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CEO offers free flights to Vegas

Las Vegas is eager to fill its hotels and casinos once again. Derek Stevens, CEO of the D Las Vegas and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino, just announced an initiative designed to jumpstart Vegas’ summer tourism season. Stevens, who will be reopening his two hotels on June 4, is giving away 1,000 free one-way flights to Las Vegas from over 20 major US cities. The “Keep America Flying” program is designed to stimulate both the city’s tourism industry and the country’s airline industry.

In the announcement, Stevens said, “As we begin to reopen our doors across the city, we are proud to help reinvigorate travel to Las Vegas while supporting airlines in America impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. We can’t wait to safely bring visitors to the city and remind them why we’ve earned the title of ‘Entertainment Capital of the World.’ And while we’d love for visitors to stop by Downtown Las Vegas, we primarily want to get people back to Las Vegas to experience the attractions and amenities that make it one of the greatest places on Earth.”

The free one-way flights are available through airlines including Allegiant, Frontier, Southwest, Spirit, and Sun Country, from the following cities:

Appleton, WI (ATW)
Austin, TX (AUS)
Atlanta, GA (ATL)
Boise, ID (BOI)
Chicago, IL (ORD)
Cincinnati, OH (CVG)
Dallas, TX (DFW)
Denver, CO (DIA)
Detroit, MI (DTW)
Knoxville, TN (TYS)
Louisville, KY (SDF)
Memphis, TN (MEM)
Milwaukee, WI (MKE)
Minneapolis, MN (MSP)
Oklahoma City, OK (OKC)
Omaha, NE (OMA)
Phoenix, AZ (PHX)
Portland, OR (PDX)
San Diego, CA (SAN)
San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Seattle, WA (SEA)
Sioux Falls, SD (FSD)
South Bend, IN (SBN)
Tulsa, OK (TUL)

To participate in the promotion, you can sign up at the D Las Vegas’ website. Seats will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

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Austria to test hotel workers weekly

Many countries want to reopen their borders to tourists to get the summer season started, but it’s not so simple. Visitors need to be confident that health and safety are being prioritized, and hotels are a big part of that. To give tourists peace of mind when staying at its hotels, Austria will begin testing 65,000 hotel employees per week for coronavirus, starting on July 1.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said in a press conference, “In which country in the world can you go on holiday and say the staff you come in contact with, the waiters, are tested regularly? It will be very few countries.”

Currently, around 5,000 to 8,000 Austrians are tested each day, and a consortium of private labs will be tapped to conduct mass testing of hotel workers.

“We will invest a great deal,” said Kurz, “to test as many staff as possible who are in contact with guests as often as possible, to prevent them becoming multi-spreaders.”

Austria’s biggest coronavirus cluster — which kicked off the country’s outbreak — happened at the winter resort of Ischgl earlier this year. The memory is still fresh in the minds of Austrians and prospective visitors, so the government is doing everything it can to ensure hotels are safe spaces for guests, and not potential centers of outbreak.

Austria’s hotels are expected to reopen on May 29, while restaurants have been open since May 15.

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Mosaic discovered under vineyard

Archaeologists in the town of Negrar di Valpolicella near Verona, Italy, have unearthed an ancient, and perfectly preserved, Roman mosaic buried under vineyards. Believed to be part of a third-century Roman villa whose remains were discovered in 1922, the archaeological discovery is in pristine condition.

Photo: Comune di Negrar di Valpolicella/Facebook

The excavation to find more about the villa resumed last summer after the site was abandoned for nearly 100 years, but was suspended in February due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Authorities from Negrar di Valpolicella wrote on Facebook, “After countless decades of failed attempts, part of the floor and foundations of the Roman villa located north of Verona, discovered by scholars a century ago, has finally been brought to light. The superintendent will now liaise with the owners of the area and municipality to identify the most appropriate ways of making this archaeological treasure, which has always been hidden beneath our feet, available and accessible.”

Although technicians still need more resources to finish the excavation, local authorities have pledged all necessary help to ensure the job is finished.

Roberto Grison, mayor of Negrar di Valpolicella, told local newspaper L’Arena, “We believe a cultural site of this value deserves attention and should be enhanced. For this reason, together with the superintendent and those in charge of agricultural funds, we will find a way to make this treasure enjoyable.”

