Tupelo
I'm ba-a-a-a-a-ck!
And my enter key works here. And I am brain-dead but basically ready to get to work again. I hope. I have had lots of thoughts about Spence and Sadie and I'm hoping that today they get busy and cooperate. And in between loads of laundry and vacuuming the dog hair that has accumulated while I've been gone, that I can get them underway again.
I have only good things to say about IGHR. And I want to clarify something about my interest in genealogy. For me -- and I think for every other person there -- it is, as Michelle Styles, commented in her response to one of my earlier post this past week -- about the stories. It isn't about "names and dates and let's move on;" it's about getting to know as much as I can about the people whose lives had an impact on mine.
This isn't just my 'blood relations' either. It's my step-dad's family, because everything they did eventually led him to where and when he met my mother. It's neighbors' families and friends' families of my ancestors and of my own, because I find people endlessly fascinating. I want to know why they did what they did. I want to know their motivations.
It's an off-shoot of writing, I guess, though I certainly couldn't tell you which came first -- the interest in characters or the interest in dead relatives. They seem to have always been a part of my life since I was a kid (I sometimes think it's because the dead relatives were so much easier to deal with than the living ones, but don't tell anyone I said that).
Anyway, I love the stories. I try to bore my children with them. And I need to write some of them down so I can bore future generations -- and delight the one or two people who actually give a damn.
Oh, yeah, Tupelo. It's where I spent 3 1/2 hours yesterday. I was flying from Birmingham to Memphis to catch a connecting flight yesterday morning. It's a 35 minute flight. Ask yourself what can possibly go wrong on a 35 minute flight. Well, weather in Memphis and 68 planes waiting to land. So . . .we set down in Tupelo.
We were the first plane to set down in Tupelo. Three more joined us. They all got to leave before we did because our crew went out to lunch (no, I'm not kidding, that's what the guy on the flight deck actually said. He said, and I quote, "We'd been up six a.m. And we were hungry and we wish we could have taken y'all with us."
Yeah, we did, too, as we were also hungry, most of us had been up since 6 a.m. and the Tupelo airport is perfectly fine (and the people were kindness itself) but it is NOT equipped to deal with 4 planeloads of extra passengers. It has a soft drink machine and a candy/potato chip machine. It does not have air conditioning. The least this hungry crew could have done was told us we were going to be stuck while they went out to lunch (and the other three planes left) and we could have ordered in pizzas -- or driven to Memphis.
Anyway, I have only good things to say about Tupelo. And while I sympathize with the NWA crew who was hungry, I think they could have been a bit more forthcoming in their communications with the passengers.
I always told my kids that travel is a different kind of time, like the aboriginal dreamtime. Only in 'travel time' you give up all right to expectations from the moment you start traveling until you get off at the other end, whenever that may be. It takes all the pressure off. You can't do anything about it, so you don't worry about it. And real life starts when you are in command of your own life again. It's a way to stay sane in modern travel mode. But it doesn't keep you from getting hungry.
And my enter key works here. And I am brain-dead but basically ready to get to work again. I hope. I have had lots of thoughts about Spence and Sadie and I'm hoping that today they get busy and cooperate. And in between loads of laundry and vacuuming the dog hair that has accumulated while I've been gone, that I can get them underway again.
I have only good things to say about IGHR. And I want to clarify something about my interest in genealogy. For me -- and I think for every other person there -- it is, as Michelle Styles, commented in her response to one of my earlier post this past week -- about the stories. It isn't about "names and dates and let's move on;" it's about getting to know as much as I can about the people whose lives had an impact on mine.
This isn't just my 'blood relations' either. It's my step-dad's family, because everything they did eventually led him to where and when he met my mother. It's neighbors' families and friends' families of my ancestors and of my own, because I find people endlessly fascinating. I want to know why they did what they did. I want to know their motivations.
It's an off-shoot of writing, I guess, though I certainly couldn't tell you which came first -- the interest in characters or the interest in dead relatives. They seem to have always been a part of my life since I was a kid (I sometimes think it's because the dead relatives were so much easier to deal with than the living ones, but don't tell anyone I said that).
Anyway, I love the stories. I try to bore my children with them. And I need to write some of them down so I can bore future generations -- and delight the one or two people who actually give a damn.
Oh, yeah, Tupelo. It's where I spent 3 1/2 hours yesterday. I was flying from Birmingham to Memphis to catch a connecting flight yesterday morning. It's a 35 minute flight. Ask yourself what can possibly go wrong on a 35 minute flight. Well, weather in Memphis and 68 planes waiting to land. So . . .we set down in Tupelo.
We were the first plane to set down in Tupelo. Three more joined us. They all got to leave before we did because our crew went out to lunch (no, I'm not kidding, that's what the guy on the flight deck actually said. He said, and I quote, "We'd been up six a.m. And we were hungry and we wish we could have taken y'all with us."
Yeah, we did, too, as we were also hungry, most of us had been up since 6 a.m. and the Tupelo airport is perfectly fine (and the people were kindness itself) but it is NOT equipped to deal with 4 planeloads of extra passengers. It has a soft drink machine and a candy/potato chip machine. It does not have air conditioning. The least this hungry crew could have done was told us we were going to be stuck while they went out to lunch (and the other three planes left) and we could have ordered in pizzas -- or driven to Memphis.
Anyway, I have only good things to say about Tupelo. And while I sympathize with the NWA crew who was hungry, I think they could have been a bit more forthcoming in their communications with the passengers.
I always told my kids that travel is a different kind of time, like the aboriginal dreamtime. Only in 'travel time' you give up all right to expectations from the moment you start traveling until you get off at the other end, whenever that may be. It takes all the pressure off. You can't do anything about it, so you don't worry about it. And real life starts when you are in command of your own life again. It's a way to stay sane in modern travel mode. But it doesn't keep you from getting hungry.
posted by Anne McAllister at 7:54 AM
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