68 responses to
“DTW.”

1. Snarkworth said on July 21st, 2008 at 8:28 am

   Wel­come home, Nancy.

   I de-lurk here just to say, I grew up in that lovely state, albeit in the less lovely south­ern por­tion. Now I’m in the East. Dif­fer­ent cli­mates influ­ence us in dif­fer­ent ways. Pre­dictable sea­sons here, quirky wet/dry sea­sons, mon­soons and mis­trals out there.

   It’s all good. Bloom where you’re planted.

2. Kirk said on July 21st, 2008 at 8:43 am

   I heard that holier-than-all speed dater, too, Nance. Sounds to me as though he’s doomed to a life of flub­bing his dub in his feather bed.

3. Jen said on July 21st, 2008 at 8:46 am

   I’ve flown many times, and I’ve never lost a bag either. *knock on wood* I always take every­thing I absolutely need to sur­vive in my carry-on (tooth­brush, glasses, con­tacts, med­i­cine, deodor­ant, comb, a book, a cou­ple changes of under­wear, and maybe an extra change of clothes) and fig­ure I’ll even­tu­ally get the rest back. Or not. I always won­der where peo­ple are going when I see them wheel­ing two mas­sive rolling suit­cases through the air­port while also tot­ing a back­pack and a purse. I went to Europe for 2 1/2 weeks with a small rolling suit­case and an over-the-shoulder bag and I sur­vived. I had to wash a few things in hotel sinks, but it’s a small price to pay to not schlep every­thing you’ve ever owned around an airport.

   Now that they’re charg­ing for checked bags on some car­ri­ers, I fear to see how much crap peo­ple are going to try to carry on. The air­lines are going to have to crack down on peo­ple try­ing to cram all their worldly pos­ses­sions in the over­head compartments.

4. Dorothy said on July 21st, 2008 at 8:56 am

   Wel­come back, and I hear ya about miss­ing Spriggy. I am mis­er­able to be home with­out the dog around. I’m always the first one at the ken­nel to get my dog the morn­ing after I get home from vacation.

   I only had lug­gage lost once, and thank heav­ens it was when I arrived home from a week in the UK. That’s the way to lose lug­gage — I got to go home to all my own under­pants and bras! The suit­cases caught up with me about 12 hours later.

5. MichaelG said on July 21st, 2008 at 8:57 am

   Boy did you hit one of my pet peeves. Lug­gage bin hogs. You wouldn’t believe the stuff peo­ple bring on the plane. I’ve had sev­eral jobs over the years that entailed lots of fly­ing. One time I was fly­ing home from the east coast to SF and checked every­thing, even my brief case. All I had was a paper­back book. Some dip­shit, loaded down with every­thing but the kitchen sink, asked me if he could put one of his bags under the seat in front of me. I was struck dumb  —  couldn’t think of a thing to say. Just a cou­ple of months ago another dip­shit dropped his bag on me. For­tu­nately I was alert and caught it. They just fry my toot­sies. I think the air­lines encour­age it because every bag han­dled by the pax is one less they have to han­dle. The new charges for checked bags aren’t going to help.

   SF and Mon­terey are always cool. Always have a jacket in your car if not on your back.

   I heard that NPR bit. I really like that 90% smug and 10% whin­ing combo. Great descrip­tion. Imag­ine what that guy takes on to the plane.

6. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 21st, 2008 at 9:15 am

   “Why do peo­ple I have so much in com­mon with bug me so deeply?”

   Ain’t that always the way? And Civil Wars are always the most vicious. I would have had 82% less anx­i­ety going into this past week­end and enjoyed the event of my par­ents’ 50th anniver­sary 21% more if i hadn’t been deal­ing with all fam­ily. The quirks would have been amus­ingly quirky and the foibles worth dis­pas­sion­ate not­ing in the long ride back to Ohio, not heated dis­sec­tion even before we got in the car.

   All of which is because it makes us see our own role in the weird­nesses more clearly, which is dis­com­fort­ing even when we haven’t yet real­ized our part in the peculiarity.

7. coozledad said on July 21st, 2008 at 9:29 am

   We’re actu­ally con­sid­er­ing a com­post­ing toi­let here, but given the amount of shit our ani­mals pro­duce, our impact on the com­post heap would be min­i­mal.
   Is there some per­son­als short­hand for “com­posts own excre­ment”? It’d have to be right up there with “Loves to attend Ren Faires”, or “Poetry slam junkie” as a sell­ing point.

8. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 21st, 2008 at 9:49 am

   “Search­ing for off-grid, closed-loop lifestyle, or work­ing to close the loop.” Not short, but seen in The Other Paper not long ago.

9. colleen said on July 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am

   I hear ya on the bags. I’ve had them DELAYED, but never lost for­ever. I’ve been on flights where the only thing miss­ing as carry ons were live chick­ens. I just shook my head when I read about the fees for bag­gage, and that air­lines were encour­ag­ing peo­ple to carry on. Cuz I guess the lines at secu­rity aren’t QUITE long enough.

   Fly­ing any­more is so.…dehumanizing. Everyone’s got the thou­sand yard stare and that look of utter hopelessness.

   I’m start­ing to notice “NPR Smug­ness” a lot more lately, whether in sto­ries or in let­ters to the pro­grams. Sud­denly, our lis­ten­ers are as stick up the butt as any LCMS mem­ber, just about dif­fer­ent things.….

10. nancy said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:02 am

    You know what really threw a span­ner into the works for fly­ing? The shoe thing. It’s hard to main­tain even a shred of dig­nity and opti­mism when you’re bare­foot in an air­port. There’s some­thing so awful about see­ing some 80-year-old geezer, hands out for wand­ing because he tripped the metal detec­tor, say­ing, “It’s my arti­fi­cial hip!” in his old-man voice. All while barefoot.

    Thanks, al-Qaeda. You assholes.

11. brian stouder said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:11 am

    I’m start­ing to notice “NPR Smug­ness” a lot more lately, whether in sto­ries or in let­ters to the pro­grams. Sud­denly, our lis­ten­ers are as stick up the butt as any LCMS mem­ber, just about dif­fer­ent things…..

    and con­sider (amongst all other things) — 

    the LCMS crowd has (as an arti­cle of faith) the promise that they’re for­given for their trans­gres­sions; whereas the gree­nies and the Earth in the Bal­ance crowd have the Old Tes­ta­ment thing going just now, wherein their trans­gres­sions are not only NOT for­given (by the Earth), but they are accu­mu­lat­ing at an alarm­ing rate!!

