The book's the thing

There are still books out there. Many, many books. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Books have been here for... well, not forever, but for a very long time. More than I can remember, at least, but that’s not saying much.

The thing is: the book is quite a clever concept. A bundle of knowledge, strapped together by pieces of leather... well, once by leather... But it is the concept of the book which matters, whether in hard cover or in soft cover.

“What about an electronic cover?”
“How can something electronic be a cover? It is virtual.”
“Therefore it does not exist?”
“Yes, I mean no. I mean, it must exist if we can still read its pages.”
“Yes?”
“But that doesn’t make it a book.”
“Not even an electronic book?”
“Call me a romantic. I still like the smell of leather... Well, something to hold in my hands.”
“I hold my Kindle in my hands. Can even hold it and turn the pages with the same hand.”

*insert awkward pause

“Anyhow, I liked things the way they were.”
“Writing on stone, you mean.”
“Now let’s not go to extremes.”
“Me go to extremes!”

The thing is, electronic books, electronic information of any type, excites me. No, it is not a fetish. I simply like access to anything, anywhere, at any time. Many of you will claim that I have become a part of the “me now” generation which demands immediate satisfaction, and can do with nothing less. But I will have nothing to do with this.

I have always had a fascination for books. I would travel with my parents and suddenly disappear. They knew then to search for the nearest bookstore. Opening a book was an exploration, an exploration into a parallel universe from whence I emerged changed, even if only in a small way. But so much has happened since. It used to be that a teacher could stand up at the front of a one room schoolhouse and teach students all there was needed to know. A set of encyclopedias could contain all of the information of both the modern and ancient worlds. Dictionaries could contain an accurate list of vocabulary and not need to be updated for decades. But then came the information explosion. Books became out of date almost before they were published. A wise teacher soon realized that s/he could no longer be a valid source of information but should rather serve as “facilitator”, in leading students to search, find and properly evaluate information. Huge conglomerations which once controlled the access to knowledge, have now lost their control over us. And writers can now easily turn out their novels on a computer, and even go way of self-publishing rather than suffer years of rejection at the hands of literary agents and publishers who are becoming less and less willing to take chances in a market whose bottom is falling out.

When I finally got my own novel published, I had no idea what was waiting for me in the literary world. Bookstores, however big, can not even represent a fraction of what is out there. Many of you will claim that most of the books published today are probably not even worth printing. But the thing is, there are many good books out there which would have never gotten published otherwise. And I, personally, take this to be the decisive factor: not the surplus of what we consider unworthy, but rather the absence of what should be there.

But what I have found to be even more compounding is how social networks offer an interactive platform in which readers and writers come together - where readers and writers no longer sit in worlds clearly separate, but are now accountable to each other. Writing has become a social experience in ways never conceived of before.

And I realize now that being a writer not only means that I should write books, but that I also should bring something back to books and writers that I read. This is why I began my own book review blog - “The Virtual Muser eBook Review”. And I must say that I am learning as much from this experience as I am from my own writing.

Books are here to stay. Maybe not in the way that you would expect or hope them to. But they have been here forever, at least in the human experience. Whether they were written in stone, or told and passed down from generation to generation. Think of it: the concept has never changed. And what about the need?

You might say, then - why even sell books? Why not just put them up there for anybody to download? Isn’t the message the thing that is important? You may or may not be surprised to hear that more and more writers are doing exactly this. Is this the beginning of a serious trend? We will wait and find out.

You're so vain, you probably think this blog is about you

People annoy me. What can I say. I don’t even remember when it started. I have a vague memory of the doctor slapping me when I came out of my mother’s womb...

Not all people annoy me. Or at least, not all of the people all of the time.

“You can be very annoying,” you say.
“Yes,” I answer. “What is your point, exactly?

People, by themselves, are not always annoying enough to reach my radar. It usually takes an extension of themselves: their pet dog or brood of children - to really get under my skin. You see, most people believe that they are god’s gift to mankind.  And, just in case no one has gotten the point, they send out their dogs and children to get into the face of anybody who might otherwise ignore them. You’ve been there: kids running rampant through the aisles in the supermarket, screaming at the top of their lungs when something is refused - dogs barking in the middle of the night while their owners sleep peacefully and leave the rest of us to toss and turn in despair.

