The real problem with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's approach to dealing with labour unions is that it doesn't go far enough.
Walker is trying to strip the state's employees of their right to bargain collectively with their employer, on the theory that the labour unions have been too successful in their work, and have gotten the state to make promises it won't be able to keep. Although this problem really should be laid at the feet of the state's less competent representatives in bargaining -- i.e., politicians and their appointees, and those who, at Walker's urging, recently voted to bankrupt the state through corporate welfare bonuses -- it is a potentially powerful way to turn the clock back to the era of the robber barons, when it was viewed as the right of each labourer to make his or her own individual employment contract.
John D. Rockefeller;
one reason we need
labour unions
But if Walker is successful, we will be beset with the same problems that gave rise to labour unions in the first place: the widespread abuse of the labouring class by the capital class.
What then is to be done?
Well, for starters, let's take Walker's idea a step further, and say that, just as labourers cannot come together to select representatives to bargain on their behalf, neither can capitalists. No more corporations or partnerships, no more joint ventures or trusts. Everyone with a dollar to invest in the capital system must make his or her own individual investment contracts. No more of this system of shareholders choosing knowledgeable people to sit on a board and choose other knowledgeable people to operate a business. Everyone has to do it on their own.
Each state agency will have to negotiate its pen and paper purchases independently with individual producers of supplies. Each state executive will have to hire and fire his or her own secretary, each crew chief will have to staff his or her own crew ... and will, of course, have to devote some time to learning personnel laws, and defending the lawsuits that result.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German defense minister, has asked his university to withdraw his doctoral degree. Turns out some of it is plagiarized; how much is debatable. According to the BBC, a German newspaper identified two examples, with other texts attributed incorrectly.
According to The Local, a website offering German news in English, participants in a Wiki-hunt have found "unattributed copying" on 270 of the thesis's nearly 400 pages. But the report is vague enough that I wouldn't be surprised to find that many of these incidences amount to three consecutive words that also appear in an earlier publication on the same topic. (What's this? A blogger who has little faith in the competence, impartiality and credibility of internet users? Gasp all you want, but yes.)
Anyway, that's not the point. My point is that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has shown abilities remarkable in any politician: the ability to keep things in perspective, the ability to recognise a mere tempest in a teapot, and the ability to discern what's important. She has declined to sack Guttenberg. From the BBC:
"I appointed Guttenberg as minister of defence," she told reporters. "I did not appoint him as an academic assistant or doctor. What is important to me is his work as minister of defence and he carries out these duties perfectly."
In 1958, an airplane carrying the Manchester United football (soccer) team crashed on a runway in Munich, Germany. Eight of the team's players were killed, as were 15 other people.
Last month, a tiny little football club called Crawley Town was drawn to face Manchester United -- which has been the most successful team of the past 20 years -- in the fifth round of the F.A. Cup competition, a year-long tournament that any football team in England can participate in. It's a big, big deal for Crawley Town, and they put together a song and video to celebrate the moment and raise money for the team's official charity. The video showed a band performing the song on stage, with celebrants dancing nearby. It was posted on YouTube, of course, as is everything of even trivial moment.
Turns out, one of the people dancing by the stage was filmed making gestures, the Guardian says, "simulating a plane crashing into the ground and holding up his fingers to count one, then nine, then five and eight to symbolise 1958." Some Manchester United supporter called the Crawley Town offices and complained about this tactless and offensive performance. The club, which had until then been unaware of the gestures, pulled the video and put up an edited version, which cuts the edges of the picture off to exclude the offending images. They also banned the offender for life from attending any of the club's matches.
Now, according to that same newspaper, this idiot has been "arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of causing harassment, alarm or distress."
This offender is 19 years old. The Munich crash is ancient history to him, and is only of significance to most living Man U fans as an article of ancient history, like the Battle of Kosovo or the Siege of the Alamo. Banning this stupid kid for his entire life from the matches of his home-town football club is excessive; involving the heavy machinery of the State and branding him a criminal is an injustice of the first water. Sadly, it is the sort of injustice that is becoming routine, and not just in decayed old-world societies.
