During the 1990s, none of the five largest air carriers in the US earned its costs of capital. Despite these challenges, airlines like Southwest and JetBlue earned enviable returns. How? An airline can be quite expensive for its owners. Aside from fuel, there is also airplane maintenance, and the number of seats that need to be filled. Airlines make profit by flying frequently, by filling all these seats, and by using less fuel. By sacrificing on other items, such as meals and seat assignments, Southwest set its prices very low, competing with the cost of auto travel rather than other airplanes' fares. Moreover their pricing structure was simple and relatively transparent to passengers, with few classes of fares and few ticket reservations. They were able to do this due to providing frequent point-to-point service between secondary airports that were on average only 515 miles apart. They also focused on simplicity, on eradicating frills, and on high aircraft utilization. Jet Blue imitated Southwest with its combination of low costs, strong brand, and new technology. The Internet helped launch JetBlue since 60% of seats were booked online. Encouraging customers to interact with the airline via Internet made it easier for customers and airline as well as cutting costs inv various ways. Also here the fare structures were simple, and tickets (as they were with Southwest) were electronic. JetBlue's image too was cheap although it attracted a different market – the bankers, brokers, fashion models, and finance officers. This was where it carved its niche. These air carriers succeeded whereas the others failed largely due to their low-cost rates, but also - as compared to other imitators that too tried low cost but shuttered (such as CALite) - because they put their customers first and were truly low cost Why have all the low-cost subsidiaries of legacy airlines, including Delta Express failed? Other low cost subsidiary airlines were not truly low cost – their true expenses were hidden in their financials - and therefore they failed. As regards Delta Express, it attempted to cut costs with lower labor rates and higher aircraft utilizations. It also operated older Boeings and served only light snacks. However its maintenance overhaul gave it low apparent maintenance cost and fights for its profitability showed as CEO Leo Mullin said that "it was a bit of a delusion to say it was a low-cost carrier" (9). Furthermore, Delta was initially a high cost carrier and it would be difficult if not impossible for a high cost carrier to transform itself into a low-cost carrier even with their selling cheap seats and attempting to cut costs. Delta Express still managed their transaction via their parent airline being, intrinsically still, high-cost and, therefore, lost in profitability...
¶ … Chassidic fundamentalist environment in a part of Williamsburg in Brooklyn NY. She lives with her parents but has often been thrown out of the house and has other times tried to run away. She is 19 years old, and works fulltime as a nursery teacher, a job that she detests and that her mother forced her into. She has minimal independence skills, little social maturity, i.e. developmentally behind her age in comparison to 'normal' American society, although has an IQ that I suspect is quite high. Given her lack of secular subjects, all of Ellie's knowledge comes from books that she acquired from the library when she, benign thrown out of the house, found her refuge there at night. Ellie is totally ignorant therefore of some subjects, such as math and geography, but has a knowledge of others, such as Latin and Greek that others her age would not have. Her group is Satmer and they do not believe in the Israeli State as being Jewish. More so, they do not hold of the value of secular education believing exclusively in the merit of studying Jewish subjects and that anything extraneous to that is wrong and spiritually contaminating. Girls -- women are even further limited. Ellie for instance did not have exposure to Jewish texts in her school. It was held that the female touch would contaminate them, Ellie's brothers did not look her in the face, it was believed that men should not look at females, and this extended to siblings; there have been cases where men spit at females. Admittedly, this is comparatively recently. Always a fundamentalist sect, Ellie's particular one -- Satmer -- has become far more so during the past few years with successful businessmen having become powerful in the community, with anti-Israeli fervor growing, and with religious fundamentalism increasing the world over.
Women are limited in other ways, too, they cannot drive; they work only in teaching or secretarial professions and then in those that are run by members of their community; they generally stay at home looking after an unlimited brood of children, sometimes running to as much as 14 or 16. 18 children in one family are not uncommon and are condoned.
Ellie has 7 siblings, 3 sisters and 3 brothers. She has poor connections with them since the others have been encouraged to stay away from her and view her as potentially contaminating them in a spiritual way.
Ellie had a difficult childhood. A natural thinker and non-conformist she was disturbed by the mixed messages that she saw from an early age. Asking a lot of questions and somehow teaching herself Latin when she was approximately 9 years old and memorizing Shakespeare (she picked a torn copy up from the street), her parents were concerned at her behavior and interpreting that she was occupied by an evil spirit physically abused her in all manners of ways from starving to locking her out of the house at night (she found her lodgings in telephone booths and libraries) in the attempt to kick out this evil sprit. Repeatedly ridiculed by her classmates, some teachers, an assistant principal of the Chassidic College that she later attended and, certainly by her family as 'abnormal', Ellie sincerely believed so wondering by age 20 whether a not normal person could consider himself or herself normal; why she felt normal when she was not.