Now, I like animals. Actually like them much more than people. There is probably a name for that ( there is a name for everything these days). Maybe it is because both animals and I don’t talk much. Much more into observing. So, the other night, at 1:30 in the morning, I went out and picked up some stones on the way  to confront the dog who was barking behind my house. Getting there, I found a dog tied up outside of a house. He saw me and wagged his tail with a huge dog smile, glad to welcome a human presence so late at night/early morning. What could I do, then? Throw a stone at him? So I left him to it and went back to bed, cursing the moron who should have never been allowed to have a dog, much like many parents who should have never been allowed to have children.

If you find this not to be politically correct, so far,  I can only say that it is going to get worse. But in order to partially placate your delicate sense of fair play, I will no longer brand people as “annoying”. Rather, let’s just say that they are “socially challenged”.

Actually, I am just as socially challenged as anyone else, but I keep it to myself. Which most people consider annoying. You see, I can sit at a party, or dinner, or any other social event a whole night and say nothing. Most people will probably pass this off as my not being intelligent enough to take part in their riveting conversation. Other people attribute my silence to my not finding them, or their conversation, interesting. And this really pisses them off. You are supposed to mingle in social situations. And if you don’t have anything interesting to say, making a fool out of yourself is just as socially acceptable.

“What are you, socially autistic?” you ask.
“I have never thought about it in that way,” I answer. “But now that you mention it, the shoe fits.”

The irony of it all is that I am not a people person (if you haven’t already guessed), yet I have spent almost all of my adult life living in small communities (we are talking about less than a thousand souls - not counting the dogs). This brings me into more contact with people than I would have, say, in the city. The first community (14 years of my life) was a kibbutz. The second community (20+ years and counting) is a small community on the edge of the Zin Wadi. When we first came here, the community was much smaller, almost everyone knew each other, and there was a feeling of common purpose in living here. This has changed over the years. What was once a cohesive community has turned into social anarchy. We could blame this on how quickly the community has expanded, as more and more people build houses here. Or on the fact that many people build houses only to rent them out at obscene prices in order to make a windfall. But the main factor may be that many people have recognized this is a place where they, their children and their dogs can live as free spirits. What others might call - “running wild”. But hey, let’s not quibble over semantics.

I mean, how many places do you know where you can let your dog run loose terrorizing children and bark all night terrorizing aspiring sleepers, without any fear of being called into account. Yes, we do have a “residents committee” which has promised to work towards “enriching” our communal experience. And yes, like most good committees, they keep sending us newsletters telling us about how they are going to round up dogs on the loose and call their owners into account. For about ten years, we have seen these proclamations repeatedly. Haven’t seen them in a while though, probably because a dog chews them up, just as two dogs chewed up our Friday newspaper which was dropped off early morning by the paper boy. Did the dog owner offer to buy us a new newspaper? No, he simply cleaned the mess of torn fragments off of his OWN lawn.

“Bitter. You think I sound bitter? No, not at all. That is one of the advantages of being a socially autistic and cynical pessimist. You don’t hold high expectations.”

“The name of the small community where I am living now? I think I will keep this to myself. Otherwise, you’re so vain, you’ll probably think this blog is about you.

Ideally Speaking

Vivian Rakoff, in “Ideally Speaking” says: “Idealism in a way is a manifestation of a generalized human desire to have a sense-making model or paradigm of the world. There are those who just accept what is given to them implicitly without it being explicit and there are those who try to make it explicit and if they haven’t got a model, go looking for it. We seem to need a sense-making system that takes away the sense of frivolity in our existence because we have a real terror of meaninglessness.”

The major difference between myself, and the South African Jews interviewed in the book who decided to emigrate to Israel in the end, is that they came here for reasons of ideology. I came first and discovered the ideology afterwards.

In a way, I am somewhat envious of those who grew up in Jewish youth movements, with a clear sense of their own identity, engaging in intellectual discussions of burning issues. Jonathan Broomberg, in “Ideally Speaking”, says: “My sense is that each person who was in the movement in each generation has a different and quite unique relation to that ideology. At one end of the spectrum were people whose involvement was entirely a function of the group while at the other end you had people for whom it ran very deep personally.”