    So that even if they strug­gle and sweat and stu­diously avoid all sorts of other on-the-grid temp­ta­tions (even as some SWF who dri­ves a Hum­mer to the Dri­vethrough to buy a processed cheese­burger, while on the way to her job at Mon­santo), it COULD still be that THEY will end up being the one to flush the toi­let that one last time that sends us over the edge, and into irre­deemable Global Meltdown!!

    It’s all so damned unFAIR!!

12. Jen said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am

    Yeah, my mom and grandma both get wanded and frisked and poked and probed every time they fly because they have arti­fi­cial knees. My mom just thinks it’s kind of funny, I think, though she’s always annoyed that they have to track down a female to frisk her. It’s kind of sad with my grandma, though, who really has trou­ble get­ting around. She gets pretty irri­ta­ble when she flies, for numer­ous reasons.

    I hope that we have good flights in Decem­ber when my hus­band and I finally go on our hon­ey­moon. He’s never flown in a plane (though he will go for a ride with my dad before Decem­ber, I’m sure), and Decem­ber will be his first com­mer­cial flight. If it’s bad, I’m afraid I won’t ever get him to fly on vaca­tion again, and I don’t want to drive every­where we want to go! I’ve never had a hor­ri­bly bad expe­ri­ence, but ser­vice has def­i­nitely got­ten worse. We didn’t get any­thing but a lit­tle cup of pop on the plane last time I flew some­where (in March).

13. MichaelG said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am

    A com­post­ing toi­let. The ulti­mate gift for the anal retentive.

    One day last year I was fly­ing home from Orange County. For rea­sons that don’t mat­ter I was car­ry­ing more stuff than usual and checked a bag. I was an hour early but had a good book. Once at the gate I noticed there was a flight to Sacto that was board­ing as I watched. I went to the desk and asked and was able to get a seat since the air­craft was only about half full. Relax­ing on the flight north with my paper­back, I smugly con­grat­u­lated myself on the swift move that would get me home an hour early. We were on short final for SMF when the penny dropped. Oh well, an hour here, an hour there . . .

14. Gasman said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:39 am

    I lost — per­ma­nently, gone for­ever, poof — a suit­case with a favorite sport coat, win­ter coat, lots of other clothes, 2 bot­tles of Czech wine (ouch!), and a hand cut crys­tal vase that was sup­posed to be an anniver­sary gift. If any­one is ever in the Prague air­port, please look for a dark blue wheeled Amer­i­can Touris­ter hard­side suit­case. I’ll cut you in on the wine. I also had some sen­si­tive record­ing gear dam­aged and delayed by 2 days, even though I gate checked it.

    How­ever, my biggest prob­lem fly­ing is deal­ing with the arbi­trary atti­tude that air­lines have toward musi­cal instru­ments. As a pro­fes­sional musi­cian, there is absolutely NO WAY IN HELL that I will sub­ject an expen­sive instru­ment — my liveli­hood — to the goril­las in the bag­gage han­dling sys­tem. The air­lines limit lia­bil­ity to $1,500 for dam­age they do. A top of the line case costs about that much, the gui­tar much, much more. Car­ry­ing on a clas­si­cal gui­tar is gen­er­ally impos­si­ble any­more. I am left with gate check­ing, but with con­nect­ing flights, I am always in fear of the gui­tar not get­ting off the flight with me. Buy­ing a seat for a gui­tar is not always an option. Some­times the air­lines still won’t let you bring an instru­ment on. Not fun being a musi­cian right now.

15. brian stouder said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:46 am

    I think I’ve flown seven or eight times, total. One of those flights was Char­lotte, NC to Hous­ton, TX. We took off and climbed and then — it felt like the pilot locked up the brakes. I’ve felt that ces­sa­tion of accel­er­a­tion before — but this was fairly strik­ing (pas­sen­gers across the plane exchanged glances and raised eye­brows). Then the pilot came onto the pa and announces that some access door (I think for a cable plug-in) had been left open, and it was caus­ing white-noise in his headset…so we were going to cir­cle Char­lotte and burn fuel off, and then land and fix it, which we pro­ceeded to do. The pilot threw the coal back into the engines, and the plane became very noisey, and remained so as we cir­cled above the (really quite lovely) city of Char­lotte for the next 70 or 80 min­utes, and then after we landed we had to wait for a gate for another hour, and then there was “paper­work”, etc etc etc — so that we arrived at Hous­ton many hours later than orig­i­nally scheduled.

    This didn’t mat­ter to Pam and I — we had no sched­ule to adhere to; but two guys behind us were Busi­ness­men and Had Places to Be, and found the whole deal to be Com­pletely Unac­cept­able, and the con­ducted a point­edly audi­ble con­ver­sa­tion about how Poorly Run This Air­line Is for the last 1/2 of the flight, until, upon arriv­ing at the George HW Bush Air­port at Hous­ton, the one bolted for the front before we were done taxi­ing (because of course he was the Most Impor­tant Per­son on the Plane, don’t you know), and the Flight Atten­dent point­edly informed the mad man that she would sum­mon secu­rity and have him arrested if he didn’t return to his seat imme­di­ately (Pam and I exchanged smiles), and he grudg­ingly returned to his seat (with more stage-whispered rumi­na­tions and denunciations)

    Not for noth­ing, the air­line folks were giv­ing free beer dur­ing the fuel burn (I scored another can of Diet Coke) and those fel­lows had no less than three apeice

16. colleen said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:47 am

    My par­ents get pulled out for extra screen­ing quite often. Because, you know, they look like troublemakers…

    You’re right. There’s some­thing extra demean­ing about the shoe thing.

    I guess it gives me a vague idea what my not-to-far-back ances­tors expe­ri­enced at Ellis Island. Peo­ple bark­ing at them, searches, and being sent into one line or another, for rea­sons never made quite clear to them.…

17. nancy said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am

    Gas­man, you have my sym­pa­thies. Isn’t there a stand-up closet for larger, del­i­cate instru­ments, or is that reserved for First Class golf clubs?

    What does Yo-Yo Ma do? Surely he doesn’t have his own Gulf­stream yet.

    (Never mind: Prob­a­bly buys the extra seat.)

