Five Minutes Ahead Of My Time

The Alamo

2007-05-03T07:24:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't posted in awhile...hard to stay focused witht this traveling lifestyle... Just finished a trip in which I saw the Alamo for the first time. I didn't set out to find it but before I knew it, there it was, across the street. Small in comparison to the modern structures...It's next to a MALL!(Wheeeeeeeee!)...but SOLID. To think that such a small building is at the center of a swirl of mythic legend and folklore...Glad I got to see it...GaP

Cosmic Correspondence

2007-04-02T06:34:00.000-04:00

Salut, Russ... Ray and I were having this conversation about friendship. Usually in a friendship, there is an iniator and a recipient. After many years of writing letters, I discovered that I was generally the iniator. I am convinced that most of my friendships(or romantic notions thereof) would shrivel up on the vine without effort on my part. I am pleased that you're an exception to that rule. Everyone else appreciates and comes to EXPECT a regular note from you(the "general you")...and when you STOP, they have the balls to ask if you died or something. Or you get "haven't heard from you in awhile." After awhile, you just realize that it's not really WORTH effort for all of the diminishing returns... So how do friendships flourish or begin? I've given out my "bizcard" to colleagues I meet while on the road...extending the hand of friendship if they should ever be in New Hampshire...Most often, nothing comes of it... And I have to admit, I don't like to socialize on my time off...I DO like to send e-mails or letters...but once I falter, there is nothing coming from the other side... Ah well...whine, bitch, moan... Anyway, with all of the A320 flying I've been doing, it seems that you'd need a cosmic act of intervention for our OWN paths to cross. You know, heaven FORBID two good friends run into each other...the universe might implode or something. And speaking of writing letters, how's THIS for a paradox...I have about twelve people in my mailing list that could be considered serious Christians. While I'm ambivalent about religion in general, I AM looking forward to looking for the appropriate Easter Cards for these folks. I may not take their religion seriously but I take their FAITH and their FRIENDSHIP seriously. Does this make me a hypocrite? And should I even I bother since most of these folks aren't regular with their correspondence anyway? But it feels right and natural to do this...so that's the criteria I'm going with... Anyway, thanks for being a good friend, Captain...GaP _________________________________________________________________________________ GaP, You raise some good points. Life is like an extended cruise on a ship; you meet great people, promise to "stay in touch," exchange e-mail addresses and such and then ... poof. Gone. One of your gifts is that you care enough to actually keep the connections of friendship repaired. You're a bridge tender. And people really appreciate it. I know they do because I do. Think about it. Unless there is an overriding reason to stay in touch, chance of sex, chance of inheritance, your friend is rich or whatever, friendships are generally acts of convenience. No, I do not think you are a hypocrite because you are looking forward to the promise of an Easter card or two from your Christian friends. You do respect their faith. If everyone had that attitude (and didn't think that the person's faith was dead wrong ... what was I reading the other day ... "we do not look for truth because there are millionsof different truths about any one thing") there wouldn't be any religious wars. Why can't we get excited about a shared celebration (not by us) of Ramadan, Chunukah, Easter or the Winter Solstice (oh, right ... that's Christmas!)? About friendship where you're actually with them, spending actual time in others' company: I don't know how to do that. Right now my fragmented life does not lend itself to that pleasant experience. It's like the boat, I want one but now I don't even have the time to go *look* at any much less * own* one! What would it be like to have an integrated, not compartmentalized, life? That is a rhetorical question, I think. Speaking of fragmentation, I now have to crank up the software and get my finances squared away. Last week I went to the Virginia Festival of the Book. I loved it! But today I have 95 e-mails, the finances are a week undone and I've a ton of other work to do. And here I sit in Columbus, Ohio. My turn to whine. Take good care, brother. Russ ____________________________________________________________________________ RussMan... Here I sit in Edmonton. Day Four. Wheeeee... Actually, I've been doing lead and having a good time with it. If someone's starts treatiung me like a lackey, I'm training myself to distance myself from it. But I WILL let some passive/aggressive soothe my ego. Nothing bombastic. Something like "forgetting" to return their coat, for example... I have a CLT layover in April, if you can believe it. Let me check on it and get back to you? Could we actually be hanging out for the THIRD time in the tenure of our friendship? WAOW. Thanks for the kind words, Russ...and fuck Religion. It's stupid. I think we're in a post-human historical simulation or something. It would explain a lot... Catch you later...GaP ___________________________________________________________________________________ GaP, I live in Charlottesville, not Charlotte. CHO vs. CLT. Unless you fly the Saab you won't be laying over in C'ville! :) Screw religion? How so? It's a major deal. We can't ignore it as a reality. Best, Russ _________________________________________________________________________________ No...but I can ignore its bullshit. Whenever some Bible-thumper goes on about their pick of subjects...homosexuality being immoral, the smugness of their dogmatic thinking(we are the CHOSEN ones...yeah, isn't EVERYONE?), and just the sheer absurdity of it all...I can just get up and walk out. Thomas Harris has written that religion has gotten a blank check since it doesn't have to back belief with critical thinking and skepticism...Basically, we have people believing in First Century Superstitions...Tiresome. All of it. I choose not to play anymore... Too bad about the non-layover...Speak soon...GaP _________________________________________________________________________________ Hi GaP, I understand your point. I'm much the same way. Over the years I've learned that the myths the religion are build upon are true (inasmuch as myths inform our soul). But always the followers get wrapped up in the dogma, then they get wrapped up in control and then we have the Inquisition and Jerry Falwell. Much can be learned by going to the original sources however. Who cares if Noah really built a big barge or if Jesus really went bodily to heaven (or was born of a virgin for that matter). What matters, it seems to me, is what these stories have to tell us about living a human life on earth. When I accept the stories as fiction I can see the messages. We do have a big problem when modern man takes a set of 2,000 year old myths and tries to hammer them into his modern life. What you're doing makes more sense; taking modern myths (in the form of super heroes) and seeing how they inform your life. Do you think Batman is real? Hell, no! Do the Invisibles roam the earth? Who cares? But the stories about them sure can teach us a lot! Getting into the modern myths is quite a wise move, my friend. Take good care, Russ _________________________________________________________________________________ Russ... Stories... I do believe you've nailed it. I always used to wonder just WHY the hell people(including myself) were enamored with stories regardless of the genre...super-heroes, romance, Westerns, espionage, horror...what have you. The point IS, we need our stories to make sense of a world where the loose ends DON'T get tied up neatly, where there ARE no sub-plots, expositions, motivations, or any discernible REASONS for the things that happen to or around us. We need stories to make help us make sense of the world/the universe...and yes, lessons can be learned from the classic story-structures. Taking the idea even further, sometimes I believe that fiction exists as an antibody---a preventative to protect reality. For example, science-fiction concepts such as overpopulation and nuclear war have been played out in novels, movies, and television as cautionary fiction...but MORE than that, they present the stories so WE DON'T HAVE TO LIVE THROUGH THEM. Almost like reality taking an antibiotic. The most current example I can give you are the scenarios on 24...First season, family kidnapping, presidential-candidate assasination attempts...Season 2...the threat of a nuke atomizing Los Angeles...Season 3, even more chilling, a terrorist threatening to release a super-virus into the U.S. population...all horrific situations that we've never REALLY had to deal with in reality...So fiction deals with it so WE won't have to? Your thoughts on this? GaP

2007-04-02T06:30:00.000-04:00

GaP, A friend gave me a beautiful book with a Buddhist quote for each day of the year (accompanied by extraordinary photographs). Here is the quote for April 1st: "Of the ten virtuous acts spoken of in Buddhism, four are verbal; not to lie, not to engage in divisive talk, not to speak harsh words and not to engage in frivolous conversation." What do you think? Russ _________________________________________________________________________________ Russ...All good advice...but that slacker-bitch part of my personality has to have a say...Divisive talk? Sometimes. I'll say some negative things about co-workers, passengers, or whomever if they piss me off. I think of this as steam-letting somewhat. It's something I try not to over-indulge in. Lying. Some lies are necessary, unfortunately. Sometimes to others(many couldn't handle the unvarnished truth unless it's positive...So I stick with that. "It was a pleasure to meet you." "You've lost weight, haven't you?") sometimes to ourselves. I think white lies spare us from social bruising. The Japanese consider it "saving face". Harsh words? You mean like, "Hey ASSHOLE! Didn't you hear me make the seatbelt sign announcement?" "You're changing your baby's diaper just as we're about to push back? What ARE you, a fucking retard?" Yeah, that's something I try to refrain from. Frivolous. I guess the definition of that depends on the person. Talking about sports, American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, or opening the conversation with the weather...not to mention just about any public cellphone conversation...All that shit is frivolous to ME. But once again, frivolous talk is a societal lubricant. Hell, walk into any bar and any conversation between strangers begins with a nice safe topic...like sports, weather or some minor news event...Then they can build up to the big stuff. Some people have that gift of the blether, the Blarney touch...People can have a warm, engaging conversation about almost anything really. These are the people that love to chat with other people and love the company of others. They are the lubricant that makes society run better. They're the type of person you wish you could buy a beer and chat with on a regular basis...There's much to be said for someone with the gift of the patter. Amazingly, I find that I can turn it on when I'm in the Shaskeen Irish Pub. Something about the atmosphere, I guess... That's what I love about our discourse, Russ...I mean to write a simple reply and I end up writing a book...which is the nature of OUR friendship... House-sitting Bill's place today. I may watch myself a John Wayne flick...THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, anyone? Hope you're well, my good friend. Much love and warmth to you...GaP (hope that doesn't sound too granola, hippie, or homo...)

Dodged A Bullet

2007-03-19T05:24:00.000-04:00

Salut, Doc... Just got back from a five-day trip...and completely MISSED a whiteout snowstorm/freezing rain melange that botched up everyone's weekend in New England...(Would THIS be the main reason why you don't schedule your family visiting in New England in winter-time? Can't say I blame you...) Really enjoyed the warm weather of Alburquerque, New Mexico...Dry, WARM, sunny weather and the time to ENJOY it...Took a stroll to Old Town and stumbled upon an excellent independent, hole-in-the-wall record store. One of my favorite environments to be in... While I was in a bookstore in the old town searching for post-cards, I examined the music on offer and this old cowboy-gentleman type was talking about some of the local artists featured. He was the epitome of frontier-style gentility, answering, "Yes, sir," "No sir" to whatever questions I had. I should be the one addressing HIM as such...and I did. Really not used to courteous, respectful behavior, sad to say. Therefore, I don't expect ANY from anyone and I keep my emotional distance from my fellow humans. Head-shakingly sad, innit? Anyway, Doc...I hope you and your family are well. Stay British...GaP

Thinking Out Of The Bottle

2007-03-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

There are some magical little moments of humanity that make it all worth it…You get a glimpse of the wonderful absurdity behind reality’s curtain that holds us all together…This morning, this…well, I guess you could call her a street person…bag-lady…whatever. She was pacing around rapidly, spouting non-sequitors to whoever was nearby. She was ambling around as if she were on a mission but she was actually aimless… Meanwhile, across the street, near the bank, there was this street-sweeper singing what sounded like an old blues song. When she came into his range, she began providing him with a counter-point beat, a marching “ha-yup,ha-yup,ha-yup!” sort of rhythm…They worked off each other, their completely different perspectives melding together into a sort of jam-session…A complete surprise and delight…something you can’t pay for or commodify. This was a glimpse into a higher-reality…or at least the wilder shores of sanity…It was a clear view of our shared humanity, how messy and incongruous we can all be to each other…and our commonality. And when I got onto the bus, this older gent, a bit slow, maybe a bit medicated, was rambling on about his childhood in Manchester and the rough-looking lady “translating” for him to the bus-driver was telling this story about how she’d been raped…All of these people…whom society wouldn’t be comfortable with, were providing me with an understanding of humanity that no classroom could ever provide, no philosopher could ever summarize… I also came to a realization yesterday. I am not really meant to be a drinker…okay, I’ll say it…I am an alcoholic…do it in caps…ALCOHOLIC. I had this long talk with Bill about it and he agreed to be my watchdog over whether I’ve had too much. So we hunkered down to watch more of 24 Season 3…I had three beers over the course of the three hours…but the whole time it was a considerable effort to slow down…I wanted to get DRUNK…and it was an effort of will to pace myself. I woke up with a slight headache. I decided that it was not something that I wanted to really deal with…but the lure of alcohol and the romance of the ribald, boozy, comraderie is a strong one…So that means I have to think of what to do if I find myself in situations where I would be offered a drink…a glass of wine or whatever? Do I pass? Do I nurse? Am I just obsessing? With booze, I seem to know when to stop but I tend to drink too fast…because I’m in a hurry to get buzzed, to get DRUNK. Not good. And that has to be addressed. In addition to this, I think I’m undergoing an identity-shift…similar to when I lost all the weight when I was a teenager, comparable to when I had to come to grips with my sexuality…I’m ready to change. I seem to be drifting out of comics(which I’m trying to resist…that’s a HUGE part of my identity that I don’t want to leave behind…), becoming closer to another person who is VERY important to me…important enough not to botch up with nascent alcoholism…,and there also seems to be this need for clarity. Maybe it’s a manifestation of finally getting off my ass and doing something with my life…finding success and fulfillment in a way that works for ME… Let the adventure continue…GaP

Working For Sauron

2007-02-16T08:14:00.000-05:00

On 2/15/07, G@P wrote: Salut, Russ... The morale at work is so bad, that it leaves me bitchy and whiny about my lot in life and everyone around me is pretty damned tired of hearing it. What no one can seem to tell me is how the situation would improve if I jumped ship over to another WORLD IS FLAT/WAL-MART situation. At least HERE, I have a fair amount of time off...and at work, there seems to be more than ample time to catch up on reading. But make no mistake...change is needed. The big question mark is WHAT? Are you a NETFLIX person? Can't believe I didn't hop onto that sooner... In the middle of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING...and while I'm FAR more ready to appreciate it now than I was in high school, topology-travel tales take some patience on my part to get through... How are you doing? GaP How am I doing? Well, GaP, I'm bitchy, angry and tired. Tomorrow I go to the schoolhouse in MSP for recurrent. My heart is not in it. I'm suffering from recurrent headaches, my blood pressure is pegged at max for the first time ever ... and something has to change. How can we create a new reality? What are we doing wrong? Are we living in Hell and don't know it? I did my books and found that I'd spent $5,000 more in January than I brought in. That kind of cash flow drain is unsustainable. Okay, all that said, today I realized that I must quit concentrating on the negatives. In reinforcement of that idea, the Universe gave me a message. I opened the mail, expecting a bill, and found a $700 refund check from my insurance company. Then I checked my stocks and found I'd made several thousand dollars over the last 24 hours. So it's not all bad. We need to stick together and fight the dragons. We haven't done all this study and reading about myths, heroes and personal paths for nothing! I have a hard time with Tokien, too. So much so that I've never gotten past the first couple of chapters. There's a lot in there but so far it's not accessible to me. You have my admiration! Well, brother, we've got to learn to "hold our mouths right," stick to an idea of a better version of reality and, one day, we'll be sitting on the boat having a single malt and good long talk. We ain't gonna fix it all, not even the smalles part of it, that's not what life on earth is about, but we can get our spirits and minds into a better place. I believe that. Now, how do we do it? Beating up on each other is not the way. Yep, the morale sucks! Big time! I've been saying to the flight attendants in the briefing, "We're going to take care of each other, close the door on the Dumpster Doug Show and the funky corporation and keep our passengers safe. Please know I do take your concerns seriously." Since I've started saying these simple things, I've noticed I've gotten a more "thank you's," some real smiles, and more en route calls from the back, "Do you need water? We don't have any food but I just wanted to check on you. Do you need anything else?" than before. Just knowing that I genuinely (I do not say these things to blow smoke up anybody's ass) care for their interests and concerns seems to have a positive, though temporary, effect on morale (It is just too bad the skipper continues to grind his teeth and crunches on pills to fend off the migraines!). Keep the faith! Russ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers--thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams." ---Peter S. Beagle, praising the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Slang Exchange

2007-02-14T06:40:00.000-05:00

Salut, Doc... You ever consider visiting the colonies during winter? Like, say, the Christmas break? Right now, you're missing out on what we New Englanders call a "nor'easter"...We're slated to get 24 hours of the white stuff covered with a nice icy glazing to top it all off... Candace harks from this area of the States, right? I'm sure she's familiar with the term. An observation of the mother-tongue crossing the great transAtlantic: The crew was waiting for a part to show up for insallation...It was being flown out from Detroit to Newark airport. "What a cock-up," I mumbled. "What did you say?" the Captain asked. "Are you from England?" "No," I replied. "But I like the vernacular." "What does that mean?" asked the First Officer. "A snafu," I fumbled. "A screw-up." "A cluster-f**k", the Captain offered. Doing my part to make sure that all the idiom exchange isn't ALL one way...GaP

Exhaustive Self-Loathing...

2007-02-13T13:58:00.000-05:00

I just did my first domestic trip after a long vacation...and while it was basically easier, it drove home the fact that I really don't want to be doing the jet-set thing anymore. I find that I'm putting up a wall around myself, blankly staring through people, scraping through with the bare minimum... I'm just so jaded with humanity. Everyone and everything seems so utterly pointless, trite, and absurd to me. I see people as sheep...a bunch of vapid zombies yakking into their cellphones, cheering on the latest mass-media sports event, or filling the air with inanities like the weather, what they do for a living, or what exotic location they just came from. A bunch of labels believing themselves to be individuals... I wish I could reach out, get to know people, engage in friendly small talk but I can't really see the point. It never leads to anything like friendships or meaningful conversation. I know it takes work to CHANGE, to cultivate positivity...but it's too exhausting. So I put up walls, make as little eye contact as possible, limit my conversation. I'm a robot keeping my distance... I blame the job but the real truth is the picture I included above. How do you find your path or passion when you think that everything is pointless and ineffectual? Most of all yourself? In a world where everything is commerce and commodity, how are you able to be anything more than a sellout or somebody's meal-ticket? Sorry. My thoughts aren't very well-organized...Let's hear it for the long, dark mid-winter afternoon of the soul...

Glad To Be Older

2007-02-08T16:41:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I head back to work after a month off...I've had some time to reflect on some of the changes in my life over the past year... I notice myself sort of withdrawing from certain things. Ever since I met Bill, I've been gradually drifting away from my comic habit. Have I been sublimating all of these years? Am I growing out of them. They were my shelter for the longest time... I've also gotten lazier about keeping my written journal. Granted, from time to time, I post to his blog, print out this page and count it as an entry...(Like I'm going to do with this one.) Also, this past week, I've had every intention of going to the gym but the moment I heard that sub-zero arctic wind rattling the windows, I just turned over and dropped right back to sleep. I've also gotten less passionate about writing letters...I guess this is getting OLDER. And with THAT in mind, I have to say that I absolutely do not MIND the ageing process... I don't miss being insecure all the time, not knowing the answers to everyday problems, feeling out of step with all of the other kids who, of course, seemed normal. I don't miss being anxious and stressed about stupid things like brand-name clothing, zits on my face, whether my peers are laughing at the self-same insecurities...I don't miss my former lack of self-confidence, the pointless workaholism, the hyperactivity, the obssessive-compulsive way that my mind used to work...I like the way more things roll off my back, the calmer way that I take things in stride...issues that I never would have imagined dealing with before. Getting a oil-heater boiler fixed, having a cellar spayed for termites, and balancing the checkbook for all of these little home-owner improvement maintenance details. You might say that this is normal, everyday stuff...but there was a time when I never had the slightest clue about any of that. I've had good teachers. Feels good learning a bit of practicality.. I like the way that former fiery convictions have cooled to a reasonable temperature. I used to think rock and roll was the ONLY music and that the music had to be made with REAL instruments. No dance-crap, no synths, NO hip-hop, and godDAMN, country was for shitkickers only...If my fifteen-year old self could take a look at my music collection, he'd probably cringe and then make some sneery remark. But hey, when you know everything when you're younger... I look at my greying temples and I breathe a sigh of relief that I'm assuming a sage-like appearance... "Distinguished" is what it's called...(I could live without the bald-spot, though...sometimes, genetics suck.) I look forward to the day when I can sit back in the easy chair , light up a meerschaum(by that time, I won't be so concerned about the health-risks of smoking at that age) and just feel a whole lot more comfortable in my own skin. Maybe that's one of the purposes of the ageing process...helping one to be more at ease with one's self... All this with a teenage/slacker mentality...because age really DOES mean not giving a damn about what other people think. Could age be the REAL punk-rock? Two years shy of forty...GaP

If I'd ONLY Known About This Therapy...

2007-02-07T14:31:00.000-05:00

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Haggard Now "Completely Heterosexual" By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:59 a.m. ET DENVER (AP) — One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is ‘’completely heterosexual.'’ Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday’s edition. ‘’He is completely heterosexual,'’ Ralph said. ‘’That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.'’ Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary. ‘’If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,'’ he said. ‘’We’re into this thing over 90 days and it hasn’t happened.'’ Haggard resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals last year after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced. He was also forced out from the 14,000 New Life Church that he founded years ago in his basement after Jones alleged Haggard paid him for sex and sometimes used methamphetamine when they were together. Haggard, who is married, has publicly admitted to ‘’sexual immorality.'’ Haggard said in an e-mail Sunday, his first communication in three months to church members, that he and his wife, Gayle, plan to pursue master’s degrees in psychology. The e-mail said the family hasn’t decided where to move but that they were considering Missouri and Iowa. Another oversight board member, the Rev. Mike Ware of Westminster, said the group recommended the move out of town and the Haggards agreed. ‘’This is a good place for Ted,'’ Ware said. ‘’It’s hard to heal in Colorado Springs right now. It’s like an open wound. He needs to get somewhere he can get the wound healed.'’ It was also the oversight board that strongly urged Haggard to go into secular work. http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/02/20070207_9.asp

Dumpster-Diving Barbie

2007-02-06T06:14:00.000-05:00

If the enclosed photo confuses you, check out the link below...GaP http://consumerist.com/consumer/airlines/northwest-airlines-dumpster-diving-booklet-revealed-194900.php

Here, Here!

