I like to think of myself as savvy traveler. Before I pack, I check to make sure my carry-on will fit in the overhead bin of the type of aircraft I'll be flying on. And I keep my favorite shampoo and conditioner in three-ounce bottles, packed in clear, quart-sized plastic bags, to be sure they'll pass TSA muster. I wear shoes that are easy to take on and off. My netbook fits into a travel-sleeve so that it's protected while it sails through the screening machine. But no matter how well prepared I think I am, I always lose something to airport security. I just got back from a five-day trip to Panama, and this time was no different. We were already through the screening process and in the secure area of the airport in Panama City when we -- meaning all the passengers on the flight bound for Miami, not just my family -- were put through a second screening that involved a hand search through everyone's carry-on. The security man took away a bottle of water that I had just bought from a shop next to the gate. They took away everyone's water bottles, so I can't complain of being singled out. I'm just baffled, that's all.
Because I'm still slightly jet-lagged, this will be a short column, a list of all the things I've lost, going backwards from yesterday's de-aguafication.
Item: Water bottle, bought at shop in secure area of airport. Panama City, Panama. Reason prohibited: Unknown.
Item: Souvenir key-chain with minuscule folding tools, bought as souvenir of the Atlanta Olympics. Taken away at BWI. Reason: One folding tool was a tiny scissors and another was a mini-pen-knife. Not sure which one was deemed the potential weapon. Maybe it was having them in combination. As I was in a rush to make my flight, I never asked.
Item: An eyeglass repair kit, which had a miniature screwdriver. Taken away at Dulles. It had passed muster on a number of other flights, so I thought it was okay, but this time it wasn't.
Item: A tweezers, seized in Manchester, New Hampshire. This incident was the closest I came to speaking up, since I was very fond of that tweezers and can't imagine any scenario in which a villain could do any damage with that implement other than use it to aggressively over-pluck a victim's eyebrows. And really, if anyone tried that, I think the other passengers could put a stop to it. Well, that's what I thought at the time, but refrained from pointing out.
Item: Bamboo knitting needles, size: number 10. These weren't actually mine, but my then-12-year-old daughter's. Taken away at London Heathrow. I asked why and the screener shrugged and said apologetically, they were on the prohibited list. The only bright spot was that that my daughter had no current knitting project attached to the needles.
Items: Multiple bottles of toiletries, toothpaste in a tube, and a prescription cream that cost about $300. This was in Melbourne, Australia, the same day that shoe-bomber Richard Reid attempted to blow up the plane he was on. All at once the rules changed, and all passengers in Melbourne were hand-screened, hand-frisked, and all liquids, gels, pastes – even Tylenol in liqui-gel capsules – got taken away. Everyone was just grateful that all flights were not completely shut down, and so no one made a peep about anything.
I'm sure I've left out at least three items from this list, but that's okay. It's not the length of the list that matters, it's that not one item on this list was in any way a credible threat to anyone in the air or on the ground. I do understand the need to be one hundred percent sure that nothing gets on board that could conceivably used as a weapon. And I completely accept the premise that it's best to err on the side of caution. That's why I never tried to talk my way into keeping any of the things I lost. Besides, the airport security personnel don't make the rules, and they don't get to bend them for anyone. So this column is not calling for change, for more common sense in the rules, or for anything else, for that matter. It's just the personal musing of someone who sat on a three-hour flight yesterday without a water bottle, scribbled in draft form while waiting, waiting, waiting for the flight attendant to come around with the drinks cart.
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Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, March 26, 2010.
Showing posts with label National Airport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Airport. Show all posts
Friday, April 2, 2010
They Keep Changing the Names on Me!
First, an update to last week's update about the Washington, DC Complaints Choir. I was happy to receive this newsflash from Evan Tucker, the director of the Voices of Washington choir, who informs me that "We just wrapped up our filming of a Complaints Choir for Washington DC tonight [March 8]. We've staged unannounced outdoor performances of it at the White House, the Capitol and Dupont Circle. We are going to be editing the footage for the next few weeks and should have a complaints choir film ready and totally worthy of all DC's faults by the beginning of April (and hopefully well before that). If you have any questions about the project, I would be absolutely delighted to answer them. My email is etucker82 @ gmail.com. Please feel free to contact at any time, and I'm so happy to hear that other DC people are as interested in the complaints choir project as we are." So keep watching this space. I will post a link to the finished film as soon as it's available. Now on to the main course:
Comcast is becoming Xfinity, but don't expect me ever to call it that. And what's with the initial X for companies? (Actually, that's for another column; this one's about my fondness for old names.) I found myself pondering the name change on my walk home from People's Drugstore. Um, I mean CVS. I can't help myself: "People's" must be stamped on the primal neurons of my brain, which just can't seem to recall the three simple letters of the new ("new" meaning since 1990)name.
I'm not as bad about names changes as my mother, who still refers to that big hotel at the corner of Woodley Road and Connecticut Avenue as the "Wardman Park." Which became the Sheraton Park in 1953. And then became the Marriott in 1998. But wait! Marriott restored the original Wardman Park to the hotel's name, so that now it's officially the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, which may be called "Wardman Park" for short. So after half a century of mis-labeling the hotel, my mother is now correct again. That gives me hope.
