HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM THE THUMBNAIL TRAVELER

The origins of Halloween, per the good folks at History.com. 

"Evolving from the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain, modern Halloween has become less about literal ghosts and ghouls and more about costumes and candy. The Celts used the day to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, and also believed that this transition between the seasons was a bridge to the world of the dead.  Over the millennia the holiday transitioned from a somber pagan ritual to a day of merriment, costumes, parades and sweet treats for children and adults. "

For some people, maybe.  I'm still "all about the 'Boo!'"

HAVE A SAFE AND (SLIGHTLY) SCARY HALLOWEEN!

THE SUNDAY QUOTE

ANNAPOLIS, MD - THREE CROSSES

Only a few more images from the October Country. 

This particular very small cemetery harkens back to the colonial days. If these stones could talk...

THE FRIDAY MARTINI

Spending the day in Washington, DC and flying back to LA tonight.

Going to be a long day, and if I can squeeze one in, a martini or two this evening.

Have a terrific weekend!

This was served to me recently up on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Rancho Palos Verdes, not too far from my home. At sunset.

Mar'sel Restaurant. Chopin vodka.

THE MOJAVE DESERT - WASTELAND

Sometimes the October Country isn't just a dark and mysterious place. 

Sometimes it's brightly lit. And a wide open space.

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

A one-day respite from the October Country as reality intrudes. 

Today we lay my mother to her eternal sleep at Arlington National Cemetery.

A moment in her memory, if you might.

Goodbye, Mom. Thanks for who you were, and everything you did.

SANTA FE, NM - THE CITY PARK IN THE OCTOBER COUNTRY

Have you noticed, when watching scary television shows and horror movies, how many times the unspeakable happens in the middle of city parks? It's in the October Country? 

I mean, who goes walking there after dark?

Shhhhh...was that someone in the bushes up ahead? Why don't we just have a seat and wait.

WESTERN WYOMING - COLD ROAD AHEAD

Welcome to Monday. Time to return to work. The October Country isn't just darkness and things that go bump in the night, it's also the fears which unconsciously, *ahem*, drive us.

Long lonely roads ahead. The waning day turns evening into darkness. Is that a storm rolling in? A hitchhiker up ahead? The miles slide by with no oncoming traffic in this cold forbidding landscape through a strange part of the world.

These too are the makings of our nightmares. 

Maybe there's a little town ahead where they serve a warm cup of coffee and maybe a friendly smile. 

Maybe.

SUNDAY QUOTE

ORLANDO, FL -- THE OLD COUNTRY

There. Across the lake. The castle.

Doesn't look too dark and forbidding, does it?

Are those ravens?

THE FRIDAY MARTINI

This week's Friday Martini is from my book CHASING MARTINIS (preview chapter here.). 

On board Holland America's VEENDAM, for our recent transit of the Panama Canal, we attended a series of martini classes, which allowed me to get quite a few "process" shots for the book.

This one, obviously illustrating a proper pour, featured Smirnoff vodka.

SANTA MONICA, CA - LONELY STRETCH OF ROAD

(I'm having real fun with the monthlong OCTOBER COUNTRY theme. Can you tell?)

The dark and empty street is fodder for the imagination. What is calming and reassuring during the day becomes mysterious and menacing when the sun is down.

Our breath catches, and every little movement catches our eye. 

Don't worry. It's only five blocks to your home. That might just have been a cat you heard.

What could possibly happen?

ANNAPOLIS, MD -- OCTOBER COUNTRY IN WINTER

There is little more worrisome than to be outside on a bitterly cold morning, lost in a strange place.

Like the Twilight Zone, denizens of the October Country are more than happy to take advantage...

Bring a heavy coat and gloves. And a torch.

CAN TRUMP, INC RECOVER: THE DESTRUCTION OF A TRAVEL BRAND

"Every single @realDonaldTrump hotel and golf course is toast. Done. Over. Bernie Madoff now has a better brand."

                           -- Mark Cuban, tweet on October 7th, 2016




As nearly everyone in the travel industry will attest, having a strong brand is essential to keeping the doors open and the clients coming back. Whether you operate a Marriott, a St Regis, or a Motel 6, consumers come to your property with an expectation and knowledge of the brand beforehand.

The same goes for car rental agencies, airlines, and specific destinations. A tarnished brand can take years to restore, if it ever recovers. Heck, even your humble little travel bloggers brand themselves with what they hope is a memorable and enticing image.