18. Julie Robinson said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Well, I’m fly­ing home on Wednes­day, so bring on those hor­ror sto­ries! I don’t nor­mally fly much, but with going back and forth this spring/summer I’ll total 9 take-offs/landings, since you can’t get any­where directly from the Fort. So far, no delays, no flights missed, no lost lug­gage. I must be due. I was going to mail back every­thing but Delta’s web­site says they aren’t charg­ing for the first checked bag.

19. LAMary said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am

    When my old­est son was three months old we flew to NYC to show him off to fam­ily. On the flight was a woman and her child return­ing from a kid­die beauty pageant, a male one at that, with a giant tro­phy. At least two and a half feet tall with sun­bursts and wingy shapes all over it. Attempt­ing to put into the over­head bin above my seat, where I was hold­ing the baby on my lap, she dropped it. I put up my arm to keep it from hit­ting my son and she yelled at me when it hit the floor in the aisle instead let­ting my first born absorb the impact. This is when I noticed that it was not wise to fuck with me about my kids.

20. coozledad said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:58 am

    MichaelG: Our prob­lem out here is despite hav­ing a sep­tic tank, the soil doesn’t perk. It’s not a big deal until you wash a load of clothes, and then the con­tents of the tank go flood­ing down­hill, where our geese, ducks and pot­bel­lied pig wait to either lap it up or enjoy a refresh­ing shit-bath, or both.
    We’re also in in a pretty bad drought, and I’m think­ing about installing a gray water sys­tem.
    My biggest prob­lem with the idea of a com­post­ing toi­let, aside from “where do you put the damned thing” is the ones I’ve seen adver­tised look like they have the dura­bil­ity and func­tion­al­ity of a sty­ro­foam cooler. I did a lit­tle research, and found out you can build a thing called a “thun­der­box”, which is a shit­house ele­vated on a tall masonry plat­form so you can peri­od­i­cally shovel it out. There are tremen­dous draw­backs with that as well, not the least of which is the per­va­sive threat of a black widow bit­ing you on the nuts.
    There’s a dilap­i­dated out­house on the place here, and look­ing at it makes me real­ize just how tough peo­ple were back in the day. It’s a good hun­dred yards from the house. Just imag­ine that Jan­u­ary morn­ing walk through the snow, stop­ping off at the corn­crib to grab a cou­ple of cobs.

21. Julie Robinson said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Oh, and can some­one explain the whole pol­icy on liq­uids? All you can take is a one quart bag with bot­tles that are less than three ounces each. But after you go through secu­rity you can buy (at inflated prices) as many bev­er­ages as you want AND take them on the plane with you. What would pre­vent us from mix­ing up com­bustibles in one of those? And will I get a full body cav­ity search for writ­ing that?

22. Mindy said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:18 am

    I was the unlucky ran­dom per­son to be pulled out of line and inspected with the wand dur­ing my last air­port visit. Had to take off my shoes because they set off the metal detec­tor. So did my bra. For­tu­nately, they didn’t ask me to take it off.

23. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am

    The boys in Britain who got arrested (not the ones who blew them­selves up on pub­lic buses and the Tube) were work­ing on a chem­istry set approach, which i’m told they had pretty well devel­oped, where they could mix two 12 oz. bot­tles of vis­cous, non-smelly fluid, add a few ounces of another slightly more caus­tic fluid, and have a decent explo­sive within an hour, which they intended to use over the Atlantic on a half-dozen planes at once for max­i­mum con­fu­sion and last­ing uncertainty.

    So the new sys­tem, how­ever mis­guid­edly applied, is to elim­i­nate or min­i­mize that prob­a­bil­ity. Ditto the shoes, which goes back to Richard Reid and the guys arrested back in Ger­many after he was caught — it was no jok­ing mat­ter that the plan fol­low­ing 9 – 11 was to use “sneaker bombs” to tear open the outer skin of a jet­liner in the mid­dle of the fuse­lage at max­i­mum alti­tude, which woulda worked if his fel­low pas­sen­gers hadn’t been sharp and he hadn’t been a pretty dim bulb.

24. Dorothy said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Oh Mary what I would have given to have been there to wit­ness what you said to that boob on the plane!

25. Jim said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:41 am

    I much agree with Nancy’s com­ment that the shoe thing is one of the worst aspects of fly­ing . The only thing that remotely helps is remind­ing myself of a com­ment I read from another flyer, who said she’s just glad that Richared Reed didn’t become known as the “under­wear bomber.” It gives me a smile while I’m pulling my shoes off.

26. Sue said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:54 am

    1. My son had a piece of lost lug­gage on one trip. The hard­est part was noti­fy­ing the bag­gage claim depart­ment. When we went in and gave our infor­ma­tion, the woman at the desk stood there and typed for twenty min­utes straight — no joke. I couldn’t fig­ure out what infor­ma­tion she could pos­si­bly be enter­ing. The lug­gage was returned to his door in 24 hours.
    2. Mitchell Air­port has named the area beyond the check spot the “Recom­bob­u­la­tion Area”. Gen­tle Mid­west humor.
    3. The superior-lifestyle smug­ness thing feels awfully nos­tal­gic to me. When my kids were lit­tle, most of my pals were of the crunchy-granola, breastfeed-til-they’re-three, may-God-smite-thee-if-you-took-an-epidural-during-labor per­sua­sion. I found them amus­ing and thought they were a nice bunch of peo­ple, but I did keep a cer­tain dis­tance. I lost track of many of them after they went on to become home-schoolers due to the evil influ­ence of pub­lic schools on their children’s right to express their Chris­t­ian beliefs. (I had (empha­sis “had”) a friend who even pulled her daugh­ter out of a Lutheran grade school because they did not teach home­mak­ing.) Good times.
    4. MMJ­eff, one of my favorite blogs, sub​ur​bankamikaze​.com, recently went into the sub­ject of fam­ily gath­er­ings in the form of a “We The Peo­ple” take­off, list­ing Arti­cle One as “The fam­ily shall make no law abridg­ing the free­dom of other fam­ily mem­bers to shoot their mouths off, spill fam­ily secrets and oth­er­wise embar­rass them­selves and oth­ers in ways that can be retold at future fam­ily gath­er­ings. This includes the right of uppity Miami women to make Mid­west­ern jokes in a room full of her brother’s Iowan in-laws. She should not, how­ever, expect any­one to come rush­ing to her defense should they turn on her in one corn-fed mass.” Sound familiar?