Here's an example of what's wrong with news coverage in our society: The BBC reports today that comments by the Irish singer Bono about a folk song are raising hackles in South Africa, because it includes the lyric "Shoot the Boer." ("Boer" is the Afrikaans word for farmer; it's also been used historically to distinguish settlers of Dutch ancestry from those of British ancestry, hence the Boer War; it also, according to this story, is used as a derogatory term for white people in general.) There is a push to get the song banned as hate speech -- something that is increasingly common in countries where there is no guarantee of free speech.
Far down in the story is mention of the fact that "Since apartheid was banned in 1994, more than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered."
I wonder why that fact hasn't gotten more attention in the world?
I received a comment from Terri Hendrix, the singer-songwriter, in response to the review I wrote of her show at the Little Carver Center last month. Before putting it up on this blog, and responding to it, I wanted to ask her to re-read the review.
Unfortunately, I don't have a way to contact her in reply. So: Ms Hendrix, if you happen across this post as you did my review, please confirm that you don't think you mis-read my post, and that you still feel as you did in that comment.
It's become an accepted feature of American life that captive audiences are to be charged through the nose for everything. I'm tired of it, myself, but there are enough damned fools out there -- that is, pretty much everybody -- to keep the practice alive.
It amazes me, how profligate people are, how ready and willing to part with their money for no value. So they charge you six bucks for a beer at the ball game; what can you do about it? You're stuck there for hours. Here's a thought: drink water out of the fountain, and stop off at a bar for a beer after the game. The game will be just as good. And don't eat the food at the ball park. Besides being overpriced, it's bad for you in every way.
Same thing at the airport. Eat before you go, and take food with you for the flight (since the airlines have now joined the fleece-for-all).
This diatribe is provoked today by my first-ever visit to Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, where I went to see the excellent film, The King's Speech. I figured the food prices would be higher than at a restaurant, and they were, just a bit. They were the kind of prices that would pass for normal in Seattle or San Francisco, and having just been out on the west coast a few months ago, I was not obligated to pick my jaw up off the floor when I saw them on the menu. I had psyched myself up to pay a premium price for mediocre food, and was all set to do so, until I saw the price of bottled water: $3.
That's more than a premium price; that's exorbitant. Water is free in this country, and the bottled-water craze is ludicrous. But even in a captive venue, $3 for a little water in a two-penny bottle is way, way too much. At that price, it should come with a blow job. (I assume it doesn't.) So I did without for a couple of hours. It was no hardship for me, and no doubt Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will not notice the small profit missing from their bottom line. Because all you other profligate fools will buy their water.
While I was sitting in a doctor's waiting room a few months ago, I read a little squib about how many minutes of actual activity take place in various types of sporting matches. This was in ESPN magazine, or maybe it was Sports Illustrated -- one of those sports publications that fill the vast pages between advertisements and genuine journalism with little factoids: bits of information not worth the effort of actual development into full articles. (Naturally, to a diffuse mind like mine, these are generally the most interesting things in print.)
It reported that the average hockey match has something like 58 minutes of play in about two and a half hours of television time; basketball has like 46 minutes (again, out of about two and a half hours), baseball has about 13 (out of eternity), and NFL football, only about 12 minutes (out of three hours). At the time I noticed only that the magazine didn't bother to include soccer, which probably has about 85 minutes (out of two hours), except in Spain, where the whistle blows every time somebody passes gas on the field, so they probably only have play going on about 60 minutes.
But more recently I've noticed that the NFL, America's favourite sport, shares its dubious distinction of sparse content with America's favourite television show, Dancing With the Stars, which takes a passel of unemployed actors, models, and former athletes; anyone who can loosely be called a celebrity in a town where anybody who owns a press agent is a celebrity (reading through a list of competitors is like reading through your local telephone book: some of the names are vaguely familiar, and a few of them you maybe can identify) and pairs them with professional dancers, then puts them on stage to dance for about two minutes each. DWTS starts the season with a dozen or so of these who-are-they's, then bumps one, sometimes two, off each week until they are left with a champion.
At the start of the season -- and they have two seasons a year -- the shows run two hours on Monday night, and one hour on Tuesday night, when they give the boot. So the Monday night show starts off with about 24 minutes of dancing out of the 120; by the penultimate week they manage twelve minutes out of 90, which makes NFL football seem positively unrelenting in its pace. Throw in another six to twelve minutes for the judges to announce their scores, and as many commercials as can be sold, and the rest of the time is filled with fluff: amusing peeks behind the scenes at rehearsals filled with formulaic melodrama and everybody's-so-wonderful puffery; visits from attractive family members or relatively famous friends; and self-serving interview clips that manage to seem both spontaneous and rehearsed at the same time.