This year the Trump brand -- and I won't be going into the politics involved -- is suffering a potentially fatal fallout as a result of its namesake's run for the Presidency of the United States. To say his campaign has been controversial is to court severe understatement.

Image is Everything...

A result of the campaign has, unfortunately, begun to seriously stain his brand, which caters primarily to the very very affluent. That is a market segment very sensitive to image, and also to controversy. The somewhat absurd element to this is that Donald Trump's campaign is aimed at exactly the opposite of his brand's target market: the less-educated working class -- not the ultra-wealthy who are the source of his disputable wealth.

And this is damaging his brand, with the potential to ruin it entirely.


A brand, any brand, is impacted greatly by the public perception of it. Take a look at Tylenol, the highly successful brand of acetaminophen pain reliever owned by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. In 1982 several bottles of Tylenol were laced with poison, killing several consumers and making others very sick. For a brand like Tylenol, built on the perception that it was a safe and effective pain reliever, this was a disaster. Trust in the product was singularly important. Johnson & Johnson had to act quickly and effectively to staunch the crashing faith in its product. To their credit, it continues to this day as a recognized and popular product.

The Trump brand is no different. Its perception is one of very high-end glitz and glamor, partially because the properties are indeed world class, and partly because Trump is a never-ending salesperson who regularly employs hyperbole to sell his brand. Hyperbole ("this is the best") ("nobody is better") works well in a marketing plan, but less well in a political environment.

Brands built on the reputation of a single individual are subject to considerable pressure from the actions of that person. If the CEO of brand XYZ misbehaves it might have damaging effect, but the brand survives by ousting that CEO and insisting they have changed their ways.

Other times the CEO misbehaves so erratically it can take the brand down with this. Winess the destruction of the WorldCom and MCI brands when Bernard Ebbers, the CEO and mastermind of WorldCom's ascension, committed fraud. The damage was so severe to the brand that eventually the entire organization was forced into bankruptcy and sold to Verizon.

Trump is no different. The impacts to his name have been significant. Trump University is gone but the legal battle is still raging. And just a few weeks ago Trump Taj Mahal, once an opulent and desperately needed addition to the Atlantic City skyline, closed its doors after a muddled history and muddied brand.

News reports come in almost daily recounting Trump's brutal past as a business partner and contractor. None of this plays to his favor when it comes to establishing and touting his success. (Which, despite the flood of negative news he insists are entirely someone else's fault.)

And so his brand is suffering. Recent controversies have thrown his personal reputation into some unflattering light. Being a somewhat naughty playboy works as the image for the jet-set, but not so well as a political candidate nor as a sales point for an expensive and elegant venue for a fundraiser.

The once nearly invulnerable Pan Am never recovered from the stain on its image as a result of the 1988 bombing of its aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland. (While Pan Am was already suffering, the safety concern this raised was one of the final nails in its coffin.)

All that glitters isn't gold...

Brands are equally important for destinations: The Mexican cities of Acapulco and Mazatlan, once poster cities for glamorous and exotic travel, now lie vacant because of their reputations as unsafe for tourists because of drug cartel activities. The countries of Guatemala and Colombia are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to attract back tourists who fled them during the worst civil war and drug trafficking days in the last few decades.

And so it comes to the evaluation of the Trump brand. I am certain the success or failure of the brand over the next few years will be the stuff of marking classes worldwide in the coming decade. How the brand manages the controversy, and whether it can sustain and rebuild its image as catering to the ultra-wealthy remains to be seen. A large number of their target audience are beginning to look elsewhere and as the brand declines it may suffer the "jump-on" bandwagon effect, which accelerates a brand's demise.

If Trump is unable to sell his image of unbridled success and extreme glamor -- both claims which are greatly debated and under increasingly intense scrutiny -- then he will not be able to sustain his market. 

And once that image is gone it is almost impossible to restore.

Crater...

LOS ANGELES, CA - A DARK COURTYARD

'Tis Monday. In October Country.

A dark courtyard somewhere. 

In Los Angeles, actually. At LA's famous Union Station. 

Even in the middle of everything, you can be alone.

THE SUNDAY QUOTE

SAYULITA, MX - DAY OF THE DEAD

Day of the Dead...or more properly Dia de los Muertos is the celebration, particularly in Mexico, of families gathering to celebrate their ancestors and helping to support their spiritual -- or through the spirit world -- journey.