27. del said on July 21st, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Mindy’s com­ment reminds me of the wand-waving action in the movie, This is Spinal Tap. (Cucum­ber wrapped in tin foil trig­gered the alarm.)

    A sweet plane story: When my wife’s friend was a very young child she had to take a flight from Detroit to NY — I believe she was trav­el­ling alone or with an older sib­ling, him­self a child. A kindly stranger on the flight com­forted her and held her, calm­ing her down. She did not know him but years later she met, and mar­ried, his son.

28. Catherine said on July 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Wow, so much to respond to here. Let’s start with the pro­saic since it’s Mon­day morning.

    The only time an air­line lost my lug­gage, they had to deliver it from Albany NY to Blue Moun­tain Lake NY, a 2 – 3 hour drive each way. I used to fly a lot for busi­ness; this inci­dent seems to have taught all the air­lines not to lose my stuff.

    Most dra­matic story: Recently flew into LAX in time to find the entire air­port shut down due to a bomb scare. I stood on the curb for about 1 1/2 hours, wait­ing for a taxi with a well-behaved crowd and a freaked-out air­port employee, in an eerily vehicle-free United ter­mi­nal. Post-apocalpse, indeed. Thanks from me, too, Al-Qaeda a$$holes.

29. Gasman said on July 21st, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Nancy,
    Yes, there is such a closet on most planes, how­ever, you usu­ally have to flirt heav­ily with a flight atten­dant to gain access. Not too painful for me if the atten­dants are female, but I really don’t want to go down that path with the boys.

    I’ve been in many dis­cus­sions with other pro play­ers. A cel­list from the Dal­las Sym­phony told me that about half the time he pays for a seat for his cello, they make him gate check it any­way. Most pro cel­lists pay more for their good bows than I paid for my hand­made clas­si­cal gui­tar. Air­lines won’t let you put an instru­ment in bulk­head or emer­gency exit rows. Your best bet is first class, but I don’t make enough to put my own butt in first class, let alone my guitar.

    I’ve heard that it’s faster, cheaper, and safer to send an instru­ment sep­a­rately with UPS, Fed Ex, or DHL. You can insure for the replace­ment value — which means they are more likely to treat it with respect — and it’s prob­a­bly eas­ier to track. How­ever, this route would neces­si­tate an addi­tional travel day to retrieve an instrument.

    The last time I flew with a gui­tar I opted to take a cheap one and leave the good one at home. I think more and more domes­tic musi­cians would rather drive than fly, even with expen­sive gas. The has­sle and the uncer­tainty is just too great. The U.S. is also being very shitty about giv­ing out visas for vis­it­ing per­form­ers. It’s got­ten so bad that many Euro­pean tour­ing ensem­bles are sim­ply bypass­ing the U.S. on their tours.

30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 21st, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Shucks, Sue, the Iowa half of my clan would have just upped the ante on the Miamian, telling an even more deri­sive Mid­west­ern joke, then ask­ing her “so, tell us a good Miami joke, eh?”

    Keep in mind, as those of us who do park/museum talks for Home­schooler Tues­day pro­grams know full well, a major con­tin­gent of home­school­ers aren’t any more Chris­t­ian than Richard Dawkins or Christo­pher Hitchens. I watched a lady talk her­self into ever tighter cir­cles of “what i meant was” until she augered in and fled the room, hav­ing tried to pan­der to what she assumed were a bunch of Dob­sonite moms, who actu­ally were full-on, hemp ori­ented, anti-plastic wives of col­lege sci­ence profs.

    Me, i just say thou­sands and mil­lions and bil­lions with a smile, and when the throat-clearing starts from the lady with a bun and a glint in her eye, we have a fun chat over the heads of the tod­dlers. I doubt if i con­vince her sci­en­tists may be onto some­thing with “deep time” or that i will some­day share in the Beat­i­fica Vision, but they usu­ally leave sat­is­fied with hav­ing voiced their qualms out loud.

    But many home­school­ers are not only Dar­win­ian, but Marx­ist. YMMV.

    Oh, and not to steal from the pro­pri­et­ess, but swip­ing a fun link from Rome­nesko — i am shocked, shocked to find that broad­cast does their story meet­ing around a copy of the local print rag:

    TV and radio news out­lets suf­fer when news­pa­pers shrink (http://​www​.vari​ety​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​V​R​1​1​1​7​9​8​9​1​7​8​.​h​t​m​l​?​c​a​t​e​g​o​r​y​I​d​=​1​6​8​2​&​a​m​p;cs=1) Vari­ety
    Brian Lowry notes that tele­vi­sion and radio news oper­a­tions rely on the local news­pa­per for most of their news. “The thin­ness in assem­bling TV and radio news — and the man­ner in which they use news­pa­pers as de facto tip sheets and news­gath­er­ing sur­ro­gates — has long been one of broadcasting’s dirty lit­tle secrets,” he writes.

31. Hattie said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Fas­ci­nat­ing thread. As a com­menter on my blog would put it, “Every­one seems to be on some band­wagon or other.” It is mighty tiresome.

32. Sue said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Home­school­ing was a grow­ing part of the area about 20 years ago, and it was almost 100% religious-oriented. Since I had friends who were going down that route, and I also worked in a library, I got to see first-hand the good and the bad. We had an orga­nized group of home­school­ing par­ents who used the library to stage plays and intro­duce their kids to a wider group of peo­ple, but we also had: a strong push to out­law the annual library Hal­loween cos­tume children’s time (satanism); a strong push to cen­sor library books, (remove this/that/the other book, such as a children’s book that con­tained pic­tures of mis­chie­vous imps, because it was a demonic influ­ence); a strong push to remove unde­sir­ables from the library while allow­ing total access to free-ranging “good” chil­dren (bad influ­ences who dis­tract from lessons being taught right there at the library). I per­son­ally felt that the kids were short­changed (seri­ously, your math les­son is the story of the loaves and fishes?) but it even­tu­ally ran its course. Just my per­sonal obser­va­tion, but on the whole I have never seen such a grim group in my life.