When not thrown out of the house, Ellie tried to flee it. Sent from family to family and kept locked in one attic for the duration of a year, since people were too intimated by her mother (a personality in the community) to keep her for long, Ellie ahs a way of retreating into herself to escape reality and appears to be detached from anger and dispassionate to emotions such as sadness and anger. She has great difficulty, too, making friends and often displays naive and simple social response being too gullible and trusting on the one hand, and extremely distrustful of people on the other.
At age 19, Ellie still unmarried (an unusual phenomena in a community where marriage is the norm at 16 or 18) and ostracized from the community because of her differences, naive as to sex (she thoguh children emerged due to germs), and emotionally immature although intellectually mature far beyond her years is still trying to find her independence.
I decided to choose Ellie for two reasons. Firstly, much of my works devolves around products of fundamentalist backgrounds. To understand them better, I need to get into their world from their perspective and explore it from a phenomenological perspective. Secondly, effective social work must be free of feelings. Empathy for the client is important and condoned. However, somehow or other, I must liberate myself form anger and criticism towards client's environment, attempting to understand the reason for their behavior and mindset howsoever difficult this may be. This does not mean to say that I conclude that Elie's community is acting correctly. When judged against their alleged directives of behavior, the ethical manifestations of some of these people fall far below that which their community preaches. However, I would like to endeavor to step beyond my subjectivity, perceive them as fallible humans, perceive their actions as prompted by the atmosphere of their times (possibly, for one, by the huge surge of dropouts that threaten them), and attaining an objective pose understand them better,
Learning Activity One
Log Entry 2, Part 1: To help me understand the community better, I decided to initially start from a 'safe' perspective. Admittedly, I was concerned about what these people would do to me particularly my being an alien and secular to boot. I wanted to live, not die prematurely and so I needed to hike up my courage before stepping into this community. I decided, therefore to do it slowly.
My first step was to read whatever I could about Chassidic Judaism in general and about this group in particular. I initially gravitated to ethnographic books, the books being helpful here included.. And was most inspired by cases of anthropologists / sociologists, similar to myself (i.e. college or university-educated) stepping into similar communities. The one book that I found the most identical to my situation was authored in Israel where someone (Landau, 1993) entered a community, less fundamentalist, but similar to Ellie's. I read his account of his assumed behavior and experience closely so as to take pointers and model them in my own. There was an account written by Kranzler about this same community. However, he being an Orthodox Jew (although a sociologist too) was familiar with them and accepted. Most significantly, his account was written more than half a decade ago. The community has changed rapidly since then, particularly with the demise of their Rebbe.
Log Entry 2, Part 2: When I read the literature on satmer and the various Chassidic groups, I could see a bit how Ellie felt growing up in one of these groups each of them similar to outsiders yet very different to those who grow up within them. I envied their sense of cohesiveness and trust in God as well as their close-knit family way of life, at the same time feeling a sense of claustrophobia. On the toehr hand, I could understand better where Buber came from when he glorifies the Chassidic way of life an example of an I-Thou relationship. Knowing this and reading something of Kat's community will enable me to understand her better.
Log Entry 2, Part 3:
The literature also enabled me to understand why Ellie felt the way she did. I once read a book on sociology of madness and senility with the book explaining that each culture had its own norms developed through years of cultural evolution. The majority of members within that specific culture would feel comfortable with these norms, but here and again a member would be born whose nature would militate against that specific cultural environment. Ellie is one of those individuals. Her culture, accordingly, perceives her as abnormal and a threat, deals with her as such, and Ellie, accordingly, feels increasingly lonely and rejected.
Log Entry 2, Part 3: (writing as Ellie) I am at an age when I want to marry. Most kids I my class have already married at age 18. Some of them left right after school. It is, however, not so easy to marry for me because I have to be set up with someone -- have a shidduch -- and there is none -- given the fact that I am abnormal who will marry me. As yet, my parents being desperate to marry me off in order to proceed with the other kids have made me meet anyone from stuttering creeps to half-blind, nervous individuals and others whom I distrust and seem to me write out of Dickens folktales. More specially, the way it is done is that the boy meets the girl once around the table accompanied by his parents. It is the boy who decides. A 'good girl in my community who sews, knits, crochets, is a darling with babies and agrees to support her husband in learning whilst she will bear child after child and look after them is the type that all the boys want to marry. Me? Forget it. I'm the one who none of them want to marry and therefore I've been told to at least pretend that I can sew; to be quiet' to at least pretend to be interested in the guy. Forget it. I do not know how to start my own life, even thoguh my counselor has repeatedly told me to.
