceled too. Anyone keeping count? That's 3 canceled flights.

I tried to talk to American/US Airways representatives, some who were more helpful than others, and got rebooked on DCA-LGA (La Guardia) and LGA-BOS but the rep wasn't optimistic the flights would actually be a "go". She also told me to get on the standby list of the 1pm DCA-LGA flight since I would otherwise have little time to connect at LGA. Alright. So I take a one-way SuperShuttle trip to DCA, make it past security, find the gate for the 1pm flight to LGA, get a seat (no need for stand-by). The flight is a go. It is also the bumpiest flight I've been in a long time, to the point it was getting scary, although not imminent-fall-from-the-sky scary. Then the pilot makes an announcement that we're going to be in a holding pattern for about 20min because of icy runways at LGA. Okay. Then after half an hour the pilot comes back on the PA system and announces that LGA is still closed and we can't keep holding because we're going to run out of fuel so we have to turn around and return to DCA. Epic fail. (It turned out for the best because the LGA-BOS flights were later all canceled.)

As soon as we land, I look up on my phone my new itinerary on the US Airways site. This turned out to be the key to a successful trip, people. Get on the website of your airline, enter your confirmation number and see what new itinerary that have for you. We deplaned in DCA at 3:10pm-ish and dear US Airways had rebooked me on a flight going to Charlotte, NC leaving at 3:30pm. (Actually, I was the last one on board and we pushed back at 3:25pm.) If I'd stayed in line at the customer help station the way we'd been advised to on the PA, I would have missed the flight, and this is the flight that ended up marking the beginning of my true trip back home. So I make it to the flight going to Charlotte, and find myself sitting between two people who love cycling and we end up having a fascinating conversation about cycling, doping, Tour de France, etc. (Recommended reading, according to my right-side neighbor: Wheel Men and Domestique: The True Life Ups and Downs of a Tour Pro.) 

Landing in Charlotte, I learn the Boston flight is still a go, although the JetBlue flight to Boston leaving around the same time was cancelled. Then people start talking about the fact that the Patriots are scheduled to return to Logan Airport this evening too, and that is probably a key part of the reason Logan Airport remains open for some evening flights. (Thank you, Pats.) The plane leaves late, in part because of a late aircraft arrival from Chicago and an air traffic hold in Boston. No one aboard cares: everyone is happy the flight is going. 

The flight is very smooth and the plane lands in Boston. WOW is the only word for it. The runway is barely cleared. Once we reach the taxiing part of the runway, we are on snow - we don't even see the color of the runway under it. (The problem, of course, is that it is 12F outside and salt doesn't work at very cold temperatures.) Signals by the side of the runways are almost buried under the snow. White everywhere. We move to the gate. I'm worried the plane will skid but the pilot is apparently a master at driving jumbo sets on snow. The jetbridge is frozen. We wait over one hour (after a 1.5 hour flight) for the US Airways ground crew to de-ice the jetbridge. It works a bit, but not completely. (Someone says he saw the Patriots plane. This is exciting. Quite a few passengers are wearing their Patriots jerseys. My neighbors start talking with each other. One will spend the night in Boston before going home to Cape Cod with her husband tomorrow. The other one talks about his husband and how they met, prompted by the Cape Cod neighbor who admires his wedding ring with lots of diamonds on it. Then he shows us pictures of his wedding and the Cape Cod neighbor speaks of Provincetown, where she lived for 25 years. Then the Cape Cod neighbor shows pictures of a town she often visits in Italy.)

After one hour (!) just short of the gate, the jetbridge is still stuck and the pilot has everyone go back to their seats, buckle up, and then he moves the aircraft to another gate. That jetbridge works. We finally make it out. My little suitcase (that I had to gate-check when I boarded the flight for Charlotte) is nowhere in sight but a nice employee helps me find it, in a corner hidden behind a big suitcase. Victory!

I head out to the taxi stand. By then it's past 10pm. Total mayhem. Not enough cabs. The dispatchers are asking folks to share rides. They ask the people at the top of the line for their destination and then yell "Downtown! Cambridge! Somerville!" to find other people in the line going to the same destination. I share a cab with a young woman going to Harvard Square and a young man going to Medford, although he doesn't seem totally clear whether he's going to Medford or Cambridge.

It's only when the cab leaves the airport that we fully understand all the plane cancellations and the mayhem. The roads are really, really bad, and barely plowed. Streets in Cambridge are terrible. White everywhere. At least on Memorial Drive you can see the asphalt on the road but inside Kendall Square the cab is just driving on snow. (Between the cab and the plane, there is a theme going on there.) I thought this storm was supposed to be not as bad as the one last week, but now I'm not so sure. In the end, though, I do make it home the same day that I was supposed to, with all my things, and without getting in an accident on the way home.

Everyone on the Charlotte-Boston flight agrees we got lucky our flight went through, especially after seeing the runway conditions at Logan. The next CLT-BOS flight (last one of the day) is cancelled. More snow is expected for the end of the week. Yay!

Moral of the story: (1) really, if there's a snowstorm messing up your travel plan, just re-book to a day after the storm, even if you need to pay for a hotel. (2) if a flight is cancelled or you miss a flight, check your new itinerary right away on your phone - especially as soon as your plane has landed, before you reach the gate. The airline might have good news for you. (3) sometimes, it takes 3 cancelled flights, 1 bumpy airplane ride followed by a turnaround and return to origin airport, and a trip bringing you way south before you can go way north, for you to make it home. And nice airport and airline employees who plow the runways, try to de-ice a jet bridge in frigid temperatures and find your luggage. And cab drivers who drive on snow so that you don't have to. And the Patriots (everyone on my flight believed) to keep the airport open. A true team effort!