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Border Control
The queue for customs was long, and very disorganized. People kept trying to cut—or they cut inadvertently, and were yelled at. But really, it was hard to tell what was a line, and who was in charge,...
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Globalization
A German cab in 1971. Photo: Eugen Nosko You expect to feel humbled when you travel. Strange public transit, alien customs—add a language you don’t speak and it’s an immediately chastening experience....
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Think Big
Image via Wikimedia Commons We are told it is a liability to be thin-skinned, and it’s true that these are bad times for it. When an Internet slight makes you question your path in life, an encounter...
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Hypotheticals
A cheese-ball scanner, one of many found at a typical airport. I’m not saying I smuggled a cheese ball through security and onto a domestic flight. That would be illegal, and I would never encourage...
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Leavened by Absurdity
Innocuous leavening agent, or terrorist threat? Before today, I’d never done my citizen’s duty by reporting a suspicious package to authorities. I guess I’d never seen anything suspicious enough. And...
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All the Fun of Poetry Without All Those Poems, and Other News
Kenyon Cox, An Eclogue, 1889.Ben Lerner stares into the mire of futility and falsehood that is poetry: “What if we dislike or despise or hate poems because they are—every single one of them—failures? …...
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City of Gold
Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor in an ad for the TWA “Siesta Sleeper Seats,” 1958 At the airport, in a very long, very slow TSA security line, a friendly woman starts to talk. “This is bad,” she says....
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Husbands and Wives
One soon learns the point of a modern honeymoon. In this day and age, when most couples don’t need the time to become acquainted, it can seem like pure indulgence: a well-earned rest after the...
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The Fruit-Basket Routine
The first-class lounge on a seventies-era American Airlines 747 Luxury Liner.The veneer of civility is always thin on a red-eye. But somehow, at the airport, it seemed that the news playing on the...
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Premonitions
Yeah, real spooky, Austin. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:To you they have show’d some truth. —MacbethIn the Austin airport, there is an ad for a major national bank. “You keep it...
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New York Values
O’Hare International Airport. Photo: Cory W. WattsThe same day I ate the hot dog—indeed, the same layover—I found myself in conversation with a group of other travelers. One commented on the crowds,...
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Embrace Your Inner Airport, and Other News
Bjorn Krogstad, Figure in Airfield, 1983.The airport is more than a place—it’s a state of mind. If you’re still wracked with anxiety and frustration whenever you head to JFK, be advised that the whole...
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Morning-After Pill
I live in the southeastern part of North Carolina, in a county that went for Trump. I’m one of those people who shouldn’t have been surprised but was. I had to leave town the morning after the election...
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At a Motel Near O’Hare Airport
Photo: NARA, 1973 Jane Kenyon’s poem “At a Motel Near O’Hare Airport” appeared in our Winter 1975 issue. I sit by the window all morningwatching the planes make final approaches.Each of them gathers...
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The Stench of Orwell, and Other News
Illustration: Bernd Pohlenz If I had to lodge one complaint against the bulk of literary fiction, I’d say this: not enough smells. Too many writers neglect the olfactory. The fact is this world...
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All the Fun of Poetry Without All Those Poems, and Other News
Kenyon Cox, An Eclogue, 1889. Ben Lerner stares into the mire of futility and falsehood that is poetry: “What if we dislike or despise or hate poems because they are—every single one of them—failures?...
View ArticleClik here to view.
City of Gold
Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor in an ad for the TWA “Siesta Sleeper Seats,” 1958 At the airport, in a very long, very slow TSA security line, a friendly woman starts to talk. “This is bad,” she says....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Husbands and Wives
One soon learns the point of a modern honeymoon. In this day and age, when most couples don’t need the time to become acquainted, it can seem like pure indulgence: a well-earned rest after the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Fruit-Basket Routine
The first-class lounge on a seventies-era American Airlines 747 Luxury Liner. The veneer of civility is always thin on a red-eye. But somehow, at the airport, it seemed that the news playing on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Premonitions
Yeah, real spooky, Austin. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:To you they have show’d some truth. —Macbeth In the Austin airport, there is an ad for a major national bank. “You keep it...
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