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Tax incentives for domestic travel

There’s a lot of talk right now about Japan and Sicily enticing overseas travelers by covering the cost of their trip, but for many countries, domestic tourism will be the first major step toward reviving the economy.

To jumpstart tourism, countries around the world are offering to shoulder the financial burden of travelers’ expenses. Italy is offering “holiday bonuses” to lower-income families to encourage visits to hotels, campgrounds, and beach resorts. In Poland, the government is considering issuing travel vouchers to citizens, for use at sporting events, exhibitions, and other entertainment venues. Peru’s Machu Picchu will be reopening in July with free admission for lower-income Peruvian families. Even though the US is still struggling with the virus, it is considering a similar approach to make domestic tourism appealing this year.

The US Travel Association (USTA) and the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) have both called for tax credits for every American family to encourage domestic travel. In a new policy proposal, the USTA floated the idea of a “tax credit worth 50 percent of qualified travel expenses incurred in the U.S. between enactment and December 2021, up to a maximum tax credit of $4,000 per household.”

There’s no doubt that Americans are eager to travel, but many are finding it financially difficult to do so. According to Tori Emerson Barnes, the USTA’s executive vice president of public affairs and policy, “We want people to book travel, to get excited by it. One of the things we think about in the current environment is the lack of anticipation, the lack of something happy to look forward to … [it’s] really another crippling effect from a psychological perspective of the crisis.”

On Monday, President Trump expressed support for an “Explore America” tax credit, though no specifics have been outlined.

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Greenhorn Ranch to buy guests' gas

The working guest Greenhorn Ranch in California’s Sierra Buttes is reopening on June 1, 2020, and it’s pulling all the stops for people to come and stay with them.

Jull Rivoli, the ranch’s general manager, explained in a statement that cleaning and social-distancing measures have been heightened at the ranch and that staff and owners are doing everything they can “to help everyone find a way to get outside, enjoy a family vacation, and reconnect for a little while.”

That includes the “Tanks for Staying” promotion. If you book a stay between August and October, the ranch will fill your tank as a way of saying thank you.

Founded in 1962, Greenhorn Ranch features 28 guest rooms, a saloon, dance hall, fly-fishing ponds, a pool, rodeo arenas, a fire pit, skeet shooting, 3D archery, horse riding lessons, and hundreds of miles of trails.

To promote social distancing, the property is installing new outdoor seating and offering more plated meal services.

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Can Americans travel to Europe

The recent news of countries ending their lockdown and lifting travel restrictions is undoubtedly bringing a smile to our face. Portugal has announced that it will be welcoming international tourism in June, Greece has set a June 15 date for opening its borders to overseas visitors, and even Spain and Italy — two of Europe’s hardest-hit countries — plan to kickstart their tourism season next month.

And after three months of restricted movement, US citizens are eager to get traveling, Hearing about the opening of some European countries is like seeing an oasis in the desert, but that oasis might, unfortunately, be a mirage. For countries that have announced the resumption of June or July tourism seasons, the announcements have been frustratingly vague.

Portugal will soon welcome international tourists without imposing a mandatory two-week quarantine. But it’s still unclear if the “international” designation applies to US citizens or just visitors within the Schengen visa zone. Similarly, Spain’s prime minister said that starting in July, “Spain will reopen for foreign tourism in conditions of safety. Foreign tourists can also start planning their holidays in our country.” It’s certainly an encouraging message, but as long as the term “foreign” remains undefined, US citizens shouldn’t celebrate just yet.

In Greece, one of the countries that successfully contain the virus, international tourists will be welcomed back as soon as June 15. However, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ announcement was among the most transparent, revealing that only visitors from countries with acceptably low rates of infection would be permitted to enter. It doesn’t take too much guesswork to realize that, given these terms, the US probably doesn’t qualify.

Iceland, another country that succeeded in containing and eliminating the virus within its borders, plans to welcome overseas tourists from June 15. The country is offering free COVID-19 testing for all incoming visitors, and you will only be required to quarantine if you test positive. But like other European countries, Iceland has not been specific about which countries are actually included (or excluded) in its 2020 tourism season.