2007-02-01T17:22:00.000-05:00

SFO FA Helps to Strengthen America's Middle Class On Wednesday, January 31, 2007, SFO FA Rosemary Miller represented working Americans at a Congressional hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor. Rosemary, a single mother of two, testified about her struggle to maintain a stable family life and provide for her children while NWA slashed her wages and benefits. Click here to watch her compelling and heartfelt testimony. TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR COMMITTEE HEARING ON STRENGTHENING AMERICA’S MIDDLE CLASS: EVALUATING THE ECONOMIC SQUEEZE ON AMERICA’S FAMILIES JANUARY 31, 2007 BY ROSEMARY MILLER FLIGHT ATTENDANT MEMBER, ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS - CWA Thank you Chairman Miller for holding this important hearing on the many challenges facing the middle class in this country – the real backbone of the American economy. I especially want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I am honored and humbled to be a face and voice for so many women and men in this country who struggle to play and live by the rules, raise our families and hold on to the hope that the future holds a better life for us and our children. Unfortunately, that hope has grown dim for me and many others as we struggle to find a balance between working to provide for our families, spend quality time with our families, and plan for a stable future for ourselves and our children. My name is Rosemary Miller and I have worked as a flight attendant for the past 17 years. Unfortunately, my career in the airline industry qualifies me to speak on the topic of today’s hearing. Airline industry employees have suffered greatly over the past several years and have borne the burden of returning the industry, hopefully, to profitability. We have been at the forefront of a trend that is repeating itself all across our economy as we work longer and longer hours for reduced pay. We have seen our benefits slashed simply to keep the most basic of health care. We have had our pensions frozen or terminated and our employers have used this country’s bankruptcy laws to shred union contracts and set back decades of progress we have made in turning our jobs into decent, stable careers that have allowed us to raise and support our families. I would like to emphasize, however, that I am not really here to speak as an “I”: I am here as a “we”. In my remarks today, you should replace “I”, “me” and “my” with “we”, “us” and “our”. In fact, please feel free to insert any one of a number of careers in place of mine. Whenever I say “we”, I mean the workers of the middle class, your constituents. It could be a pilot sitting here today, or an airline mechanic, or an air traffic controller. It could be a nurse, or a firefighter, or a police officer. We are the people who install your cable TV, who drive your buses, who truck your groceries from farm to supermarket, who check you into your hotels, who teach your kids. We are the city and county civil servants who run your communities. The reason we’re here today is to tell you what it’s really, really like in this country’s current economy, and to impress upon you that our reality is not pretty. We have all heard and read the numbers coming from some economists and bureaucrats in Washington, DC, that suggest the economy is doing well. They tell us that the economy is growing, unemployment is low and things look rosy. I am here to tell you that things do not look rosy for middle class Americans. We are seeing our professions destroyed by corporate management policies. We are watching our wages plummet, our benefit packages shrink and our pensions disappear. We are working longer hours, for less pay. We are being forced to choose between dental work and the electrical bill, between required prescription medication and groceries, between braces for our kids and new brakes for the aging car. In my own case, I have tried to do everything right in order to balance the demands of working full time, being a single mother and raising my two wonderful daughters. I choose a career as a flight attendant because of a love for the profession and the flexibility it allowed to spend time with my daughters when they needed me to be home. But knowing that things can change, I prepared for the future in case the day would come when I might have to quit the career I love. I went back to school and have been able to obtain two bachelors degrees and a masters degree. I started saving early for my daughters’ college educations. I willingly joined a union and supported that union in order to have a voice on the job to preserve our wages and benefits. I’ve done everything within my power in to secure my job and my future. However, upon entering bankruptcy, my employer has forced on me and my colleagues drastic wage and benefit reductions. I am now working longer and longer days as well as having to spend more and more time away from home. I have had to miss some of my daughters’ school events that I vowed I would never miss because now I have to work longer in order to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. But not only am I working longer; I’m earning less. My pension has been frozen. My benefits have been reduced. It is harder for me now, even with three degrees, to re-enter the workforce. And it angers and saddens me that I am going to have to withdraw the small sum that I managed to carefully set aside for my children’s first semester of college in order to keep paying the mortgage and keep my house - our home - a little longer. Again, my plight is not unique and I consider myself fortunate in many ways. Consider me the voice for just a few of the people who can’t be here today. For the woman with cancer who says, “ the thought of the senior executives at my company getting bonuses, gutting labor contracts and defaulting on pension obligations at the same time they are demanding a 40% wage cut from me, while I am literally fighting for my life, makes me sicker than the cancer ever has.” Or the pilot with over 30 years of service who is outraged that when he began with his airline, there were four Senior VPs on the payroll, but at last count there were 37. The colleague of mine who, after 18 years on the job, says she has to decide some days if she’s going to buy a cup of coffee or a meal, or the woman whose husband lost his job of 28 years to outsourcing and had to start over for $7.75 an hour. I know that we could spend hours telling these and similar stories. Since we don’t have hours however, let me move on. What do we, the middle class, think has gone wrong? Among other things, we think executive compensation packages that are wildly disproportionate to the contribution those employees make to a company’s overall health are wrong. Why do we allow for an airline CEO to terminate all of the company employees’ pensions, while keeping his own $4.5 million pension? Why do we allow for these corporate robber barons to reward themselves compensation and management retention bonuses upon “successfully” bringing a company through bankruptcy? And I hate to use the word “successfully” because it is hard to use that term when so many employees’ lives are shattered by the process. Should these individuals that drove the company into bankruptcy in the first place be rewarded for that? The average worker in this country struggles for a modest cost of living increase today while the CEOs that made 20 times what a worker made in the 1960s, now makes 400 times as much. Bankruptcy laws that allow companies to evade pension funding obligations, and instead sanction degrading and unlivable employment contracts are wrong. The bankruptcy laws have become a smokescreen for union busting and a tool to destroy employee contracts that were originally bargained in good faith. The abuse of these laws has eliminated employees’ access to legal self-help when confronted with gross inequities in the sacrifices they have had to make during economic hard times. In fact, my employer has used the bankruptcy laws to enforce a contract on all the flight attendants without having to negotiate one in good faith. When we democratically rejected their proposed contracts as going too far, they instead threw up their hands and with the blessing of the bankruptcy courts imposed draconian working conditions and drastic wage cuts on us. Our union rights were destroyed. Using the bankruptcy laws and courts as a means to destroy union contracts must come to an end. As for our health care system, something has gone horribly wrong. So many workers in this country are making enormous sacrifices to just maintain basic health insurance. Those of us with employer provided health care are finding it harder and harder to save money as our copays, premiums and other out of pocket expenses increase drastically. And it’s increasingly harder for our employers to confer salary increases when they are paying so much more for our health care costs. Washington must act, sooner rather than later, in order to prevent the total collapse of our health care system. Higher education for years was the path to the middle class. Now it is a necessity to simply survive in our globalized economy. The problem is that saving and paying for a college education has become harder and harder for most families today. And those that are fortunate enough to receive student loans to cover their costs find themselves in debt for many, many years. More must be done in order to make sure that American families can afford a college education for their children. Saving for our retirement has grown harder as our wages have gone down, health costs have increased and college has become more difficult to afford. Many of us are losing, have lost or seen frozen our defined benefit pension plans. It is absolutely crucial that Congress act to protect and secure the present Social Security system to ensure that it is there for all of us, who have worked hard our entire lives, when we reach our retirement years. We’d also like to point out something else. We are people who live modest lifestyles. Notice that in our remarks today we are not asking for boats, or vacation homes in Aspen, or luxury cars. We are not lamenting the lack of a 30,000 sq. ft house or cosmetic surgery. We are asking for livable wages, a home that we own, affordable health care, comfortable retirement security, and reasonable means to provide for our children’s college costs. It is obscene that in this country, among all others, it is such a struggle to simply live decently. I know that there are many issues facing our government today. But when you, the members of Congress, walk onto an airplane, or check in to a hospital; when you send your kids to school, or go to the grocery store, or call the police, you expect us to be there to do our jobs. Now we are asking you, as legislators, as law- and policy-makers, to do yours. Which is, listen to us. Hear us. Be aware that it does not matter if we are Democrats, or Republicans, or Independents, or Green or Rainbow or pink with purple polka dots. We are the vast majority of Americans; we are your neighbors, your friends, your own family. We are the middle class, and we are having a hard time out here. I want to thank you again for giving me this opportunity to testify today. I will answer any questions that you may have.

THIS Is Why I Love My Capitalist Country...God Bless America!

2007-01-30T08:14:00.000-05:00

THIS one is worth a look-see...GaP (Not sure if the link worked...if not, just copy, paste, and pop it into your browser. It's worth it...GaP >http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/business/2007/01/23/b2.101.dumb.northwest.bofa.cnn.cnn<

Back From Kay-Bec

2007-01-29T15:13:00.000-05:00

Salut... A week ago, I rented a car for one-week sojourn. A visit to my dad in Marston, Quebec was LONG overdue. But for the first half of my vacation, I hemmed and hawed about how to get up there. Bus(economical but damned inconvenient...and LONG.) or car-rental?(Very convenient,VERY expensive.) I opted for the car rental...Got myself a good deal but it turns out that the insurance was more expensive than the rental. SO... I promised a recently relocated friend up in Milton, VT that I'd pay him a visit. For the definition of a wrong career-move, all you had to do was look at this cautionary tale. My friend went into debt moving up here to open a new store for a mattress and bed company. They didn't pay dime ONE for his moving expenses. He was promoted to manager of this place in Burlington...No promotion, no real back-up...Long story short: They're miserable and in the red up there. I wouldn't be surprised if they headed back home. Hey, it was a wrong turn. He doesn't know what to do next regarding job, career, LIFE...I know how he feels. His wife is stuck out on the tundra being mom to little Dom and J. when he's back from school. And they're not big fans of the Yankee Stepford Stinkeye that they get up there. I got a small taste of it in a drug-store. That impolite size-up. Luckily, my job has taught me to completely ignore asshole behavior completely... I said good-bye to them, crossed the border at 89 North and used the internet's Mapquest instructions to get to Marston...(I can't say enough good things about MQ. USE it...Better than getting lost...) I spent five days with my dad and his two dogs up in the wooded north. I took in an amazing amount of Westerns on the LoneStar channel, visited some relatives, drank a bit with the old man, did some reading...all of the things that make an ideal vacation... But by the last two days, I was wishing I was back home...rather than enjoying the very valuable time with my dad...(And let's face it, he's not getting any younger...none of us are...)my mind was dazed, envisioning my beloved living room, just being HOME and NOT traveling. And I was missing Bill...and he was bummed out at home without me. It's awful, isn't it, marking off time, wishing your life away? Only when the party kicked off in high gear at my uncle's camp did I get pulled back into the present. We had a dozen people in there, drinking beer, speaking French(and a some English), smoking, and just having a good time. I don't know...I guess I'm becoming more misanthropic? Anti-social? Anyway, it was good seeing my uncles again...and I really enjoyed that last tail end of it... I left Marston at 0800 this morning...I tried to put my mind in that timeless state as I crossed the border, made it onto Route 3, and then onto the highway...It was a smooth journey...And god, am I glad to be home...GaP

The Perfect Day With My Loved One

2007-01-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

Bill had an appointment to change the oil in his car. It was going to be a long wait so we decided to walk over to Barnes and Noble to browse around. We had to stop at Wal-Mart so he could buy a hat to cover his right ear. He has a recurring ear-infection problem. We did our thing(and made a killing on some DVD's...but one television season on DVD, get one free...I got myself THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO SEASONS 2 AND 3. And the complete original (British) version of THE OFFICE along with the complete FAWLTY TOWERS.) I know I'm trying to save some cash but that's a good DEAL! Anyway, on the way back to the car dealership, Bill started to have problems with his ear again. His equilibrium was being affected. So I held on to his arm as we slowly made our way down the hill. I was happy to be there for him... We've been hiding from the howling winter winds, watching SEASON 1 of 24. The heat of the woodstove was making us drowsy...We took a nap. We lay there in bed, enjoying the quiet, the warmth of each other's company. We lay side-by-side, our hands joined together. I never thought I would be the one to say that love IS worth it. Especially when it's REAL and when it's based on kindness and respect. There's only one Bill...and I'm very happy with him...GaP

Taking Stock...

2007-01-19T07:08:00.000-05:00

Salut, Danny... Many thanks for your phone call...Not to worry about the lack of a Christmas Card. Contrary to popular belief, they are not mandatory. And truth to tell, I would rather receive nothing than a card that was sent out with the air of obligation(which is NEVER the case with you. You put your heart and soul into everything that you do...) You know the type..A generic card from a bulk box-set with only a person or couples' signature at the bottom. Usually written by one person. You can almost picture them at a table, speed-writing through them all, assembly-line style. It's the afterthought that counts, apparently. So no worries there... Back at home, I'm trying to continue the futile task of getting my library in order. I come across books and magazines in an unruly pile(your highly organized manner would probaby have you commiting me to a sanatorium.) There's more than a little of my sister in me. (The one who rushes out and snaps up bargains and lets them pile up on the floor until her house looks like a junkyard.) Organizing all of the books/compact discs/and other minutaie is a daunting, depressing task...Especially when you look at the souvenirs of...not necessarily happier times but certainly times when I enjoyed my job, my profession a whole HELL of a lot MORE...Stuff I picked up in Glasgow and all around Scotland...England as well...Those memories seem like they belong to another person...one who enjoy life, adventure, and TRAVEL a hell of a lot more...I envy you your call to return to Scotland on a regular basis. I miss the culture, I miss the burr, the hospitality, the WARMTH...I also miss my PASSION for the place. I remember when I wanted to move there. I'm not saying I'm unhappy...I'm saying I've changed. Some things are for the better...(losing my fear of relationships...at least with Bill) other things NOT so...(I find it hard to even PRETEND to be friendly at work anymore...) Call it ageing... ... Hope you're well, my friend...Say hello to Margaret and Sara for me...GaP

Homage To La France!

2007-01-19T06:41:00.000-05:00

Salut, Charles... I'm laid up with a cold and I'm a "kept man" in Bill's house. I'm just keeping warm in his house while he goes to work. I feed the woodstove, take care of his cat, drink liquids, read, listen to music, and watch movies. The closest to Paradise that I could ever envision...He really is a sweetheart... It's better here because I don't have to deal with walking the dog. Cats are WAY easier to look after... I imagine you must be looking forward to visiting the land of your ancestors. France may be seen to be living in a dreamworld with it's affectations of social justice and equality...and the French's complete refusal to abandon their easygoing way of life..but I say GOOD FOR THEM! They realize that to be human means having some downtime and that not EVERYTHING is related to money...Unlike this Economic Concentration Camp known as The United States...The same culture that demanded that I take a 40 percent paycut so that upper management to keep their salaries and keep their cash-cow airline afloat...(Bitter? Moi?) Anwyay, winter is halfway over...we got off light with the first half...so the rest should be tolerable... Visiting mon pere on Monday if the weather cooperates...Wheeeee! More travel. But I look forward to spending time in the blazing warmth of his shack, watching westerns on the LONE STAR Channel, and hearing tales of his youth... Hope all is well with you, mon ami...A la prochaine...GaP

Last Son Of Middle-Earth

2007-01-18T10:55:00.000-05:00

Salut, Tonez... Laid up with a cold at Bill's house...Just finished reading TELEGRAPH DAYS By Larry McMurtry. I am no literary connoisseur but I dig his prose enough so that I'd read all of his books. We did a run of LORD OF THE RINGS films and while I know you have BIG issues with them, I was wondering about what aspects worked WELL with the whole project...what scenes/portrayals/approaches that enriched Tolkien's mythos rather than detracting from them. Let me give you a semi-analogy. As much as I like Superman, there are some aspects of his media portrayals that --->I<--- hate. Movies III and IV are the big ones. But even THEY had aspects that I think they nailed correctly. For example, the Smallville depiction/Superman and Clark fight in III, the very LITERAL dumbass comic-book aspect of IV.(It read just like one of those dumbass stories from the 1960's when every other issue had Lois trying to trick Clark/Supes into revealing his secret identity and/or into marriage. (Always the basis of a sound relationship, you know?) Also HATED LOIS & CLARK but there was an episode where Lois got busted for her abject stupidity of not being able to tell Clark from his caped alter-ego. ("How STUPID was she?", I believe the villain spouted. PLUS, I think Terri Hatcher made a FINE Lois Lane. (And sorry, YES, I did like SUPERMAN RETURNS. Let's make that official.) Anyway, the reason WHY I bring up Middle-Earth is that the films has whetted my urge to revisit the source material. I still have the original paperpacks that I read in high-school so it's only fitting that I read them again and appreciate some of the details that I missed the first time around. (There's no WAY I'm going sit there and try to translate an Elvish poem or some shit like that...You know, I like--even LOVE---Star Trek but I'm not going to devote any time to speaking Klingon, Vulcan or whatever...) Any thoughts you have on the above would be welcome...GaP

Telegraph Days

2007-01-18T10:16:00.000-05:00

Being laid up with a cold means that one has a ton of time to read. So racing against a library deadline, I tucked into Larry McMurty's TELEGRAPH DAYS. A relatively short book compared to LONESOME DOVE and it prequels/sequels but Mr. McMurtry is a master at packing a LIFE(or most of one) in just under a three- hundred pages or so. Being a failed aspiring writer, I can admire the craft and the effort that must require. I've only read a handful of his books but the death of the REAL West seems to be a recurrent theme. The bittersweet longing when history passes into myth...and this book centers on a lady who witnesses one of the most famous historical events(The gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona). She even sees the events of her own life turned into a Hollywood motion picture during Tinseltown's own golden age. I'm not a literary connoisseur but I know that I really like Larry McMurtry's books enough to eventually read them all. Next--Time for a re-reading of Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy. Of course, a marathon-viewing of Peter Jackson't movies has whetted my longing to visit Middle Earth again. My first and only visit was back in high school. To my young, impatient, impetuous mind, I found the saga slow-moving. Maybe I wasn't yet old or seasoned enough to appreciate it. And (contrary to the opinion of a couple of friends of mine,) Peter Jackson's rendering of the saga captured enough of it to make me return to the source material. Maybe even beyond...It's a big world to explore... GaP

NOW Winter Is Here...

2007-01-17T07:43:00.000-05:00

What a way to wake up. The dog is barking up the stairs, asking to relieve himself...which always good. But because of the glare ice outside, I wiped out TWICE with him pulling on the leash. What a way to wake up... Nursing a scratchy throat right now and quite honestly, I don't really have anywhere to go...so I'm going to stay in and continue my reading. Current book: TELEGRAPH DAYS By Larry McMurtry. He's fast becoming my one of my favorite writers. Loving my quiet life and NOT traveling...GaP

IS There An Answer?

2007-01-16T05:31:00.000-05:00

Russ___________ wrote: Hi GaP! I just opened the package with the Aimee Mann iTunes Originals. I will put them on the player tomorrow. Thank you. I particularly want to hear "I Hate To Hear People Cover Beatles Songs." She has a wry, wicked sense of humor. Kind of like mine. That's why I liked the Christmas card I sent. Yes, it looked classical, proper and all that. Until one gets to the caption. Yes, I do have possession of the familial high ground for the time being. This year, though, the place will be put up for sale and then we'll see what happens. The adventure continues. So does the drama. This past week has me wondering how much of the drama I'm creating. My friend in Oregon reminded me that I create my own reality. That's something I've preached to her over the past couple of years. It stings to hear one's own words directed at one's own ears. As I've mentioned before, it is the relationships with the women in my life that provide the challenge and mystery on my path. My spouse, the doctor's wife, the Norsk goddess and now my friend in Oregon. My God! When does a man find peace and comfort? Can a man ever find lasting peace and comfort? It's true that I am more physically comfortable being in the house with room to stretch out for first time in a year. Spending time with my boy is a good thing, too. (Yesterday we got back from a weekend skiing in W. Va.). But the emotional anguish of loving a woman continues. Sometimes I feel the current of several relationships coursing through, and the combination threatens to electrocute. But yes, this is a story that must wait for the draining of a bottle of single malt. There is a lot of stress in our lives. Too much. The job is a Faustian myth on its own. The hostile working conditions, the financial stress and the decay of the society provide more crap than any of us deserve (unless this world is some kind of a cosmic school like some of the New Agers preach). Add the personal element and, well, sometimes I wonder about exit strategies. We are characters in an Ibsen play. I hope your eschewing AMS provides some relief for you. Let's keep the faith, stick together and try to imagine it all is for a reason. Take care, brother. Russ. _____________________________________________________________________________ Salut, Russ... I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't look that closely at the card itself. (It has a place of honor on the desk so I just took it down for another look...) I thought it WAS all proper and reverent to the holiday. I was so in LOVE with the envelope and the written content of the card, I missed the punchline. I thought you were going all Christian on me for a minute there...But at the risk of sounding like I'm blowing smoke up your ass, you're a classy gent...so there'd be nothing wrong with a proper, classical card... That sounds like such a Northwest Pacific thing to say. I'm given to believe that the left coast produces that oh-so Ageing Hippie Worldview...But still, do you think she has a point? Relationships have a learning component...About the other person and especially one's self. It's a mirror to one's self if one cares to look. I don't know about the dynamic you have with the opposite sex but this is how I see it: You're a tall, handsome, romantic, introspective, PHILOSOPHICAL pilot...A CAPTAIN, at that. That's a heady, desirous mix for any self-respecting, intelligent female...But see, you like to examine...you like to analyze. You are SEEKING the answers to life and the universe's BIG questions. I would imagine that quiet, philosophical aspect is attractive. Maybe the lady in question thinks that her LOVE will be the answer. But this is the kind of quest that has no real definitive answers. LOVE, a life-companion helps with the journey...but it doesn't provide the answer. So when said lady finds that her love and understanding isn't enough...or heaven forbid! The end-all, be-all destination to life's journey, she may feel frustrated, she may feel betrayed...that she's just another question to be analyzed in this great cosmic riddle. So they back off... But what do I know? I could be just talking out the other side of my ass...Like I said, this is the conclusion I've gleaned from your past writings and observations...I could be way off. Apologies if I've overstepped my boundaries...but I care about you too, Russ. You are on of my best friends. I'd like to see you happy as well...but like I said, maybe happiness is a journey. I don't think it's a continual, achievable state. Life and all it's experiences are not linear... If you want the dark side of NOT finding happiness nor purpose in life, you should check out SAW. Bill and I recently absorbed the LORD OF THE RINGS in all of it's extended epic glory. It covers it all...Love, betrayal, redemption, friendship, loyalty, war, peace, death...Like all good stories... I'd rather be a character in a Kevin Smith movie... Many thanks for your friendship and your insights, my friend... Keep the faith and keep in touch...GaP

In The Bleak Midwinter

2007-01-15T17:10:00.000-05:00

1710...and it looks like midnight. It's the perfect example of mid-winter bleakness...Grey skies, perpetual dusk, and freezing rain have coated everything in a cold, crusty glaze of ice...I guess I should feel lucky that I have power. I remember this crippling ice-storm about ten years ago across New England and Canada that actually made world-headlines with the power-outages and damage done to trees and property. I was on a layover in India and their STAR TV had a piece on it... Had a bash at trying to organize the piles of books in what is to become my study some century or another. I came across the books on Britain and Scotland that I purchased when I was flying over there back about fifteen years ago. Remembering past journeys and past interests that feel like they belong to someone else is somehow appropriate to the mood described above. As I type this, I work by the light of the monitor and two candles while listening to a forlorn tune on an internet folk station. In the bleak midwinter, indeed... GaP

Some Friendly Advice

2007-01-15T05:01:00.000-05:00

Marc wrote: Hi GaP Hope you have an good vacation time off and enjoy and I would use this time off to find out more what you want to do with the rest of your life. OK to know what you not want ( brings you better to your goal ) but better to want what you want. How do you get there ? Reading some books ( personally I got some things out of Tony robbins books and seminars see http://www.tonyrobbins.com ) or going to an seminar could help One tip I could give you also do not throw out one job before you have some new goals and an job will miss you on the AMS - BOS route however you have to follow your dreams and if you feel more happy with domestic do it ! Had some good flights last weeks with Rachel and Heidi Greetings my friend and enjoy ! Marc D.---- _________________________________________________________________________ Marc... Many thanks for the advice...and make no mistake. I don't plan on leaving the airline in a huff without a plan. I think part of the reason for burnout is a need for change...even WITHIN the job. Hence, the switch to domestic. The USA routes may leave at ridiculous hours but there never seems to be enough time for some passenger to lose their mind on a 2-hour flight(or ME, for that matter...) Knowing what you want and how to get there...THAT's the question... I have to admit, I'm pretty skeptical on motivational business speakers...It always seems to be that they're always busy trying to teach business leaders new ways to brainwash their workers into being more productive. (The DILBERT cartoon and OFFICE SPACE make fun of this rather nicely...) But hey, any advice to better one's self can can come from the most unlikely sources... I have been looking for you recently...but I had a hunch I was always just missing you... I hope your holidays were excellent... Rest assured, mijn vriend...I will be in touch. Tot ziens...GaP

Getting A Clue?

2007-01-12T09:54:00.000-05:00

My vacation has begun. I won't have to see the inside of a plane or even be NEAR an airport for the rest of the month. Yesterday, I puttered around the house got a few little procrastination projects done...and then went to see my significant other. I made a quick stop into town to get an errand done and stopped in to see my lawyer friend. I reiterated the reasons why I was done with the international trip bullshit. So I got the fatherly(but friendly) advice speech about what my next step in life was going to be. Now that is the scary question that's been hovering in my mental periphery for a good long time now. This man, this lawyer, this ex-Ambassador(to Belize), this respectable pillar of society and extreme Democrat(Thank God)was challenging me to realizing some of my potential, to maybe even become GREAT. He's basically asking me to fan the embers of some of my talents and/or interests to begin the next chapter of my life. But change is frightening, isn't it? And then there's my sputtering motiviation factor...gung-ho one second, fuck-it-all the next. It's endemic to my Gemini stature. Two extremes in one personality, the yin/yang flipping over each other incessantly. Kind/Viciously Sarcastic, slacker/respectable citizen, can-do positive/nihilistically negative, laser-focused/lackadaisical... How am I going to start fresh if I don't even have a destination or game-plan? All I know is that I don't want to be breathing other peoples' air in a steel-tube on my way out to another hotel-room exile for the rest of my life. I stand at the path with many other directions branching out in front of me. Am I going to wait there forever for the giant hand of God or some other imaginary all-purpose spiritual deity/cosmic-force to show me the way? And then there's the money factor. I'm barely keeping my head above water as it is financially. I don't want to become yet another American buried in debt and spending month-to-month feverishly scrabbling and clawing my way out? What do I do? How do I evolve? GaP

Air Travel Follies

2007-01-10T22:16:00.000-05:00

You know...if I needed a more vivid symbolic sign and portent that I should kiss the AMSTERDAM trip good-bye, the sight of the absent-minded professor yakking into his puke-bag across from my jumpseat really couldn't be more appropriate. Earlier in the flight, I nearly ran over this woman who was lying on the floor toward the back of the plane. She wasn't feeling well...(people were getting sick right and left during the final approach. Wonder why? On second thought, who cares?) She didn't need oxygen so I prompted her to take herself out of the path of harm. After all, if her head was cracked open by a meal cart careening down the aisle, I'm sure she'd feel a lot worse... Oh and then there was the guy that threatened Miss Sheila up at door 2 that if he couldn't use the Executive Class bathroom he was going to "piss all over the fucking floor". Our purser had a nice, long talk with him. This shit is insane. At least on domestic flights, people don't generally have the time to create/experience this kind of absurdist drama. Air-travel is a special kind of hell...GaP

I Only Wish This Were Going To Be True...