The reason for my lack of ideology, then, as a youth, might have been because there was no group for me to be a part of. I grew up in a rather sterile WASPish suburb of Toronto. My family didn’t have any marked ethnic distinction. And although I read extensively - devouring the theories of Freud, the teachings of different world religions, the background to revolution and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks... there was no one to intellectually share these ideas with. At a time when the hippies were beginning to assemble in the streets of downtown Toronto, preaching new world order from their makeshift community in Yorkville, my peers in Scarborough were only concerned with the trivial affairs of the day.

And by the time that I was old enough to join the hippie movement, it was already petering out. But two things stayed with me from all of their proclamations for social renewal and a better world: one was the idea of communal living and the other was the return to the land.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the Jewish youth there were also talking about creating a better world, although their approach was quite different from that of the “flower generation.  In most Jewish youth movements, the concept of Israel and the kibbutz were almost inseparable. Israel was seen to hold the promise of “a light unto the nations”, and most saw this to be best realized through the socialistic and utopian nature of the kibbutz life style.

By the time I heard about the kibbutz in my sheltered existence, the “real terror of meaninglessness” had already led me to  consider leaving Canada in the search of something more. I heard about the kibbutz for the first time from a friend of my sister’s, who was planning to go to a six month ulpan on a kibbutz where you learn Hebrew half the day and work the other half. Something seemed to click when she told me about this and I felt that this was something I had to do. The irony was that she never did go to Israel in the end, but rather went to work with the native Indian community somewhere in Alberta, trying to right the wrongs of discrimination in her own backyard. Which is somewhat similar to the decision of many South African Jews not to emigrate to Israel but stay in South Africa and fight against Apartheid.

So, somehow I and many South Africans ended up in the same place. I had never planned, though, to stay here. I came to see socialism in action, and also learn Hebrew on the side. The ideology only really came afterwards. There was a time when I believed I would spend the rest of my life on the kibbutz. But that is when reality set in, both for me and for many of the South Africans who had decided to settle on a kibbutz. We gradually discovered the discrepancies between vision and reality; between the idealization of human nature and human primal instinct. If “Ideally Speaking” is any indication, most of the South African Jews who came to live on a kibbutz have since left. Many have left Israel, also - some going back to South Africa and others settling in other countries around the globe. We came very close to leaving Israel when we left the kibbutz, also. But in the end, we stayed, settling for isolation in the desert. The main difference here between me and South Africans, was that I only felt overly disillusioned with the kibbutz, feeling that it didn’t live up to its ideals. Many South Africans had become disillusioned with the country as a whole, feeling that they had been misled during their years in the youth movements about what really to expect. But my advantage, perhaps, was that I had first landed in Israel without any expectations. No one had tried to plant a pretty picture in my mind about Israel. Rather, at the kibbutz desk, when applying to come to a kibbutz ulpan, they appeared more interested in dissuading me from going.

You might wonder why I have concentrated on comparing my own experience to that of South African Jews. Why I would want to make such a comparison at all. Or why I didn’t choose youth closer to home, such as North American Jewish youth.

This was inspired by a book I recently read and have quoted here: “Ideally Speaking”. Although the  book is based on a series of interviews with a wide cross-section of South African Jews - now living in South Africa, Israel and abroad - I feel that much of what is expressed in the book is relevant to all of us, and warmly recommend the book to all of you.  I first heard of the book from one of its two editors: Steve Hellman (Lindsay Talmud is the other editor). I had never met a South African before coming to Israel and Steve was one of the first South Africans that I did meet. Not only that, but Steve played a significant part in my life in the early eighties when I was just starting out as a new teacher. In his role as coordinator of the English department at Kibbutz Brenner Regional High School, where I began my teaching career, Steve both welcomed me to the world of teaching and served as my mentor. And I owe it to him for not only getting through those first few months as a new teacher, but for also instilling in me the inspiration for thinking outside of the box in my teaching and in creating authentic teaching environments. Thirty years have passed since then and only now have I really discovered the world that Steve came from. And I thank him for what he gave me then, and what he has shared with me now.

The Bearded Wonder

Why do men have beards? There are a multitude of explanations, I’m sure. Freud must have devoted a chapter to it, somewhere. I can only speak for myself, and even then, I am on shaky ground.

I think I decided to “sprout” a beard as soon as I was able to grow one. Most likely, even before that - when facial hair was no more than an unpromising stubble. Was this in an effort to appear older? Or perhaps, I saw it as a stamp of my own individuality. I really can’t remember that far back. I only know that, except for a few years later in life, I had a beard in some shape or form.

