Travel – Joseph A Federico

Travel Efficiently and Safely During a Pandemic

August 19, 2021August 19, 2021
by josephafederico

As more and more people get vaccinated against COVID-19, traveling is increasing quickly. If you have an upcoming vacation or work trip planned, there are a few things you should consider when traveling post pandemic.

To ensure the smoothest travel experience as possible, you must do something before you ever leave for the airport. You must pack patience. A good way to be patient is to allow extra time to get to the airport, park, check-in, TSA etc. Lines are long for airline counters and security, as staffing has not caught up with demand.

Also, some airport parking lots are full, and you might have to find offsite parking, which takes longer to get from your car to the airport. If you arrive at least 2.5 hours before your flight, you won’t feel rushed which will make you be more patient as you go through the process to get to your gate.

Is it safe to travel? Learn more!

Another way to be more efficient when travelling is to not check your bags. It is a huge time suck to wait in line to check-in your bag and then retrieve your bags at your destination. This could waste almost an hour of time. If you can, carry on and follow all of TSA carry on procedures.

Masks, masks, masks!

Yes, the federal government still requires you to wear mask on public transportation, this means on aircrafts. Pack your mask, wear your mask in the airport and on the aircraft. It must cover your nose and mouth. Crew members are required to enforce this rule, so please make life easier for everyone and comply. You do not want to end up causing yourself and 150 other passengers a delay over not complying with the mask mandate.

This leads me into treating and respecting your flight crew.

They are there for your safety, first and foremost. They are trained in medical procedures, handle hijackers, self-defense and a ton of other things that they rarely are seen using, thankfully. During the safety demo, they say you can be fined or imprisoned for not following crew members instructions. In recent news, the FAA has been increasing fines on people who do not comply with their instruction.

With travel can come delays, and sometimes, you are stuck on the aircraft. One thing I do to help my with delays, is I pack my own snack bag and I ALWAYS bring a bottle of water with me aboard. I pack a mix of nuts, granola bars, baked chips and/or dark chocolate. This helps me from getting HANGRY and losing my patience. Being delayed and hungry is not a good combo for most!

You’ve arrived at your destination and now it is time to head from the aircraft right to the rental car, since you did not check in a bag.

To make sure you have a car when you arrive, reserve it as soon as possible. Rental car companies sold off most of their fleet during COVID and rental cars are very limited currently. One bonus of this is sometimes you will get upgraded to a better car for free due to limited availability on certain classes.

The last and one of the most important things to do… Download your airline, hotel and rental car apps.

You can check into flights, cars and hotels from the apps. You can also get your digital boarding pass and hotel keys. If you need to make a change to the reservation, most apps allow you to do so, avoiding long hold times to reach a customer service representative, thus saving time!

Having these apps in the palm of your hand saves time by avoiding having to wait in line to deal with counters or kiosks and working with humans.

I learned over the years that this was one of the best things to do to cut down on time and make my travel experience from home to hotel the most efficient.

Safe and happy travels!

–Your trusty airline representative

(image sourced by Business Insider)

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Do You Voudou?

June 12, 2019June 12, 2019
by josephafederico

Which city inspired you to write your first novel?

I’m a self-taught writer. Nobody trained me, I never took a professional class and I didn’t even go to school for it. Here I am, 36, and being compared to Anne Rice all these years later. Just wow. Do you know how humbling that is?

My boyfriend and I co-wrote our first book together back in 2011, the year
IMAGES OF AMERICA: GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP (now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble) was published by Arcadia Publishing. It took approximately two years to conduct research and submit a manuscript, then we spent another two years after the publication date on a press tour.

We didn’t write the historical nonfiction coffee table book to make our first million – hell no – not in today’s economy – but rather to learn about a lost city and deeply connect with a community. And that’s exactly what happened, and it was oh-so-rewarding. Still is to this day, to be honest.
And with that said, that’s originally what led me starting on my trek to historical preservation and educating myself on local folklore…namely in America’s south.

Ah, the southland. I tell readers and fans that my inspiration for VOUDOU JUICE began when I was basking on the shores of Myrtle Beach back in 2012, and I just so happened to be drinking a mixed cocktail of the same name when the characters started talking to me.

Yes, that happens to writers once in awhile, and when inspiration beckons, you ride that wave for as long as you can and get a few good pages of prose down on paper.

So, the book I was writing was a summer project and I broke out the handwritten manuscript once every few weeks or when the mood felt right. It wasn’t often, trust me. Not until I went to New Orleans in 2014 with my best friend.

One visit to Oz – one of the best nightclubs off Bourbon Street – and the story I thought I wanted to tell took on an evolved life of itself. New characters were born out of a drunken stupor, as Go-Go Boys in skimpy outfits pranced around my being and the hardcore thumpa pulsed through my chest.

I went home three-and-a-half days later, and wrote my ass off. I prayed the experiences I lived in the Crescent City wouldn’t soon be forgotten, so I could weave them into my book. The pen was on fire and my inspiration carried me through.