Meanwhile I continue on my merry way, flying in and out of National Airport, not "Washington Reagan National Airport." I don't know any DC native who calls it that. Actually, I doubt I've ever heard the phrase coming from anyone other than a Metro train operator. So there's no reason for me to change.
I think part of my resistance to name changes stems from the loss of a sense of place. "National" Airport tells you that you're in the nation's capital. When I'm in New York, I often hear New Yorkers refer to Sixth Avenue, which officially got renamed "Avenue of the Americas" in 1945. But what does that "of the Americas" tell you? That you're in the hemisphere which has two continents called America. What does Sixth Avenue tell you? That you're on the avenue that falls between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue -- now that's useful information! So much so that sometime in the 1980's, the city of New York acknowledged the truth and installed "Sixth Avenue" street signs alongside the "Avenue of the Americas" signs.
I can claim a bit of credit myself in keeping a useful street name unaltered, right here in our neck of the woods. When I was a commissioner of ANC 3-C back in the early 1980's, there was some political momentum to change the name of a short segment of Massachusetts Avenue to "Nelson and Winnie Mandela Avenue." The name change would be just for the block in front of the South African embassy, then controlled by the apartheid regime that had imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Now I admire Mandela as much as anyone – I was even arrested and jailed for a day as part of the series of staged protests in his behalf – but I just could not see the value in hanging new street signs and printing new maps, all for a one block segment of a street. What would be the impact? Perhaps some mild annoyance for the rulers in South Africa -- though this would have been the least of their problems -- versus a good deal of confusion for tourists trying to navigate their way down an avenue already hard to follow through its various circles and squares.
Fortunately, the name change never happened. If it had, we'd probably still be trying to get the Council to change the name back. By the way, take a close-up look at the 1100 block of 16th Street on Google Maps. You'll see that segment of the street is officially named "Andrei Sakharov Plaza," a moniker slapped on it during the early 1980s to annoy the Soviet Union, which had its embassy on that block back then. If the Council would like to make a stand for rationality of place names and control of its own street grid, as well as recognition that
times have changed, it should take the quick, simple and long-overdue action of changing the name back to 16th Street.
My mother and I would be grateful. And I suspect that the Andrei Sakharov, champion of democracy that he was, would not have minded at all.
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Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, March 12, 2010
Comcast is becoming Xfinity, but don't expect me ever to call it that. And what's with the initial X for companies? (Actually, that's for another column; this one's about my fondness for old names.) I found myself pondering the name change on my walk home from People's Drugstore. Um, I mean CVS. I can't help myself: "People's" must be stamped on the primal neurons of my brain, which just can't seem to recall the three simple letters of the new ("new" meaning since 1990)name.
I'm not as bad about names changes as my mother, who still refers to that big hotel at the corner of Woodley Road and Connecticut Avenue as the "Wardman Park." Which became the Sheraton Park in 1953. And then became the Marriott in 1998. But wait! Marriott restored the original Wardman Park to the hotel's name, so that now it's officially the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, which may be called "Wardman Park" for short. So after half a century of mis-labeling the hotel, my mother is now correct again. That gives me hope.
Meanwhile I continue on my merry way, flying in and out of National Airport, not "Washington Reagan National Airport." I don't know any DC native who calls it that. Actually, I doubt I've ever heard the phrase coming from anyone other than a Metro train operator. So there's no reason for me to change.
I think part of my resistance to name changes stems from the loss of a sense of place. "National" Airport tells you that you're in the nation's capital. When I'm in New York, I often hear New Yorkers refer to Sixth Avenue, which officially got renamed "Avenue of the Americas" in 1945. But what does that "of the Americas" tell you? That you're in the hemisphere which has two continents called America. What does Sixth Avenue tell you? That you're on the avenue that falls between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue -- now that's useful information! So much so that sometime in the 1980's, the city of New York acknowledged the truth and installed "Sixth Avenue" street signs alongside the "Avenue of the Americas" signs.
I can claim a bit of credit myself in keeping a useful street name unaltered, right here in our neck of the woods. When I was a commissioner of ANC 3-C back in the early 1980's, there was some political momentum to change the name of a short segment of Massachusetts Avenue to "Nelson and Winnie Mandela Avenue." The name change would be just for the block in front of the South African embassy, then controlled by the apartheid regime that had imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Now I admire Mandela as much as anyone – I was even arrested and jailed for a day as part of the series of staged protests in his behalf – but I just could not see the value in hanging new street signs and printing new maps, all for a one block segment of a street. What would be the impact? Perhaps some mild annoyance for the rulers in South Africa -- though this would have been the least of their problems -- versus a good deal of confusion for tourists trying to navigate their way down an avenue already hard to follow through its various circles and squares.
Fortunately, the name change never happened. If it had, we'd probably still be trying to get the Council to change the name back. By the way, take a close-up look at the 1100 block of 16th Street on Google Maps. You'll see that segment of the street is officially named "Andrei Sakharov Plaza," a moniker slapped on it during the early 1980s to annoy the Soviet Union, which had its embassy on that block back then. If the Council would like to make a stand for rationality of place names and control of its own street grid, as well as recognition that
times have changed, it should take the quick, simple and long-overdue action of changing the name back to 16th Street.
My mother and I would be grateful. And I suspect that the Andrei Sakharov, champion of democracy that he was, would not have minded at all.
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, March 12, 2010
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