2007-01-07T07:46:00.000-05:00

This gives me hope...but it can't come quickly enough...GaP __________________________________________________________________________________ DANIEL C. DENNETT Philosopher; University Professor, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University; Author, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion I’m so optimistic that I expect to live to see the evaporation of the powerful mystique of religion. I think that in about twenty-five years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe it does today. Of course many people–perhaps a majority of people in the world–will still cling to their religion with the sort of passion that can fuel violence and other intolerant and reprehensible behavior. But the rest of the world will see this behavior for what it is, and learn to work around it until it subsides, as it surely will. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we will need every morsel of this reasonable attitude to deal with such complex global problems as climate change, fresh water, and economic inequality in an effective way. It will be touch and go, and in my pessimistic moods I think Sir Martin Rees may be right: some disaffected religious (or political) group may unleash a biological or nuclear catastrophe that forecloses all our good efforts. But I do think we have the resources and the knowledge to forestall such calamities if we are vigilant. Recall that only fifty years ago smoking was a high status activity and it was considered rude to ask somebody to stop smoking in one’s presence. Today we’ve learned that we shouldn’t make the mistake of trying to prohibit smoking altogether, and so we still have plenty of cigarettes and smokers, but we have certainly contained the noxious aspects within quite acceptable boundaries. Smoking is no longer cool, and the day will come when religion is, first, a take-it-or-leave-it choice, and later: no longer cool–except in its socially valuable forms, where it will be one type of allegiance among many. Will those descendant institutions still be religions? Or will religions have thereby morphed themselves into extinction? It all depends on what you think the key or defining elements of religion are. Are dinosaurs extinct, or do their lineages live on as birds? Why am I confident that this will happen? Mainly because of the asymmetry in the information explosion. With the worldwide spread of information technology (not just the internet, but cell phones and portable radios and television), it is no longer feasible for guardians of religious traditions to protect their young from exposure to the kinds of facts (and, yes, of course, misinformation and junk of every genre) that gently, irresistibly undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance. The religious fervor of today is a last, desperate attempt by our generation to block the eyes and ears of the coming generations, and it isn’t working. For every well-publicized victory–the inundation of the Bush administration with evangelicals, the growing number of home schoolers in the USA, the rise of radical Islam, the much exaggerated “rebound” of religion in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to take the most obvious cases–there are many less dramatic defeats, as young people quietly walk away from the faith of their parents and grandparents. That trend will continue, especially when young people come to know how many of their peers are making this low-profile choice. Around the world, the category of “not religious” is growing faster than the Mormons, faster than the evangelicals, faster even than Islam, whose growth is due almost entirely to fecundity, not conversion, and is bound to level off soon. Those who are secular can encourage their own children to drink from the well of knowledge wherever it leads them, confident that only a small percentage will rebel against their secular upbringing and turn to one religion or another. Cults will rise and fall, as they do today and have done for millennia, but only those that can metamorphose into socially benign organizations will be able to flourish. Many religions have already made the transition, quietly de-emphasizing the irrational elements in their heritages, abandoning the xenophobic and sexist prohibitions of their quite recent past, and turning their attention from doctrinal purity to moral effectiveness. The fact that these adapting religions are scorned as former religions by the diehard purists shows how brittle the objects of their desperate allegiance have become. As the world informs itself about these transitions, those who are devout in the old-fashioned way will have to work around the clock to provide attractions, distractions—and guilt trips—to hold the attention and allegiance of their children. They will not succeed, and it will not be a painless transition. Families will be torn apart, and generations will accuse each other of disloyalty and worse: the young will be appalled by their discovery of the deliberate misrepresentations of their elders, and their elders will feel abandoned and betrayed by their descendants. We must not underestimate the anguish that these cultural transformations will engender, and we should try to anticipate the main effects and be ready to provide relief and hope for those who are afflicted. I think the main problem we face today is overreaction, making martyrs out of people who desperately want to become martyrs. What it will take is patience, good information, and a steady demand for universal education about the world’s religions. This will favor the evolution of avirulent forms of religion, which we can all welcome as continuing parts of our planet’s cultural heritage. Eventually the truth will set us free.

A Work Decision

2007-01-05T15:27:00.000-05:00

George... Good to hear from you. I'm in AMS as I write this. Once I get to a crew computer, I'll be trading away any of these trips I have for my vacation in January. They finally wore me down, George. With the addition of duty-free and the pain-in-the-ass, high maintenance of Euro-passengers has finally burned me out. I am SO finished with this nightmare of a trip...time to do domestic. See you soon...GaP --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GaP, I had the nicest flight attendants on Air China in both directions. Pleasant, helpful, accommodating. They made the trips easier, and I thanked them. Must have caught them on good days. I understand your frustrations. Earning a living sometimes takes a lot out of us. It is not all perfect, but it is necessary. It is also important to make the most of all opportunities. I met a cab driver at JFK from Sri Lanka yesterday who is so grateful to be in the US despite his hardships and the absence of his family for 15 years while he waited for them to immigrate under the US system. The are now in the US finally. Last month he met a man in his cab to whom he was helpful. He told the man is life story, and his hardships. On the man's next rip to the US from the UK, the man asked to meet him. He gave him a ck for $7000 to buy his own used limo. It was the cab driver's dream come true and all because he was nice to someone. So, good things happen. You never know the impact you can have on someone else at times. What is the lesson: I guess it is to try to do your job well because other people depend on you. I depend on you at times. The other lesson is to make the most out of every situation. To learn, to advance, to grow. Take a break from AMS for a while to get recharged, then try it again. Visit the museums, go to The Hague and watch a human rights be argued, take a boat ride on the canals, take some language lessons. Don't let other's interfere with your good karma. You have it you know. Maybe I am going to far, but just wanted to share some thoughts. Hope you have a great Christmas. Tell me your plans for the holidays. I will look for you. George

Christmas With A Certain Airline

2006-12-25T08:48:00.000-05:00

_____ in Crisis Mode AGAIN Sent to FA's in SFO (IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR THE HOLIDAYS) IMPORTANT NOTE: The Solidarity Page is growing big - let me know if you want your name included. Hi SFO,(San Francisco) ____ is in scheduling crisis mode, AGAIN. There have been many reports of Flight attendants having extra flights and/or extra days of flying tacked onto their trips. There have been flights returning to a base being greeted by a FA Manager with a schedule holder being handed a pattern for the following day. There are reserves being flown into their Planned Days Off and Guaranteed Days Off. It is not pretty. SFO is officially out of reserves. We realize that it is stressful and we are angry as well. If you call in sick, regardless of how many sick calls you have and regardless of whether you have a "pattern" of sick calls over past holiday seasons, you will most likely be ordered to produce a doctor's note. The MEC is already filing a grievance and we will be looking at individual cases as well. We realize that this doesn't help now. Association of Flight Attendants does not condone or support any FA calling in sick if they are not actually sick. Any type of "sick out" is illegal and anyone found encouraging sick calls will most likely face termination. If you are given a trip that you believe is illegal or violates the Terms and Conditions of Employment (TCE) be sure to ask for a review of crew orders. Be calm and remember you are on a taped line. A trip refusal will most likely end up with you being withheld from service pending a Q and A. There is a Scheduling Hotline with FA volunteers from the MEC/LEC as well as many MEC Committee Chairs and the Scheduling Task Force. They are there to review the TCE language and duty day limitations. The hotline number is 1-_______________. Kate and I will be checking voicemail throughout the weekend and on Christmas and returning calls as soon as possible. REMEMBER to BE CAREFUL WHEN ANSWERING YOUR PHONE. There have been unconfirmed reports that when Scheduling has called people recently, the caller i.d. did not reflect a ___ area code. ALSO, if you log into ACCESS and there is a 'NOTIFY' on your line, you are obligated to take that trip. If you still have the white book (TCE) carry it with you. You can also access it at _______________________________________ Despite the circumstances, Kate and I wish you a happy and safe holiday season. Tom and Kate

Hating The Phone

2006-12-20T07:43:00.000-05:00

Interesting fact I've noticed about myself...If someone (other than my boyfriend) calls me on the phone, I'll screen the call. Unless it's an emergency, I probably won't return the phone call...I'll respond via e-mail or snailmail. I just HATE the phone. I hate sitting there and trying to pull conversation out of thin air whereas sitting down to write (or type) feels a lot more natural to me. Which is probably why I won't be owning a cellphone any time soon. Just HATE it... Christmas week begins...along with a whole TON of flying. Suck it up and DEAL with it...Take along a ton of reading material and pack heavy on the clothes so I can be as self-sufficient as possible... GaP

Man, You Are A Writer

2006-12-18T07:40:00.000-05:00

Received this in an e-mail this morning... Hi G--, Thanks for your card and interesting blog link Man you are an writer ! nice to read some parts of your life and see some pictures... Writing has always been a passion of mine...but in the form of letters...or sporadic journaling. I've written the rough draft to a nove about ten years ago and I can TELL you, it is WORK. But when the words and plots flow, it's all worth it. If writing were pure, without the crushing grind of query letters, agent-representation, continual rewrites, and editing, then I would be more interested and passionate about it. But WHY shouldn't I write? I guess I would need some kind of structure and passion...the same kind that letter-writing offers. I see great stories in shows like LOST, DEADWOOD...and they make it look EASY. I know these are shows and situations created by committee...but damn, they spin a TALE... Came across a writer called Natalie Goldberg, author of WRITING DOWN THE BONES and she is the closest I've come to writing SOMETHING on a regular basis... http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Down-Bones-Natalie-Goldberg/dp/0877733759/sr=1-1/qid=1166446031/ref=pd_bbs_1/105-3653618-6185221?ie=UTF8&s=books So Maybe if I write, the path will be revealed to me? GaP

Religion Is Stupid II

2006-12-13T14:59:00.000-05:00

See here's the thing...If money, time, and manpower hadn't been a consideration, as the SEA-TAC airport manager, I would have put up a menorah along with the Christmas trees(which by the way, are not Christian symbols but are of pagan origin). I would have also put up the crescent moon and star for Ramadan, and I would have looked up the accountrements for Diwali and Kwanzaa as well and would have added THEM to the whole sideshow. Oh, and a pentagram for Wiccans as well...there's enough of them around... Basically that would have been my not-so-subtle message that all but screamed: HAPPY FUCKING HOLIDAYS! EVERYONE HAPPY NOW? ANYBODY ELSE WANT TO TRY A LAWSUIT? I'm sorry, but controversies like this make me laugh. Whether public representations of everyone's faith-based fairy-tale fetishes should be displayed and the fact that court-time is actually devoted to this shit. It would be like arguing about whether Captain Kirk could outgun Picard...or something equally as inane. Now before you think me some godless heretic, let me make one thing VERY clear...I'm not exactly sure what my beliefs are, whether Jesus was actually the Messiah, whether Mohammed actually existed, or if there's even a God up there. All I know is that I don't get worked up about the ridiculous seperation of church and state hysteria that surrounds these stories. The ACLU, who just may be every right-winger's nightmare, had NOTHING to do with this. That's the thing to remember. But I digress... Fact is, I'm ALL about the seperation of church and state...but I LIKE Christmas. I like the idea of Christmas. Or whatever you want to call it. It speaks to a human need to TRY and extend a bit of warmth and generosity out into the world, to TRY and be a better person in general rather just another selfish, mindless cog in the commercial, materially-obssessed military-industrial complex we call SOCIETY. The season encourages us to LOVE a bit more, drop the cynicism a bit, open UP a little...renew acquaintances with friends and family. (It SURE as hell doesn't include ripping your hair out in a shopping mall trying to fill someone's gift-list...) THAT's what the quote-unquote Holidays are supposed to be about. Not this MY-belief-is-better-than-YOUR-belief crap. So Merry Christmas. Or whatever. Forget the lawsuits, sink some eggnog. Shalom. GaP

Religion Is Stupid...

2006-12-13T14:52:00.000-05:00

...And this is WHY: _____________________________________________________________________ SeaTac Christmas Tree Removal, Talk Radio THANKS, SEATTLE! After Airport Tree Removal, Talk Gains Momentum Newly armed with additional evidence that the secular War On Christmas is in fact real, talk show hosts across the country zoomed in on an incident that occurred over the weekend at SeaTac Airport in Washington State. From Rush Limbaugh to Boston's Howie Carr and others from one coast to another, talkers jumped on the issue right out of the gate today. In case you've been living under a rock, you should know that the Port of Seattle abruptly removed a number of "holiday trees" in view at the airport after a rabbi demanded that a giant menorah be added to the display. Instead of granting his wish, port officials yanked every last holiday symbol from the concourses. Adding to the confusion is the fact that Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, the man who lodged the original complaint, seems now to have changed his stance somewhat, saying that taking down the trees was unnecessary. That seems to differ a bit from his previous threats of legal action. It should be noted that Bogomilsky is associated with a Jewish religious foundation based in Seattle's ultra- radical University District. From KING- 5 TV, here's the latest on the flap: SEATAC, Wash. - All nine Christmas trees have been removed from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, who made his request weeks ago, said he was appalled by the decision. "Everyone should have their spirit of the holiday. For many people the trees are the spirit of the holidays, and adding a menorah adds light to the season," said Bogomilsky, who works at Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish education foundation headquartered in Seattle's University District. After consulting with lawyers, port staff believed that adding the menorah would have required adding symbols for other religions and cultures in the Northwest. The holidays are the busiest season at the airport, Betancourt said, and staff didn't have time to play cultural anthropologists. Maintenance workers boxed up the trees during the graveyard shift early Saturday, when airport bosses believed few people would notice. "We decided to take the trees down because we didn't want to be exclusive," said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt. "We're trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year." More than just underscoring the real truth behind the ongoing effort to wipe out every last sign of Christmas from public view, it shines a rare national spotlight on the politics of extremism that have enveloped the Seattle area. Now, with a growing national backlast against the port's ill- considered move, it will be interesting to see if the airport relents and returns the trees to their previous public positions _____________________________________________________________________________ Christmas trees are going back up at Sea-Tac airport By Janet I. Tu and Lornet Turnbull Seattle Times staff reporters Related Text of the Port of Seattle news release Airport's trees stoking "war on Christmas" The holiday trees that went away in the middle of the night are back. Tonight, Port of Seattle staff began putting up the trees they had taken down Friday night after a local rabbi requested that a Hanukkah menorah also be displayed. Port officials said the rabbi's lawyer had threatened to imminently file a lawsuit, leaving them with insufficient time to consider all the issues. A nationwide furor erupted over the weekend as news of the trees' removal spread, with a flood of calls to Port officials and harshly worded e-mails to Jewish organizations. Today, Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky said he would not file a lawsuit and the Port, in response, said it would put the trees back up. "This has been an unfortunate situation for all of us in Seattle," Port of Seattle Commission President Pat Davis said in a statement. "The rabbi never asked us to remove the trees; it was the Port's decision based on what we knew at the time. We very much appreciate the rabbi's willingness to work with us as we move forward." A menorah will not be displayed this year. Port spokesman Bob Parker said "we look forward to sitting down after the first of the year with not only Rabbi Bogomilsky but others as well, and finding ways to make sure there's an appropriate winter holiday representation for all faiths. We want to find out a way to celebrate the winter holidays that is sensitive to all faiths." Bogomilsky, who works with Chabad-Lubavitch, an Orthodox Jewish outreach organization, said, "Like people from all cultures and religions, we're thrilled the trees are going back up." But he said he was disappointed that Port officials chose not to put up the menorah as well, pointing out there are still several days until the start of Hannukah. "I still hope that they'll consider putting the menorah up this year. But ultimately it's their decision." He also said he hopes the Port will apologize for mischaracterizations that led people to believe he was against having the trees displayed. "At the end of the day it's not about trees, but adding light to the holiday, not diminishing any light." At the airport tonight, Matt Bachleda of Snohomish was playing cards while waiting for his daughter to arrive from Paris. He was surprised to see Port staff putting a tree back up in the baggage claim area. "It looks like Christmas is back," he said. The reaction to the trees' removal had been swift and vociferous. News outlets nationwide picked up the story. "There's been such an outcry from the public — from people of all faiths — who believe that the trees should be reinstalled," Davis said. "I'm very thankful that we can return the trees and get back to running our airport during this very busy holiday season." Port Commissioner John Creighton said he had been swamped with e-mails, 99.9 percent of which supported putting the trees put back up. "I'm overjoyed as to the resolution," Creighton said. "I'm very happy we were able to reach an agreement that was acceptable to the rabbi and to us." Creighton said he personally would've preferred the airport also put up a menorah this year. But "there's a fair amount of sensitvity at the airport. Whatever we do, we do after putting some thought into it." The situation began rather quietly back in late October or early November when Mitchell Stein, a construction consultant for the Port, contacted a Port staffer saying he'd like to put up a large menorah near the Christmas tree at the international arrival hall. Stein, who is Jewish and is friends with Bogomilsky, said he thought it would be a "great opportunity for the Port to show their joy and commitment to diversity." Over the next several weeks, though, he said, he was referred to several different people on staff, who told him different things about whether a menorah would be allowed. Stein said Harvey Grad, the rabbi's attorney, contacted the Port last week and sent officials there a legal brief as a way of spurring action, given that Hanukkah was coming up, and to let the Port know the legal precedents involved in the issue. It was not intended to be threatening, Stein said. When Port commissioners "told us just before Shabbat that they were taking down all the Christmas trees, we were totally aghast." But some Port commissioners said they first heard about a threatened lawsuit Thursday. "From what we were made to understand, if we didn't accede to the group's demands," they would file a lawsuit by the next day, Creighton said. "At the time, it seemed to be a reasonable solution to remove the Christmas trees." Not only the Port, but local Jewish organizations, felt the consequences of that decision. Robert Jacobs, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said about 14 organizations or rabbis had reported receiving hate e-mail. On Monday, his organization was advising local Jewish institutions that have received significant numbers of hate e-mails to consider having security during Hannukah and other holiday season events. This is not the first public clash over the traditional symbols of Christmas. For years, judges — including those of the U.S. Supreme Court — have been sorting out disputes over how nativity scenes and Christmas trees can be displayed in the lobbies of public buildings, in downtown plazas and in parks. The furor has been building for years. Last month, the Alliance Defense Fund, a religion-based legal aid group in Arizona, announced it had lined up an army of attorneys who were prepared to defend the tradition of Christmas in schools and on public property. "Frankly, it's ridiculous that Americans have to think twice about whether it's okay to say 'Merry Christmas,'" the group's president Alan Sears said. Federal law prohibits government entities from endorsing any religious symbols, proselytizing for religion or preferring any one religion over another, said John Strait, an associate professor of law at Seattle University. He said the Christmas holiday has become so secular that many symbols associated with it, such as the Christmas tree, have simply become symbols of the holiday. But legal debates rage over just how religious some symbols, such as the nativity scene, actually are. Strait said the menorah has achieved about the same religious status as a nativity scene. Stewart Jay, a law professor at the University of Washington, admits that the rules aren't always so clear. A holiday display, he said, is allowed as long as it mixes several holiday symbols and traditions. The Port of Seattle, Strait and Jay agree, could have allowed the menorah along with its Christmas tree in such a way that it would not have been an endorsement of religion. "And that would have been the end of it," Strait said. In fact, the Christmas trees on their own might have been problematic, Jay said. Adding a menorahmight have given the Port some legal cover. Across Washington, holiday displays and celebrations reflect the diversity of ways public and private bodies have found to recognize the holidays. Each year — for many years — Seattle City Hall has featured a Christmas tree, menorah and Kwanzaa display, the mayor's spokeswoman, Marianne Bichsel said. "We want to make sure that however people choose to celebrate this time of year, that it is honored," she said. In many school districts across the state, including Seattle and Bellevue, any holiday program or decorations must be tied to curriculum, officials there said. The city of Redmond celebrates the season with displays of evergreen branches with white lights, poinsettias and wreathes inside City Hall. Outside, an evergreen tree, part of the city's landscaping, is decorated with multi-colored lights. King County opts for "giving trees" in the lobby of the court house and the county administrative building. The trees include the names and gift wishes of people in need during the holiday, spokeswoman Carolyn Dunkin said. Last year, a Catholic lawmaker from Spokane and his supporters stirred up a hornets' nest when they sang Christmas carols in front of the giant holiday tree that dominates the Capitol rotunda in Olympia. Rep. John Ahern, a Republican, said the Washington-grown fir is a holiday tree, not a Christmas tree. Next week, following a lighting ceremony, a menorah will accompany that tree in the rotunda, said Steve Valandra spokesman for department of general administration, which oversees the capitol grounds. Staff writer Jennifer Sullivan contributed to this report. Janet Tu: 206-464-7727 or jtu@seattletimes.com; Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

The Proud Captain

2006-12-12T00:57:00.000-05:00

Hi Jackson & GaP, Your e-mail is a catalyst. It sparked some thought on how I see the role of an airline captain vis-a-vis captains of ocean ships. Like you, Jackson, I've read and re-read O'Brian's Master & Commander series, about Aubrey, along with the stories of Hornblower, Ramage and Bililtho. I love them! I've also been a fan of Star Trek. My favorite Star Fleet captain is Picard ... now there's a man with great CRM. Recently I read the autobiography of Capt. Harry Grattidge, late commander of both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth (number 1 of both series, the "WWII Cunarders"). Grattidge once again reminded me of the parallels between sea captains and airline captains. By Grattidge's time were long gone the days of flogging, with ships months away from government or corporate control and with cultures having no regard for human life or liberty. Grattidge was the appointed master of his vessels. Among his responsibilities was making sure the rules of the sea and Cunard were strictly carried out. He could not wield personal whim. To do so would be to his professional peril. So the "master" was actually a servant. And so he is today. One of Grattidge's stories stuck with me: On one of his weekly inspections aboard Queen Mary, Grattidge found a pile of unwashed linens under a dining room table. He said, "I didn't have to rant or rave. I just held the light of my torch (flashlight) on the dirty linen for just a moment or two longer than I would have normally. I didn't have to turn and stare at the man responsible or his officer. I did not have to speak. I could see out the corner of their eye that they knew that I now knew." He didn't flog anybody. He didn't even have to say anything. He didn't yell, "Take that man's name" or "Lash him to the grate!" "On the next week's inspection," he said. "That dining room was perfect." He spoke of the calm, quiet approach and how it is important to exercise discipline while preserving a crewmember's dignity ... CRM. Unlike the days of Bligh and Cook, when flogging, hanging & keel hauling were common, our style is more subdued. But the responsibility and charge remains the same; the safe and efficient operation of the vessel. So it is with airline captains. The "ultimate authority" is the caretaker and coordinator of a myriad set of rules, customs, over-lapping responsibilities and authorities ... he must step a careful dance all the while knowing that the final decision and responsibility for keeping all safe and orderly rests squarely with him. We often hear in the cockpit, "They've taken away all our authority." That is simply not true. We operate in a complex array of overlaps. Often there are forces that would like to eliminate a captain's "ultimate authority." But all the authority goes right through the captain's seat. He ultimately says yes or no to the operation on the aircraft. He can refuse to move or he can declare an emergency at any time. There are many examples in the O'Brian books where Aubrey comes up against the Admiralty. Sometimes he must bend to its will in his execution of duty. Sometimes he fights the Admiralty and wins. He is the ultimate authority on his ship ... but he always remembers he serves at the pleasure of the Admiralty. The First Lord can fire him at any time! He is the custodian of official rules, laws and orders. So he'd better be damn careful! To break rule or custom in furtherance of personal whim would be done at his own peril! Can you imagine what it would really be like to have Capt. Picard's job on board Enterprise? Star Fleet would permanently have a dispatcher, Mayo doctor and even Doug Steenland holographically staffing the bridge! Even so, Picard would still be captain ... the ultimate authority (that is, unless Star Fleet decides that a vessel in the stellar void is best commanded by a committee ... and then God help them!). It has long been my feeling that captains (be they on the sea, in the air or in space) who don't understand the age old traditions and laws of navigating away from land, and either try to wield personal power or feel that "they've taken away all my authority" should, in fact, show the maritime signal "red over red, captain is dead," for in many ways that vessel is truly "not under command." A captain must command and accept the responsibility of his command. Sometime his vested authority requires the commander to explain and justify himself. How many times did we read of Capt. Jack Aubrey doing a "carpet waltz" in the office of an admiral or First Lord? Have "they" taken away my authority? Are airline captains captains in name only. Are they nothing more than airplane drivers. They'd better not be because a vessel needs a captain! I may choose, however, to not exercise my lawful and responsible authority. In doing so I would have abdicated. Best complete the abdication, retire, and leave the job of commanding to someone else. There's a big difference between being a pilot and being a captain (see Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain). A modern airliner has two pilots; skilled airmen, systems experts & navigators. But a ship in the air also requires a captain. On an airliner the commander is Pilot and Captain. That's not unlike the old Master and Commander (Keep in mind that larger ships in Aubrey's time had a captain and a seperate sailing master, a warrant officer posting. Smaller ships, like the fictitious Aubrey's brig Sophie, didn't rate a sailing master, so the captain served a dual role ... (Sailing) Master and Commander (Captain). There's a good article about a ship's master at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Mariner. I doubt that the "hell fire and brimstone" Captain Ahab types were very common at any time in history. One of the best attributes a captain can have is humility. It seems to me that a quiet, respectful command presence is the best kind. Thanks, gents, for giving me a chance to think about this stuff and get my thoughts on "paper." Best regards, Russ. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Russ...Wow. Just Wow. Just did my second trip as lead and I made very sure that the Captain and his Officer had everything they needed, felt welcome, and I made it a point to tell them that I take the meal-cart barrier-rule VERY seriously. I know Spokane isn't exactly a terrorist target, for example, but I'm letting any potential troublemakers out in the cabin know that I'm not screwing around nor taking any chances...Call me overcautious...and I'll say "Thank you..." Hope you're well...Do you have an address I can send a Christmas package to?

