Else what's a heaven for?

I'm glad White Hunters was the last of the safari-related books I read, bc there was so much material, it was helpful to already know who Bror Blixen and Bill Woodley are. (Thank you Wiki and my obsessive reading.) The book traces the history of hunting in Africa from the first white hunters to the hunting ban in the 1970's, with a chapter devoted to each hunter. The Amazon reviews made me think it would be a crushing weight of human detail, but actually, even spread over the months I've been listening to this book while distracted by route finding, calculating my speed and mileage, and mosquitoes, Herne puts in enough reminders of who everyone is to keep track of 30 names. Which is not to say that by the end, it didn't become a little too much of "and then there was this awesomest hunter who was raised on an African farm and he was an awesome shot but then he had a dumb client and went after the wounded lion/leopard/elephant/buffalo/rhino and got mauled."

I liked the different perspective on some of the stuff I've read. Bror Blixen came off MUCH better in Herne's account, whereas Denys Finch Hatton comes off as more of an amateur. The Prince of Wales' hunt must've been fascinating - I think it was the latter who was asked to be the Prince's guide bc of his noble connections, but he asked his gf's ex-husband to join in bc he was a much better hunter. The movie also left out Beryl Markham, who slept with both. And I thought my poly life was complicated!

The book has a chapter about Philip Percival, aka "Pops" in Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa, but he's indistinguishable and the only mention of Hemingway is about a different story that was the basis of some early movie. Yes, the book has a chapter devoted to the filming of movies in Africa.

The book mentioned Bill Woodley often enough that I was disappointed when it ended without giving him a chapter - I wanted a different perspective on his work. He was a pretty fascinating guy - I still don't understand how white guys managed to convince African terrorists by wearing blackface - that takes more cojones than I can imagine. I also enjoyed learning about the Mau Mau revolt, which I'd never heard of before. But yes, a less biased perspective on the Woodleys would've been nice, esp since there's gotta be some interesting stories about the Woodley-Sheldrick love triangle. On the plus side, after reading about a century of safaris, now I understand why walking from the top of Kili to the ocean makes sense.

Interestingly, The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and White Hunters have very different perspectives on what went wrong with the ivory trade, and not bc one is a book about conservationists and one is a book about hunters. The former argues that artificially depressing native hunting increased the elephant population far past sustainable levels, which led to a die off that made ivory hunting very profitable. The latter argues that the gov't ban on hunting removed the influence (and observation skills and ready guns) of people with a financial stake in the long-term welfare of the animals. Interesting stuff.

This is me geeking aloud bc I *heart* pricing. You have been warned.

So you might've noticed that I fly JetBlue a lot. Earlier this year, I racked up two one-way frequent flier tickets AND got credits related to my bad travel karma. The trick is, I'm having a hard time deciding what the value of a ff tix is.

See, on most airlines, a ff roundtrip ticket in the US is worth about $250, based on the credit card schemes and the points required to accumulate them, so if the plane ticket costs substantially more than that, I start checking about using miles. By the same calculation, JetBlue roundtrip tix are worth about $200, presumably bc they have a more limited set of flights. So, if I'm looking at a $150 ticket (each way), I should use the ff ticket. Except that the ff ticket is usable by anyone I like whereas the credit is only usable by me, which is occasionally a useful distinction. I think that Gresham's Law suggests I use the credits, esp since it's nice to have the ff tix as a backstop if in my last minute planning, the price jumps.

I suppose someday I could start planning my trips more than a few weeks in advance. naw.

Also, I got to use the words "distinction" and "precision" today, which makes me very happy.

Edit: Strictly speaking, there's a further discount factor on JetBlue's tickets in that they expire in a year (instead of the more typical rolling 3-years of other airlines). However, I travel to their destinations sufficiently frequently that this shouldn't be a concern - I've penciled in two more trips, possibly 4, before the end of the year. Egads, just typing that makes me dread the packing/unpacking.

This is probably going to offend someone. My apologies in advance: this is me thinking aloud about weird things in my head and if it offends you, you probably took it the wrong way, and I hereby apologize for my lack of skill with the English language.

Which is an interesting disclaimer, given that this post is about language. I've been talking a lot lately about semantic issues - I assume everyone has personal meanings they associate with certain words. e.g. I recently noticed that while girlfriend is the female form of the word boyfriend, which means "the person you are dating with whom you plan to spend a lot of time," to me at least it also means "the woman who is not your wife that you are sleeping with." Whereas, for me, boyfriend doesn't mean that. Weird. Part of me wonders if I simply re-mapped the word "mistress", which has a very different meaning in some contexts, to the word girlfriend.

Relatedly, if you meet A at a party while hanging out with B, and A asked for your email addy, would you be sure to mention in your first email that you are (non-exclusively) seeing B?