Tuesday nights are even worse: sixty minutes to announce the loser of the previous night's competition, which in actuality takes all of thirty seconds. The rest of the time is filled with even more fluff and manufactured melodrama than the Monday night show.
And yet.... And yet....
I started watching a few years ago because my wife got into it, and let's face it, my choices at that point were either to watch and enjoy, or watch and not enjoy. I enjoy the dancing, what little of it there is, and I enjoy the comments of the three judges, who are all genuinely knowledgeable about the subject of ballroom dance. Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli are choreographers, and Len Goodman is a professional ballroom dancing judge (a what?!?). Inaba is also very pretty, Tonioli is wildly and amusingly exuberant, and Goodman is charmingly curmudgeonly, which strums sympathetic strings in my heart. The host, Tom Bergeron, who also hosts four or five hundred other television shows, has a pleasant delivery and is graceful in his easy humour. He is joined by a co-host, currently some woman named Brooke Burke, who was a competitor on the show before I started watching, so I have no real idea of who she is. She's getting better at her job, but is still no match for the smooth Bergeron, or indeed the woman she replaced in that job (whose name I forget).
Then there's the fact that the show goes out live, so there's always a possibility of something out of the ordinary. When Marie Osmond fainted after her dance, I was as stunned as I was when Roy Carroll threw the ball into his own net and didn't score an own goal (see video, below). It's the only time I've seen an actual faint. (Tom Bergeron really impressed in his handling of the event.) And it's a chance to see an occasional performance by a guest that I might actually want to see, as when Shakira performed on one results show. Plus, the show exposes me to music I wouldn't otherwise hear, since I almost never listen to commercial radio. It was through DWTS that I came to appreciate the music of P¡nk, who is now one of my favourite singer/songwriters, and Lady Gaga, who is one of my least favourite performers.
DWTS is inane, and contrived, and almost all the people on it are affected. But it still isn't as silly as shows like Survivor or Big Brother, where a whole bunch of fatuous people try to act as scurrilously as possible, and pretend that they're not being seen by a camera crew. And, with rare exceptions, the people on the show don't try to pretend that what they're doing is seriously important, beyond the sense of competition. Plus, there's a lot of good dancing.
I had jury duty today. I know a lot of people pull faces at the very thought, but I take the chore seriously. I would actually like to be a juror, but I know that no lawyer is going to want another lawyer on his jury. I'll never get on an actual jury, and that knowledge dims the glow of the experience somewhat. Still, I go, I sit and read for a day, I earn my six bucks, and I go home.
When I got downtown to the courthouse area, I parked in the county's parking garage. I parked on Level Three and walked down the stairs. When I left this afternoon, I got in the elevator and pushed the button for Level Three. I stepped out and saw a sign to my right that said "Stairway B, Level 2." I turned around, thinking I'd gotten off on the wrong floor, and there was a sign at the elevator that said, "Remember that you parked on Level Three."
I was confused. Where was I? Far off to the left I could see another sign, "Stairway C, Level 2." Then I remembered that, where I'd parked, the floor was only half-covered by the floor above. This clearly was not Level Three. I walked up the stairs and found my car on Level Three.
So: if we can't trust our county government — and by extension, all levels of government — to correctly do something as simple as counting to three, twice, why should we trust them to do anything right?
I've always known that South Texas is a relatively inexpensive place to live. That fact is reinforced every time I visit a restaurant or grocery store in Southern California or New York, or even in the Midwest. (The prices at a Wal-Mart in Menominee, Wisconsin took me by surprise.) But I noticed something on this most recent trip that I had never noticed before: there is a dividing line --- a Continental Price Divide, if you will --- that runs down along the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico. Until this trip, I'd always travelled in the southern part of the West: California, Nevada, Arizona. The rise in prices as you go west from Texas is somewhat gradual, although no less noticeable for that. But up north --- and this is what really surprised me --- the change in prices is steep and sharp. In the north, the change is like a cliff, while in the south, it's a sloping plateau.