The three heads shown below, which decorated the front awning of a building in downtown Sayulita, is representative of the style of the artwork associated with the Dia.

Typically celebrated October 31st through November 2nd, the Dia is a way for us to pay respect for those who have come this way before, and in many ways laid out the pathways we walk today.

THE FRIDAY MARTINI

"Everybody's working for the weekend," or so say the song lyrics from the band Loverboy.

I don't think that's quite right. I think we work for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to pay for what we do outside of the office.

Regardless of why you work, let's hope you have a lot of fun when you're not on the job.

Happy Weekend, and have a martini...

This shot, titled "Date Night", was made at the OXO Brasserie in London. Belvedere was the vodka.

(Image from the planned book CHASING MARTINIS)

SANTA ROSA, CA - CRY OF THE SARUS CRANE

Another October Country destination.

Too many horror movies these days center around young adults at camp.

Perhaps the writers are simply reliving their own horrible Summer seasons away from family, listening to things that went bump in the night.

In this case, however, the encampment is of a permanent and much more enjoyable time: wine country's SAFARI WEST park, near Santa Rosa. Here it's not the boogeyman who will get you, it's the wild animals in natural settings just a handful of feet away.

Nothing predatory can get to you, but the unearthly cry of a Sarus Crane (a slender five foot tall bird) at 2 o'clock in the morning will certainly bring you to your feet.

LONG BEACH, CA - A PARKING LOT AT MIDNIGHT

Who among us doesn't fear the walk through an empty parking lot late at night? The familiar becomes the strange and the shadows hold a thousand moving possibilities. It's a scary place, for reasons both real and imagined. Our imagination works overtime, but caution is more than warranted.

In the October Country, anything can happen.

BRITISH COLUMBIA - FOREST FOR THE TREES

Can you tell I'm really, really looking forward to Halloween this year? For me it isn't the evening itself, though that can be a lot of fun. It's the run-up to the night. I love watching the scary films, the marathons of shows like Buffy, The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.

For me this is a season, not just one night. In the next few days my wife and I will have the annual screening of SLEEPY HOLLOW, which the is official start to our Halloween Season. Yeah, there are already decorations up in the yard, but the movie just seems to be the right jumping-off place for all things that go bump in the night.

Or the forest. Have you ever noticed how many scary things lurk in the forest? There's always something there, just out of view, watching you.

October Country picture of the day: Forest for the Trees.

JOSHUA TREE NP. CA - MIDNIGHT DESERT

Continuing on our October Country theme, this was shot using time-exposure in the Joshua Tree National Park. I don't usually shoot time-exposures, and this was just a little fun I was having just after shooting the sunset and noting how positively dark the desert becomes after the sun goes down.

Again, it's OCTOBER COUNTRY.

THE SUNDAY QUOTE

SANTA FE, NM - MUSEUM OF THE HEART

Unlike a lot of the images I post here, this one caught my eye solely because of what another artist was attempting to convey in their work. To me, this represents the heart as the controlling influence of mankind. I may be wrong, but I'd like to believe that's true.

These pillars adorn the eastern entrance to Santa Fe's IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA)

THE FRIDAY MARTINI

Hard to believe another week has come and gone, but it's time for the weekly martini!

This week's choice is from the View Restaurant at the very top of the Marriott Marquis, Times Square. It's the first martini shot in my collection and started the whole Martini Chaser thing.

Have a wonderful weekend, and hope tonight finds you with a firm grasp on a good martini.

(And, as always, the book preview: CHASING MARTINIS SAMPLE CHAPTER)

LAKE TAHOE, CA - MIDNIGHT BURGER

There is something very mysterious and eerie about a brightly lit diner or hamburger stand in the middle of the night. Many a story of a haunted road trip starts and maybe ends at a place like this.

On the other hand, the Sno-flake Drive-in near Lake Tahoe does grill up a mean burger.

SKAGWAY, ALASKA - DIGGING UP THE DIRT

In keeping with the October Country thematics, this is the cemetery in Skagway, Alaska. A land where thousands came seeking their fortunes in gold and more than a handful found nothing but dirt instead.

I wandered up to the cemetery very early one morning, with not another person within a mile or so. Profoundly quiet, other than the sound of a waterfall off in the distance. 

For some the dirt simply didn't pay off. For others, well. The dirt was a bit more final.