Taking The Lead

2006-12-08T08:01:00.000-05:00

On my last trip, I got the LEAD position. In the airline that I work for, EVERYTHING works in seniority order...When you bid for work-positions on a flight, you go right down the ladder...If the senior person doesn't want the LEAD position on a domestic trip, the position goes down the line until it hits the most junior person...That means they work up front in First Class, board the plane, make the announcements...basically, I have the illusion of power. I'm also the lead communicator to the pilots up front. They can't come out unless I put up a meal cart in the way to hinder any attack attempts. SO...I don't usually like any leadership role but this one helped my confidence quite a bit. I learned that the secret to being Lead is to a)Be Organized, b)Exercise a bit of foresight...open up a couple extra bottles of wine for example...to avoid a time-sucking mad-scramble later...and c)Not to be overly concerned about being perfect. If you forget something or let something slide, Oh, WELL...shit happens to us humans, I guess... The whole experience helped to focus my confidence and motivation...Gave me some much-needed self-confidence...The ability to say "I can DO this..." Luckily, I didn't have any Unaccompanied Minors or Wheelchair passengers in the mix...but you see just how many cutbacks have taken place in the airline when you see how things are being done out in the domestic system...Some of the outsourced agaents don't know exactly what they're doing, everyone is understaffed and overworked...the caterers and the cleaners, especially...I think the most harried I've ever been. You have the caterers coming in one door while the passengers are boarding through the opposite door...My colleague and I trying to hang up First Class coats...forget about drink predeparture drink-orders...THEY're not happening in THAT mad rush... The worst was the boarding the Boston bound-flight...This flight is usually filled with what we cheerfully call "Beacon Hill Bastards"...all of the well-heeled lawyers and businessmen coming home from a grueling day of wheeling, dealing and hob-knobbing with America's Upper-Crust boardroom, Forbes-reading Millionaire contingent...Naturally, First Class was full and thankfully devoid of that BHB attitude...The luggage-quotient was ridiculous but I refused to get harried. When it came time to send rollerboard-luggage down into the cargo-hold, I did it with a business-like, matter-of-fact demeanor. No one gave me any grief but I was ready for it with a no-bullshit attitude. I don't care if these people earn ten times more than I do, how better they think they are...they were in MY arena now. The whole experience of serving drinks and dinner up in First Class reinforced the need to comport one's self in a dignified manner. I was dealing with Upper-crust people...I was going to have some class and respect...but I wasn't going to take any garbage, either. Seemed to work out okay. Complimented this renaissance man with a bow-tie, horn-rimmed glasses, and old-style briefcase on his gentlemanly demeanor... he RADIATED gentleman...and I that's something I respect. So I survived the lead experience, made a LITTLE BIT of extra money, and bolstered my confidence...I have to say, though, that domestic travel can be harder on the body than international...early-morning departures, sleeping at the airport, just feeling DAZED. This job AIN'T glamorous. I don't think it EVER was...and it definitely isn't NOW. Fly safe...GaP

Three Things

2006-12-03T14:14:00.000-05:00

Three Things 3 Things that scare me: religious fanatics, gaining weight, looking like an idiot in general... 3 People who make me laugh: William Shatner, Chris Tucker, Jason Miewes(Jay from the Kevin Smith movies...of "Jay and Silent Bob" fame...) 3 Things I love: My boyfriend, his cat, music, and comics...(four things but who cares?) 3 Things I hate: Clueless, high-maintenance parents, society's rabid obssession for material wealth, and F__KING cellphone abuse! 3 Things I do not understand: How humanity has lasted for so long, what the hell a "consultant" is supposed to be and how the title is supposed to bestow instant respect on the person brandishing it, and the appeal behind reality television. 3 Things on my desk: My die-cast DeLorean replica from BACK TO THE FUTURE, miniature DOCTOR STRANGE bust in his classic cast-spelling hand-gesture, and a small replica of a British Telephone Police Box. 3 Things I am doing right now: Drinking a Woodchuck cider, listening to my boyfriend snore, waiting for someone to I.M. me on MSN Messenger.(Nobody's around. It's a dozy Sunday...) 3 Things I want to do before I die: find a purpose/job/niche that makes me happy AND gets the bills paid, do stand up and kick ASS at it, write consistently... 3 Things I can do: Speak French, jog a mile, and write letters(not e-mails) like it is a dying art...which I think it is. Don't care...will still continue to do it... 3 Things I cannot do: focus, motivate myself, and be consistent..with almost ANYTHING... 3 Things you should listen to: Aimee Mann, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Morrissey. 3 Things you should never listen to: FOX NEWS, Celine Dion, and just about anyone from American Idol or similar "get-famous-quick" reality-television talent shows...anyone remember "Star Search"?...blech... 3 Things I would like to learn: tie a bow-tie, build a bookshelf, be friendlier and more open with people... 3 Favorite foods: bagels, anything hot and spicy...like Mexican, chicken. 3 Beverages I drink regularly: coffee, cider, wine. 3 Shows I watched as a kid: Land Of The Lost, The Incredible Hulk, and The Six Million Dollar Man

Christmas Mania...

2006-12-03T10:58:00.000-05:00

Salut, Doc... Messing with this current version of Internet Explorer and it falls into the category of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"...But looks like I have everything back to "normal"....so I may proceed... Now, I don't know how things are in the UK these days regarding the run up to the Christmas season...but HERE, everything is hyper-accelerated. In a way, our THANKSGIVING served the purpose of your Christmas...getting the family together, overeating, watching bad television,reforging family ties, or trying NOT to stir up some family drama... But NOW, it seems like a speed-eating fest that leads us RIGHT to BLACK FRIDAY...supposedly busiest shopping day of the year, heralding the beginning of the Christmas shopping feeding frenzy...You have breathless financial reports on television over that day's sales figures and how the economy is shoring up. Have we all lost our minds? Nah, I think the Golden Calf is pretty much crapping all over us...Now I could go ON about the true meaning of Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa, or whatever...but doesn't this seem a little bit NUTS? What people don't realize is that you don't HAVE to buy copious amount of presents...hell, you don't even have to buy presents at ALL...The choice is yours. It's sort of a popularity contest...Who got the most presents...were they "GOOD" enough? Appropriate enough? And most importantly...How much MONEY was sunk into them? You can present someone with a gift ANYTIME...Not just Christmas... (Personally, I would LOVE it if the nation went into this mass hypnotic state in which NOT ONE DAMNED thing was purchased on Black Friday...I won't be greedy and black out the whole month of December...Can you imagine? We'd probably be treated to dire red-alert warnings of another major Depression being imminent...) I won't even go into the stress of running around to fulfill all of these obligations... Needless to say, the only store I'll be going into for the holidays to enhance my OWN music/movie collection...whilst on a budget, of course... So how go the holiday-preps in Glesga and at Chez Lucas? All the best to you, Mike...Miss our blethers at the Uni...

Junk Shop Nirvana

2006-11-22T21:28:00.000-05:00

Back on Friday 17 November, I was on another Amsterdam layover. I made a pilgrimage to a junkshop in the same neighborhood as the hotel. I'd heard great things about it. It was a place to go without worrying about spending excess cash and it was just something DIFFERENT to do. It was a five-minute walk to the two-story junk emporium. Of course, I was there for the music. I went digging through the used compact discs and came with a small treasure-pile. Mostly cd singles and a double-disc of Christmas music from the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra... I also bought this bizarre, absurdist-creepy figuring that will probably come to life and kill me in my sleep at some point...Almost bought my first pipe for one Euro. But it wasn't quite ME...(That'll make sense to the Frumpy Professor...) The whole bag o' swag cost under five euros...(About eight dollars) There was something very comforting about that junk shop. A nostagia-limbo of lost artifacts. Threre's a quiet Sunday afternoon atmosphere in such a place. All of these former possessions from other peoples' lives...Dusty old albums, kitsch bric-a-brac, books, absurdly-dated furniture sets from previous decades...No airs or graces in that safe little pocket of retro-reality... Underlying and emblifying this experience was my hearing a song I hadn't heard since I was in the single-digits. It missed my orbit all these years with all of the music-store-browsing I've done..."How Do You Do?", I believe it was called. (I'll have to check the Rhino 70's Pop-Culture Box Set...) Another gem was "PERSONALITY". A warm, cozy retro-bubble experience. I MUST be getting old... Today's dinette set is tomorrow's Salvation Army showroom centerpiece...GaP

To Love Is To Be Human

2006-11-20T10:52:00.000-05:00

To be in love is to come face-to-face with your own humanity...warts and all. On paper, relationships sound like the biggest pain in the ass...sometimes a nightmare. Yes, there is sex and that much vaunted honeymood period, but once that rush fades, there'd better be some kind of love, some kind of caring left behind. And if there is then it's hard to walk away...impossible almost, when you hit a bump in the road. Just as a bee stings and leaves its guts trailing as it leaves the stinger behind, you find that the only thing worsethan dealing with the misunderstandings, miscommunications, melodrama, and general miscellaneous aggravation is to NOT be with the person you love...glitches and all... When I thought that Bill was going to send me away with a Dear John letter, I felt a vortex of emotions swirling through my guts...Relief, yearning, sadness, pity, and a cold dead nothing. I was hollowed out. I tried to focus on the positives of being single...I could make a pass at any man I wanted. I could be lust-driven again, scratch the carnal itch and try to fulfill every fantasy clanging around in my head... But I would be alone...Sex wouuld be intermittent. I would have no one to love, no one to BE with...To cuddle is just as important to me as the sex...I would miss the little things about caring for someone...The quirks, the eccentricities...his walk, his facial expressions, his warmth and his compassion. So yes, walking away would be easy when there is strain, turn your back on the whole thing. But then you see how hard it is when there is no anger in your heart toward this person nor resentment in your heart. Love is has no place in rationality...which is why it's so HUMAN... GaP

Rants, Theories, Etc...

2006-11-15T20:05:00.000-05:00

Enjoying my one day off...the last few days have, like, SUCKED. I thought for sure that I was going to get dumped by my significant other...I had conflicting feelings...Relief, pity, sadness, yearning. They say that the course of true love never DID run smooth...Turned out to be a gigantic misunderstanding. The poor guy has SUCH a low self-esteem. Come to think of it, I must too...because when something goes on, we tend to blame ourselves rather than the other... Had a weird crowd coming back from AMSterdam yesterday afternoon. A light passenger load but everyone was bitchy...but then again, so was I...No patience for the usual learning curves that passengers undergo...I've decided that customer service is a special kind of Purgatory. The whole Customer-Is-King attitude seems to entitle people to treat their servers like shit...or cause them to show indignation when we point out their unreasonable behavior...To wit...the very large, prolific family yesterday. Their kids were hitting the call light every five minutes and when I suggested that they visit the back galley for their drinks, I got read the riot act by an indignant mother of, what? five children? SIX? Passengers are pissy because security confiscates their liquids at the gate...(Thank you, Al-Quadea) and somehow, we(the airline staff) get the blame... Anyway, this family falls into the category I like to call The Messiah Complex. The parents have pushed out a brood and the whole world and its inhabitants have to bend over backward to accomodate their needs...because their children are the Chosen Ones. In this day and age of diminishing resources, global warming, and the threat of overpopulation, do parents really NEED to have three, four children or MORE? I could live that(barely) if the parents didn't generate this indignant sense of entitlement. Reproducing doesn't require any great skill...Christ, cockroaches do it. We humans seem to think that the whole process is far more grandiose and MEANINGFUL just because we're the top of the food chain. Mother Nature is probably going to show us otherwise as this century progresses... I'm surprised the matriarch with the child-rearing hips didn't somehow produce another child before they reached the Immigration Hall. Tie the tubes, MOM! And on THAT misanthropic note...I'm gone. GaP

A Brand New Day?

2006-11-08T10:57:00.000-05:00

I'm going to hand over the body of my blog to The Frumpy Professor...In HIS blog, >http://frumpyprofessor.blogspot.com/< he articulates perfectly why I really don't care much for our current Commander-In-Chief...Maybe with the Democrats holding power in at least ONE house(not sure about the Senate yet), maybe we can see some positive, intelligent change? -----------------------------------------

Wonderful Election Results I am extraordinairly pleased with the results of the election thus far. Please do not get me wrong... while I tend to lean towards a Democratic/Libertarian bent on most issues, I am not oppossed to Republicans, and find some of their ideas valuable and insightful. The reason why I am pleased today, though, is that the nation has effectively castrated the most foolish, unthinking president we have ever elected in my entire life. I dislike Bush not because he is Republican... on the contrary, there have been many Republican presidents who were very worthwhile.... T. Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Nixon did good jobs for our nation. The biggest problem I have with G.W. Bush is that he is what I call a "proud anti-intellectual". He likes to flaunt his lack of insight, his lack of understanding. He seems to relish his stumbling, mangled speech patterns. He is a "good old boy" of long standing who takes on the lifestyle of the unthinking, idle rich who sit back, hands clapsed behind their head (usually in some sort of muddied stupor), looking down at the masses and criticize them for their lot. They then hire others to make their decisions for them. He is also the sort who "thinks" anything involving thought and or analysis is beneath them. Bush is a bad president because he does not think. And, because he dislikes others who DO think. PipeTobacco 9:20 AM

Vote Early, Vote Often, Vote Like It Actually Matters...

2006-11-07T12:17:00.000-05:00

Just voted about three hours ago. I was looking forward to doing so but deep in my heart, I really DO wonder if it really DOES make any difference. You'd think that one person, one vote would make sense...but instead we get the electoral college. Can anyone explain to me why that makes more sense? Here's hoping that we halt The United States' downward spiral in terms of world-perception. We are the biggest assholes on the international stage right now... As autumn goes on, I realize that I'm slowly withdrawing from life. I'm not the most social of creatures but since dating Bill, I've noticed that I'm slowly, almost imperceptibly withdrawing from friendships, hobbies, usual habits...(like comics, for example...I'm about a month behind. There's the lack-of-cash-factor as well...and I feel as if I'm losing the passion. I remember back in my twenties when I LOVED traveling to Scotland, had some somewhat hyperactive vim and vigor about life in general...Now I'm just settling into being a homebody-recluse. The thought of traveling on a plane...hell, traveling ANYWHERE just fills me with dread. Not blaming my boyfriend for this...actually I love him because he likes to stay in, watch movies, listen to music, among other things...but I AM changing...withdrawing. I should be concerned but I'm not.Is this AGEING? I remember when all dreams seemed possible. Now everything seems like fading potential. Not being sure of what I want to do or how hard I want to work to achieve whatever goal I decide to aim for...the ship is leaving port if it isn't already LONG GONE... Yep. These are autumn thoughts...GaP

Music Discussion With My Next-Door Neighbor-To-Be

2006-11-01T08:36:00.000-05:00

On 11/1/06, G-- wrote: Hello, Bob... When it comes to music, despite tightening funds, I'm still finding ways to find more bang for the buck, as it were. That involves scoring on iTunes coupons, trawling the used cd bins at Newbury Comics, and taking advantage of special offers at BMG Music, the club that basically owns my soul. (Still waiting for my bargain-priced Loretta Lynn Box Set...You have any favorite bands, singer/songwriters/whatnot? Rock on...GaP ___________________________________________ Robert wrote: I was a Phishhead for years, eventually I got into virtually every genre, old and new. Mostly, I like Rock/Folk/Blues -Bob Dylan, Ween, The Who, Beatles, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia, and a lot of Jazz (Wes Montgomerry, Miles Davis, Coltrane), Lauren has her own tastes, she has a very unique collection of Soundtracks, classical, 90s Rock, Ella Fitzgerald, celtic, rap, showtunes, and...oh yeah..Roxette. I stopped getting CDs a while ago, I realized I had a problem with the cd bins at Newbury. How about your favorites? ______________________________________________________________________ What problems? Quality of the discs? Scratches and whatnot? Just signed off of BMG Music, spending money I really SHOULDN'T be...These were the selections... Strummin’ With The Devil: The Southern Side Of Van Halen(Bluegrass) The DFA-The DFA Remixes Chapter One Various Artists Johnny Cash - Roots & Branches David Lee Roth actually contributes vocals for the Bluegrass Van Halen tribute so you KNOW that's worth a listen... Favorite bands off the top of my head(or artists) Aimee Mann(whom my roommate hates but he likes Andre Rieu so his opinion doesn't really count), Nada Surf, Morrissey, any GOOD electronica...but that's always a crapshoot to discover...hence much reading and listening to some iTunes radio to get a sense... I find that I discover bands but acquiring bargain-based compilations...one or two bands will prompt me to discover their other work and the domino effect will continue...Recent discoveries...Patrick Park, Joseph Arthur, Sufjan Stevens... Roxette. Yow. Still beats Celine Dion, however...(whose music I hate just for fun...) Later...GaP _______________________________________________________________ Robert wrote... My problems? I bought way too many, I digest a cd and move on to another a week later. I flooded my cd cases to the point where Lauren and I can't find any of the cds we want anymore. I had to cut down so I can listen to what I have! Bluegrass Van Halen, I gotta check that out. Are you a Roth fan or Haggar? Lauren has some great stuff that I never would have thought of getting (Cowboy Junkees?), she also has a bunch of Showtunes that I'm not a fan of (except the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar which rocks! - the lead singer of Deep Purple was Jesus!) ________________________________________________________________ GaP wrote... Yeah, I used to have that problem...then it comes down to deciding what you really WANT. The beauty of iTunes and other online music stores is that it allows you to sample tracks inexpensively...AND I've been gathering together tracks that I've wanted but didn't actually want to buy the albums to...MAGIC(Mick Smiley) from the Ghosbusters Soundtrack for example....or MORE THAN THIS from Roxy Music. Cowboy Junkies are excellent but if you only have to get one, it's THE TRINITY SESSIONS. Regarding Van Halen...Both have cut some pretty decent tunes for the band...but when push comes to shove, it would be DL Roth... Which reminds me, there's a great song from NERFHERDER that pisses all over Van Hagar with it's VAN HALEN track...Damned funny... Catch you later...GaP

Mister Sandman...Send Me A Dream...

2006-10-26T09:39:00.000-04:00

Can you believe this? I'm actually looking forward to picking my(actually Ray's dog) from the kennel today. I wanted to get this blog because he's going to be a hyper canine when I get him back...I suppose we really DO get attached do our canine and feline buddies, right? Had myself one of those dark, disturbing sci-fi/horror dreams. There was this evil version of Neo(portrayed by Keanu Reeves in the Matrix flicks)...He had the temperament of Pinhead from the HELLRAISER movies...Dark Neo ripped me apart in the dream...Skin-flaying, dismemberment, disemboweling...yet somehow I was able to survive it...and observe it from the outside...Because I was in the Matrix? Anyway, I reintegrated and kept clear of him and his masochist cult...He had the same unstable personality as that psycho concentration camp guard played by Ralph Fiennes in SCHINDLER'S LIST. I suppose this symbolizes further fears of change and the ongoing struggle against my angrier, cynical side...blah, blah, blah...These dreams are pretty f--king vivid. On my way back from the gym today, I took a different route...one that would have led me to my old place on Beech Street if I'd cut through the park in front of the library...I had a twinge or two of nostalgia...but for the most part, I enjoy my current status as homeowner-up-on-the-hill. I imagine that's a sign that my life has progressed quite a bit. I remember being lonely and depressed quite a bit back on Beech Street. I remember kicking down the closet door over there, dealing with THAT trauma of sexual identity...I had many good memories as well...Friendships lost and found, trips to Scotland in and out of that place...Eight years coming of age in a way... But I wouldn't go back...That was then and this is now. And I like NOW a whole lot better...There's love in it...and a more settled personality inside this skin...although some folks would disagree with that... All for now....GaP

Wayfaring Stranger

2006-10-23T11:35:00.000-04:00

Got myself a little heads up from my union rep regarding my recent work-attitude. Mare sold it to me like this: "Ga--...Anger is understandable...but don't make extra work for your colleagues by causing them to put out fires that you start..." Or words to that effect...If I were to ditch this gig, what would I DO? THAT, my friends, is the sixty-Euro question... I went down to Boston(Somerville) to a friend's Halloween party and I got myself lost after getting off the bus. I did a mile-and-a-half-loop in pouring rain around Tufts University...Suddenly, I remembered exactly WHY I didn't like to travel anymore...That aimless, wandering, stuck-out-in-the-cold feeling...everyone's snug in their HOMES and here you are, DRIFTING, G--! Felt that way so many times when I was backpacking overseas. So lost and alone...a STRANGER wandering past unfamiliar streets... Party was fun, though...My friend Liam seems to know many people while I'm becoming more reclusive...and no longer really care if I am... On the bus back to Manchester, I arrived right at the time a funeral/memorial service was letting out for fallen Police Officer Michael Briggs...Policemen were dressed in their finest regalia to honor him...they streamed out of the newly constructed baseball stadium where the service took place. Streams of blue and gold-clad law enforcement folk followed by their families...And there were officers from out of town as well. I saw police-motorcycles from Waltham, MA and Lincoln, NH. Fellow cops from all over the country traveled to pay their respects. Such loyalty and respect touched me. It was a poignant realization that humans have warmth and honor within them that is worth celebrating...and it gave me hope for us humans... GaP

Too Much Time On My Hands?

2006-10-19T14:05:00.000-04:00

My second consecutive day off...When you have a ton of time suddenly on your hands, all of the things you should be doing, get delayed and fussed over...until you rush around to multitask them...and they end up being completed half-assed...With my roommate over in England and the dog in the kennel, suddenly there was a lack of structure...Absolute piles of time to be indecisive in...I futzed around upstairs in what will someday become my reading room, I lit candles to kill some of the dog-odor, blew them out, re-lit them...I imported music into my hard-drive, re-filed the music in my external drive...All of it very exciting stuff... Working out at the gym, I was able to reconnect with some friends and maybe start another friendship. I spoke with a gent named Patrick, originally from Brisbane, Australia...and man, he's got the accent to prove it...The Y isn't just a place to exercise...it's a social networker... I've got a union rep who's being relentlessly trying to contact me by phone...I have no cell so I'm wondering...am I in trouble at work again? I have to admit...the way I dodge phone calls and the way I'm letting my friendships drift, I AM becoming more reclusive...like my dad. Human interaction...running around to socialize...even my comics are becoming a hassle. (GASP!) Human nature, I guess...some things change...other things never do...Some people have glamorous lives, others would rather just hide in the solitude. It was weird but not unpleasurable having the house to myself for a change. All for now...GaP

Meandering Thoughts--Sign O' The Times

2006-10-19T13:41:00.000-04:00

Some things going through my head... Senator Tom Foley naming the priest who allegedly interfered with him when he was an altar boy. Unbelievable...the guy was caught sending e-mails and instant messages to young male pages...So what does he do? Does he come clean? Face the music like a man? No, of course not. He scurries away to rehab and has his press junket declare his alcoholism. And when that fails to elicit the appropriate amount of sympathy we learn that he's(GASP!)a GAY MAN! (The Scandal!) Now we have him naming the priest who supposedly molested him when he was an altar boy. More diversionary tactics and damage control. So this is supposed to excuse him, apparently... In my hometown...actually, my home-city, we get a taste of New York and L.A. Last week, a policeman was shot down...The memorial service will be held this Saturday. I understand this is the first cop-murder in anyone's memory. Looks like the population-migration from the southern neighboring state is importing its special brand of cosmopolitan underworld gangsta chic. The perpetrator is being extradited back to the state(from said neighboring state) where he'll be facing the death penalty. And if his victim's colleague buddies gets his hands on him in the incarceration process, I would speculate that there'll be some brutality involved. I understand that the police fraternity is pretty loyal... Welcome to the 21st Century...GaP

Friday The 13th...Two Weeks Before Halloween

2006-10-13T16:50:00.000-04:00

This is a rare event...A Jason Voorhees holiday on the same month Michael Myers usually goes trick-or-treating... The Exchange on NPR had horror movies as a topic. It provided a potted history of the genre from the Thirties up 'til now...I especially like how horror is usually indicative of whatever societal anxieties are lurking beneath the collective surface...Dracula, for example, reflects fears of sexuality and passion, Frankenstein belies a discomfort with technology...The Fifties gave us atomic horror...The Seventies slasher flicks were almost like a neo-conservative yearning for proper values...giving birth to the all-important rules that Randy(Jamie Kennedy) cites in the Scream movies. Drugs, Alcohol, Sex equal being racked up to the body count. It's almost like America was in this confused state post Viet Nam/ Watergate/the Sexual Revolution...In some twisted way, the slashers depicted what happened if the Leave It To Beaver moral code had been broken. (Why am I reminded of the Brady Bunch? It was a sitcom that wanted to BE like the earnest simple sitcoms of the Fifties after all of the aforementioned cultural upheaval...The it evolved into Mike Brady's afro and bell-bottoms and his childrens' groovy-hipness...The Brady Bunch movies of the Nineties skewers these like a slasher-movie victim...But I digress. Horror. I'm of the opinion that horror serves a purpose...a safe, cathartic way to deal with our primal fears...pain, death, the threat to "normality". And a good point was touched upon in this program...Why IS it that the Christian faith(ESPECIALLY Catholicism) provides a springboard for so much horror? THE EXORCIST, ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE WICKER MAN? Never heard of a Buddhist horror movie...Or a Hindu slasher flick... Watch your skies and watch your backs in the post-millenial times...GaP