I'd always assumed that it had to do with things like transport costs and state tax policy. I still think those must necessarily play a part --- witness the difference between the price of gas in South Lake Tahoe, California, and Carson City, Nevada, less than 50 miles away; only the comparatively rapacious tax policy of California, the state with the least efficient government, can account for the great difference. And despite all the cost-lowering progress in transport, brought about by technological advances in my lifetime, moving things still costs money, and moving it farther costs more (to a point).
But these can't be the only factors at work here. I say this because of the sharp difference in prices from one side of the Cascade Mountains to the other, within the state of Washington.
Prices for things tourists are interested in --- primarily gas, lodging, and restaurant food --- are high to the point of exorbitance in Seattle, as in all of coastal Oregon and California. This was more or less what I expected to find, and, sadly, wasn't disappointed. But get across the Cascades into the eastern counties of Washington state, and suddenly prices for gas and food drop. The burger that costs you $9 in Port Townsend, on the Olympic peninsula, is only $6.50 in Grand Coulee. The gallon of premium gas that costs $3.55 in Sea-Tac on Saturday night is only $2.99 in Spokane on Sunday afternoon.
I suspect the trend holds good in lodging as well, but because of special arrangements made in advance in one place, and not the other, I can't really say with any specificity. All I can say is that I found a reasonably-priced room pretty much at random on the eastern side of the mountains, but couldn't locate one in a week of internet searches on the western side.
I don't know what causes this sharp bifurcation. Why is it that people in, say, Everett, Washington will pay 40% more for a hamburger, and 20% more for gasoline, than their neighbours in Spokane?
We like to think that ignorance is confined, at least as to general topics, to uneducated people. That seemed to be true when I was young, but I suspect now that that was more perception than reality. Back then, there were relatively few people talking in mass media, and those who did --- reporters, anchormen, senators, admirals, generals, scientists --- generally maintained a certain gravitas, and spoke with some erudition. They didn't get on the air unless they could speak cogent, coherent, and --- politicians excepted --- concise English. As anyone will know after watching even half an hour of cable network news, this is manifestly no longer the case. Every ill-educated crackpot who can waive unexamined credentials under the nose of some desperate and time-pressed producer can now find his or her opportunity to befoul the marketplace of ideas with their peculiar brand of counterfeit reasoning, frequently clumsily expressed, and often at full volume. It's gotten so that even well-educated people no longer can be counted on to stop and consider before they put their ignorance on display for all the discerning world, wherein it will be noted, as well as for the uncaring world, wherein it will not.
My particular beef is with a presumably well-respected law firm, and with Here And Now, a nationally-available (on public radio, once an incubator and exemplar of erudition in America) news program produced by WBUR, the radio station at Boston University, which somewhat ironically pretends to excellence in education.
On a number of occasions, the producers of Here And Now have thanked their corporate supporters on the air, including Hinckley, Allan & Snyder LLP, lauding it for providing legal expertise "throughout New England, and now in Connecticut." (Emphasis added.)
Surely somebody at Here And Now is aware that Connecticut has long been a part of New England. Surely somebody at WBUR is a former English major who recognizes redundancy. Surely somebody at Boston University has heard this frequently-delivered announcement, and surely somebody at Hinckley, Allan & Snyder LLP has listened to the announcement, either delivered to them by the program's producers for their approval, or on the actual broadcasts. Yet none of these surely well-educated radio producers or lawyers has thought to correct the appearance of ignorance that such an announcement projects.
It's bad enough when I hear Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show --- an intelligent and sophisticated guy, though he'd probably quibble with that characterization --- say, in an unscripted interview, that he and his staff "wean (sic) through" all the previous day's televised idiocy for stories on their program. I'm sure that if you asked him to write that down and say it once a day for months, he would immediately notice that the proper phrase is "weed through." But to have all these New Englanders go week after week in apparent obliviousness to the precise meaning of Here And Now's expression of gratitude is a far, far greater show of ignorance.
I bet this is what happened: somebody probably said, "You know, guys, if you say that, it means that either you think Connecticut is not part of New England, or that you're lying when you say 'throughout New England.'" But then somebody higher up, probably somebody with too much concern for economy of speech, said, "Well, people will know that what we really mean is that these lawyers now have an office in Connecticut."