Even the countries looking to fully open their borders wouldn’t be able to do so for another few weeks as flights into the European Union are still banned until June 15.

Since this is an unprecedented situation, governments can be forgiven for their lack of transparency right now. Every country in the world must strike a delicate balance between public health and economic survival, and the decisions are neither easy nor obvious. Right now, all US citizens can do is remain patient, and trust the gradual reopening process.

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Why American bluegrass is popular

Rosta Capek grew up on bluegrass. His mother played banjo in an all-female bluegrass band that his father, a folk musician, founded in the early 1970s. The band, Schovanky, was a sweeping success: Its songs became radio hits. Its hits went on to soundtrack movies and TV shows. Schovanky was even invited to tour with Johnny Cash in the early 1980s.

Like many Americans, particularly those from the Southeast, bluegrass is in Capek’s blood. Yet Capek is not from the United States at all. He, like his parents, was born and raised in the Czech Republic.

Bluegrass itself was born in rural Appalachia after World War II. Its heritage is rooted in Irish, Scottish, and English musical traditions that were brought over by settlers and later mingled with blues, country, and string-heavy mountain music.

The genre’s name is credited to the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Artists like Earl Scruggs, a North Carolina native, and Tennessee-born Lester Flatts helped solidify the sound, both as members of Monroe’s band and as the leaders of their own group, the Foggy Mountain Boys, which helped bluegrass find a wider American audience.

Festivals like San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly and Colorado’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival are testaments to the genre’s reach in the US, but bluegrass didn’t stop at domestic stages. Not long after the Blue Grass Boys began performing in the US, bluegrass made its way to Europe through the Armed Forces Radio, where it was not only received by American soldiers stationed overseas but also intercepted by Czech ears.

Photo: BalkansCat/Shutterstock

Ethnomusicologist and fiddler Lee Bigood argues that much of the genre’s appeal can be explained by the sense of freedom that bluegrass embodies, which Czechs craved having spent the 19th and early 20th centuries pining for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

“America was a big part of what the possibilities were,” he told Radio Prague International in 2008. “America stood for democracy and the Wild West, the Wild West being a source of a lot of imagery and fantasy that was really effective.”

This desire for freedom and the romanticization of the American West aligned in an early 20th-century practice called tramping, Bigood writes in Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe. Free-spirited Czechs would venture into nature to enjoy outdoor pursuits like camping and fishing. Many also played folk songs, both Czech and American. Soon, tramping became a subculture with its own style, slang, and sound.

Bluegrass started to reach a wider Czech audience in the 1960s when then-Czechoslovakia was a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Pete Seeger staged concerts in 1964, introducing the country to the five-string banjo. The first bluegrass festival in Europe, Banjo Jamboree, was held in Čáslav an hour east of Prague in 1972. Johnny Cash made an appearance in 1978.

Yet it was not American bluegrass that was popularized throughout the 20th century but a uniquely Czech iteration of the genre.

Communist decree banned local bluegrass bands from singing in English, so American bluegrass classics were rewritten in the native tongue with entirely new lyrics.

“For example, Jessie James is nearly a Czech national song,” says Capek of one of the most frequently covered songs in the American folk canon, “but with the Czech words, of course.”

Capek was born in 1968, the year Soviet forces quashed Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring liberalization movement, which intensified the forced rejection of American influences. Czech bluegrass bands, many of whose names nodded to the American bands that inspired them, were forced to adopt Czech names, driving a greater wedge between the genres.

During this era, says Capek, “bluegrass music was a kind of protest.” The songs that slipped past the Iron Curtain brought not only visions of freedom and democracy but also rebellion.

In the end, rebellion drove the communist party out of Czechoslovakia during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, almost a decade after the party prevented Capek’s parents from touring with Johnny Cash. Western music flooded in, and Czechs began traveling, reigniting interest in American bluegrass in tandem with the hybrid genre that was already ingrained in Czech culture.

Though distinct, today’s Czech bluegrass doesn’t follow a single format. Some bands perform in Czech, a tribute to the early lyrical evolution, and others play in English, singing in their best American accents. Often an homage, Czech bluegrass is never an imitation.