Responses to Science-Fiction Pop-Culture Apocalypse

2006-10-12T21:26:00.000-04:00

You're not alone. I've had similar visions for the last twenty years. Lots of people have; where do you think those movies came from and why they're so popular? And yes, I'd say a LOT of it has to do with your "soul-deadening job". Traci will tell you, my dreams slowed down once I took up martial arts, and since I quit my job a few months back I've felt more empowered and optimistic than I have since childhood. Your mind is trying to tell you something G---. Listen!!! Brian PS: On the other hand, that must have been a really awesome dream! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- or maybe you just have an over-active imagination... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Roberts perscribes 2 ounces Cruzan Rum (dark) 4 times an hour for the next 22 years ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually Gar, I think your predicting what will happen if the Republicans win the next presidential election……. Just kidding…. In reality though – and dream analysis is not a specialty of mine, I think it has to do a lot with all of the things you mentioned. Being a flight attendant you are bound to be bombarded with all of the shite about unrest anyway. Even if you don’t seek it out (tv news, newspapers, etc.), right now in society we CAN’T ESCAPE IT! Passively it’s everywhere. Every time we hear someone say “let’s not forget 9/11” Brian and I scream at the tv “HOW CAN WE? YOU WON’T LET US!” The whole Transmetropolitan thing. Plus you do have a great imagination and you watch/read a lot of media that have to do with these things so it’s already in your subconscious. Then your brain is taking in all of this other apocalyptic stuff and then there’s the piece of yourself that apparently does feel that if you don’t change careers/”do something with your life” (you are, trust me, just not what you want)/spread your wings at least one more time (being that you’re in your 30’s now), that this is how life will turn out. What d’ya think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary, WoW, but your not the first! Relax in that thought. Things are happening all over the world. Get this: In the Middle East its being reported that Muslims in great numbers are being visited (appeared to) by Jesus. I'm not making this up. I heard it on the tube again yesterday. Why we get dreams (or visits) of such vividness, clarity and direction is imponderable. You have had enough signs (previous disclosure) that if I were you, I would request again (with humility) a clear direction. Consider the source possiblilities. Try this Ga--: If the dreams and circumstances bring you to a desire to seek the Lord for the answers, you may be experiencing the Big Hint. If they drive you away from Him and cause you lean on your own methods of understanding (been trying that) its less likely to be heavenly inspired. Additionally if the dream experience makes you angry, irritable or irrational that too may be a hint of the source. I dont know of many examples, if any, where these characteristrics, as evidenced by the outcome, proved to be from God. Also, all this could be from your fertile mind as fed by the world situation and your sci-fi interests. But God can use it all for his purpose. OK enough theology. Get down on your knees and pray Ga--. You have before I bet. Do it again and wait until you get an answer. Not literally for forever ( too long betweeen meals) but you get the intent. Don't give up asking. Ask Him what this is suppose to mean and if He blesses it. Sometimes that quiet still peace comes to a guy and the answer and direction are clear and peaceful. And sometimes just the next step is clear. As to direction, take a step out, start to prepare for a transition while you have the job. "Right Greg with my schedule I have lots of juice left and time" I hear ya and yes I know what you are or may be saying G---. But short of a clean financially destructive break I don't know any other way. Again, many do and its the self push they need. Only you know G--- and what will work. Of course, I'm thinking and advising from the place of being a Dad and husband. Keep me posted G--, Greg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you considered sci-fi/fantasy writing? You have a great knack for creating visuals! Or maybe it’s just me…I tend to slip into fantasyland quite easily these days! Seriously, I have found more and more people with a general feeling of uneasiness, since we have torn apart the middle east. Whether it is revelation coming to pass, history repeating itself, or just self-ignited by your wish to break out of the rut you feel around you, it is certainly for real. I am facing similar questions, as I have been forced out of my job (see attached brochure…may have to print it to read easier) and am uncertain about pursuing yet another kitchen to hold together. I like the legal profession, in particular labor law, as it would give me a chance to help people that got screwed the way I did. However to undertake such a change while approaching age 50, is a fairly daunting task! Being a grownup really does suck, doesn’t it superman? I try to free my worried mind with music and laughter, and it still works great, if only for the moment it is in. Watching Jon Stewart (and his antithesis, Colbert) helps, he says out loud what everyone is thinking, making me feel a bit less alone. I feel sure that history will expose W and co. for what he/it is, a mechanism of the Project For A New American Century (look it up), the likes of which are at least as scary as Mein Kampf. Unfortunately, the damage is being done now, and hindsight may not be enough to save us. I saw the CSN&Y tour (twice) this summer. Besides being wonderfully nostalgic, it was heartbreaking that the songs written during Vietnam were pertinent right now. We have not learned a thing. The entire tour was a protest movement, Neil Young’s baby I presume, and it was, again, good to know I wasn’t alone. Keep the faith, my old friend, and the right path will open to you. Peace, Natalie ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- G--! Wow! That's quite a scenario. Give me some time to ponder this one. Unlike Jackson, I think there is something here that doesn't need to be medicated with Glenfiddich ... although any excuse to imbibe shouldn't be ignored. So, is it a personal journey; a Joseph Campbell "Hero's Journey?" Are you having Nostradamus flashes? Is there room in northern Quebec for me after the "bigs ones" start lighting up? Let me read this a couple more times. I'll get back to you in a few days. R. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well G--, Don't quite know how to answer this one, but as I am a lover of quotes I always remember this one. " Leap and the net will appear" make of this what you will but I live by the adage that there is always a solution. Love always May ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Old Sacramento

2006-10-10T07:38:00.000-04:00

Salut, Doc... I actually eked out some enjoyment from my previous trip...On my Sacramento, CA layover, I went out and did some exploring...I checked out Old Sacramento which has retained its Gold Rush-era architecture. I stepped into the Wells Fargo Museum and was greeted with the sight of a replica of the Concord Stagecoach...which carted all of its cash and gold all over the frontier-territories. The coach itself was made 20 miles from my hometown. I felt a rush of pride and connection that I lived so close to a contributor of history, interwoven with a name that is synonomous with the Old West. I also made it a point to visit the Pony Express Statue. I was surprised to learn that the Express only lasted for a year and half or so...On 10 April, 1860, 0245, the first rider raced off from the Sacramento town limits in the pouring rain...carrying the first bags of mail along the relay line that eventually led to...(I want to say)Missouri. I forget the town. On 21 October 1861 the Transamerican Telegraph Company was established...and the Pony Express closed two days later...but the Pony Express did much to open the communication out to the frontier... See? My job can be educational...GaP

It Could Be WORSE...

2006-10-02T14:20:00.001-04:00

I sent an lawyer friend of mine a forward comparing prostitution to flight-attending. He replied... >>>>>>Hey G---, it isn't so bad. You could be a lawyer. George<<<<<< George... You're right. It isn't bad. Because I make it that way. I use the job to catch up on my reading between services...And speaking of prostitution, I'll be pimping for duty-free sales next month. Apparently, NWA didn't lose enough on this route the first time around... I really hope passengers aren't expecting me to know about the scent of Chanel No. 5 because all I have for them is a shrug. 4 percent commission is going to ensure that I BLAST right through that cabin with minimal eye contact. Hope you're well, Ambassador...And if I really wanted to work on an eternal run of homework and research AND deal with members of the horrid human race AND be expected to fix the self-created shambles that their lives have become.....then yeah, maybe I would consider the legal gig. Latersville...GaP

Science-Fiction Pop-Culture Apocalypse

2006-09-27T07:15:00.000-04:00

Two nights ago, I had the third of a particularly vivid series of dreams. Ominous Apocalyptic dreams steeped in science-fiction imagery. Cinematic memes that have seeped into the popular consciousness, concepts familiar to most regardless of having seen the films. The final dream had more of a general theme. They took place over the span of a month. And since things tend to run in threes, I wasn't surprised to see the themes recurring. The first was a REVENGE OF THE SITH scenario. The rise of darkness, totalitarianism, destruction, and subjugation. I remember I was about to be executed in the dream. The emperor or one of the higher-ups had stepped from the room, bidding me good-bye even as I witnessed the rise of this new regime...Somehow, I escaped...but there was a sense of doom and despair permeating everyting...like the dawn of a cold, dark age... The second dream had James Cameron overtones...Imagery from the TERMINATOR mythos...Machines roaming the streets cutting down any human in sight. Gun-towers landing amongst the skyscrapers cutting a swathe of destruction and death. I remember being among the panicked crowds, scurrying and trying to decide if I should join up with a group for safety in numbers or go it alone. I remember deciding on the latter...Again, a sense that life as we knew it was over. Humanity's day had passed... Two nights ago, I had a third dream...I remember being a part of a meeting up North...a backwoods rural setting. There was a hush in the air, a dread apprehension around the globe. The bombs were a hair's breadth from flying...I knew that I was to head up north...up to rural Quebec, somewhere in the backwoods. I was heading up there to form a survival township...to be a leader or administrator or something. The community would shelter against the storm and then do our best to pick up the pieces of civilization after the dust settled. Care for survivors, be a community...as egalitarian as we could manage... So what are the reasons for these dreams? Do they reflect fears of international tensions (Islamic Fundamentalist East versus Western military/industrial consumer complex?) Will it climax in a classic mutally assured destruction scenerio? Will the Book of Revelation come to pass? Is it because of my own desire to quit this soul-deadening job? The fear of change...ending something old and beginning something new? Is it despair at being ineffectual...at my lack of motivation to get off my ass and make some positive change in my life? To start realizing my potential? Is it the fear of time passing WITHOUT taking these necessary steps? All of these things? Something to ponder as we hurtle along through the Ought years of the 21st Century...GaP

Work Attitudes

2006-09-20T07:24:00.000-04:00

Hi GaP, I was just going through my photo album here on the computer. Thanks for sending all the pictures! It's fun to see you in Canada, at the Scottish fest and all. Like you, I'm amazed at the frienship that has grown mainly through correspondence. But I'm determined it will not always remain locked in cyberspace. Take care and let me know how you are doing inside all the exterior crap we face. Russ _________________________________________________________________ Hey, Russ... Gotta tell ya...Everything outside the job is going well...Within the job, I just don't give a shit anymore...I phone in my service, ignore extra service requests, and rarely deviate "above and beyond"...because what's the point? "Don't blame the customers," the Kool-Aid drinkers wail. "It's not their fault..." Yeah, well...Steenland's screw-job isn't my fault, either...so I guess shit rolls downhill. Fears that passengers will book away to other airlines? At 200 bucks a ticket overseas? Not likely. Oh, and they'll get duty-free again and I understand snacks are coming back domestically? I can't strike, I have no recourse...so I'm just going to coast. I won't be rude but I will be an automaton...quick, curt, and direct...do my job and go home. I will not be the model employee... I have one day off before two more in a row. I use the plane time to catch up on my reading... Today...a day of running my errands in MY home-town, doing down-to-earth things like record-browsing, drug-store shopping, getting my comics and just walking to accomplish all these with the iPod playing...Ordinary, non-travel shit that requires no schedule. Many thanks for the kind words, my friend...does snail-mail easily reach you? GaP -------------------------------------------------------------------------

11 September 2005

2006-09-11T07:11:00.000-04:00

Back from the wooded north. I left last Thursday to spend three days with my father up in Marston, Quebec. For three days, I had a diet of classic Westerns thanks to the Lone Star channel, a regular supply of beer, backwoods ambiance in abundance, and dog-hair everywhere...I've gotten far more used to my dad's yellow Labrador Tubby now that there's one in my own life. (Buddy, the big gooby...) It was good to get away from all of the work-related bullshit...You know...the possiblity of striking at my place of employment, the BUSHit of the current administration, Gulf War II, the general malaise of U.S. life in general... Life seems simpler up there...It's easy to see why Westerns and country music are so big up there...When I took a walk along the main road to on my last day there, it's not hard to cast your mind back in time a century and some change to the frontier-days...the wide open spaces, the farmhouses, the rolling hills, the mountain ranges, the sprawling but close-knit smalltown community...I got some weird stares when taking photographs with my digital camera but it was worth it. I also found myself missing my man while I was up there. I surprise myself how much I love Bill. I've spent my whole life VERY dubious of love's existence, cynical of its necessity, and VERY fearful of being in ANY sort of relationship. Being IN one meant being controlled, being imprisoned. I chalk that up to my upbringing with Mom. The longer I spend with Bill, the more those fears are put to rest...sometimes the old fears whisper: "You could do better, you could be FREE to be a slut, you could follow lust wherever you wanted..." But that's a fantasy. I remember how lonely I was, how forsaken I felt. I think of Bill and his insular life. Well, my life was insular as well...albeit not as much. But now we are homebodies together, enjoying each other's company, watching movies, listening to music, going to dinner, just BEING with each other...I always glad to be around him, I miss him when I'm NOT with him, I hurry to get BACK to him whenever I'm traveling...and that's exactly what I did when I came back down to New Hampshire on Saturday morning/afternoon...I guess I must be in love... My dad was misting up when I left him. He must really miss me. Bill says that as he gets older, he's probably regretting all the moments he missed when I was growing up. Poor guy. "It's not good-bye", I told him. "It's farewell..." God forbid, but I hope this isn't the last time I see him alive. I worry about him sometimes...his drinking, his smoking, his lack of health-insurance...(Well, Jesus, who can afford $430 a month on a retiree's income?) I smelled woodsmoke last night. There's a chill in the air...In my mind, autumn has begun... All for now...GaP

Northward Bound

2006-09-05T06:19:00.000-04:00

I'm heading up to Quebec to visit my dad this morning. A five-and-a-half-hour ride...the iPod is charging. It's less of a ride more than a meditative journey...time stretches out into a timeless state until suddenly, I'm there...It'll be nice to get away from the airline melodrama... I have to say that I love the drive through Northern NH with unfamiliar music playing from a compact disc...something with some lyrical weight, with something to say. I feel like I'm connected to the world in this travel state. One life is connected to the other. Each town I pass through has its residents that know each other by name and village eccentrics...The dramas are similar but the locales are different. Including my dad's hometown. It'll be good to see him and his two dogs again... All for now...and best wishes to the Frumpy Professor and his mom. GaP

Stepping Up To The Keyboard...

2006-09-02T08:40:00.000-04:00

I'm using this as a statement of intent to be a whole LOT more consistent with my posts...Been getting lazy when some solid thoughts needed to get posted. Motivation and focus are the keys...GaP

V For Vendetta

2006-08-15T13:29:00.000-04:00

On 8/12/06, G@P wrote: Russ... Have you seen this movie yet? Excellent study in terrorism versus freedom fighting? Who makes the rules? Who controls? Who fights? Based on a comic, of all things. Excellent stuff...GaP ___________________________________________________________________ Russ wrote: Hi Gary! I did see "V for Vendetta." I agree that its a timely study and raises question about freedom fighting versus terrorism. In a piece on radio recently (it had to be NPR) a writer was talking about the biblical myth of Samson and Delilah. By killing himself along with the, who was is, evil Pharasis ... hell, I can't even spell it, the writer said that Samson was the world's first "suicide terrorist." History is written by the victors. Today we have serious criminal activities we deal with by bombing cities. We call it a War on Terror. In this latest scare are we to bomb London to take care of the criminals who grew up there? I've said for a long time that the best thing we can do is try to rid the world's social soil of the poison that allows the monsters to grow. We will not do that by engaging in a traditional war against a verb. War on poverty. War on drugs. War on illiteracy. They don't work. Today I'm in Detroit and feeling very low about the state of affairs. No hair gel, no toothpaste, no shampoo ... a smelly situation indeed. Where does it all end. When the bad guys raise the bar again, as they will, do we raise our defences yet higher? Does it end with each of us carrying nuclear counter measures in our car trunks? I spent all day yesterday onboard the most powerful warship in the world, the USS Theodore Roosevelt. It is a marvelous example of man's ingenuity and relative might. As will steamed along, powered by twin nuclear reactors, I thought how stupid it really is that we felt the need to build such a monster just to kill other people. The Teddy Roosevelt's nickname is "America's Big Stick." Today we are forgetting the part about "walking softly." Take good care, brother. And keep the faith. There must be a reason for all this. Russ ______________________________________________________________________________ Russ... Writing this from the lobby in AMS...Must make it quick. I don't think humanity will ever be ready for the rational, mature solutions until we hop up a rung on the evolutionary ladder or SOMETHING. Because history's lessons are NOT being heeded. So fuck it. Nuke the place...LEt some other species have a go at it. (Nihilism is VERY tempting...) Keep your faith, buddy...and I'll keep mine...GaP

What I Don't NEED To Do...

2006-08-15T13:17:00.000-04:00

Just some meandering notes...We live in a world of soundbites, buzzphrases, and mass-produced quips. One of the ones that have emerged that drives me RIGHT up the F--KING wall is when someone tells me that I "NEED" to do something. The phrase has become so pervasive that even I find myself using it without intending to. Another variant of this is when someone says or writes..."You NEED/HAVE to understand..." No. I don't NEED/HAVE to understand shit. What I NEED is for people to stop saying what I or anybody else NEEDS to do/say/think. The only things I NEED to do is...breathe, eat, drink, and get rid of the waste-products thereof. Everything else is subject to personal choice and circumstance. So everyone NEEDS to keep their advice to themselves when it's prefaced by that tired introduction. Not a big fan of air-quotes either. Dumbed-down, poor-man's irony. All for now...Must continue getting the study in order...GaP

A Letter A Friend Wrote...

2006-08-12T08:12:00.000-04:00

I have a fellow flight-attendant who sent a beautiful message to his Theory X CEO...Very adroit... _____________________________________________________________________ Our Collective Strength Share the TRUTH! & Tell the TRUTH! Dear Doug and Suzanne, I am in receipt of your emails regarding TA2 being voted down. Most notably Suzanne Boda's email regarding our new work rules. A very sad day indeed that your further demonstrate your lack of regard for the FA group at a time you state you wish to bridge the gap between NWA and the employees. True you need relief from the FA group but not at the expense of our health and the time away from our families under these horrible work conditions. I knew in voting NO that this is what would be coming and prepared myself for just that. Thankfully I know how to save and have an education. Thankfully the employees are an educated group that too know how to save. You are not dealing with gadfly individuals here jumping up and down for a larger piece of the pie. You have a united workforce who is fighting and will fight for what we deserve and for what WE have worked for. You have a workforce that will not be beat down and watch you and all the "EXECUTIVE TALENT" take the spoils once this company is "righted". As I have stated in past emails to you, Doug, we are viewed as a liability here just like the mechanics, the pilots, the baggage handlers and every other employee here that does not have a managerial position. At times I feel my 20 years account for nil. You state you want to strengthen relations with the employee group. Your words have no meaning as they are not backed by what you say. All you have managed to do is take with nothing in return. Suzanne, in the long list of what you are taking (Centry Email 8/01/06) please tell me one thing you have given? Passes are no longer a perk, no job security, no time between flights to get food, long days and minimum rest, 35/7, no 8/24, 75-100 hour lines, reserve having to fly up to 87:30 before a release - NOTHING. The fa's in Hawaii, how do you expect them to survive with the high cost of living and no base allowance? A Sick pay rate of 75%? You will have many sick FA's coming to work. The means to buy food will far outweigh the desire to stay home for rest so one can heal. In my last email to you Doug I asked why one should stay employed here at NWA? You stated (paraphrasing) "many good things are in the works". NAME ONE?? With these work rules? You have again further driven a divide between the employees and management. I ask myself why am I still here? Tell me, please, what is good about my job making $32,000 a year supporting a family (wife and two children) and working under these conditions? 41 years old ............ 'why am I still here'? NOTE: The front line employee group is an angry one. Whether intentional or not it shows on our faces in the cabin. You do not care as demonstrated by your actions. I ask why should I care (rhetorical)? WE FA's are NWA. WE deliver your product. WE keep this airline running by showing up on time and doing our jobs with pride and dignity. WE are your front line people. WE keep the people coming back. WE, the employees, are the grease that keeps the wheel spinning. DO YOU NOT GET IT? You are not in touch with the employees. You never have been and by your actions you never intend to be. YOU WROTE: "To truly succeed in the air transportation business Northwest must be a "winner" with all employees. As we proceed in our restructuring, and restore the airline to profitability, we believe that we have an opportunity to renew our relationship with coworkers." This is how you "RENEW" the relationship with coworkers? You shove this down our throats? Repeating an earlier question, what is one thing of positive value you have given to the work force who built this airline? "'OPPORTUNITY" passed you up starting with the mechanics. You are losing many good people who can no longer afford to stay here. You will attract the Wal-Mart greeter mentality worker who was just fired from Taco Bell because he cannot make a chalupa. It is time for a new leader with a vision for its customer and employees to take the helm. Your workforce is going broke, literally. Your workforce is leaving. Too bad as you had many chances to make a difference. Jeff W.... - LAX

TERRORISTS TO THE LEFT OF ME, UNEMPLOYMENT TO THE RIGHT…

2006-08-11T12:48:00.000-04:00

I’m sure you’ve heard the news of the foiled terrorist plot that originated out of Heathrow Airport yesterday morning. My roommate tried to warn me not to pay attention to the news but the concept and the big picture has finally sunk in. When I was at the gym this morning, most people discreetly avoided me, knowing my profession as a flight attendant…or glorified waiter, as the flying public seems to perceive me…or overpaid vending machines as our beloved CEO D.S. has allegedly dubbed us, even though he claims he didn’t. The point is moot considering the draconian paycuts I’m being asked to take while upper management rakes in the millions for the bang-up job of mismanaging the airline into bankruptcy. But I digress… So let’s see…I have an employer who wants to clusterfuck me with pay reductions and stringent work-conditions. And now I have to keep an eye out for terrorists with liquids and some kind of iniator…like cellphones, MP3 players, or what the hell…a camera with a flash-function…And I love when travelers are freshly interviewed after an event like this…The quotes usually go something like…”I know the delays are a hassle but it’s worth it to be safe.” Suuuure, it is. Let’s talk to these people in a month when they’re bitching at the security check-points about not being able to bring their hair-gel nor their bottles of water. It’s worth it to be safe, kids. Thing is, I’m glad the Brits seem to be more on top of this. We’re not safe. We never HAVE been. I’m very grateful for the inspectors, police detectives, and whoever else worked to prevent this tragedy from happening. Yet, in a way, the terrorists have already won, regardless. They’ve spread FEAR. They’ve slowed us down; they’ve given us the hassle-factor. It bloodies the nose of the true God that our culture truly worships and reveres: the wallet. You slow the money-flow and you do some REAL damage. You mess with the creature-conveniences of the Western world…you show the infidels with their bloated sense of entitlement some fear and frustration…and you’re in business. Nope. I don’t think I like this new century very much. GaP

Customer-Service Musings...

