Going in Style
Occasionally, people ask me where I learned to write. Which is kind of a difficult question to answer, since you continue to learn a little bit every day (because every good writer is reading every day), but if i think about the foundational aspect of it, I would credit two sources. My Sports Illustrated subscription starting at age 9 (and I even got a bonus education as an adolescent in swimsuit design which I particularly enjoyed) and the Boston Globe sports section, but particularly the work of Peter Gammons, whom many would know now via his work as an ESPN television reporter, but in the early ‘80s at the Globe he was the baseball beat writer and just a glorious reporter and writer and storyteller.
I think about him now because Gammons was the first guy I read who threw grammatical convention to the wind and he was a big fan of the ellipsis (…) which the late George Shirk also liked to use in his “Three Dot” column.
Of course, maybe both these guys were actually influenced by Louis Ferdinand Celine, author of “Journey to the End of the Night” and “Death on the Installment Plan.” Celine loved the ellipsis, too.
I don’t know why I bring this up other than to warn you it’s the holidays and my attention span is short so expect a few elllipses before this column is through.
Everyone’s a critic when it comes to writing, cooking, politics and Mammoth Lakes Tourism.
On December 22, the local air service advisory group met in the Town offices to hear a presentation from consultant Clint Ostler, who works for Embark Aviation.
Ostler was a longtime employee of Alaska Airlines before joining Embark, and has intimate knowledge of Mammoth Airport, its potential, and its limitations.
Former Mayor Michael Raimondo is pushing for MLT to hire Ostler because he believes we need to shake it up with our air service marketing.
John Urdi has no interest in hiring Clint Ostler and certainly did not wish to hear his presentation. At the beginning of the meeting, he apologized that the group would not be able to view Ostler’s Power Point presentation.
Assitant to the Town Manager Pam Kobylarz replied that if she’d been given any advance notice of a presentation, she could have set it up.
Public Works Director Grady Dutton then intervened and told Ostler to email the presentation to Kobylarz. It was up in 4 minutes.
This is why Urdi would have preferred no one see it.
Enplanements at Mammoth Yosemite Airport have dropped approximately 30% since 2013.
Meanwhile, competitors like Crested Butte (up 30%) Steamboat (up 30%), Telluride (up 20%) and Sun Valley (up 10%) have achieved significant air service growth.
Ostler also noted that while Telluride, Crested Butte and Sun Valley have opened five or more new air markets over the past four years, Mammoth’s opened one. Overall, Mammoth flew to far more markets in 2011 (among them Reno, San Jose, Orange County) than it does today.
As Mayor Shields Richardson remarked, “Air is an important subject to potential investors in Mammoth … this is not a graph [information] I’d like to show them.”
Damn press.