Yes, we can figure that out. But while we're thinking about it, we're also thinking, with perhaps some exaggeration, "These people are idiots."
That's probably not the image they were going for.
Driving through New England the other day, I noticed one of those freeway lanes set aside for "high-occupancy vehicles" -- cars with two people in them; motorcycles, buses. This freeway lane was at least 15 miles long, and included specially-built exit overpasses, so that its ecologically responsible users wouldn't have to work their way through the mass of ordinary folk in the other lanes. There was not a single vehicle using that lane in its entire length.
Now: the idea of these dedicated HOV lanes is to reward people who car pool, making their trips faster by getting them out of the gridlock and speeding them on their way. I can see some value in that; we want to encourage people to car-pool. And I would expect that there would be fewer cars in the HOV lanes than in the other lanes -- if there weren't, HOV lanes would be useless. But there were none. Absolutely none. And where I could see the HOV lanes heading the other direction, I saw not one single vehicle over there either.
There still has to be some kind of cost-benefit analysis given to the construction of these lanes. I find it hard to believe that any serious objective analysis was done. How much does it cost to build a mile of freeway a single lane wide? How much does it cost to build 15 miles of it? How much to build the special overpasses for dedicated use? How much to build the added shoulder and guard railings? How much for the carpool parking lots that are part of the system? (Probably not much for that last one, but something.) And how much does it cost each year to maintain all that added infrastructure?
And how much benefit do we get, from the added productivity of HOV users who arrive at workfour minutes earlier, or stay later, or are more alert from a more relaxing commute? How much from the pollutants that were not emitted by the vehicles that weren't used? How much from the unspent fuel? (And note that the benefits from using motorcycles and buses are not properly a benefit of the HOV lane, except to the extent that the presumed faster transit on the HOV lane encourages motorcycle or bus ridership. Neither are the benefits of using hybrid or other low emission vehicles, which in some places are allowed to use HOV lanes with only one occupant.) (And, do these expensive-to-build, expensive-to-maintain roadways actually achieve their stated objectives? Theone study I found says not.)
I know there are ways to quantify these things in dollars and cents. I would like to see the calculations, but I suspect either they weren't done, or weren't done properly, or were just ignored in the interest of politics. And I suspect something uglier than mere politics.
I've seen these HOV lanes all over the country, and in Canada. In some places, mostly in the very largest sprawling cities, like Houston and Phoenix, they seem to get enough use to justify the cost. I say "seem" because, again, I don't have any quantitative basis for analysis. There are others, as in Tampa and Minneapolis/St. Paul, that are toll lanes ("HOT lanes"), sometimes with no charge to high-occupancy traffic, reducing (or, theoretically (though I bet it hasn't happened since the old Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike was paid off) eliminating) the cost to the public. But if you take it that frequently-used HOV lanes are worth their cost to society, while underused HOV lanes are not, then I would say from what I've seen around the country that HOV lanes are too often a waste of money.
In a representative democracy, we elect public officials to oversee the answering of such questions. We all know these representatives are subject to all of the failings of ordinary mortals, but still we expect them to husband public resources the way they would their own. We expect them to use due care in deciding what project is a good investment, and what project is not.
Sometimes they will get it wrong in the analysis. Sometimes the information provided to them will be incorrect, or incomplete. Sometimes it will be lies and sometimes they won't catch those lies. Sometimes they will be influenced by the desires of the loudmouth segments of their constituencies: the special-interest groups, the lobbyists, the organized groups of citizens who care a great deal about issues that most of us think only modestly important. Sometimes they will be influenced by corrupt influences, generally either money, power, or sex. Sometimes they will just exercise poor judgment, and sometimes they will just be stupid. They are, after all, ordinary mortals themselves, and in theory their failings will be dealt with at the next election.
Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really. ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull
When Homer was a puppy, he couldn't wait to get somewhere. Anywhere. Straining against his leash, he always had to be first, to be in the lead, to be ahead of everyone else on a walk. He had no time for grass and shrubs and smells, or anything that might delay him, might allow another to take point; his only interest was in that next place, the next street, the next yard, and the one beyond that, and the one beyond that. As he got larger and stronger, he had to move up to a halter instead of a collar, and he had such strength in his little body that, eventually, the wife couldn't walk him. He would pull her along, pull her over. (Plus, he has an aggressive temperament with other dogs, and when they once encountered a stray on a walk, she came close to being injured in trying to get him out of a fight. Since then, she doesn't walk him alone.)