2006-07-21T11:34:00.000-04:00

I called in sick for my trip yesterday. I had a hoarse throat and the beginnings of a cold so I finally made the decision to call in. I was losing my voice toward the end of the flight. But it wasn’t just the physical ailments…I needed a bit of a mental break as well…The whole customer service thing is…or CAN BE a drag. It can be a twisted sort of mentality that allows the rationalization of total ownership of a front-line employee because one is parting coin for a service. If you have a problem with the product or the service from another area, why rip into the front-line person? THEY personally didn’t cause your problem. But indignant customers will harrumph that while you wear the company colors, you ARE the company…So I guess you have bear all of this unsavory behavior: exasperation, rudeness, ignorance, and just plain lack of social graces. And you have to be civil even though this behavior on an equal level out on the street would earn some of these folks a slap upside the head. Well, see…that’s the thing. When someone considers you an EQUAL or at least ANOTHER, you’re on even ground. There is a tolerant live-and-let-live mentality. But put someone in a uniform representing a company or a service, suddenly there’s this tacit, unconscious understanding that the customer OWNS that person. That they have the right to show you the nasty side of their nature because, by God, they paid for the right to do so. I’ve heard some people who have swallowed the customer-service Kool-Aid that it takes a certain gentility, kindness, and passion to serve others. Fair enough. I’ll give Miss Manners that one. But this point only holds water when the servee understands that the server is a PERSON and not a menial. He and she will do their best to anticipate your needs and the customer will APPRECIATE that you’re providing a service…or trying to. Well, there are MANY people that DON’T appreciate it. They’ve rented a servant and he/she should hop to it, smiling at whatever indignity they’re slung with because after all, THE CUSTOMER is paying their salary and for the wonderful experience of being humbled and belittled as a bonus. Miss Manners predicted that service would be getting worse in the Twenty-First Century. Because Serving Others would increasingly be seen as demeaning and humiliating and not the gentle art that it actually is…And I think she’s right. For my OWN part, whenever someone says someone rude, crass, stupid, or gauche to ME, I’m trying not to respond at all. The silence usually says it all. One passenger asked me on a flight if I was going to be a good mood this time. Okay, maybe she was on a former flight where I was wigging out. Fair enough. But it’s not the way to start things off on a brand new foot, is it? So I handed her the headset and didn’t answer…later she apologized and explained that she was trying to be funny and NOT be smart. “Okay”, I replied. And that was that. That’s the approach I want to keep using: Trying to be kind and ignoring all things that annoy or provoke me. This can work in my occupation since I don’t work for tips. I could NEVER be a waiter. They almost have to SURVIVE on generous servings on indignity. So I’m sparing a thought for THEM…GaP

Bravo Humanity

2006-07-21T03:16:00.000-04:00

Here's a response to a friend who sent me some link regarding the whole Israel/Lebanon hullaballoo. I'm all hopeful, eh wot? ___________________________________________ Steven... The site has been suspended. Personally, I'm taking bets as to when World War III actually starts. I'm giving it 'til Christmas. Or Ramadan. Or whatever dumb religious observance comes first. Who knows? Getting blown out of the gene pool could be the best thing that's ever happened to us, really. And to THINK, it'll all be down to the oldest, deadliest game of "they started it" ever... Bravo, humanity...GaP

Vacation Is Nearly Over

2006-07-13T08:39:00.000-04:00

Russ... God, I hope so... My self-created vacation is about to end...Learned a few things about myself, the man I'm with, and how travel to far-off places isn't always necessary. How did your visit with the Icelandic one pan out? Or dare I ask? Saw SUPERMAN RETURNS. Enjoyed it. Has a dark adult sheen to it...feels like a continuation of the first two but with an innoncence-lost tinge to it... Hope you're well, my friend...GaP _______________________________________________________ G--, Sometimes the travels to far off places can be a diversion which takes us away from the real journey ... the one inside. It's when travels augment and illumine the psyche that they are really beneficial. I remember ready that Carl Jung derided the "age of exploration," Shakleton, et al., as a rather sissified period. He said the real daring explorations are the ones we make into our own interior. Travel, it seems to me, takes us away from the ordinary and gives us new eyes ... not unlike Superman's x-ray vision. The visit with Jeannie of Antarctica went very well. We had a good time exploring parts of Virginia and North Carolina. It's nice to have a female companion; again, new eyes ... not to mention other comforts. Hmm? I don't know where you got the idea she's Icelandic. She's Swedish/Welsh by genetics and Oregonian by birth. I was going to see Superman Returns this afternoon. When I got to the wrong theater at showtime the only thing on was Pirates of the Carribean. Too long ... too much lame action. It was cool inside, though, on a very hot day. Tell me more about your "self created vacuum." What was that all about? I'll have the computer on the trip, so I'll be in touch. All best, Russ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Russ... I reread my message...and it said self-created VACATION. Not sure why I referred to it as such. Maybe it was the cobbled-together nature of it...part-travel, part lounging at home...In this case, travel DID help us to illuminate what was going on inside. Except for Halifax and Yarmouth, I didn't particularly enjoy the long road travel. Plus Bill just got rattled with the change of routine... So we've been home for a few days now...no problems... Carolyn is having her birthday party today...thrown by ME. Ray is getting a bit...resentful? Lonely? because of my extended absences from home. I guess he likes a familial presence around that doesn't walk on all fours...Ah well...he's had the opportunity to be tired of my CONSTANT presence once upon a time...now he's got the opposite... Let me know what you think of the film when you see it...Oh, and in a classic case of cross-media pollination, Supes NOW has a crystalline-based Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic based on the movies.(The WB's SMALLVILLE also had Clark creating the Fortress in the same way...I guess it's an iconic image) Superman is a mythology that grows and evolves over time...Comics influenced the radio programs which created Jimmy Olsen and Kryptonite, both of which were later introduced in the comic. Then Superboy(The Adventures of Superman...when he was a boy!) comes along...and informs the Smallville part of the myth...Then Supes is radically reinvented in 1986 by John Byrne...all of the fun stuff was taken out...his Kryptonian relatives,(Kara Zo-rel...Supergirl) the knowledge of his culture, Superdog...BUT Clark and Martha Kent, his adoptive parents are still around. THAT's an improvement. It's good for Kal-El to have a simple refuge out in the heartland when he needs a break. But now Supergirl is back...by popular demand. She was a popular character as well... But I digress... However, I think I'll be buying Seasons 1 and 2 of the George Reeves television show...and Season 1 of SUPERBOY. I AM a fanboy... Hope you're well,my good friend...GaP

Boston Pops...With Aimee Mann!

2006-06-29T15:48:00.000-04:00

29 June 2006 Thursday Yesterday, the long-awaited Aimee Mann concert sort of snuck up on me…I had decided early in the game that it would be Carolyn who would be accompanying me. She and I have a history with the music of Aimee Mann. I kept this special performance from her for about a month. I was going to spring it on her right at the last minute…I told her to meet me at the bus-station for the 1530 bus to Boston. So Ray drives me down and we expected her to wheel in at 13:29:58 in keeping with her well-documented sense of scatterbrained, hippie chaos-theory…But she showed up in plenty of time… Thing is, she just happened to be wearing a LOST IN SPACE Aimee Mann t-shirt. She MUST have known. So I sprang it on her… We rode down to Boston, catching up each other with the other’s life-adventures. We got down there in plenty of time for a bite to eat and a couple of pints at Pizzeria Uno’s . Finding Symphony Hall was simplicity itself. (All of this comes from a bit of pre-planning…internet research and whatnot. Always pays to be a bit prepared… So we both found ourselves in a relatively unfamiliar situation. We were underdressed in a very classy black-tie milieu. It didn’t concern ME much but Carolyn made mention of it. We were seated at floor-level tables. The place began to fill up with what were obviously season ticketholders. suits and bowties, very posh and respectable. A pillar-of-society, wine-bar sophisticate crowd…some of them looking pretty pompous, businessmen with their reading glasses dangling out of their mouths like surrogate pipes or cigars when they weren’t actually looking OVER them in that disapproving dad manner. Humans are funny. But I digress… For openers, Keith Lockhart conducted a pieces from Bjork, Elvis Costello, Chris Rouse, and Gershwin. (AN AMERICAN IN PARIS…Carolyn was in heaven. I was politely bored…) SO…After an intermission and the band’s instrument setup, the band shows up, looking all rumpled rock-musician-like. Then Aimee shows up in a frilly tank-top and jeans…Carolyn was validated and the singer’s poise, integrity, and individuality was proudly displayed. (Yes…I know its unabashed hero-worship. What can I say? I’m a fan…) I can’t remember the exact sequence of the set-list…GOODBYE, CAROLINE… WISE UP… IT’S NOT… LITTLE BOMBS… LOST IN SPACE…PAVLOV’S BELL…KING OF THE JAILHOUSE…VIDEO…I’M WITH STUPID…CALLING IT QUITS…SAVE ME(The song she lost the Oscar to Phil Collins to…His song for a Disney Cartoon, no less. She made wry mention of that…)…and she did FRANKENSTEIN for the encore. The orchestral version turned into something special. And God Bless Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops. (It was clear that he was a fan…As well as MANY people in the crowd. She has a very DEVOTED following. It was interesting to see the polite…tolerance from some of the classical crowd. Maybe she even won some them over… Wow. This is something I’ll never forget. Below is a message I sent to her MySpace mailbox… It was a great time… ----------------------------------------------------- Aimee... Just wanted to say that you put on an amazing show...You looked suprised, pleased, and amazed as to how your songs were being so lushly interpreted. Just wanted to let you know that my companion was feeling a bit underdressed but when you strolled out onstage in your jeans, she was put immediately at ease. Thank you for such a great show...and thanks to Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops. It was something I'll always remember. GaP P.S.--I especially liked your introduction to "SAVE ME." "The song I lost the Oscar to Phil Collins Disney cartoon song with..." Or words to that effect.

Response To "Fourth-Dimensional Rat-Maze"

2006-05-28T11:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a response a friend sent to me regarding my "rat-maze" life-comparison...GaP____________________ Cher ami, Was just re-reading your postal card depicting Hotel Carpenter. Your observations were profound in as much as they were deep statements from your inner being. I would agree that the notion that our existence is no more than "a 4th dimensional rat-maze designed to propel us - or trap us" through existence. Then you mention a life maze in which our lives are played out on walls leading to dead-ends or plateaus. Fact and fiction interplay in those meanderings, it seems. The questions coming from deep within are age-old: who am I...why am I....where am I....what am I....where am I going... I have a rather simplistic outlook on these same matters that I'd like to share with you, dear one. First, I know that I am unique - as you are unique. I know that I am not a random creation, but the product of the will of a transcendent Being that has called me into created reality....if that is true then I have a purpose. That purpose to justify my unique creation I must seek out...and when I have found that purpose for my ontological being...then it is in carring out the purpose of my life that I find fulfillment in the created order of things which will eventually lead me to where I am going...back to the totality found in that non-created Transcendent Being that brought me life in the first place. And to top it all - I was given the gift of the ability to love...and what a gift. But the fulfillment of that gift can only be found in the Giver of the Gift, though in life we find some few upon whom and with whom and from whom we share the gift, though in comparatively small measure. You analogy of the maze is quite within reason. However, I look at life as a crazy-quilt. We see only the underside of the quilt...with all the threads hanging, and no apparrent pattern. An underside of a quilt that brings shadows and darkness at times. However....there is the upside of the quilt with a beautifully sewn pattern, all in order and pleasing to the eye....comforting...and brilliant. Life revealed - eventually. Wishing you sunshine as you celebrate the anniversary of love in your life. Did you know that we, too, are celebrating an anniversary? It was one year ago this month on the return flight from AMS that the gift of friendship was given us. I value that gift and I hold your dearly in my thoughts. Thanks for the e-mails and the snail-mails. They are meaningful sharings of thought, heart and soul. Friends help us to understand, to love, and to move forward to the Giver of the Gift. A bientot, mon cher ami, Charles-Raymond

Summation

2006-05-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

Got to hang out with a good friend last night. Very sexually-open lady, very descriptive and liberated in that sense. She's always a blast to have over...usually I start to wilt after 2200 or so but it was so good to see her, I could have talked for at least a couple more hours. But she had to work and I had to get to the gym the next morning. She's a very sexually active lady. She's had couplings/relationship dynamics that a scriptwriter couldn't dream up. I don't know how she does it. That's some intense shit. It's taken me a year just to get used to the idea of ONE person in my life...and all the fears and insecurities thereof... Just took the dog for a nice, long, exhausting walk. I love it when the big doofus is at a slow trot when we're coming up the driveway. As I walk him on the leash, I'm conscious of this constant contest of wills that takes place...Or rather, it's more of a case of human agenda versus canine agenda. He wants to sniff every bush, piss on every pole, basically just be everywhere at once...and here I am trying to be patient. I asked for this when I told Ray he could adopt a dog. I think Buddy has changed our life for the better...but there's no kidding ourselves. It IS a challenge and a responsibility. And a dog's personality really infiltrates your life, you know? For better for worse...and he IS a two-person animal. Still more of a cat-person but one still has to allow for change in one's life...And I HAVE a cat in my life: Bill's NOURIE. ...I knew it was going to happen eventually: I'm quickly coming up on 38(two years shy of forty)and I'm already starting to feel changes in my body that I'm not DIGGIN'. Metabolism is slowing down and the torso is slowly heading south, distorting the size of trousers that I usually take. Regular, vigorous bouts of exercise are required to keep the furnace(and the calories) burning. Yep. Ageing sure is KEWL. All for now...GaP

The Broad Strokes

2006-05-22T15:32:00.000-04:00

Just managed to get the comic collection upstairs. Last week's mega-rains caused some soaking down in the cellar which neccesitated some wet-vaccing. Many thanks to my roommate who did the lion's share of the work. He's the handyman who keeps the place running. While the comic collection didn't get touched by the rain, I decided to take my babies out of that dank, damp environment and put them in my bedroom until further notice. On Mother's Day, during the worst of the storm-activity, Bill and I went down to visit his mom and his aunt. A few other family members showed up. If mom and her sister suspected the nature of our relationship, they said nothing. Denial is the way to go... I returned home all stressed from the driving only to get bitchy when the dog was bouncing in my face...In complete self-absorption, I was completely oblivious to the fact that Ray had been bailing out my cellar. Caused a bit of friction between us...but I've been ignoring my responsibilities as a homeowner. He may not be regular with the cash contributions but he's done many repairs for me...making new plumbing pipes for the washing machine downstairs, for example... I had my one year anniversary date with Bill at the same restaurant we set up a meeting at...(Blake's). Then we hit an Irish Pub for a couple pints of cider...A good night... Our day together was yesterday, doing nothing in particular. We shopped at Newbury Comics, went out to eat...It's what you do on a Sunday. Saw THE PRODUCERS on DVD. Amusing but a reminder of why I don't like musicals... Had a good trip overseas this past week. I decided that while morale at work was grey and bleak, I didn't have to make myself miserable...The power of positive intent. Makes a difference when you smile a bit. A bit of sunshine goes a long way, trite as it sounds... During my layover, I saw a movie with a fellow-film/pop-culture afficionado...He wanted to see AUDITION but didn't want to see it alone. A psychological thriller that builds up to a horrific fifteen minute finale involve piano-wire and anti-acupuncture. Will never forget that sawing sound. Yeesh. The morale of the movie? Don't ignore some very obvious(to us, the audience anyway) red-flag warning signs...or you could end up without a foot or two... The rain is over. Say Hallujah... Not going to see THE DA VINCI CODE. Don't care enough to. Book was a page-turner but didn't want to hype-surf...

Mother's Day Relief

2006-05-09T13:28:00.000-04:00

I'm in the middle of creating a First Anniversary Card for my significant other. Typically, I start with a small idea and it balloons into a full-blown project...Don't want to drown myself in it...I could do the cut-and-paste on my next AMSterdam layover but of course, I can't bring scissors with me on the trip...so it looks as if I'll have to buy some over there...I don't feel like tackling the monster-collage right now... Every time I walk into a drug-store or a card-shop, I'm reminded that Mother's Day is less than a week away. And EVERY time, I feel a minor flush of relief that I don't have to deal with contacting a manic-depressive mother anymore. I don't have to call and hear the guilt-trips, self-pity, nor the melodrama. I feel some guilt about this...but mostly a bit of sadness that mom never got herself any help, never really found some coherence or clarity in her life...If there is an afterlife or a higher state of existence, I hope she's in a happier place...I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with the mental-merry-go-round any more... Sorry, Mom. I guess I did love you. I love the person you could have been even more. Hope you're well...GaP

HOSTEL

2006-05-08T21:16:00.000-04:00

On my last layover in AMSTERDAM, a colleague and I saw HOSTEL on his computer/DVD player. Presented by Quentin Tarantino, it begins in AMS with three backpackers, two Americans and one Icelander bent on sex and getting high. They get lured to a hostel in Eastern Europe which turns out to be a front for a black-market kidnapping ring. Hostellers disappear, usually after partying. They've been slipped drugs and are spirited away to this abandoned factory or whatever that is basically serving as a giant abattoir. Unbelievably affluent clients pay for the sick thrill of torturing these hapless travelers to death. Americans fetch the highest price...The film rattles around uncomfortably in your head for quite awhile after viewing it. You wonder if such a place could actually exist, if the normal-looking strait-laced businessman next to you gets off on donning slaugherhouse gear and turning a human-being into a pile of meat. And you wonder what kind of mind would enjoy such a grisly pastime...especially when one of the sadistic characters had a young daughter of his own... It draws parallels with the United States official line regarding their interrogation practices abroad, not to mention American arrogance and imperialism. You can easily understand why a stupid, swaggering fratboy American would fetch the highest bidding price for the flesh-rending... Some of the evil is punished...but it leaves an unsettled feeling in the pit of one's stomach to entertain the notion that this shit is closer to REAL than we'd like to imagine...

Fourth-Dimensional Rat Maze

2006-05-03T15:46:00.000-04:00

I wasn't in a particularly despondent mood when this thought/idea/concept came into my head today. I was going for a long-overdue jog and then this question hit me...What if Life is nothing but a Fourth-Dimensional Rat Maze? No maps to guide you, wrong turns and choices that lead you down into dead-end situations, jobs, relationships...Every positive turn of fate or providence is the metaphorical piece of cheese designed to keep you going, to keep searching for what YOU believe might be the truth, the ideal way to live your life. Picture endless corridors playing scenes of your life like hi-definition big-screen television. You cobble together a map with the music you listen to, with the books that you read, with teachers and mentors that you admire, with the films, plays, and television shows that you watch...And sometimes it even makes sense... And you know the maze has an exit...but what under which circumstances will you find your way out? Will you die peacefully in the arms of your lover at peace with your family, with your affairs in order, and with the approval of whatever deity you've chosen to worship? Or will you die a slow lingering death as some disease eats away at you? Or some bullet or truck careens into you? Will you have grown? Will you have learned something from your twisting, turning journey through the Life Labyrinth? Well, there's no knowing for sure, is there? Because unlike the mazes you've seen in activity books, THIS maze can't be seen from a bird's eye view. Wrong turns are plentiful, hindsight is crystal clear twenty/twenty vision. Everyone else navigating through thinks THEIR route is best...and you can learn from them...but this maze is your OWN. A fascinating yet disconcerting concept... Enter Here--->

Jesus, What A Dream

2006-05-02T06:08:00.000-04:00

Had this sprawling, intense dream. I dreamt I had this bohemian friend. I'd known them for a while. I remember that I wanted to get to the Mall on my day off to hang out and do some useless shopping. I went over to my friend's house and her father did NOTHING but berate and insult me for my lack of responsibility and drive. He cut up some jeans of mine...turned them into really ill-fitting cutoffs. Then he wanted to foist off this hand-held business-card creation machine at me but only because there was something wrong with it. Felt hot to the touch... Anwyay, I decided to dress up in my pseudo-Eighties clothing. I kept screwing around, lollygagging...couldn't quite seem to get out of the house...Asshole dad went to work. Then I screwed around on the internet and said hello to my bohemian friend on MySpace. (The friend is loosely based on ASH.) Eventually the friend comes home from school with some other friends. And the rest of the family members...The mother is beautiful, warm, loved hugs...She seemed to genuinely love and appreciate everyone she met. Some of my friend's FRIENDS started showing up to hang out. They were all making fun of the old man's bluster. It struck me that the dad was miserable, trapped by his success, working himself into an early grave, and all stressed out and taking it out on the world. Or whatever target was at hand. The father returned, in work clothes. He was sweaty and filthy. He proffered his and a token apology. It was half-hearted and I got the impression that I'd be on the receiving end again when his mood shifted... Eventually, the family goes out on an outing...like they're going out to Sunday Church or something. They had a baby too...(Looked like the little cherub from A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, the movie with Jim Carrey) I took that as my cue to leave...So I'm not sure that I want to visit the Mall now. It's about one p.m. A co-worker of mine, the lovable but shrill-voiced Jillie tells me to get my ass to the mall because it's what I wanted to do in the first place. We're driving through the city... The bus-driver was a gent named DON...in reality he works for CONCORD TRAILWAYS. So as we're driving through the city, the passenger in the first seat and I decide to help clean up the bus...I come up with a greasy stripped engine from God knows where...I find a home for it on the dashboard. I think I had to discard most of the trash at a nearby trash receptacle in the city...And there was more than one CT bus so I had LOOK for Don. I could tell I was straining his patience... And that was it. What a dream-blender...GaP

Coolness Transcends Age...

2006-04-25T10:43:00.000-04:00

A groovy new image to start the day. I was down at the gym right when it was supposed to open and no one was there to open it. There was a crowd of us standing outside at 0500. Since it was the Y, there's sometimes someone in residence to open up the place. So enter Old Joe, World War II veteran who parks his car there at THREE A.M. goes on this longass walk. So to get someone's attention, he turns up his stereo and has Elvis belting out SUSPICIOUS MINDS. I doubt the fact that he wears a hearing aid makes any difference...Eventually, he got exasperated and got the hell out of Dodge with his lights off...The place was eventually opened by the usual suspect. She was late because she'd been involved in a fender-bender on her way to work. Read this cool graphic nove...THE FORTY-NINERS. I won't bore you with the plot/s but one of them involves a young man coming out and dealing with his homosexuality in PostWar America. It was handled sensitively and realistically amongst all the other storylines. This was a prequel and the two characters were featured in the regular title(TOP TEN), albeit fifty years later...STILL together. Very heartwarming... And speaking of that, I'm planning an impromptu supper for my significant other tonight. Nothing fancy. Just a pizza, some wine, a melted waxed wine-bottle candle, some romantic music...There's been a minor bit of static between us and I wanted to talk it out...and show him how much he meant to me. I've been insensitive...and I want him to know I'm going to work on changing that. The ageing process...I think of when I firsted started as a flight-attendant...I remember how restless I was, how many times I traveled to Scotland. I was averaging three times a year even after we stopped Glasgow service...(probably the happiest I'd ever been with this job...) Now I look back at that spastic, restless, naive twenty-something and wondered what happened to him? His sense of adventure? The many friends he had across the UK and Europe? Now it all seems like it belongs to another person. I know this is the ageing process. I know perceptions and attitudes change...But I didn't think the wonder would leave THIS soon. Maybe I'm bored with my OWN life? I don't miss the hyperactivity and naivete...So I guess it's a trade-off. STILL, I want to go to Scotland this summer to visit some friends...I don't want to get completely out of the habit... All for now...GaP

Cutting Your Losses...

2006-04-23T09:11:00.000-04:00

My flight canceled Friday night...It was an embarrassing lack of coordinated effort on my employer's part We were on the plane for four hours and to be fair, passengers were reasonably calm but they were getting ugly fast. The Captain was inconsistent and not timely with his messages...No one seemed to know exactly what was wrong or what to do. I could understand why passengers were getting pissed off. When someone FINALLY made a decision and canceled tht flight, I chose the "pay-for-fly"...cutting my losses and sitting out the rest of the days of the trip. To get PAID, I'd have to sit by my phone and wait for them to assign me something else... I didn't get paid dime one for waiting around through someone else's ineptitude. At least passengers got put up for the night...TWO for some of them...and you KNOW that my employer would rather DIE than fork out money like that...So I took the Silver Line out to South Station and ended up spending the remainder of the night there until my bus for Manchester left at 0800. STILL better than working bleary-eyed on a full airplane trying to explain to passengers for the millionth time that I DON'T have access to connecting-gate/rebooking information. Better to have an unpaid weekend off... Customer service is cruel and unusual punishment...

Dream, Dream, Dream...

2006-04-12T04:23:00.000-04:00

Maybe I AM becoming more like my dad. I'm getting increasingly anti-social. I got up early to hit the gym today and once I took the dog out for the walk, that notion went out the window. just want to return to bed...and why not? Call me lazy... And speaking of bed, I've had the latest in a series of recent dreams that I'm GLAD to wake up from. I wouldn't say that they're nightmares...but they DO depict situations and modes of existence that are fairly undesirable and awkward. I think deep down they might represent my fears of relationships, of love...But my feelings for Bill are clear. But they are confused sometimes...Obviously, deprogramming myself will be a life's work...(sigh...) My roommate is gone on a quick trip to Florida to scout a small retirement home(shack) for himself. I LIKE the time on my own... Everything in moderation? All for now...GaP

Catch-Up Time...

2006-04-11T12:13:00.000-04:00

Lot To Catch Up On... A lot to catch up on...I live a slow life...so how can I get behind on my journal/blogging? Just letting it pile up, I suppose... Taking it back for a week...I've been walking the dog. That may sound boring but I'm getting to know the little critter...(little! He's a Yellow Lab. He's a small horse...)and getting some degree of exercise. It teaches you responsibility and caring for another being. And now that my roommate is gone for a couple days, I have full responsibility to him. Feeding, walking, and keeping him company...which I'm not really doing as I sit here at the computer... I've been spending less and less time at home and more and more time with Bill. It's almost like we're living together. I have to say I'm glad for the day I have here to just be in my own space...I gave him some moral support last week when work was sucking... And Saturday, we went up to Quebec together...We left at about 0815 or so and did the five-and-a-half hour journey up 93 North...Cross the Canadian border, take a right at La Patrie, head over to Woburn, take a left there, head on through Piopolis and eventually onto Marston. We checked into the hotel and made contact with my dad. (Wow. Just receive three actual letters. Not e-mails. Actual LETTERS! The written form of communication lives ON...) My dad agreed to take us over to my uncle's sugar cabin that's right off a gravel road. He wasn't boiling...It was too cold. I missed the busy period over the past month. That's usually when my uncle is scurrying around feeding the massive wood-furnace, checking water-levels, twiddling knobs...It's a worker. Although I didn't get to see the process, I got to see the next best thing...My dad, Bill, Uncle Bert, and I just sat down, shot the breeze, drank some beer, and took some pictures...and my uncle was kind enough to bequeath us with a couple cans of the syrup. When we got back to my dad's shack, Bill and my dad sat down and shot the breeze. They seemed to hit it off rather nicely. My dad exercised his gifts as a raconteur as we hung out. If my dad suspected Bill's sexuality and our own relationship with each other, he gave no sign. Bill got a full dose of my dad's co-dependent Yellow Labrador TUBBY and the Lu, the Malamut. I have to say that I enjoyed the ride back but I was traveled out. Monday was a chillout/hangout day. Bill called in sick for work. He wanted to do get some errands done...fun stuff like staining the deck, getting a haircut, staining the deck...He also had a jones for doing some "fag-shopping", as he put it. That meant a trip to the Christmas Tree shop to shop for home-accessories. He's always like a kid in a candy-shop when he does this. He's house-proud and loves to interior-decorate... Monday was the day he put the chairs out on the deck for the first time since last year. We sat there, drank, and listened to his iPod. Spring had officially begun. I go back to work on Friday. With the time left, I should reconnect with local friends. I haven't seen little Josiah for Christ knows how long...Not to mention The Tara, Starchild, Jason...I worked for George last week. And I really should go visit my sister. She's prone to manic depression like my mother and I. All for now...GaP

ARE We The Great Satan?