33. michaela said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    Wow, I must be cursed by the lug­gage gods… I’ve had bags lost mul­ti­ple times, though they always show up even­tu­ally. Worst was the trip we took a few months ago to our nation’s cap­i­tal — a non­stop flight wherein they some­how lost the eff­ing carseat for our daugh­ter. And lemme tell you: the Bawlmer air­port has exactly the kind of loaner carseats you’d think they would. And of course 30 min­utes into our 45-minute drive to our friends’ house, the air­line called to say they’d found the seat. They did send a very nice man to deliver it the next morn­ing, though.…

    Oh, and we flew thru DTW last week; actu­ally had a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence wherein a North­west gate agent found the wal­let that had fallen out of my lap­top bag. Sure, I had to make three round trips across the place & through the trippy tun­nel before I got it back… but all my stuff — even the cash — was intact. Amazing.

34. Joe Kobiela said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Being that I am now a pro­fes­sional CHARTER pilot, The air­lines are my company’s best friend. The more they screw up, the bet­ter it is for our busi­ness. Just wait till this fall when they cut capac­ity and raise ticket prices.
    Char­ter is the only way to go. If you have 3 – 5 peo­ple to get some­place, we can get you there for about the same price as the cat­tle cars. You fly on your sched­ules, get to the town you want, don’t make you take off your shoes and get you home on the same day. Ask any­one who has flown char­ter and I bet they wouldn’t go back to the air­lines if you payed them.
    Livin the dream in Auburn In.
    Joe

35. LAMary said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    United lost a trunk hold­ing all my worldly poses­sions once when I was mov­ing from NJ to Den­ver. I got it back three weeks later.

36. Jolene said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    So great to have you back, Nance! Your post struck my own sense of self-righteousness. I, too, am supe­rior to all those dorks who carry on every­thing except the car they left in the park­ing lot. Infu­ri­at­ing, as are those Busi­ness­men Who Have Places to Be.

    My par­ents live in North Dakota, and a visit there requires a plane-change in Min­neapo­lis no mat­ter where you are com­ing from, which always cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity for lost lug­gage. Sev­eral times, my bag has been delayed, which would have been annoy­ing if I’d been doing any­thing other than going home to drink end­less cups of cof­fee with my folks, but it’s still bet­ter than wrestling with bags that, really, are too big to carry dur­ing lay­overs of inde­ter­mi­nate length in the MPLS airport.

    On one of my many trips to ND, after a long lay­over in MPLS and delays on the run­way, a baby only a few months old was cry­ing and cry­ing and her barely older mother was reluc­tant to feed her because she’d have to expose her breast. She couldn’t seem to fig­ure out that (1) given the seat­ing arrange­ments, no one could see and (2) given our exhaus­tion and the pain of lis­ten­ing to the baby, no one cared.

    Re musi­cal instru­ments: A cel­list friend, now retired, always bought his instru­ment a first-class seat and also always made sure that he got its free drink!

37. Jolene said on July 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    On another topic: Phrase I am most tired on hear­ing today: Con­di­tions on the ground.

    Jeff, the story about TV peo­ple hav­ing trou­ble fig­ur­ing out what to say as the con­tent of news­pa­pers dimin­ishes would be funny if it weren’t so sad. I can’t fig­ure out why some of the cable sta­tions (I’m look­ing at you MSNBC.) don’t send some of the peo­ple who read news for an hour or two each day out to find things out so that they can say some­thing dif­fer­ent between 3 PM and 4 PM than they said between 2 PM and 3 PM.

    Clearly, those peo­ple are mak­ing plenty of money; they should do some­thing to earn it. I’m sure they once upon a time thought of them­selves as jour­nal­ists. With a lit­tle stim­u­la­tion – such as the threat of los­ing their jobs – those impulses could be reawakened.

38. Jolene said on July 21st, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    Joe’s com­ment about char­ter flights reminds me of a book that some might find inter­est­ing. By James Fal­lows, it’s called Free Flight: Invent­ing the Future of Travel. Accord­ing to Fal­lows, new kinds of air­craft oper­at­ing under dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els will soon make pat­terns of travel sim­i­lar to charter-flying much more widely avail­able. An excit­ing prospect. Check out the two-paragraph abstract.

39. Jolene said on July 21st, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    One last thing: Wanted to men­tion a story by Car­los Rotella from yesterday’s Wash­ing­ton Post Mag­a­zine. It’s about George Pele­canos, who’s writ­ten crime nov­els set in Wash­ing­ton, DC and was also one of the writ­ers for “The Wire”. It’s a good piece of writ­ing by itself and also a good intro­duc­tion to a writer that you might enjoy, assum­ing you’re not already a fan.

40. Bill said on July 21st, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Yesterday’s Trib announced the lat­est air­port secu­rity device: http://​www​.chicagotri​bune​.com/​t​r​a​v​e​l​/​c​h​i​-​a​i​r​p​o​r​t​-​b​d​2​0​j​u​l​2​0​,​0​,​2​5​8​3​5​3​1​.story

    The money quote:
    “The new full-body imag­ing machines that will arrive at O’Hare this fall look through cloth­ing to cre­ate an explicit sil­hou­ette of the trav­eler — show­ing shapes, folds of fat and other anatom­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics — to iden­tify pos­si­ble hid­den objects.

    Even though facial fea­tures are blurred to pro­tect pri­vacy, the images reveal breasts, but­tocks and other pri­vate parts, prompt­ing some civil lib­er­ties groups to call the machines an unac­cept­able intrusion.”

    I’d rather remove my shoes, thanks.

41. moe99 said on July 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    Food purists are today’s Puri­tans. I have a for­mer brother in law who lives in Maine in a house he built w/ an out­house in the back. No elec­tric­ity and the run­ning water is from the stream next to the house. So no hot water either. He and his cur­rent wife are veg­ans. And there was always this sort of look­ing down their noses men­tal­ity that went with that that was very hard to deal with. But the fam­ily is descended on both sides from stern Calvin­ists so it makes sense in an odd sort of way.

    This fel­low repairs for­eign cars to make a liv­ing but does not own one – rides a bike. And as soon as he’s made enough so that he will have to pay income taxes, he quits. Life just seems so grim for him.

42. Julie Robinson said on July 21st, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Joe K, I think you’re right. I’ve just been search­ing for tick­ets around, but not on, Thanks­giv­ing for my sis­ter – West Palm Beach to Chicago. Almost noth­ing avail­able, poor times, few direct flights, and high prices. If you-all haven’t booked hol­i­day travel yet, do it today.

