JEFF GIDDENS

Southwest Forever.

I would like to ask my friends to remind me never to fly American Airlines again. We have all seen how they hate their customers in the past two weeks with the $35 charge for a second bag, and I have just been subject to another policy of theirs that shows disdain for their loyal customers - the $150 change fee, regardless. Granted, I have no one to blame but myself, for I willingly booked a flight with them. I won’t ever do that, ever again, even if they are the cheapest.

There is no reason that changing a flight to an earlier date should cost a dollar. Last fall, I was in El Campo, TX, flying to Los Angeles. I had a late-night suicide drive to Dallas to make my 6 am flight, when I realized I was only 2 hours from Austin, and through their website, I changed my flight less than 12 hours before it left, and GOT MONEY BACK since the new flight was cheaper.

However, here I find myself more than a month away from a flight trying to change it, and there are 300 dollars in fees for doing so (for two tickets). Never again, American. Never. Ever.

Ever.

Thinking further, I can’t decide if this is American, since we are built on capitalism, and everyone should be trying to make a profit all the time, or unAmerican, since, you know, its a free country and all that stuff. Just trying to decide if they live up to their name or not.

something I learned today - a new word -

Melisma, in music, is the technique of changing the note (pitch) of a single syllable of text while it is being sung. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note.

Alicia Keys has made a career out of his, as has Mariah Carey. Probably the most famous use of melisma is in the Christmas tune “Angels We Have Heard on High”, on the word Gloria.

very interesting.