2017, April 13th to be exact, was when VOUDOU JUICE was officially released to the general public. The amount of pride I felt, like a father who’s partner had just given birth to a healthy baby, was beyond compare.
Furthermore, sure I was happy and proud of myself, but I had fallen into a slight depression. I was hurt and sad that my characters were no longer mine, that I’d no longer have deep conversations with these beings I created out of nothingness.

Another trip to New Orleans was in order. ASAP. Let’s go, drink and be merry. So, with my best friend who’d showed me around the city in 2014, off I went, back to my beloved Big Easy.

The trip would be longer than a week this time around, and there was more anticipated intrigue around every corner.

After my book signing at the Four Points by Sheraton French Quarter, I’d gone out to celebrate…for several hours. Around 6pm CST, a lovely young man picked us up via Uber.

He was a doll, spewing off local ghost stories he’d heard over the years, and making us laugh. Then he suddenly began telling us about the Old French Opera House…the location of the now-Four Points by Sheraton French Quarter. Say what?

“So, you had a book signing?” the gentleman asked. Excited and still riding the high of the event, I was only too happy to discuss it. “Yes,” I replied…nervous. The Uber driver then explained that a fire had broken out at the Opera House in 1919, after a rehearsal of “Carmen.” On December 4th, the Creole mecca had been burned to the ground. And where did the fire start, you ask? Right at the exact location I had my book signing, by the concierge station.

Little did I know how frighteningly haunted that place was, and how lucky I’d been to host my book signing in that location, caked in dark history.
My best friend turned to me in disbelief as my unhinged jaw returned to my top lip. She smacked me with delight and said, very slowly, “That’s it, babe. That’s the story you came here to get. You have to write that in your new book.”

And write I will. That cab ride back from Magazine Street will forever haunt me in the most beautiful way. And I will weave that ghost story into VOUDOU JUICE: ORIGINS…a followup to my breakout novella.

I’m looking at a 2020 launch date, as it’s naturally set in 1920s New Orleans. My heart never will quite be the same after visiting that crazy little city, and I’m sure it will flutter in different ways after my next visit, too.

VOUDOU JUICE is on sale for $18.00. You may purchase a copy by calling (973) 289-3517; online ordering options available soon. Head to JosephAFederico.com for further details.

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Talk About Acting with Adler Hyatt

December 7, 2018December 7, 2018
by josephafederico

My third guest, the young, handsome and talented Adler Hyatt, is an actor. See, I’m attempting to spotlight all walks of life and professions in this here blog series.

Read on, because things are about to get interesting…

Whether I knew it or not, I was always a performer growing up. I always loved playing as TV characters when on the playground as opposed to football. When I discovered the stage, I was hooked. My journey took me all the way from my New Orleans home to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to get my bachelor’s degree in Acting. I dedicated my life to the role of a performer, and I wish I could go back and teach myself all the things I know now… to make my personal course a little smoother.

The biggest question I had as a young performer is, “What is my method?” I thought I should know what I needed to do to prepare myself for a role naturally, but an actor’s method is a unique thing. It’s like a fingerprint, but even more personal, since it can’t truly be categorized. The one thing every person in the entire industry will tell you about acting, is that an honest performance is key to every lock for actors.

To get an honest performance, you need to have a grasp on your process. But, which process is the right fit? I’m a firm believer in the fact that different people need different things to be able to access the pool of emotional openness needed for that honesty. Whether you are a Stanislavsky Savant or a master of “The Method”, the constant truth of acting is trueness in the emotion, in the scene, in the character. To find this trueness, one needs to find what way the character fits into their personal process and method.

I know actors that give tear-jerking performances after light skimming of the words, and actors that discover honesty in the words after in-depth textual analysis and a breakdown of the scene through bookwork. Neither of these actors are better than the other; they both are simply using different processes to open their portrayal of the characters to the audience.

For myself, I always thought that my need for bookwork was a weakness… that the actor that needs to put more effort into the book is not as effective as an actor that just releases their emotion to the world with ease, but that isn’t the case. If it gets you where you need to be as a performer, bookwork is a fantastic tool.

Now, one of my favourite things to do when getting new characters is the bookwork, whether it is necessary or not. It helps me find the person in the character and that person is what I can bring to the stage or screen or radio or wherever I find myself as an artist. What the audience receives is the most important part of the job of an actor. How the actor gets there is the process.

A lot of the words are interchangeable: process, method, technique; they all, in essence, mean the same thing. What we need to remember as actors, is that all the feeling, and working and connecting is done to bring ourselves and the character together. Whether that is done by being the character or being yourself and knowing how to inflect delivery to get the desired sound and physicality.

The best thing is what works for the individual. An actor’s method cannot be dogma. Through my own training, I picked and chose pieces from each of the famous methods we studied until I discovered what brought me emotional trueness as a performer. Doing this not only helped me find my own truth as an actor, but I also discovered personal growth as a human being.

Sincerely,
Adler Hyatt

Care to be my next guest blogger? I’d sure like to have you on! Email josephafed@yahoo.com for your chance…