43. Dexter said on July 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Here’s where lost bags go.

    Lots of bar­gains and mucho inter­est­ing mer­chan­dise. I have never had a lost bag, and I have checked bags many times, but now I won’t do it. I travel lightly, wash socks and shorts out in the sink , and buy small items along the way. For gifts and hard item pur­chases , I mail them home. Also, if I buy some new clothes, I’ll just grab a box and go to a mail­ing ser­vice place and mail my old stuff home. Any­thing to keep the lug­gage down to that lit­tle boxy roll-along bag.

44. nancy said on July 21st, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Moe, there’s a guy who lives out­side FW, a Brethren-church guy whose main activ­ity in life is Wit­ness for Peace — they’re the folks who para­chute in to world trou­ble spots and hang around keep­ing an eye on things. The idea is that the wicked oppres­sor will be less likely to open fire on a crowd of unarmed pro­test­ers if they know a bunch of Amer­i­cans are watching.

    You can have your argu­ments with them, and I do — they seem inor­di­nately fond of some fairly nasty Pales­tini­ans. But that’s what they do.

    Any­way, this guy lives a pur­pose­fully sim­ple, off-the-grid life. Bought a par­cel of land no one wanted, con­verted a corn crib to a house, grows his own food, doesn’t own a car, barters for every­thing else, and keeps his cash earn­ings below tax­pay­ing level. When the weather turns cold, he goes off wit­ness­ing for peace, or what­ever you call it.

    I saw pho­tos taken inside his corn crib/house. The par­ti­cle­board walls are unpainted, the fur­ni­ture is all cast-off junk — there’s not a whis­per of beauty any­where. And I have to be hon­est. It didn’t exactly offend me, but it bugged me (if that makes any sense). I think it’s a minor sort of sin to reject beauty in favor of ugli­ness, to be too pure for even sim­ple plea­sures. I’m reminded of Rod Steiger’s great speech in “Doc­tor Zhivago,” about Lara’s boyfriend, the revolutionary:

    There are two kinds of men and only two. And that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He’s the kind of man the world pre­tends to look up to, and in fact despises.

45. Joe Kobiela said on July 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Jolene,
    When I get back tonight I’ll try and explain what has hap­pened with free flight, if you look, the date of that arti­cal is 2001. A lot has hap­pened good and bad since then.
    Off to Tra­vers City, Grand Rapids,over dtw,(wave at Nancy)and on to Clev­land.
    Joe

46. Jim in Fla said on July 21st, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    The Brethren’s pri­or­i­ties are dif­fer­ent than your pri­or­i­ties and my pri­or­i­ties. That’s not a bad thing.

47. Sue said on July 21st, 2008 at 3:35 pm

    Mid­west Express (“the best care in the air”) has announced many route can­cel­la­tions and huge cuts in staffing. They are being pretty open about this being a last-ditch effort to fight off bank­ruptcy. Of course, the TV crews are at the air­port inter­view­ing pas­sen­gers. Almost every per­son they talked to empha­sized their loy­alty to Mid­west but stated they would now be look­ing for another air­line, because, you know, Mid­west is not treat­ing them right. Define loyal, please? I’ll bet these were the same loyal cus­tomers who protested sev­eral months back when nego­ti­a­tions were going on to merge with a dis­count car­rier. Same dif­fer­ence in the end, espe­cially if you refuse to sup­port the effort, and no choco­late chip cook­ies, either.

48. nancy said on July 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pm

    Oh, I know the Brethren are dif­fer­ent from thee and me. I was just observ­ing that some peo­ple are cut from a bolt of cloth I don’t rec­og­nize — rough burlap, maybe.

    Mary Gordon’s first novel has a main char­ac­ter who has an epiphany over Jesus’ line about the poor, whom you always have with you, “but you do not always have Me.” Her light­bulb moment was that we’re sup­posed to give our­selves the gift of beauty once in a while, and not always reject it because of good works left undone. There’s always time for that, and in the mean­time, unpainted par­ti­cle­board bespeaks a sort of asceti­cism that does lit­tle more than buff your own abstemious ego.

    If that makes any sense. Which I doubt it does.

49. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 21st, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Nancy, are these the CPT — Chris­t­ian Peace­maker Team folks? They do some very admirable work, but you sum up your­self my own hes­i­ta­tion on their Palestine-Israel approach. They fol­low a “get­ting in the way of vio­lence” phi­los­o­phy with­out court­ing mar­tyr­dom, which is a fine line to man­age. But the regret­table set­tlers seem to deserve rocks and shots in their view, while in Hebron they take pride in “get­ting in the way” of angry glares. (For a dra­matic excep­tion, see the wiki arti­cle below.)

    Not that i have the faintest idea of what to do with the set­tle­ments, since pull­outs have done so lit­tle other than encour­age the Islamic mil­i­tants, and Israel can’t go back to the 1967 bor­ders (nor, on the mer­its, does it seem to me that they ought to). Whoops, as Hat­tie would say, another band­wagon on the road.

    Any­how, i admire the heck out of the CPTers mostly, and that’s what your guy sounds like. http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​_​P​e​a​c​e​m​a​k​e​r​_Teams (their own web­site is painfully slow to load, linked at article’s end).

50. brian stouder said on July 21st, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    One scene from Dr Zhivago that stuck with me was when Omar Shar­iff con­fronts the rev­o­lu­tion­ary guy with the fast red train, about a vil­lage that was destroyed. The scarred rev­o­lu­tion­ary says that they (the vil­lagers) were har­bor­ing counter-revolutionaries, and he had to “make a point”; where­upon Omar says “Your point — their village”

    If that makes any sense. Which I doubt it does. I had never stopped to con­sider the mean­ing of the poor that will always be with us, so I got my my moment of enlight­en­ment for the day, today.

    This past week­end we were at my in-laws house, and went to their church, and they have a brand new pas­tor, and his ser­mon was all about.…..judgement and damna­tion and repentence!

    And, although I was on-guard for a sud­den veer into con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics (he used the catch-phrase “Jesus should be pres­i­den­tial and not res­i­den­tial in your life” sev­eral times), and gen­er­ally didn’t go for the theme, ALL the women liked his sermon!