2006-04-07T06:10:00.000-04:00

I've had politics on my mind for the last couple of days. I've been listening to National Public Radio the last few days and I've noticed a recurring theme: The erosion of our civil liberties. Yesterday on THE EXCHANGE, Anthony Romero was being interviewed. He's head of the ACLU(American Civil Liberties Union). Later, on the Diane Riehm show, there was a piece on homeland security and someone called in to say that she was VERY concerned about the LACK of concern regarding the whole phone-tapping scandal. "Oh, but we're at WAR," they answer. "Our government is PROTECTING us." So in order to feel safe, we're just handing over the keys to our liberty. What a mess. The only consolation is that our beloved Commander-In-Chief King George makes a boob out of himself every time he opens his mouth. This whole thing is in the air. V FOR VENDETTA, for example. I haven't had a chance to see the movie yet but it IS something I will rectify when I return from Quebec. The catchphrase says it all: "People should not fear their government. The government should fear it's people." Even the comics I'm reading have these overreaching arcs regarding government control, conspiracies, and registration acts. Something is in the air...and walls are going up along borders. This is a scary time...

Capitalist Assimilation

2006-04-05T19:16:00.000-04:00

A pilot friend of mine sent an e-mail to the Orange County News...The gist goes like this... "...It is not that Orange County is some prestine, untouched wilderness. There is only one small patch of land in the county that hasn't been worked by man. That patch is a bit of old growth forest on Montpelier. Today's question is one of growth and development. Even limited growth eventually fills up the land. I lived in the county for thirty years and then moved away. Today, having since experienced the effects of sprawl on my soul, I would make different choices about building two houses on undeveloped land in Orange County." This was my response-------> Russ... Excellent letter. But we all know what the ultimate outcome will BE, don't we? Or rather, I should say, we know which outcome will be most likely. I'm beginning to think capitalism itself is an advanced virus that will not REST until it sucks everything dry and moves on to wider vistas. That's why the promise of going out into space has me shrugging my shoulders. So f--king what? We're just going to export our bullshit up THERE. Before industrialization and money, we had power-hungry individuals, yes. A lust for land, people to rule, and resources aren't really NEW...but industrialization and the concept of money have given us ways to measure and commodify our so-called "worth", our prestige and power index. Again, maybe this concrete consumption is supposed to happen. It's like an overwhelming avalanche from Mount Everest and all of the conservation efforts in the offing is like putting a snow-blower in front of the roaring tons of snow and ice. What, do we actually expect humanity to somehow wake up, become enlightened in a joyous New Age rapture, and start hugging trees? Going back to the land? Good luck. So bring it ON. Let's top out. Apparently, this is what we REALLY want...Especially in the good ol' U.S. of A. Let the assimilation continue. Speaking of THAT, I just slurped up three more episodes of the STAR TREK FAN COLLECTIVE BORG Box Set. That's an apt metaphor, isn't it? Cold assimilation and conformity or vibrant individuality? Depends which one is more lucrative, I suppose... I received the book today. Many thanks... You are a man of passion and conviction, Captain. I'm proud to call you a friend...GaP

Back Home Again

2006-04-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

My nine-day, triple-whammy Amsterdam extravaganza is done with. Freedom for a few days. I have a two-day Fort Myers trip on Wednesday that I was trying to ditch but so far, no dice. When I return from that, I plan on doing a flying visit to Marston, Quebec to visit my dad and to see my uncle's sugar-shack before it gets too late into the spring. I'll be heading up with Bill. I'll pass him off as my "good buddy". I'm sure my dad knows deep down but I'm just going to play it casual. We're only going to be up there for about twenty-four hours anyway... Yesterday, Bill and I went over to Portsmouth...visited BULLMOOSE RECORDS...a kickass independent record store. I spent FAR more money than I should have...Here are the purchases... Went over to BULLMOOSE RECORDS yesterday in Portstmouth with Bill. My purchases... ONE KISS LEADS TO ANOTHER---GIRL GROUP SOUNDS--4 DISC box set A Pete Seeger Album that I didn't already have... A bunch of discs from RICHARD CHEESE. He does lounge covers of really hard risque modern rock songs. Radiohead's CREEP, Nirvana's RAPE, Disturbed's DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS--It was featured in the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. YELLO--THE EYE Their latest album used. Came with an extra disc or remixes. Bill bought a QUEEN tribute album...Electronica versus Metal--TIE YOUR MIX DOWN. He also bought two bluegrass albums, a FLOCK OF SEAGULLS greatest hits package. (Timeless and dated at the same time...) Naturally, I loaded all of it into his iTunes software program...I've begun doing the same thing with MINE. Listening to Girl Group Box Set now. A unique, magical sound...captures the ache of teenage girl melodrama. Great harmonies, fantastic hooks. Worth every penny... Stay attuned...GaP

When Animals BREAK FREE(And Shred Paper-Towels)!

2006-03-30T06:42:00.000-05:00

Jesus... I leave for one day and the folks in my life are bedeviled by their animal companions. To wit: My partner picked me up at the bus-station yesterday and was in a dour mood. It was like someone had died. Turns out Nourie the Cat had shredded MORE paper-towel for the third time in a row. The REAL problem was all of the bullshit going on at work...Nourie was only the final straw. So he makes all this noise about getting rid of the cat and I try to keep things in perspective for him without taking sides, so to speak. I think the cat might miss me. I'm over at Bill's place so often that Nourie probably thinks I'm one of his "parents". Anwyay, Bill was glad that I stayed with him. He was feeling down. Meanwhile, over at my house, Buddy the free-spirited Yellow Lab made a break for it when Ray was airing out the house. He brought Buddy in forgetting that the front door was open. So when he heads back IN, the front door is wide open and the dog is LONG GONE. He made it over to Goldenrods, the greasy-spoon take-out two miles down the road and then there was a sighting downtown, a couple miles in the other direction. Turns out the litte f__ker took a nibble out of the mother of two kids. I'm sure I'm going to get the details from Ray when he wakes up this morning. Our animal companions always seem to bring out the best and the worst in us, don't they? Tonight will be my third AMS trip in a series of three. Yesterday's flight back home was virtually seemless...Gracious people, polite, low-maintenance. I don't think the passenger call-lights rang once. Too bad that couldn't be a trend. Some days are just smoother than others... All for now...GaP

Adjusting To The Canine In My Life...

2006-03-27T07:02:00.000-05:00

Just came back from my lastest AMS trip yesterday. I spent the night at my significant other's place. Of course, it was good to see the highly sublime and amusing feline Nourie. He almost feels like our child. Bill dropped me off at the house and my roommate's dog Buddy was all excited, happy to see me. I didn't feel like sleeping so I put the leash on him and took him for a walk. It didn't feel like a chore...for the first time in...EVER. It was a nice, early-morning stroll through the nearly empty streets. The sun was rising, it was early spring. It was an easygoing, reflective experience. Buddy and I enjoyed each other's company. Is this the bond between man and man's best friend? Now I understand the importance of animal companions in one's life despite the work that they can sometimes be...

Betting Against Myself...

2006-03-23T17:18:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like all of the goals I've set for myself during the week have been met. One would think that I'm actually showing some iniative, drive, and responsibility. I assisted my Attorney/Ambassador friend today in getting caught up on his side-work. He's an immigration lawyer, BIG-time Democrat, Diplomatic Activist and all-around eccentric character. He seems like a bow-tied, country-lawyer but don't be fooled. He has a brain like a steel trap and is MOST eccentric. Which is why I volunteer my time to him. That and it allows me a look into a world that I normally wouldn't be privy to. Political rally dinners, a press-conference for a former presidential candidate, being a part of some peace delegations he hosts from time to time. Plus, he's an employer who doesn't pay me whoAPPRECIATES my work versus an ACTUAL employer looking to cut my pay, benefits, and self-esteem with the message that I have to LIKE it. God Bless The Corporate States of America. Anwyay, I finished the painting job today. This means I can actually accomplish things with some motivation. I won the bet with myself... A very dear friend today showed me an episode of COLD CASE. I won't bore you with the plot details but it involved an innocent Pollyanna of a white girl being courted by a black/African American juke-joint juvenile deliquent girl. It took place in the era of Prohibition so the idea of a bi-racial, lesbian relationship would have spun some heads. But it was a beautiful, heartfelt, albeit tragic story. It had me misting up at the end...Carolyn came over to hug me. It was such a potent depiction of love and happiness, transcending race, sexuality, and even time. Beautiful. The world needs more love. And I mean REAL love. Not the placebo/snake-oil pap that Hollywood and mass-produced romance novels try to sell us... All for now...GaP

Coasting Right Along...

2006-03-22T13:24:00.000-05:00

Sitting here at the computer, I.M.-ing someone, writing this blog, and writing a letter because my dial-up is relatively slower. I managed to get another phase of the room-painting completed today. If I keep this up, I may actually become a de-facto handyman/homeowner type. Then we'll REALLY know that the world's about to end or something. Heard something today on the Diane Riehm(sp?) show on National Public Radio about the fading art of conversation. (I forget who the guest was but he'd written a book on it...) All of the usual subjects were discussed: The modern trend toward self-absorbed NON-listening and how the internet is helping or hindering our conversation skills. I wish I was more of the casual breeze-shooting, chat-warmly-with-a-stranger type...but I tend to withdraw. Maybe it's my customer-relation job or a cultivated sense of cynicism. But the odds of having a reasonably intelligent, stimulating, heartfelt, passionate conversation are relatively low. What was it that Ghandi said? "Be the change you want to see in the world". (?) All for now...GaP

Customer Service Illness

2006-03-21T14:57:00.000-05:00

I want to send Doctor Zapf some flowers...Read on_____________________________ Being friendly to customers makes you ill: study 16 March 2006 FRANKFURT - People who have to smile all the time in their jobs are more likely to fall ill than others, according to a study. Most at risk are flight attendants, sales personnel and call centre operators who are forced to pretend to be friendly to customers, psychologists at Frankfurt University said. People in these jobs are more likely to suffer from depression, according to the study released Thursday in advance of publication in the consumer magazine Good Advice. "Every time a person is forced to repress his true feelings, there are negative consequences for his health," said Professor Dieter Zapf, a researcher into human emotions. The study tested students working in an imaginary call centre who were subject to abuse from clients. Some of the participants were allowed to answer back, while others had to be polite and friendly all the time. Those who stood up to clients had a rapid heartbeat for a brief period, but for those who had to remain friendly their heart was still racing long after the client had hung up. The conclusion reached by the psychologists was that being friendly against one's will causes nothing but stress. Flight attendants, shop assistants and caregivers also took part in the study of emotional behavior, which involved 4,000 people, according to Zapf. "We are all able to reign in our emotions," Zapf said. "It becomes difficult when you have to do this over a protracted period as cabin attendants are forced to on long-haul flights. "These people need space away from the passengers where they can be on their own and let their feelings run free. "We have to get away from the 'customer is king' attitude and show more respect to those working in the service industries," Zapf said. DPA

Today Is The First Day Of...

2006-03-21T14:24:00.000-05:00

Okay. Here we go. Going to try and keep a commitment to blogging on a regular basis here. I've kept the timetable I've set for myself this week. I've done my taxes when I said I would, I worked on painting the study as I planned for myself. So now I'll keep the momentum going. One of the bloggers whom I admire said he'd be updating his recommended blogs links, eliminating those who don't regularly update...and I don't want to be one of them. (The Frumpy Professor...the learned gent who inspired me to blog in the first place...) SO...I had myself a lesson in customer-relations today. I went into a hotel gift-shop to buy a couple of birthday cards...(Amazingly, they have a decent selection of locally-crafted cards) I only had a twenty-dollar bill. So the clerk-lady politely harrumphs that she's been hit with twenties all morning so she'll have to close the shop to get some change. I politely apologized twice and said that we all had to to what we all had to do...I tried to have some empathy as well as getting the basic service that was supposed to be on offer. Because God knows, in my job as a flight-attendant, I've been host to some unreasonable requests and conditions that went WELL beyond my job-description. She was basically polite as she said good-bye. She just wanted to vent her frustration a bit. When your employer doesn't give you the tools, it CAN be frustrating... Last week, on the heels of an AMSTERDAM trip(for my airline,) I rented a car from the airport and pointed the car northward to Marston, Quebec to visit my dad. Part of the reason why I went there was to see my Uncle's sugar-shack but the weather wasn't going to cooperate. Mild, intermittent snow-squalls with low temperatures. God, The Universe, or Whatever provides BALANCE. I learned that my dad had been blessed with a new television channel: LONE STAR. All Westerns, ALL of the time. Back when I lived my dad fifteen years ago, watching them on a Saturday afternoon with him became a habit and I learned to appreciate the genre. ESPECIALLY after seeing the original LONESOME DOVE television series with him. So we hunkered down, cracked open some beers and soaked up some RAWHIDE, BONANZA, GUNSMOKE, HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL; BORDERTOWN, LONESOME DOVE:THE OUTLAW YEARS,(loosely based on the Larry McMurtry canon.)and even THE LONE RANGER. I relearned that there some damned fine storytelling going on set on those dusty, muddy streets of the American frontier, the classic struggles of humanity were being played out behind those swinging saloon doors. Plus they were so MYTHIC, reflecting a seemingly simpler time DURING a time when America felt good about it's own identity, morality, and strength. Good guys wore white, bad guys wore black...A morality play set out on the prairie. These days the same tableaux of human drama are played out in law-firms and courtrooms. Great stuff, really. And to think, there was a time when I was only into science-fiction, super-hero stuff. I've added some more lowbrow culture to my palette. Anyway, it was good to see my dad again. AND his two dogs. I returned home and was held up at the US Border for 45 minutes...(Something to do with the Rhode Island license plates?) As I went down 3 South eventually morphing into 93 South, I listened to PETE SEEGER'S LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL 1963 and RYAN ADAMS "COLD ROSES". Perfect on-the-road music. But still, I hate the whole prospect of travel. And in my sixteenth year in the travel biz, I'd rather just stay at home and watch DVD's of whatever or listen to music. All for now...GaP

Getting Back On Track

2006-03-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

Time to resume blogging. In my own voice and with greater regularity. I would like to know how to get more readership. Once I get started on anything, I'm okay. But getting started has always been the problem with me. So tomorrow, I will begin with a recap/update of recent memorable events...and go from there...GaP

Gentlemen...We Have A Problem

2006-02-27T07:41:00.000-05:00

Gentlemen, We have a growing epidemic in America. Kids today with their rock music and their alternate covers and their Ultimate universes are missing something in their education: The Silver Age. This recently been brought to my attention due to a lack of respect for the Flash villains and pre-Crisis Supergirl. I ask of you, what do you say to a punk-ass kid who doesn't appreciate a when the Riddler ties Batman & Robin to a giant typewriter? Help me Silver Ages fans, you're my only hope!!! Meg-El If a kid can't recognize the intrinsic value of giant typewriters and legions of super-pets, then it's already too late. Give them the beating they deserve and, as you do, remind them that this only happens in THEIR comics, not Silver Age. Then switch to a bigger bat.

New Front: Protecting America's Investors by BEN STEIN

2006-02-13T19:09:00.000-05:00

The New York Times February 12, 2006 Everybody's Business New Front: Protecting America's Investors By BEN STEIN IN the tiny room where I am writing this missive, there are four little display cases and a framed diploma, among many other mementos. The diploma is for my father-in-law, Dale Denman Jr. of Arkansas, and it is from the United States Military Academy, dated June 6, 1944 - a day when quite a lot was happening of military significance in France. Next to that is a display case with two little stars. One is a Silver Star that my father-in-law won in Europe several months after he graduated. It is for running along a road under heavy German machine-gun fire to call in artillery to save the company for which he was a forward artillery observer. Next to it is a Bronze Star that my father-in-law, then a colonel, won in Vietnam in 1966 for holding his unit together when it was ambushed by a Vietcong force and would have been cut to pieces without him. I have been thinking a lot lately about these heirlooms that Colonel Denman left to my wife and me. That's because of some mail I have been getting about my recent articles in this space about the way high executives have been treating their employees and stockholders. What I said two weeks ago about UAL, the parent company of United Airlines, prompted hundreds of e-mail messages. (I have still not even remotely caught up with all of them because I read them myself - no secretary here.) Several people sent clippings describing how UAL provided Glenn F. Tilton, who was living in San Francisco when it hired him as chairman and chief executive, with a suite in a luxury hotel when he spent time at its headquarters in Chicago. UAL was paying for the suite - which cost $18,000 a month, according to The San Francisco Chronicle - while it was reorganizing its finances under bankruptcy court protection and telling tens of thousands of workers that their jobs had been eliminated, their pay cut, their pensions terminated or all of the above because the company was broke. Some of the letter writers recalled how UAL spent an average of $10 million a month on lawyers, accountants and investment bankers for 37 months while UAL was in bankruptcy, and yet was unable to pay its employees their pensions. Now UAL has emerged from bankruptcy with a mighty flourish, and an allowance of hundreds of millions of dollars for its top executives. Some letters pointed out that one of UAL's board members is none other than our old friend Robert S. Miller, chief executive of Delphi, the auto parts maker. Delphi also recently entered bankruptcy - but proposed to the bankruptcy court a payment of well over $100 million to its top executives to keep them happy while it was in bankruptcy. Mr. Miller, who goes by Steve, a version of his middle name (not the one who sings "Fly Like an Eagle," but an artist of sorts nonetheless), has told Delphi's workers that they will have to take pay cuts of roughly two-thirds in order to save the business. But my favorite communication, the one that made me stay up nights, was from a United States Army sergeant who has done two combat tours in Iraq and two more in Afghanistan, and is now home in Georgia training others to serve in those wars. I have been pals with this man for a couple of years now, and we talk on the phone. He has been following my articles online, and he simply asked, "Was this what I was fighting for in Iraq?" The question haunts me, not only because of UAL and Delphi, but also because there is something deeply broken about the corporate system in America. Long ago, my pop was pals with Harlow H. Curtice, the president of General Motors in its glory days in the 1950's. Mr. Curtice presided over a spectacularly powerful and profitable G.M. For that, in his peak year as I recall from my youth, he was paid about $400,000 plus a special superbonus of $400,000, which made him one of the highest-paid executives in America. At that time, a line worker with overtime might have made $10,000 a year. In those days, that differential was considered very large - very roughly 40 times the assembly line worker's pay, without bonus; very roughly 80 times with bonus. A differential of more like 10 to 20 times was more the norm. Now C.E.O.'s routinely take home hundreds of times what the average worker is paid, whether or not the company is doing well. The graph for the pay of C.E.O.'s is a vertical line in the last five years. The graph for workers' pay is a flat line - in every sense. Now, my fellow free-market fans may well say: "Hey, stop your whining. This is the free market at work." Only it isn't the free market at work. It's a kleptocracy at work. (I am indebted to another of my correspondents for the word.) What's happening here is that the governance system for many - by no means all - corporations has simply stopped working. For centuries, the idea has held that the stockholders own the company. They are the trustors. The trustors select directors who in turn hire a chief executive and other top officers and then keep an eye on them for the stockholders. They - the chief executive, other top officers and the directors - are all agents for the stockholders, many of whom are often the employees, as is the case at UAL. But what has happened is that - as in a corrupt, failed third-world state - the trustees in too many cases are captives of the C.E.O. and his colleagues; they owe both their places on the board and their emoluments to the chief executive, and they exercise no meaningful restraint at all on managers. The directors are instead a sort of praetorian guard, protecting management from its real bosses, the stockholders, as management sucks the blood out of the company. I am by no means saying this is the standard or the usual way business is done in this country. Most managements are still honest and hard-working, I believe. But far too many are simply in the catbird seat to take what is not decently theirs from people who cannot afford to be taken. Government, meanwhile, does nothing, or next to nothing. Courts, especially bankruptcy courts, do nothing. And the employees and stockholders and the whole society are looted. Maybe it's not looting in the legal sense, but something basic is removed from the society. In the capitalist society, the most basic foundation is trust. But in today's world, trust is abused, mocked, drained of meaning. Again, I am not talking everywhere, by any means. I work with many, many businessmen and businesswomen, and a huge majority are honest and amazingly hard-working. I am sure that this is true nationally. But enough are not so honest and hard-working that it takes a toll on the rest of us. Don't get me wrong. I am not a newborn. I know that looting is not new. Man is highly flawed when money is on the table and not guarded well. I saw it and wrote about it in great detail when Michael R. Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert were ascendant, and in many other cases. It was terrible and dreadful, at least in my view, back then in the 1980's. It has always been terrible. But there is something new and unlovely that my pal in the Army brought up. Now, we are engaged in a war. More than 100,000 Americans are fighting far from home. Many don't come back. Many come home crippled. They are fighting for a vision of a just and decent society back home in glorious, shining, blessed America. And back home, meanwhile, the looters are running wild, taking the meaning out of that vision of America, taking some - by no means all - of the beauty out of America as a land of justice and fairness. ONE of my correspondents wrote that she, a flight attendant at United Airlines, had played by the rules, believed what her bosses told her, trusted that the laws would protect her, believed that fairness would triumph in the end because it's America. "I guess that makes me a fool in today's world," she said, because now she is broke, with no job, barely any pension and no faith. While the soldiers are fighting to protect us from the terrorists with bombs, too few are at home protecting us from the terrorists with briefcases. There aren't a lot of such terrorists, but they do a lot of damage. Surely this is not what Colonel Denman won his medals for. Surely this is not the America that our best are fighting and dying for in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is something desperately wrong here, and if President Bush is searching for an issue, I might suggest this: common decency for the workers and the savers and investors of this country, and an end to the hideous breaches of trust that build great mansions in the Hamptons and wreck a free soci- ety. Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com. * Copyright 2006The New York Times Company _______________________________________________________________ Hello, Mister Stein... A pilot-friend of mine forwarded me your article ("New Front: Protecting America's Investors")and it lent me some much needed hope. You see, I also work for an airline and a bankrupt one at that. Rumors of liquidation abound and strike-actions are threatened while upper management is salivating at a plan to outsource a 75% of our international flight attendants to foreign nationals. This in an age when American citizens are being thoroughly screened before stepping foot onto a plane. I won't EVEN begin to tell you what a potential security-compromise this represents. Bottom line: Front-line staff are expendable in the feeding frenzy to cut costs and feather the nests of CEO's and upper management. Bigger, Better, Faster, MORE are the cornerstones of 21st Century capitalism, it would seem. Ah, well...this happened with Rome and it's Empire, back in the day. Most of the wealth was held by a miniscule percentage of the populace...the upper classes. And we all know what happened to Rome. All empires have to fall(and make no mistake, the United States is an extremely bloated one) we are no exception. And I don't imagine that it's going to be pretty... Thank you for listening... Yet another jaded front-line airline employee, GaP

Stinkin' Thinkin'

2006-02-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

Russ... Hi G--! Glad that you're doing well...and that your silence was due to having a bitchin' adventure abroad. I've had three weeks of vacation and didn't even LOOK at a plane... I know what you mean ... the airplane/airport scene made me feel like I was at work. And then the $1,350 ticket I had to buy for my son to get out of South America was an added "bonus." That's why, in my quiet time now and to come, I want to travel by wind powered boat. Had a stinkin' thinkin' winter psyche-glitch. I went through this phase where I wasn't sure how I felt about Bill. The tiny concern flowered into a full-blown obsession. Jesus! What is it about relationship that uncorks the angels and demons in us? This basically pointed to some deep-seated bullshit in my hard-wiring: The fear of love, of BEING loved, and the tendency to create mental melodramas where none exist. In other words, if things are going too smoothly, THAT feels wrong. Only chaos and insecurity feels normal. He came over the house during the week and underneath the layers of fear, I felt a warmth, connection, and attaction there. He loves me with all of his heart. And I guess that must have freaked me. He's not possessive or anything...I've just never had that experience, you know? Wow! That's pretty amazing that you fear it so. You have been living in hell so long you don't even recognize, you are afraid, when the good stuff shows up. Thanks for sending the photos. The Antarctica lady seems really...exquisite. Elegant. Have you found a connection with her? Yes I have. She lives on the other side of America and that is most inconvenient. But this means we can explore the world and universe through written and spoken words, occasional visits and occasional adventures. It's a multidimensional relationship. We started as friends, sharing words and ideas and after two years the relationship continues to mature and grow sweeter and richer. She a woman with courage to discover and follow her authentic path. Ray adopted a dog this week. An eleven year-old gold labrador whose next stop was probably the glue-factory. He's far from a cripple case...but chances are no one would have adopted a dog at that age. Ray needed a dog to care for. It was a missing piece of his personality. And now he's having the best time taking Buddy everywhere. I'm including a photo and I hope it isn't a repeat. Nope, this is the first time I've seen Buddy. Good for Ray. It's quite a commitment ... but what a neat thing to have a friend who doesn't talk. I've been wondering why we can't be more like dogs; happy, very happy, with anyone with whom we find ourselves. As long as they have grub and aren't beaten, they wag their tail and are delighted and in love with the person or people with whom they live. So what's wrong with us. Saw BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Wow. Larry McMurtry collaborated on the screenplay and it SHOWS. Fragile human lives and connections across a starkly beautiful Western landscape...Paths not taken, yearnings not heeded, and heavy regrets. It's a hallmark of his writing... I saw it yesterday. I agree. Wow! Ang Lee, Annie Proulx (sp?) and McMurtry ... and the stark emptiness of the landscape and heart. Wow, indeed. I'm going to see it again. TJeannie put me on to it. I'm glad she did. The only part that made me feel that the author, Proulx, was a woman, was the initial physical love scene. I didn't get that they jumped in so fast without dealing with Inis' reluctance. What is your take? Not even CARING when I'm supposed to return to work. Sometime after 10 February... I'm going back on the 5th. Shit. A full month. Including A.R.T. (CQ for us). Hope you're well, my good friend...GaP I am alive and kicking. I was delighted to spend time with my son and Jeannie. Now I'm back and in the depths. Something has got to give. I've given it over (I think I said earlier) to the universe ... along with my intention to improve my lot ... I hope I can some (more) clarity soon. Let's keep the dialog going. Thanks, brother. Russ

