Finneran: Oh Beautiful For Spacious Skies
Friday, September 27, 2019
Tom Finneran
**I once thought that air travel was exciting and that terminals were cool. I was young and foolish.
Air travel today is a grind and as I get older, I find it less and less appealing all the time.
I retain my youthful awe of the achievement itself---going three thousand miles in about five hours is absolutely miraculous.
But the terminals are grim places, echoing incoherent messages which no one can understand.
And the airplanes themselves seem designed to inflict maximum discomfort on all passengers.
I’m in pretty good shape, yet my butt and back are still sore from sitting in the sardine can which they call a seat.
Finally, might the pilot and the service staff speak slowly, clearly, and intelligently when making an announcement.
Mighttheyrefrainfromslingingtheirwordstogetherinonemassiveandunintelligibleramblewhichleavespassengersinthedark,convincedthatnoonereallycares?
You get my point……………….
**New Mexico is a rugged and beautiful state. Talk about spacious skies! Talk about beautiful heavenly blues. Talk about gorgeous white clouds shading the mountains. I now know why Georgia O’Keefe and countless others have fallen in love with the state. It’s not the beauty of Maine’s forests and coastline, nor the beauty of Minnesota’s lakes, nor the beauty of Wisconsin’s rolling meadows. New Mexico’s beauty is ruggedly different, a beauty born of desert and mountains and sunshine.
**Santa Fe is a funky town. I enjoyed walking the streets. I enjoyed people-watching. I enjoyed the cuisine, although the green chilies could start a fire. Ketchup is a mainstay in my family and fiery spices are earnestly avoided. My forehead and upper lip will actually break out in a sweat if I inadvertently come across a hot pepper or chile.
The town’s population is only about 85,000 people. Yet there are al least six bookstores that I saw in my travels around the town. Compare Boston, a city of 685,000 with nary a bookstore to be found! And we call ourselves the Hub of the Universe. How modest we are in our intellectual pretensions………
** A window seat on a clear day, flying at 36,000 feet, gives perspective. The United States is a vast nation. Given the season, I saw many shades of brown. The country’s crops have come in and those deep fertile plains are at rest. As a city kid I marveled at the wide open spaces below me. And I wondered, where are all the people? We were flying at about 500 miles an hour and we would go for multiple twenty minute stretches without seeing a single barn or dwelling anywhere. City kids vs. farm boys, inhabiting two very different worlds………………
A final thought---I’m glad that I went and I’m glad to be back.
There’s no place like home.
Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.
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