The timing couldn’t have been scripted better: today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and the news is still obsessed with the airplanes sitting on the ground at airports around the world, where they have been forced to yield to the aftermath of what blasted out of the surface of our most adolescent continent, Iceland. For some reason I really enjoy the stranded traveler stories. A couple of years ago, when several inches of snow – relatively speaking – shut Portland down, the people interviewed at the airport and the train station amazed me. How dare my travel plans be interrupted by snow? It’s the holidays! One particularly obnoxious woman from Salem, who had been stuck at Union Station for two days, announced she was never going to come to Portland to see the symphony again. It’s really interesting when travel problem stories have a trans-Atlantic angle. I’ve spent time in Europe, and in my opinion they’re as flawed as the rest of us, but they are almost without exception far more dignified on camera when their flights are cancelled. The people from the U.S., of course, whine and bitch and moan and talk about how “frustrated” they are. And, in keeping with the formula for these stories, one woman burst into tears while showing the reporter a picture of her two children, whom she hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks because she and her husband were stuck in France. It’s really difficult for all of them, she sobbed. Poor things. And finally, now that the safety issue seems resolved, it’s on to the money angle. How much is this costing? How long will it take to recover? Who is to blame? All of which makes me wonder, what are we going to do when we run out of gas, when we have to ration things like oxygen and water? Now that will be truly frustrating. Happy Earth Day!