Peace In The Valley

2006-01-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Salut, Russ... Just wanted to keep you in the loop. We've got springlike weather in NH...All I have to say is global warming can be a GOOD thing. Yesterday, Bill and I went to see BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. It was a quiet, understated tour-de-force with some of the most amazing western scenery I have ever clapped eyes on. I was surprised to learn that Larry McMurtry collaborated on the screenplay and come to think of it, it makes sense. The grand sweep of the west, the quiet, fragile lives that stretch across it...Intense yearnings, paths not taken...Needless to say, tears were streaming down my face by the end of it. Bill had said, "I may cry"-- but I was the one who was bawling. Highly recommended but it moves at quiet pace. My fears regarding my relationship with Bill have seem to faded. I wrestled with my obssessive thoughts that have seemed to be trademark ever since I can remember. It seems that I was always over-obssessing about one thing or another...as if I couldn't be happy unless I was WORRIED about something, you know? But as I evolve, I'm gradually getting over that. And my association with this loving, caring man is helping me to do that. Reading this book entitled THE END OF FAITH by Sam Harris. He posits that unquestioned religious faith is a dangerous thing for the modern world since each religion claims to be the "ONE TRUE WORD". So how can we respect others if we inherently think LESS of them because of their religious beliefs. Never mind the fact that the world...most notably the United States is headed up by a man that believes in The Rapture and Revelation. Harris also points out that many of the Bible's teachings...(including killing unbelievers) doesn't hold up in the modern world. So modern moderate Christians have decided to cherry-pick the areas that still hold meaning for them and live their lives by it. He makes no bones why he wrote the book. He thinks the human race is endangered by blind, unquestioning belief in these religions...that they should be questioned and held up to the same rational scrutiny as science or medicine...otherwise we're fucked. The job had me thoroughly demoralized this past week. I had one too many e-mails about how the Evil Empire is trying to screw us and I just obssessed on that for awhile as I sorted out the Ambassador's tax paperwork. But sanity and confidence resumed by the end of the day. All it took was a hearty "thank you" and the genuine grateful attitude to go with it. It's pretty telling when you have more job-satisfaction VOLUNTEERING than at your actual JOB. Anwyay, Russ...I hope you're well...Keep in touch, my good friend...GaP

Reality Setting In

2006-01-14T04:19:00.000-05:00

I just got in from a two day trip. It was a two-day Milwaukee layover that I picked up to make myself financially (more)solvent for the months of January. With the 21% paycut, this paycheck was lean and once the holiday pay honeymoon wears out, it's going to get a lot leaner. For the one or two that glance at this blog, you may have gathered that I work for an airline. One of many that are being raped by it's upper management for fun and profit. Morale is crumbling, apathy is a warm, comfortable blanket that I wrap around myself. Some passenger out there didn't appreciate my caustic demeanor? Tough. Enjoy your $100 ticket. We(the flight-attendant group) are powerless. The pilots have the clout out of all the work-groups. And they may have to use it to gum up the airline...Get the message out that we're not willing to get sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed and catastrophic reorganization. Every time I check my e-mail, I get forwards from my colleagues regarding the Union representing us and how negotiations are going. The news is demoralizing and demeaning. PAYCUT and OUTSOURCE are the two words that are on everyone's lips when they perpetuate the despair with their ear-to-the-boardroom-door theorizing... Maybe I can get hired at Newbury Comics. Pay would suck but at least I could work around music and comics all day...GaP

Strong Words From THE MIAMI HERALD

2006-01-11T07:10:00.000-05:00

Subject: From the Miami Herald Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not ROBERT STEINBACK rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled. Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated. If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them. If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marine Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy. That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path. What is there to say now? All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity. I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege. Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to ``protect us.'' President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people. Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, ``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?'' Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again. Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it? Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights. Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we? =

Real Christians

2006-01-11T06:36:00.000-05:00

This is just over a year old and STILL relevant today...maybe even more so...GaP ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Dr. Robin Meyers' Speech during the 11/04 Peace Rally at OK University As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor. Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side: When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral. When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral. When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral. When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral. When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral. When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral. When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral. When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral. When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral. When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral. When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral. When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral. When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton. When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral. When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral. When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral. I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the war. I heard that when I was your age--when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong--the only question is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power? This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you--young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back. Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists--so do all the faith traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith. And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus the greatest failure of faith. There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what is it good for? absolutely nothing. And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.

Property Fever!

2006-01-11T05:59:00.000-05:00

Hello, Steven... Hope you're New Year is off to a positive start...Of course, the morale situation at North--- is dire...Our only hope is that the class-action lawsuit levied against our CEO Douglas Steen--- will cause him to drop his effort to neuter us as an airline...Apparently his shareholders are accusing him of (gasp! surprise!)insider-trading... Listen, I need to have your take on something that's been bugging me...After BBC Breakfast, we are treated to a phalanx of home-purchasing, home-revamp-for-profit programmes of every manner, shape, and form. What is this locust-like fascination with property over there? Seems like the Brits(or at least the more affluent ones) are going nuts for the comfy-cozy fantasy of untold riches by way of property-purchasing. It's a breathless feeding frenzy that actually reminds me of the Japanese when THEY get into, well, almost ANYTHING really. They do NOTHING by half-measures... Any insights into this, my friend? I'm just stymied. I know property is the big buzzword on BOTH sides of the pond...but how do you think this plays into the British mindset? Hope you're well, my friend...GaP ______________________________________________________________ Hi Gary, Thanks for the emissive. I am really sorry to see what is happening with North---. We are all in the hands of a mindless few who gather for their own benefit, regardless of the consequences to the masses. Yes, property is the big thing here. There are several TV channels dedicated to nothing else. The programmes tell you how to be a property developer, how to decorate, how to change your property, how to sell the one you have and buy 2 others, one in the country and one in the town. Basically it is a bit of a feeding frenzy. This has, in part, been brought about by the fact that it seems the pension funds we have been paying to (both private and government)for all our working lives are worth almost nothing. Most of them are based on the insurance/pension companies playing the stock markets - badly. The only financial certainty (if indeed there is one) seems to be property, the values keep rising, and rising and.... So, as a consequence those that can are buying properties either to let, refurbish and sell, or just keep buying bigger and bigger ones hoping that when it is time to retire they can sell the big house and buy a smaller one, the difference being their pension. There is logic there somewhere. It is all about the uncertainty of our futures and the pension funds that are failing. It is a big issue here, with some of the big, supposedly sound, pension companies going bust and people being left with no (or very little) income after they retire. It is quite a large and serious matter. So much for the welfare state! Christmas and New Year were fun here. We should have known what t was going to be like. On Christmas eve we had a flat tyre going to get the last minute Christmas shopping. 7 am Christmas morning there was a loud BANG followed by the sound of rushing water. A joint had burst and the water came pouring through our dining room ceiling into the dining room and adjoining lounge. The hot water tank emptied itself onto the tiled floor of the dining room and saturated the lounge carpet. Ho Hum. Clare and I were seen outside in dressing gowns in the cold scrambling to shut the water off by the stopcock in the drive. What a lark! Anyway, fair play to Clare, we had guests for lunch and the dinner was only 20 minutes late on the table. It was a surreal situation, me dangling from the ceiling with an emergency plumber trying to repair the damage, Clare stuffing the turkey and putting it into the oven! The ceiling is a mess; the lounge carpet is destroyed and hacked to pieces. Over the next 3 days we had two more plumbing disasters, none of which were related. Spooky. Great time to have no heating and hot water. And of course I now have flu! This coming Monday I head off to the USA. It is the very exciting 'World of Concrete' convention in Las Vegas and I am attending with one of my agency companies. KLM/Air France couldn't help me so I am using BA to LAX then on to Las Vegas with America West (?). Keep well, keep in touch, let me know if you want to buy any properties here! Ciao! Steven

I Couldn't Watch This Show...

2006-01-06T03:44:00.000-05:00

Subject: Travel Channel to air flight attendants in 6 weeks of training Frontier reality show set for takeoff Travel Channel to air flight attendants in 6 weeks of training By Chris Walsh, Rocky Mountain News January 5, 2006 One hopeful shows up late to class. Another forgets to complete his physical. A third fails too many tests. They all get booted - and that's just during the first week of training. Next Thursday, the Travel Channel will begin airing a reality series about the rigors of becoming a flight attendant, featuring nearly 40 candidates recently accepted into Frontier Airlines' six-week training program. The series, called Flight Attendant School, aims to show viewers there's much more to the job than serving "peanuts and Pepsi," as one executive at Denver-based Frontier puts it during the first episode. The carrier hopes to gain national exposure - and possibly new customers - through the show, especially after rival Southwest Airlines garnered a huge share of headlines this week by launching service from Denver. The Travel Channel reaches 82 million households nationwide, giving Frontier an opportunity to reach a massive audience. "This is such a huge thing for us to have large national exposure for our training program," Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said. "This gives us the opportunity to build some name recognition outside Denver." But the show's debut comes at a bittersweet time. Pam Gardner, a popular executive at Frontier who plays a huge role in the show, died unexpectedly from a blood clot last week. As Frontier's vice president of in-flight services, Gardner led the airline's flight attendant training program. The show is mostly filmed at Frontier's headquarters just a few minutes from Denver International Airport. But it also includes footage from other areas around town, including a house in the Reunion development where eight of the candidates lived together throughout the training. The show's first episode leaves viewers with the clear impression that getting a job as a flight attendant, at least at Frontier, isn't as easy as it looks. Hundreds of candidates apply, but only a fraction are selected for admission. Of those that make it to the program, roughly one-third don't survive the process, a trainer says at one point during the show. Flight attendant hopefuls must master two dozen tests, memorize tedious in-flight safety demonstrations and learn a host of skills, such as exterminating fires, administering CPR and handling violent passengers. Candidates are kicked out of the training program if they're late to class once, even by just a few minutes, or for failing more than two tests. The experience is more than just an extended job interview for those involved, and emotions run high. During the intro to the first episode, set to a modified version of John Denver's Leaving On a Jet Plane, one candidate says she'll feel like a failure if she doesn't make it through. Later in the show, another hopeful talks about wanting to make her parents proud. GRB Entertainment, involved in such reality TV fare as The Princes of Malibu and Growing Up Gotti, produced the show, which will run in back-to-back installments on Thursdays. Frontier was chosen over other airlines because the carrier has created a friendly, relaxed corporate culture, the Travel Channel said. And its management was willing to open up its training process to the world. "For this series to work, we needed to find a partner that would give us the access we needed around the clock," said James Ashurst, a Travel Channel spokesman. "Frontier gave us that access, and we think it worked out great." Flight Attendant School • What: An 18-episode cable-TV series featuring the rigors involved in becoming a flight attendant at Frontier Airlines • Where: The Travel Channel, which reaches 82 million households nationwide • When: Two new half-hour episodes will air back-to-back at 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, starting Jan. 12.

Boxing Day Correspondence...

2005-12-29T06:24:00.000-05:00

> > Hello, George... > > Sitting in a cyber-cafe in AMSterdam... > > This is one of those moments where you take the > time > to tell someone in your life that you appreciate > them > and the impact that they've had in your life...and > George, you defininitely have an impact. You > realize, > of course, that one of the reasons why I volunteer > my > time for you is to enjoy the pleasure of your > company. > And it's basically the easiest way to hang out with > you as your work schedule is off the scale...So, > what > better way to spend time with a friend than to help > him out a bit? > > I've learned a lot in your office just by observing > between filing and scrapbooks. The wheeling and > dealing, the warm maintenance of professional > contacts and friendships, how the civilized word of > law (and it's interpretation) can actually work and > reflect the more salient aspects of humanity, and > basically how to be a gentleman. (One can always > learn a bit of that polish to balance out the > ageing > teenager slacker vibe...but not supersede it, of > course...) > > In short, George, thanks for being a positive > influence...and thanks for making me feel as I have > a > purpose and showing some appreciation for that > purpose. > > Merry Christmas to you, Rona, Liza, and you > Mom...not > to mention to any number of the colorful and > remarkable colleagues, clients, and associations > that > have illuminated my path while in your > apprenticeship...Ed comes to mind. Professor > H is another. Let's not forget Mr. W > All > of them got a taste of THE MATRIX with the > now-pseudo > famous Christmas card. > > By the way, I take it that your Christmas present > is > going to come with a bit of instruction, I hope? > We P---s may have get off to a slow start...but we > are > fast learners. And can you imagine? One day, I'll > wear a bowtie and suit to the office. Won't THAT > be > scary? All The Best, My friend...GaP --------------------------------------------------------------------------> Dear G-- Thank you for your generous and > undeserved words. I apologize > for being such a workaholic, but want you to know > that I admire your many fine > qualities, appreciate your assistance, and enjoy > your friendship. > > Looking forward to your return; and yes, the can > opener does come with > instructions. > > Merry Christmas. George --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > George... Just came in from a flight with some code 6 turbulence...Imagine running for I-90's and customs forms, the smell of airsickness, fumbling for extra discomfort bags...These are the unglamorous rip-out-your-hair-chaos moments that I really LOATHE...but I'm safe, home, and dry... No need to apologize for your work. You have much that you want to accomplish in this world and you are driven. I think you would go insane if you had it any other way. My sales teacher once told me that there are people out there who absolutely CANNOT LIVE without that constant rush and drive. I imagine that would be YOU, my friend. And that's why I'm happy to do the stuff that would keep you at the office even later at night. When you're making the world a better place, you need all the help you can get...Through you and your associations, you have indeed shown me and taught me a lot. Hell, it was fun hearing General Clark's army tales in the YMCA locker room. Damn, he would have made a fine president... See you in the very near future, my good friend...GaP -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear G, not sure what Code 6 is but I can imagine it is not good. I am not fond of the slightest turbulance, and so admire your ability to tolerate it on a regular basis. Glad you are safe and look forward to seeing you soon. George

Nowhere Man

2005-12-20T20:43:00.000-05:00

This week, NOWHERE MAN was released on DVD. It was a television show on Fox back in '95. It lasted for only one season. It was about a photographer who shot something that he shouldn't have. The Powers That Be want the photograph, the hero won't capitulate...so they set about erasing his life and identity. Everyone who knows him have been convinced, coerced, or bullied into not acknowledging or helping him. So he's on the run, without an identity, living on the fringes of society...pursued by a faceless enemy who want that photograph. And the thing is, you get the impression that they could get it anytime...but they WANT him to admit that he's broken, say "uncle". It was a product of the conspiracy-saturated X-FILES era of the mid-Nineties Then it occurs to me that this whole existential quest for identity, purpose, sanity, and integrity is a recurring theme in television. THE PRISONER is the most obvious early example. Spy(played by Patrick McGoohan) tries to quit THE BUSINESS, he is asked why, he refuses to answer, gets knocked out, and is relocated to a semi-paradise island prison-island where The Village is located. He is given a number instead of a name, he is monitored, harassed for the reason, and he continues his escape-attempts in the meantime. Not sure if he actually succeeds according to that bad-trip last episode. A western called LAZARUS MAN was out around the same time. A noir-nightmare Western about a man(Robert Urich) waking up without his memory trying to find clues to his former life...Was he a spy? A shootist? A government operative? Old flames kept appearing, people with grudges showed up with an aim to put a bullet-hole in him...sometimes both at the same time. Also a short-lived show. THE PRETENDER is about a government experiment called JARED who can adopt the skills and expertise of others but has no real identity nor life of his own outside the aims of his leash-holders. So he's escaped and leads them on a merry chase while he uses his genius-level skills to help the strangers he encounters on the way. He wants information about his mother and frequently contacts his pursuers offering them deals even as he stays two steps ahead of them. I was told about a short-lived series called JOHN DOE. An amnesiac idiot-savant who has an endless array of skills and expertise to help the police with their cold-cases all the while wishing he knew his OWN identity... To a lesser extent, these themes are touched upon in shows like QUANTUM LEAP where time-traveling scientist leaps into the lives of others to fix what once went wrong...he frequently has gaps in his memory especially in the early shows. THE FUGITIVE template repeats itself constantly as well...Dr. Richard Kimball wants to clear his name of his wife's murder. And he's on the run from police inspector Gerard as he interacts with and helps the lives of ordinary people...THE INCREDIBLE HULK where David Banner is on the run pretending to be dead while he searches for a cure for his monster-transformations...And then you have the government-chasing-innocent-extraterrestrials fugitive format...THE PHOENIX(Judson Scott) and STARMAN(Robert Hays...a sequel on the movie of the same name...) KUNG FU with David Carradine comes to mind. A peaceful man roaming the violent untamed west in search of some kind of answers within himself... I'm also reminded of THE TRUMAN SHOW...very PRISONER-esque in its attempt to keep Truman Burbank it his artificial televised environment for the entertainment of television viewers worldwide...A show that his "father" Christoff created for him to take care of the orphaned child...His stepping through that exit door is a HUGE decision for him. There's something in the human psyche that wants to frame these eternal questions into some sort of quest-narrative framework. And who knows? Sometimes these programs even provide an solid, tangible answer or ending...After all, Doctor Richard Kimble found his wife's killer and cleared his name. I'm not sure if the OTHERS were successful in their quest. (David Banner dies, for example, never finding the cure for his hulk-outs...or rather, his DEATH is the cure.) This drives home the fact that our quest for answers may never be completely answered... Let us keep searching...GaP

Christmas Card Mission Accomplished!

2005-12-20T20:25:00.000-05:00

The last of my Christmas cards have been sent out yesterday and now I'm just sitting back and enjoying the chillout. Completing the whole project was a lengthy labor of love that I cut into manageable segments. I did that with everything...Creating the card, cutting, pasting...doing everything in increments...There was a period when I hit the limitations on my picture software and nearly threw my hands up in frustration and futility. After a couple days of mild self-pity, I went back to it. The act of creation was also a learning process this time: The ins and outs of certain computer software, working around logistical problems, incorporating the ideas of others...it all led to an evolution. So when the final product emerges and your audience(the folks on your Christmas list)gives you feedback, it's such a rush. It feeds your spirit and it touches a life or two. So mission accomplished again for this year...

Am I A Sick Bastard?

2005-12-18T22:15:00.000-05:00

I saw this piece on CNN about a Christmas display in HUNTER'S CREEK, Florida. It depicts Rudolph The Red-Nose Reindeer hanging gutted from a tree with the red lights dripping onto the snow representing his blood. Of course, it elicited the usual moral indignation in the neighborhood...but I thought it was hilarious, twisted as it was. Warped genius, actually...Guess the redneck dude and I would be having a few beers together in his deer-shack while the upstanding families in the neighborhood picketed, complained, or whatever it is that the morally self-righteous are wont to do. I remember several years back making a Christmas card which depicted Rudolph getting beaten up by Comet or one of the other reindeers while the others jeered off-camera. Stuff like, "What's the matter, Rudolph? Gonna CRRRRRyyyyyyyy?" and "Let's not let him play in any of our reindeer games!" On the inside I did this rant on how the Red Nosed Reindeer was a mutation and therefore ridiculed as a freak...UNTIL his freakishness could be put toward a useful purpose...ie lighting Santa's way at night as he piloted his sled across the world. Once Rudolph's gift or curse could be exploited by mainstream society...only THEN was he accepted. If I can scan it, I'll post it onto this entry... Wishing you all a relatively "normal" Christmas...GaP

Psycho Santa

2005-12-18T21:55:00.000-05:00

Murderous Santa Display Draws Stares By DAVID B. CARUSO NEW YORK (AP) - It's usually easy to tell where a person stands in the culture wars, but whose side is someone on when his Christmas decor is a blood-spattered Santa Claus holding a severed head? Joel Krupnik and Mildred Castellanos decked the front of their Manhattan mansion this year with a scene that includes a knife-wielding 5-foot-tall St. Nick and a tree full of decapitated Barbie dolls. Hidden partly behind a tree, the merry old elf grasps a disembodied doll's head with fake blood streaming from its eye sockets. No one answered the family's door to explain on Tuesday, but Krupnik told the New York Post it was a statement about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas. ``Christmas has religious origins,'' he said. ``It's in the Bible. Santa is not in the Bible. He's not a religious symbol.'' The family is far from the only one making an editorial comment this year on how Americans celebrate Christmas, although it may be the only one doing it by depicting Santa Claus as a killer. Pope Benedict XVI complained this week that Christmas festivities have been ``subjected to a sort of commercial pollution.'' Christian conservatives have launched campaigns to reintroduce a religious component to Christmastime decor in schools and public squares, chiding even President Bush this year for sending out cards wishing supporters a happy ``holiday season.'' Fox News talk show host John Gibson wrote a book claiming there is a liberal plot to ban Christmas. Still, more than a few people passing by the Krupnik and Castellanos brownstone on Tuesday were a little puzzled about the message behind the massacre. Peter Nardoza, 81, of Manhattan, shook his head and chuckled. ``Sick, sick, sick,'' he said. ``What kind of a world is this that we live in?'' Ronnie Santiago, a deliveryman on his route, speculated that something bad must have happened once to the homeowner at Christmas. A few spectators wondered whether the campy gore would bother children. There were signs the macabre theme is a year-round thing. The facade of the building was covered with leering gargoyles. A statue of Death, hooded and grim-looking, stood outside. A few people got it. ``This is brilliant,'' said Bucky Turco, 31, of Manhattan. He said the display captured how he felt recently while watching someone costumed as SpongeBob SquarePants promote products at Rockefeller Center. Walter Garofalo, a musician from Brooklyn who wandered by wearing a black bandanna covered in skulls, was awe-struck. ``I wonder if these people would let me use this as our next album cover,'' he said. ``It's perfect!'' 12/13/05 18:46 © Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Christmas Card Musings

2005-12-18T21:33:00.000-05:00

--- GB1 Wrote: > G--, It is cold in Bosnia but meetings here are > going well and people are uniformly friendly. I saw > your car before I left and it is very powerful. > Congratulations. George Hello, George... I meant it's freezing HERE, Ambassador. Cold snap. I now undertand why, when I was of a kid, some of the adults I came across wanted to keep the heat down to a bare minimum. You know, where the tip of your nose is COLD. Heating oil is EXPENSIVE...God help me. I'm becoming one of THEM. Glad that you like the card. I had that idea in my head since last year. As must as I liked LAST year's card, it was edging a bit too much into soccer-mom territory for me. Needed to do something DIFFERENT. So I plumbed the pop-culture ephemera in my head and came up with that. It almost didn't happen, I got so frustrated with it at one point. But I'm glad I soldiered on and worked around some of the logistical problems... And now in "the passing something onto the next generation department"---At the Y, I have an acquaintance with someone at the Y who has a four year old child...appropriately named Luke. Appropriate because he LOVES the original STAR WARS movies. He sees in them the same magic I did when I was ten. Anyway, since I have any number of them on VHS, I bequeathed the Special Editions onto Little Luke during the move...(These were the editions where George Lucas started to digitally alter some scenes to fit what he was seeing in his head. I kept the original versions...just so I could see them as I originally remembered...but I digress...) Anwyay, Little Luke has worn the tapes out. So his dad is going to have to buy them on DVD. Recently, the laddie was wondering if he could just hear the music to them. So Craig, his dad, asks me if there are soundtracks available. Not only are they available, they're in my friend's iTunes program...because I put them there. So we can burn the little guy a copy. I'm choosing THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK because I wore out the double-vinyl album when I was a kid myself. Film-composer JOHN WILLIAMS has one of the most recognizable soundtracks going. You know little Josiah. His dad is a HUGE Star Wars fan. So I look forward to the day when all three of us can sit down and just watch the entire six films together. The Force will definitely be with us... Whoa. Look at the time. Must get on with some physical fitness. George, thanks again for making the time to keep in touch. I know how ridiculously busy you are on any given day never MIND over there. So it IS appreciated, my friend... All the best...GaP

Merry Whatever

2005-12-16T04:38:00.000-05:00

Hi G-- Regarding the whole controversy about use of the word "Christmas" you mentioned in the letter that arrived today; I think the whole damn country is missing the point, which is as follows. When I was growing up in Singapore, the population included large groups of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and many other religions. Each time one of the major religions had a holiday, festival or important religious observance, it was a national holiday for everyone, and the whole populace got the day off. On a Buddhist holiday, the Buddhists did their thing, and if you had Buddhist friends, you participated as much as their religion would allow (which usually meant visiting as many of them as possible in order to devour large quantities of their holiday food!) and generally celebrating with them. Two weeks later, there was a Hindu day, and everybody took the day off out of respect for their Hindu peers. More food! And so on. In other words, Christians in this country should be more aware of, and look forward to, the celebration of Hannukah, Ramadan etc. with their friends of different faiths. Everybody should be happy to say "Merry Christmas", but only if they can be equally happy and willing to say "Happy Hannukah" or "Happy Kwanzaa" or whatever. What's wrong with that? Of course, the prerequisite to this attitude is for Christians to stop thinking of their way as the only "right" way. What a concept! And probably not likely to happen soon. End of sermon! Regards, Allen