    Go fig­ure

51. Dexter said on July 21st, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    Years ago I watched a TV show on “hap­pi­ness”. Inter­viewed were ‚among many oth­ers, a fam­ily man who worked 96 hours or so every week in a Detroit auto plant (in boom cycles , in some jobs, OT is nearly unlim­ited), and a drop-out type who lived in a com­mune some where in Col­orado , where he sang songs to his heart’s con­tent and had many friends and room­mates , but no money or any ben­e­fits like med­ical care .
    The con­clu­sion was that the drop-out was much more con­tent than the guy bust­ing his balls 16 hours a day and a shift every week­end, every day of the year except maybe Christ­mas.
    I was much more like the over-worked man, as for years I worked over­time in a hot fac­tory until I had enough years to retire…and I would never do it again.
    I would head for the moun­tains and become a her­mit or some damn thing.
    Ah yes, that’s so easy to say..now!

52. coozledad said on July 21st, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    I’ve always dreamed of being able to grow all of my own food, but my own farm is more of a con­tin­gency against the day I might have to. I know I will never be able to grow, press and vin­tage a fac­sim­ile of a Cruz de Piedra Grenacha, or cul­ti­vate cacao to make my own choco­late bars, and as long as my wife can afford these things, I’ll be damned if I’ll live with­out them.
    But to be hon­est with you, any effort to sim­plify your life para­dox­i­cally seems, at least to me, to add new lay­ers of com­plex­ity. Here’s an exam­ple: When we moved out here we tem­porar­ily lost con­ve­nient access to tofu (I know a lot of you are say­ing “Well boo-fucking– hoo!”) but it’s one of the many oth­er­wise healthy foods we’ve learned to enjoy through the medium of deep-frying. So I learned how to make tofu from whole soy­beans. It involves stand­ing over a five gal­lon stain­less steel pot for a good part of a day with a large spoon in one hand and a ther­mome­ter in the other to make soymilk. You learn to coag­u­late it at pre­cisely 185 degrees with cal­cium chloride(or Nigari) for firm tofu or epsom salts (for the squishy kind– and yes, it will give you the runs if you’re not care­ful). I wound up hav­ing to build a cheese press to get the con­sis­tency we were used to. When you are done with the beans, the waste prod­uct (okara) can be made into tem­peh, so I learned to make tem­peh in order to avoid hav­ing to feed those organic soy­beans to my chick­ens, who would just as soon eat a dead rodent or a dog turd. I had to con­struct a box with a heat­ing ele­ment to pro­mote the growth of the fungi (rhi­zo­pus spores) that makes the okara con­geal into a brick­like mass.
    See how sim­ple it is?
    And after I learned this, we found a local source for both tofu and tempeh.

53. alex said on July 21st, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    The Brethren are not-too-distant cousins of the Amish and have their own strange sort of asceticism.

    Had a very inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with a young man raised Amish who’s cur­rently in Rump­springa and has no inten­tion of join­ing the Amish church. I assumed this meant he’d be dis­owned and shunned by his fam­ily and com­mu­nity, but he tells me it’s not this way at all. That sort of treat­ment is reserved only for those who join the church and then change their minds.

54. Julie Robinson said on July 21st, 2008 at 4:43 pm

    Yes, Coo­zledad – you can take it too far. I used to make almost every­thing from scratch and prided myself on that. Then I got a life! But recently I decided that yogurt was get­ting too expen­sive and I could make that. After sev­eral batches I just about had it right, then I noticed it was all stay­ing in the refrig­er­a­tor. Rest of the fam­ily admit­ted they didn’t actu­ally care for the stuff.

55. Sue said on July 21st, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Julie, a friend of mine used to say “When my kids were lit­tle, they would have killed for a piece of white bread”. My own dear ones are white bread eat­ing car­ni­vores, so noth­ing took. My daugh­ter is squea­mish about eat­ing meat, but that doesn’t stop her; she just blames me for mak­ing her think about it. Of course it might have helped if I had been more con­sis­tent — by the time they were in their late teens I had thrown in the towel pretty completely.

56. nancy said on July 21st, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    C’dad, you should run one of the exhibits at Green­field Vil­lage. On my last visit, I was impressed by the House of Looms (which isn’t what it’s called). But it’s a house, and they have four or five looms in there, rang­ing from the most prim­i­tive, Colonial-era spec­i­mens to the first electric-powered ones. “Labor-saving” doesn’t really cover it. It really makes you see how sig­nif­i­cant the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion really was in terms of how peo­ple lived their daily lives, how much drudgery they were freed from.

    Of course, some would say it went too far, and they’re cer­tainly free to dis­cover the Zen of weav­ing, but it’s one thing to weave an art­ful shawl of col­or­ful wool and quite another to churn out a dozen yards of home­spun for the family’s clothing.

    Which is (this just occurred to me) another thing to dis­like about the food rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. They for­get that “less work for Mother” was once seen as a good thing, that mod­ern agri­cul­ture might be guilty of many sins but also made food plen­ti­ful and cheap, and that is a bless­ing to the mul­ti­tudes. The pen­du­lum swings, but the day I have to make it myself is the day I give up tofu.

    But good on you for try­ing, any­way. The soy­bean farm­ers of the Amer­i­can bread­bas­ket salute you.

57. Dexter said on July 21st, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    I used to eat a lot of tufu in stir frys. Then our local store quit stock­ing it, and I sort of for­got about it, even when I would shop at stores that might have had it. Now I pre­fer hum­mus any­way.
    In a scene from a movie, Paulie makes a gigan­tic sub­ma­rine sand­wich and takes a bite.

    Char­lie: “You oughtta apply for a license to shit in the street.”

    Paulie: “Why?”

    Char­lie: ” Because you eat like a horse.”

    …“The Pope of Green­wich Vil­lage”, Char­lie, Mickey Rourke…Paulie, Eric Roberts.

58. Danny said on July 21st, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    Nancy, great to have you back. Sounds like you had an excel­lent vacation.

    I’m too busy to par­tic­i­pate much this week. Hope we can all catch up soon!

59. brian stouder said on July 21st, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    A 100% non-sequitur: The young folks and I just got back from The Dark Knight, and I must say — the movie is 100% engag­ing, and Heath Ledger’s Joker absolutely MAKES the movie. It has more than a few laughs, and it is about 15% inco­her­ent (the direc­tor LOVES swirling, spin­ning shots; I think more than 50% of the movie is a pan­ning rotation).….….……and, I have prob­lems with about 75% of its politics.