Jeff Scroggins, a two-time national banjo champion and former frontman of the internationally acclaimed bluegrass band Jeff Scroggins and Colorado, ranks Czech bluegrass musicians as some of the most technically proficient in the world. Built on lightning-fast fingerpicking, bluegrass instrumentals require incredible dexterity to master.

Yet it’s enthusiasm and the bluegrass spirit, which Scroggins defines as a “nostalgia for the good old days that never were,” that Czech musicians capture best. “They’re just passionate,” he says. “They’re passionate about music, they’re passionate about beer, they’re passionate about food. That’s why the bluegrass is intense, and that’s why the crowds make noise at the show.”

No international audience can compare with the reception an American bluegrass player gets in the US like the fans in Prague, according to Scroggins. “They get real rowdy there,” he says, remembering a particular performance in a packed 2,000-person theater that literally vibrated with excitement. “Just the way I like it. Everyone on their feet like they are back home.”

Photo: Pivovar U Supa/Facebook

For American bluegrass fans, transatlantic travel to check out the Czech scene is an experience unto itself. The legendary bluegrass jam nights at U Supa pub, which bills itself as the city’s oldest brewery and a Western-style country saloon, offers a fun, if idiosyncratic, perspective on the heart of Prague’s Old Town. Banjo Jamboree, Europe’s inaugural bluegrass festival, is still held annually in Čáslav, with dozens of other events and festivals hosted throughout the year.

Now ubiquitous in the Czech Republic, across Europe, and abroad, Czech bluegrass has evolved from a byproduct of American bluegrass to a peer. Countless bluegrass giants from the US have played venues in Prague. In 2011, one of the biggest names in Czech bluegrass, Drúha Tráva, performed for President Obama at Prague Castle. And some of the most highly regarded bluegrass instruments in circulation are crafted by Czech hands.

Two of them belong to Rosta Capek. Though he never aspired to be a musician like his parents, Capek always envisioned a career that involved bluegrass. He was trained as a violin maker as no schools in the Czech Republic offered classes in banjo-making in his youth. He later applied that craftsmanship to bluegrass instruments.

Today, Capek’s instruments are coveted by bluegrass musicians of all nationalities, notably the American greats: Ricky Skaggs, a 2018 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, plays Capek’s mandolin and mandocello. Grammy nominee Andy Statman owns an F5 mandolin. Eight-time International Bluegrass Award winner Becky Buller plays one of his ukulele banjos, and Capek is even making a signature model of a five-string banjo for 2018 Banjo Player of the Year Ned Luberecki. Demand is also high in Norway, Sweden, Germany, England, and Italy.

One might argue that Capek is continuing a tradition that traces back to the very beginning of bluegrass. Bigood notes that Czechs, through their historical ties to Slovaks, can lay some claim to the foundations of American bluegrass in the form of the characteristic steel-string dobro, or resonator guitar, which was invented by the Slovakia-born Dopyera Brothers in the United States in the 1920s. Though a loose connection, perhaps, Czech luthiers like Capek can now claim their influence on the worldwide bluegrass scene without hesitation.

“It’s a sign of how far [bluegrass] has evolved there,” says Scroggins. “It adds to the authenticity. By the time you’re down to how to make a banjo, you have to understand the music.”

At the end of the day, though, neither Scroggins nor Capek attributes the demand for Capek’s instruments or bluegrass itself to any nationality, location, or even language.

“For the people for whom bluegrass is compelling, it is intensely compelling,” says Scroggins, who grew up in Oklahoma wanting to be Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page but could never sidestep his attraction to the banjo sound. “Bluegrass is undeniably a music that speaks to certain people,” he says, “and it’s not much about the lyrics to be honest.”

It’s hard to say what, exactly, makes bluegrass so compelling for such a wide audience. Perhaps it’s the combination of steel strings, fast fingerwork, and vocal harmonies. Perhaps it’s a spirit of abandon that’s somehow imbued in the melodies.

Whatever the reason, bluegrass saw the Czech Republic through political turmoil and a social growth spurt. It spoke to Czechs, as Scroggins says. And, when translated, tweaked, and reintroduced to American audiences, Czech bluegrass spoke right back.