Learning Aactivity Two
Log Entry 3, Part 1: Gradually becoming acquainted with the vast differences between the Chassidic groups (as for example between Lubuvitch and Satmer -- polar opposites), I realized that although interesting, they were rarely helpful. I, therefore, decided to read materials and newspapers published by that community as well as to listen to audiocassettes and read magazines. They do not watch movies nor are allowed to use the Internet; therefore I limited myself to the reading material. This was actually the most helpful since it 'sunk' me into their world, let me see their terminology and employed narratives, as well as giving me some insight into their tastes on fashion, food, education, and other memes and cultural trends.
Log Entry 3, Part 3: What I soon enough discovered was that 'Jewish' tastes as per stereotyped assumptions were non-existent here. The Woody Allen kind of Jewish stereotypes are Hollywood style can simply canto be universalized. Jewish is such a huge and variegated mish-mash of people, ethnicities, backgrounds, rituals, folklore, history, society, geography, groups, and subgroups -- and so much more that each subgroup (and Chassidus for instance may have as much as 60 odd after each little Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Slovenian village and hamlet; and has recently created groups after American localities, such as Boston and New Square) that one simply cannot blanket customs as general. I had to approach that group from the inside. I think Ellie would understand that feeling.
Log Entry 3, Part 4: (writing as Ellie): my social worker tried to understand the world I live in. She does not realize that she can never understand it. It reminds me of a book written by someone called Husserl that I had read the other day. It was similar to the Cartesian technique that I had done on myself but, either way, this guy thinks that you can see the world and stuff objectively by 'bracketing' your opinions and assumptions and seeing things as they are. It seems to me that my social worker tries to do likewise but how can she ever understand my background coming with all the detritus of her particular experiences. Just as I can never actually and really understand her world. Nonetheless, her attempts to understand my world are interesting. Particularly her description of the books that she had read. Again, she cannot understand that the language of my culture has nuances and meanings that no outsider can adequately grasp.
Learning Activity Three
Log Entry 4, Part 1: For my third learning activity, I decided to visit a home in Ellie's neighborhood for shabbos. Once having learned how to dress and conduct myself, mainly from Landau's (1993) book and from their own material, as well as having solicited advice from Ellie and having perused online web sites and accessed relevant chat groups having asked them their advice, I then accepted a shabbos invite from a family who, thinking I was an ignorant Jewish person and thus a 'Mitzvah for them to enlighten' eagerly welcomed me intending to show me the 'ropes'.
Log Entry 4, Part 2: The experience was confusing and, truthfully too detailed and complex to elaborate on here. There was the candle lighting, and the shabos meal by night and the shabbos meal by day and attending synagogue (called shul) and attending a lecture, and another meal and then havdala (ceremony at end of shabbos) and then another meal before I finally went to sleep. During that whole 24 hours, I could do literally no 'muktzah whatsoever. This was more than work, This meant no phone calls or texting, or computer, or writing, or driving car or bike (although they didn't have the latter), or turning on light, nor using electricity in any which way or form. Cooking was done in a special way with all having been cooked before and placed on a special 'blech' -- aluminum cover to keep warm. The food was actually tasty. The Gs whom I stayed with had 11 children and this family, actually seemed different than Elli's description of hers with the parents seeming to have warm connections with the kids, with the kids seeming to be content and play well with one another -- there actually seemed to be affectionate bonds between them -- and with the family being well-mannered and courteous to their guests. They had 5 guests at night, and 8 guests the coming day. There was singing and a give and take where the man -- Rabbi G. -- actually seemed interested in his guests' opinion and the women and girls seemed to be involved, albeit talking amongst themselves rather than to the men, whilst the men talked amongst themselves rather than to the women. The females also seemed to have a more abashed manner to them looking down when spoken or responding to someone, rather than making direct eye contact as is won't in conventional American society. The conversation mainly devolved around Jewish things; in fact, Yiddish was the common language spoken with broken English interspersed in between. Much of it I could not understand, but although my initial reaction was to 'freeze', I felt comfortable and accepted by the end of the day.
Log Entry 4, Part 4 (writing as Ellie): My social worker told me about her shabbos experience, which sounded somewhat strange coming from her. I felt that she was trying hard to understand me but nonetheless was still somewhat off target since (a) she had gone to a different family than the one I had the 'privilege' of growing up in, (b) she compared it to a Rockwell painting, telling me that she thought the scene straight out of his pictures. Now come on! His paintings featured descriptions from traditional American families in the '40s and '50s, whilst these families that she saw were scenes of Chassidic families who tried to recreate -- unsuccessfully, I think, given technology, a different country and different era -- the conditions of the shtetl life of 14th to 16th century Eastern Europe. Rockwell! No way. But my social worker has something of it
Learning Activity Four
Log Entry 5, Part 1: Still attempting to prove my knowledge of and interest in Chassidic heritage to Ellie, we engaged in a discussion on the philosophy of 'normal and abnormal'. This was particularly interesting given that Ellie had until comparably recently believed that she was literally abnormal but wondered why she still felt normal inside her. I thought a discussion of her culture's take on 'normality' would prove informative to both of us.