By the time I could grow a beard, and had reached an age where I could grow my hair long, the hippies had pretty well run out of steam - many of them leaving behind their nomadic, power of love life style, to open stylish boutiques where money became their new object of concern. We were into the seventies, the sixties were but a memory, but either no one had told me that the flower generation was over, or I didn’t care. With my long hair and beard, I set out for an Israeli commune, looking for a life where people lived together in harmony and social bliss.

It would be interesting to measure my induction into the socialistic life style of the kibbutz against the length of my beard. When I arrived on the kibbutz, one might say that my beard was “bushy”. Yet still under control. I had spent two months before that working in a small hotel on Rue Pigalle in Paris - what was known as the red light district. The characters that I met during those two months could have provided the inspiration for a compelling thriller. They took one look at this young Canadian boy, who they called “Le petit Jesus”, and took me under their ward. They would take me out for a walk through Paris late at night and I knew that there was nothing to be scared of, as they were much scarier than anything we could possibly meet on the way. At the end of the two months, when I was supposed to go to Israel to join an ulpan, they did everything in their power (other than kidnapping me) to try and convince me to stay. I often wonder what would have happened if I had stayed. But more about that in a future blog entry, entitled “Life Choices”.

So when did my beard start getting out of control. One might say, just before my marriage. By then I looked like a character out of the “Lion King” - or The Lion King himself. I was still in an upward spiral, becoming more and more of an integral part of the kibbutz, filling many roles such as head of the Manpower and Education committees. We had our first child and he spent his first years sleeping in the children’s house. But then things began to change - the kibbutz began to change. The signs were there - had been for quite a while, I imagine. Even now, although I left the kibbutz for the same ideological reasons that brought me there, I am surprised at how quickly it all fell apart. Right up to privatization.

And these are the years where my beard got increasingly shorter. Soon, the overall bushy look was gone, although there was still a firm growth of beard there. A vote in the general assembly decided that children would now live at home. And, as I became more and more involved in the sensitive areas of the kibbutz - especially when I became the head of the Members Committee, I saw how big the cracks had become, and found it difficult to justify staying there any longer. And my beard could now be described as “neat” - something it hadn’t been since my early Canadian years.

It must have been a year or two after we left the kibbutz, moving down to live in the Negev, that I shaved off my beard altogether. Maybe this was my way of stating that I was starting something completely new. I needed something to signify the separation, something which was an intricate part of myself. I remember when Adva came home and saw this strange man in the house. She was quite excited at the time, at least for the first few minutes until she realized it was me. That is another good thing about having a beard. By shaving it off, you can feel that you made a significant change in your life. Even if it is only for a moment. But growing a beard is nowhere the same. As G. K. Chesterton once said: “You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.”

When it comes down to it, it is all skin deep - or should I say “hair deep”. Some people told me that being clean shaven made me look more distinguished, others - “younger’... but there were those - especially my sister and two childhood friends -  who appeared to have a problem recognizing me in my new naked form. Not that they didn’t know who I was - but they had  grown up knowing me only as a bearded wonder. And then this new person walked into their lives and he didn’t quite fit.

Probably the thing that convinced me to grow back a beard, albeit a small one, was that I could never get used to not being able to run my hand over my beard when in deep contemplation. There was no friction to help me think. Also, while staring at myself in the mirror, I was taken aback by the gaunt look.  So, much to the chagrin of some people, I started to sprout facial hairs again.

And here I am, late in life, wondering whether to just shave it all off again. Is it now the need to look younger? Or simply a need for change? In my facebook status, I asked people to vote for what they like more: a bearded or beardless David. If I thought they would help me decide, I was mistaken, as the votes are split more or less down the middle.

Maybe I should listen to the wisdom of Jean Cocteau: “There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. The period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.”

There are those who experiment with having a beard, and those of us who experiment without having one.

Time according to Facebook

Last week I discovered that I got married in 2007. Which sort of turned my world upside down. How do you suddenly explain to your kids that they were born out of wedlock? And how do I explain the discrepancy between the young man that appears in my wedding photos and the aging soul that stares out at me in the mirror each morning?

It all started when I clicked on Get Timeline on a friend’s Facebook page. “It couldn’t hurt,” I thought. “Facebook is continually reinventing itself. This is just another tidbit”. Or so I thought, just before I was sucked into a time warp.