Now, he's matured to the point where the walk has become all about the grass, the bushes, the smells of the neighbourhood. No longer straining on his leash, he walks steadily on, stopping to pee, to sniff, to poop, to taste the grass, to enjoy something other than the walk itself. Other dogs merit inspection, but not the sort of suspicion and knee-jerk hostility of his youth. After nine years, Homer's becoming an Old Dog.
Not unlike me, in many ways. When I was young, I couldn't wait to get 'round the next corner either. Anything new was a temptation, any novelty life offered was a pleasure. The latest toy, the latest fashion, the latest idea -- that was the pleasure of life. There were unexplored paths, and I wanted to zip down all of them, get on to the next city, the next craze, the next new best place.
Now, not so much. I've lost interest in the novelty of new things. I can't be bothered to learn how to use new gadgets. A DVD recorder? There it sits, a pointless lump of metal that hums irritatingly and flashes the wrong time, and invites people to give me movies that I will never unwrap. The latest cell phone? All bells and whistles, pointless and overpriced. Beyond the communications aspect -- and that only in a limited degree -- they are glitz without substance. I would prefer not to have a camera on it -- I've seen enough pictures of the inside of my pocket.
My new phone has a button on it that activates voice commands. The button's on the outside, where it can easily be pressed accidentally. I find voice-command technology to be an impediment to the enjoyment of life.
I'm tempted by high-definition television, I admit, now that Fox Soccer Channel is available in HD, but I figure that if I wait long enough, it can be had for a price that might make it seem worthwhile. Until then, I can see the ball well enough on standard TV.
Sometimes I miss those old days, when Homer didn't have to be dragged along on a walk, when I didn't have to continually stand and wait while he chewed on some piece of grass, or inspected some low shrub with an attentiveness worth of a congressional inquiry. Sometimes I get tired of waiting on him to smell his roses.
Until I think about how hard it was to handle him when he was in a hurry.
I love to travel to small, out-of-the-way towns, and since I live fairly close to smack-dab in the middle of the gigantic state of Texas, much of my travelling is done there.
I also love to eat, and when I eat I prefer to eat good food. Since I am so often in places I've seldom been to before, for several years now I've been collecting the restaurant recommendations from several sources that I consider reliable: Texas Highways, a monthly magazine put out by the Texas Highway Department; Travel Texas, a publication of AAA-Texas; Texas Monthly, a glossy high-falutin' magazine that I only occasionally see; and occasionally other sources that don't immediately come to mind.
I thought I would put this collection of restaurant recommendations out there, in the ether, in case anybody else is driving around some remote part of the state and wondering if there's any decent place to have a bite. Now I can't guarantee that the places listed here are still in business -- some of these recommendations are several years old. But they are likely to be the best food available in a given town, and so, I think, are more likely than not to remain in operation.
There are 193 towns listed, naming well over 200 restaurants. The big cities that I go to most often -- Dallas, Austin, Houston and Fort Worth -- have few listings, just because I already know the places I like there, and have only included a few of the many recommendations published for those cities: places that, for one reason or another, particularly piqued my interest and that I wanted particularly to remember when the time came. And there are no listings in San Antonio, because (1) this city is the prime location for good food in Texas, I don't care what any snooty, misinformed Dallasites or Houstonians think. you can't swing a dead cat in this town without it smacking up against the wall of a damn good place to eat; and (2) I already have my own favourites, and have access through the internet to any other recommendations I might want -- an advantage I don't usually have out in, say, Crosby County.
Because there are so many towns listed, I've divided the locator map into six parts: the Panhandle (including Wichita Falls); North Texas; East Texas; South Texas (meaning the Rio Grande Valley and lower Texas coast); Central Texas, including the area around San Antonio (which I normally consider South Texas); and West Texas. If you know the name of the town you want to eat in, just look it up in the restaurant listings at the bottom. If you don't know what towns are around where you are, or will be at mealtime, look at the appropriate locator map, find the nearest numbers, see what towns the numbers represent, and then look those towns up in the alphabetical listings.
