Stephanie Elizondo Griest has mingled with the Russian Mafia, polished Chinese propaganda, and belly danced with Cuban rumba queens. These adventures inspired her award-winning memoirs Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines, and the guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go. Visit her website at www.aroundthebloc.com. Stephanie mourns the defunctness of all the independent bookstores that shuttered because of Amazon and all the locally-owned coffee houses that folded because of Starbucks. And, although she knows it’s petty, she is already grieving the soon-to-be defunctness of her Continental Gold Pass card, due to her recent move to an American/Delta/United-only airport.