NARSC stuff, stripped python-modernize

This is a fresh `pysal/pysal` master with changes we did at NARSC. When I convert it to python3, the `pyDbfIO.py` tests work. But. all the record entries are `b'*'` strings instead of `u'*'`, so I'm not sure what's up. 

Looks like automerge is failing on this, but I figured diffs may be easier to check out w/o the modernize stuff. Also, made a branch upstream, but didn't commit anything yet. Eventually, it might be easier to move this to an upstream branch?