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Camping is a low-risk activity

Memorial Day is over, and that means summer is unofficially here. With increasingly warm weather comes the desire to get out of the house, have fun, and maybe even pretend that the pandemic was just a winter fluke we really don’t have to worry about any longer. But despite the news of US states and countries reopening to tourism, the virus is not gone.

To make sure you have a good summer while remaining safe, experts have given NPR the lowdown on what activities put you and others at risk of infection and what activities don’t. And, as expected, spending time outdoors with few people will be the way to go this season. Camping especially, pending your level of isolation and familiarity with the other campers, has been deemed the least risky activity for coronavirus infection.

Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center, told NPR, “As far as summer activities go, this is least risky from a virus perspective.” That doesn’t mean, however, that there are no risks at all. “Sleeping in tents together with others [not from your household] can certainly be a setup for transmission,” Katz said, adding that you should make sure that the people you are camping with have been respecting the social distancing and health safety guidelines.

According to experts, other low-risk activities include outdoor exercising and spending the day at a public beach or pool.

“The sheer volume of water will dilute out the virus,” said Dr. Andrew Janowski a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Washington University in St. Louis, “making the water a highly unlikely source of infection.”

Higher-risk activities include going to nightclubs, attending a religious service, and potentially visiting a shopping mall.

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Tree-planting drones

We lose 13 billion trees per year and only get back less than half of them. But because experts know that having more trees is one of our best chances to fight climate change, Canadian startup Flash Forest wants to make a dent in that number by planting one billion trees by 2028.

When combined with the work of similar companies like Dendra Systems and Droneseed — which is working to up its planting efforts to one billion trees annually — tree-planting drones could make a significant difference in long-term reforestation of heavily deforested areas.

The average tree pulls up to 48 pounds of carbon out of the atmosphere each year. At that rate, it would take 34 billion trees an entire 40-year life span to remove the 34 billion tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere in 2018. It takes about 15 minutes for the average person to plant a tree. Even if each of humanity’s 7.5 billion people planted one tree per year, the dent we’d make in sequestering carbon would be negligible.

Enter technology. Tree-planting drones “shoot” biodegradable seedpods into a specific spot in the ground or scatter seeds randomly across an area and give hope to the fight against both climate change and biodiversity loss in areas where deforestation has hit the hardest.

“Flash Forest is a reforestation company that can plant at 10 times the normal rate and at 20 percent of the cost of traditional tree planting techniques,” the company says on its website. “With drone engineering, we bring new levels of accuracy, precision and speed to the reforestation industry.”

To reforest an area, the company first flies mapping drones over the space to determine the best course of action for planting. The planting drones then deposit the seedpods as programmed. With one drone operator, the company can plant 100,000 seed pods per day at maximum. The drones can plant trees as densely as 800 trees per acre.

These machinated tree planters first caught major attention in 2017 when Fast Company reported on a project using drone labor to reforest the Irrawaddy River Delta in Myanmar. Since then, companies and nonprofits have used them for reforestation efforts in other countries including Australia and the United States.

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Florence Cathedral reopening

As lockdowns lift across Europe, cultural institutions like museums will likely be a popular venue for people who just spent the last three months sitting at home. Newly reopened museums, however, must contend with new social-distancing policies and do their part to reduce community transmission. Around the continent, museums and cultural institutions are getting creative to enforce social-distancing regulations.

At the Florence Cathedral, only 200 visitors will be allowed per day, and they’ll wear lanyards with electronic devices that will vibrate when they stand too close to others. The rectangular devices, which are able to sense when they’re within six feet of another necklace, will vibrate, light up, and emit a sound, so there’s really no excuse for not keeping your distance.

See the lanyard in action within the cathedral is the following Youtube video:

Other museums require visitors to book tickets in advance, wear masks, or undergo temperature checks upon entrance. At Paris’s Giacometti Institute, only 10 people are allowed in every 10 minutes, and at the Bavarian State Painting Collections’ museums in Munich, visitors are limited to one per 215 square feet. At Turin’s Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, patrons can expect designated walking paths, temperature checks, and time-slotted tickets.

And at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale, visitors strolling through a major Raphael exhibition will be sorted into small groups and led through the galleries by a guard — not acting as a guide but a chaperone to keep them safe.

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