Log Entry 5, Part 5: The experience did prove useful as regards Ellie, for it helped me somewhat more to identify with her and realize what it felt being an alien in such a close-knit, claustrophobic community. It also helped me understand how someone, inexplicably drawn to an outside more expanded perspective from very young, seeking wider education and attracted to western culture (including opera, art, music, ballet, sports, literature -- all of which Ellie was) would feel contracted and asphyxiated (as Ellie often described herself) in such an environment. I could step out of it and return to my abode. Ellie had to live with it day after day, continuously being told that she was abnormal because she was different. Somewhat like the 'ugly duckling'
Log Entry 5, Part 3: I am not certain whether I remained objective despite my best attempts. As we wroekd our way through the debate, I realized that aspects of Ellie's experience certainly disturbed me. Nonetheless, the warmth of the community -- each for the other, their orderly and predicable way of life, the meaningfulness that they gain from this existence, the romantic meaning of family as understood in the literal sense and as practiced in a stable family -- all of this attracted me. Nonetheless, I did realize that Ellie's family was an anomaly. Tragic thoguh her situation may be and certainly exacerbated by her being an odd duck' in her community, not all Chassidic families may have mistreated Ellie as her parents did. Ellie had the misfortune (or fortune if she uses it to her advantage?) of being an anomaly in a closed community born to parents (at least her mother) who may likely have been mentally ill. Their conception of values is also different to that of another community.
Log Entry 5, Part 4 (writing as Ellie): conducting this discussion was fascinating. It reminded me of Thomas Szasz (I think that was his name). Either way there was his account that fascinated me and that I told my social worker: of patents who thought the girl was abnormal, of the girl who thought she was normal but wasn't sure -- how could she believes she was if her parents - mighty and authoritative figures believed she wasn't. That was my predicament! Reinforced by my friends and teachers all around me who likewise seem to think I'm abnormal. In Szasz's case, he served as the epistemological observer who saw 'on top' of and beyond the parents and could diagnose whether the girl was or was not 'normal'. There was none in may case to do so. Unless once can consider the social worker as being the observer
Learning Activity Five
Log Entry 6, Part 1: I attended synagogue today. The synagogue experience was somewhat different with men being divided from women by a brick wall that extended from floor to ceiling. I could not see the men at all. I found the women's place cramped and stuffy, and the women fashionably dressed. The prayer services were interspersed with casual talking and, truthfully, specially after having attended more respectful and dignified services in other orthodox synagogue were worshippers seemed more intent on their prayer than on their co-worshipper and where conditions were less rigid.
Log Entry 6, Part 2: I felt somewhat discomfited and disturbed. I did not feel the customary holiness in this place that I have felt in some others. I tried to brush my discomfort aside by repeatedly telling myself and imaging that I was an observer, someone from Mars who had nothing to do with these people and therefore their attitude regarding me -- and I was stared at and whispered about -- should not bother me. This stance helped me somewhat.
Log Entry 6, Part 3: I attended an intriguing lecture experience afterwards. The woman lecturer, face aglow, spoke all about the beauty of 'shabbos'. The women seemed enraptured with that simple lecture that devolved around a simple description of the way that the woman felt her shabbos to be. Intent and seemingly hanging onto each and every word, (some had mouths open and one was leaning over the lecturer the entire time), some of the women stayed afterwards to ask her questions and my hostess murmured that the lecturer was a 'Tzadeikes' (namely righteous woman). This was again a return to Buber's experience and description of the I-Thou where the magic that exists in this spiritual community is lacking in an outside world.
Log Entry 6, Part 4 (writing as Ellie):
Again my social worker told me of her experiences attempting to understand my community. It is useless to reason with her. She amuses me, but I consider her naive and somewhat simplistic. She will never understand my world however hard she tries. She might as well give up.
Learning Activity Six
Log Entry 7, Part 1: I was invited to some sort of function today; I think it was some event but am not sure for what. As I had noticed before, the females seemed to dress in homogeneous clothing wearing scarves or snoods on their heads and dress that reached their ankles. Some of these dresses, particularly with the middle-aged and above women were shapeless, but on those who were younger they were obviously chosen with great care and consciously expensive. Jewelry -- all genuine gold, silver, pearls and diamonds were conspicuous on the younger women. This was not expensive in the simple taste but rather the more detailed and filly the better.
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