    The movie pretty reg­u­larly presents the Good Guys as (essen­tially) tor­tur­ing the bad guys — who they begin refer­ring to as “ter­ror­ists” —  to get infor­ma­tion from them. Toward the end, they attach a fig leaf by hav­ing the hero (Chris­t­ian Bale) lose his best, most con­sci­en­tious employee (Mor­gan Free­man) ove a dis­pute regard­ing ille­gal wire­tap­ping, but not before Free­man helps con­duct an “extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion” (or kid­nap­ping!) of a bad guy.

    Toward the end, the ethics of the movie become (to me) sim­ply incoherent.…and granted, all this is intended to be is a big bud­get sum­mer­time flick, made to gen­er­ate gonzo cash (which it seems to be doing).

    But in the movie’s gar­bled attempt at mod­ern rel­e­vancy to the cur­rent day, I think it was akin to ide­o­log­i­cal pornog­ra­phy — rais­ing impor­tant, seri­ous issues soley for wham-boom sala­cious sizzle.

    I found myself winc­ing on more than one occasion

60. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 21st, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    Don’t know from Dark Knights, but i can rec­om­mend as Jolene did ear­lier the George Pele­canos piece from the WaPo mag­a­zine yes­ter­day — http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​7​/​1​5​/​A​R​2​0​0​8​0​7​1​5​0​2​1​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​sub=AR

    Reminded me when i was night man­ager of Von’s Book Shop in West Lafayette in 84 & 85, and one night some­one brought Stan­ley Fish by after a lec­ture. He’d just hit aca­d­e­mic rock star sta­tus with “Is There a Text In This Class?” but no one was around, it was late, and Dr. Fish cruised up and down the high aisles crammed with used and new nudged against each other (today Von’s keeps the used in the newly cleaned up basement).

    Just at close at 10 pm he and the prof who was his local guide came back to the counter, asked me some unnec­es­sar­ily nice ques­tions about life and plans and such, and then laid two George Pele­canos nov­els down in front of me and paid up. “I’ve never heard of him,” said the clerk that was me, and Stan­ley Fish said “You will,” took the bag, shook my hand, and walked off.

    Next pay­day i bought copies of both, employee dis­count. Loaned ‘em out and never got ‘em back years ago. Fish knows tal­ent, 17th cen­tury or 21st.

61. Joe Kobiela said on July 21st, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    Jolene,
    The planes that are men­tioned in the book, Cir­rus and Eclipse jet are now both in pro­duc­tion. The cir­rus is a 4-place sin­gle engine prop plane, Fast,easy to fly but unpres­sur­ized. Really do to weight restric­tion you can have a pilot and 2 pas­sen­gers and fly about 600 miles in 3hr not bad but it is small. The eclipse jet is faster yet but has its prob­lems. It was sup­pose to sell for around 850,00 but due to engine and avionic prob­lems the price is up to around,2.15 mil­lion, this elim­i­nates the owner pilot and puts it in to the same class as a Cessna mus­tang price wise and the mus­tang is much larger inside​.As far as free flight goes, we already use it in char­ter and pri­vate flight using gps to fly a straight line point to point. The air­lines can not use gps unless their entire fleet is upgraded and pilots trained to use it so they still fly from vor to vor some­times miles out of there way. The air­lines are in deep trou­ble and they are look­ing for to blame any­one or any­thing but them selfs. They will tell you that small planes will blacken the sky’s over major city’s where in real­ity small planes do not use O’hare Dulles, JFK or LAX. The sys­tem works but if you have 5airlines sched­ule a 9:00am depar­ture some­one is going to be late get­ting air­borne.
    It is bad now, but going to get worse
    Joe

62. Dexter said on July 22nd, 2008 at 12:45 am

    Pilot Joe: My daughter’s S.O. just fin­ished train­ing on the new Hawker. He is a pilot for Net­Jets, the way to go, for sure. Frac­tion­al­ized own­er­ship of an air­craft makes more sense than own­ing a jet out­right. I was think­ing that when our host gets her ten mil­lion dol­lars and moves to Nor­Cal, she will be able to afford Net­Jets, but maybe not…it’s very expen­sive. Not all big shot V.I.Ps travel pri­vately on jets.

    Al Gore told Tom Brokaw “I am fly­ing on South­west tonight”, for exam­ple.
    Of course most of the peo­ple my pilot flies are C.E.O.s , with the occas­sional celebrity flight, even some very famous movie stars.
    He told me that once he flew a plane across coun­try with one name on the man­i­fest. A rich woman flew her cat out to be her. A cat. A kitty cat. Meow kind.
    Ain’t that the shits?

63. Jolene said on July 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 am

    Thanks for the detail, Joe. I only knew about this topic from read­ing Fallows’s blog. Sounds like we’re in for “inter­est­ing times” aviation-wise in the years ahead.

64. Jolene said on July 22nd, 2008 at 7:27 am

    Jeff, which of Pelecanos’s books would you rec­om­mend that I read first?

65. alex said on July 22nd, 2008 at 7:31 am

    Hey, Pilot Joe — DeKalb is the clos­est air­port to my home. Always thought I had to be rich and have my own plane to fly out of there. No? I can take a char­ter plane wher­ever? Tell me more, ‘cuz I really hate fly­ing com­mer­cial. I’m one of those peo­ple who has all the luck. Fly­ing out of Fort Wayne is expen­sive and usu­ally requires a con­nec­tion or two, and the planes I’m on are always late and miss the next flight. It’s espe­cially bad at that clus­ter­fuck of an air­port in Atlanta, where they never give you a rea­son­able amount of time to take the tram from the ter­mi­nal you’ve landed at to the one you need to be at.

66. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 am

    Jolene, i’d say “his lat­est” since he’s so con­sis­tent, or “The Big Blow­down.” And i have to note in check­ing the title — my story absolutely has to be wrong, which bugs me not the least because i’ve been telling it for years. Stan­ley Fish bought two books by some up and com­ing crime nov­el­ist from me in ’85, and i read them and liked them (and loaned them and didn’t get them back) and that author became Pele­canos over time … but his first novel was ’92.

    I am abashed, and baf­fled. For­get the Fish tale, and read the Pele­canos anyhow.

67. brian stouder said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:43 am

    Sounds like a case for Laura Lippman’s Mem­ory Project…!

68. Jolene said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Thanks, Jeff. I think I’ll remem­ber the story as you told it. I like it that way.