WANDERING AROUND THE WORLD AGAIN

UNITED FLIGHT 922, WASHINGTON TO LONDON

Isanna Dale is a middle-aged, broad-beamed English blond who was probably once something of a knock-out in a 1980s figure-hugging stewardess uniform, back when flight attendants were known as airline stewardesses. The United Airlines uniform she wears now has been taylored to give her room to breathe and allows her to move easily about the crowded economy-class cabin. She smiled genuinely as she dispensed small warm moist paper towels at the beginning of the long flight, and throughout she cheerfully delivered airline breakfast, snacks, and drinks. She never scolded when she found a seatbelt unlatched or a seatback not forward before take-off or landing.

Air travel ain’t what it used to be. It’s actually better. Planes don’t shake and rattle quite as much and as often as they once did. Pretense is gone from the environment. Planes now boldly admit what they are: Greyhound buses that can fly. Line up, march on board, endure the time it takes to get from one place in the busy world to another. Food service is offered mostly on a pay-for-what-you-want basis, and passengers are not embarrassed to eat what they’ve brought from home or bought at the Macdonalds in the departure terminal.

LUFTHANSA FLIGHT 4727, LONDON TO FRANKFURT

Americans in Europe complain about almost everything: the high price of breakfast when considering the calculation of pounds or euros to dollars; the long wait in check-in lines at airports; the one-bag carry-on rule in European airports; chaos in airport waiting lounges. At Heathrow before the Lufthansa flight Margaret and I were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in the pre-boarding group. Why? The only obvious reason was that we are “elderly.” Wow! The pay-off comes: dramatically reduced transportation costs in America, senior breakfast at Denny’s and senior coffee at Macdonalds; and pre-boarding in Europe. No complaints from me. On the other hand, perhaps we were allowed to pre-board because Margaret looks like the Queen of England.

In England and in Germany few airport service workers are caucasian. Although the flight crews wearing their jaunty military uniforms appear to be mostly white, Lufthansa airline personnel at check-in and on the airplanes are a mixed group. Multilingual Lufthansa flight attendants switch easily from English to Spanish to French to German. They seem happier to have their jobs than American flight attendants serving on domestic routes in the United States. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing.

Achieving work-free status is a common goal of many Americans. Failing to achieve financial security without having to take a job, Americans consider the next best thing to be employment that requires little actual work but provides maximum pay. Parents and teachers tell children they should go to college so they “won’t have to work so hard.” In America we make a big point of being an egalitarian society with equal rights guaranteed for all citizens. We like to brag that there has never been a time in our nation’s history when a noble class enjoyed the right to be idle simply by being born into the right family. Two hundred hears ago at the same time the French were engaged in revolution to dismantle and dissolve their noble class structure and establish government “of the people, for the people, by the people,” our founding fathers were struggling to sever their connection to a monarchy that hasn’t even to this day been completely dissembled. Our first president was a frontiersman who didn’t complete grade school. He insisted that nobility was not conferred by birth or by election but that it had to be earned, and he obviously assumed that noble status was not guaranteed forever but could be maintained only by constant effort. Perhaps it is time for us to emphasize in our system of education that work is good not just for grades while we are students or for a cushy job after school but for the sense of worth that comes from earning what we are and have. He would be shocked by our new American culture that insists that celebrity is all that is necessary for one to be considered noble. Our culture produces “famous” people who shoplift because they assume their presence in a store is payment enough for whatever the desire and people who kill because they assume they are above the law. We have a president who apparently presumes to be able to make something real by saying it is so. He brought his nation to war because he said it was necessary to do so. He believes a mission is accomplished when he says it is accomplished. He insists that a mandate is what he declares it to be and that not only the people have declared him to be the decider for all of us but that God has ordained it. Our first president would find little to admire in George W. Bush. He would be appalled by Bush’s lack of preparation for leadership. Our self-educated first president would wonder how a rich boy who was admitted to one of the best universities in the country would deliberately avoid scholarship. Our first president, who came to office after a brilliant military career, would be embarrassed by this president who deliberately avoided draft and any engagement in real military activity but would relish the role of “Commander-in-Chief, put on the the uniform of a fighter pilot and land on an aircraft carrier, and strut under a “Mission Accomplished” banner only two weeks into a war that would drag on for years. Our president is the role model for young Americans who want all of the benefits of meaningful employment without any of the difficulties of appropriate preparation and little understanding of what real work requires.Dael is Dutch AND American. She knows the difference.AMSTELVEEN AND AMSTERDAMBeing an American in Paris or Madrid or Amsterdam is to stand before a mirrow as big as the world. People are generally too polite to ask about “the American way” that could result in bringing to ultimate political power a group as inept as President Bush and his closest advisors. Why couldn’t at least a simple majority of us have recognized in the time leading up to the last election that the emperor has no clothes. The first election is difficult to explain. All the world knows that George W. Bush lacked a majority of votes. The electoral college is difficult to explain in a way that makes good sense. The second election is another matter. How do we explain that one? The world is watching. People who are not Americans are very interested in the 2008 election. So am I.MY FRIEND HECTOR sent me the following bit of news:
Recent polls have shown that a fifth of americans cannot locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?

Answer:
"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps. And uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, Iraq and everywhere, like, such as... and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S., should help the U.S. or should help South Africa, it should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we would be able to build up our future for our children."
- Miss Teen South Carolina, Miss Teen USA 2007 Competition