My suspicions should have been aroused when I saw that my personal history began in the year 2007 - the same year that I joined Facebook. And especially where it claimed that I got married on the same day that I joined Facebook - August 9th, 2007. Facebook certainly takes personal status seriously.

It is as if this social experiment, called Facebook, was not quite enough for its founders and they decided to have Facebook become a scientific experiment as well. They had already redefined our place in the virtual world. Why not also redefine our place in the physical world? Will I soon discover that if I attempt to leave Facebook, my marriage will immediately dissolve, and I may find myself fading - both virtually and physically?

Sounds like a page out of my own book - As I Died Laughing. But then, that is supposed to be fiction, isn’t it?

But what harm is there in all of this? It’s not as if Facebook is seeking world domination. ”Lower your voice,” I tell myself, looking nervously back over my shoulder. When it comes down to it, Facebook is a democratic organization. Except for the fact that it keeps making changes without consulting us, and forces us to automatically accept them in the end, even if at first it tells us we have a choice. And then there is the Terms of Use agreement, which even my lawyer finds difficult to understand. But the bottom line is that Facebook would have long ceased to exist had it not constantly reinvented itself. And if we hadn’t reason to complain, we would have gone somewhere else by now. We love to complain about what we have, but are not yet ready to do without.

Which brings us back to the timeline and the year 2007. I have been filling in the cracks. Yes, although Facebook seems to have made it needlessly complicated with very little explanation on  how to add events outside of the Facebook years, I have managed. And although these events didn’t receive the Facebook stamp of approval, they are now officially within the realm of Facebook. I have found my way out and back in again. I am reminded of Truman in The Truman Show who discovered the escape door which led him outside of his alternate reality. Although I don’t know if he ever found his way back in. And which also begs the question: “Which side of the door is real?” And if one side is real, does this automatically make the other side fiction?

Personally, I enjoy these virtual worlds. I don’t know what I’d do without them. I can sit here, down in the Negev desert, the wind howling outside, the rain beating down on the roof - and speak out to the rest of the world. You may not be listening now, you may not be listening today or tomorrow.  But my words will be out there, floating around. Who knows who will read them. How does that make me feel? A rush of social adrenaline, perhaps. Or maybe I just enjoy talking to myself. Beats solitaire. Or maybe it is solitaire, of a totally different sort. Play on. Drop me a line if you think I am not alone.

Taking the “new” out of New Years

We are already into the third week of the new year and I am waiting for something wondrous to happen.

You see, I have this fascination for new years. Somewhat of a childlike expectation. As if something different is supposed to happen simply because of the way we artificially separate time. I can’t help myself. It begins with officially toasting in the New Year with warm anticipation (although at times it is more like a heavy sigh of relief at having made it through yet another year). Actually, it begins even earlier than that - during the last week of December when making New Years resolutions in front of a roaring fire in the company of my closest of friends. Maybe it is the seductive lure of the fire, but we really do seem to believe that we will stick to these resolutions each new year.

Looking back, I don’t have a very good track record when it comes to New Years resolutions. The only time that I can remember carrying one out, in recent history, was the year of  2011 when I pledged that I would - no matter what - get my book published. And actually succeeded in doing so.

Maybe the shock of my actually carrying through with a new years resolution is what spurred my two close friends to not only declare significant resolutions for 2012, but also set out with a fierce determination to carry them out. Meanwhile, for the first time, I am left with no resolution at all for the new year and time is running out.

I suppose that we cannot make a resolution until we decide what it is that we want. And I keep coming up with a blank. Sure, I want to continue with my writing after taking this first big step. And I am also working on a screenplay.  But what is it I want out of all of this. Another book? Endless adulation? A smug sense of worth?

We think that if we could go back thirty years, knowing what we know now, we’d be much more in tune with our needs and desires than we are now. As if hindsight would create a better world. But it doesn’t work that way, does it. If we don’t make the same mistakes again, we will make other mistakes. Perhaps just as big, perhaps even bigger. There comes a time when you have to accept where you are in life. Accept it and work on making it better.

Does this mean I should give up on the idea of opening up a pub in Yellowknife? Would such a decision negate all that I have gone through and have become, or would it be a natural continuation to all that came before it. From hot desert to cold desert. From a small dysfunctional community to a slightly larger one. Okay, Yellowknife is much larger than my small desert community. But I’m sure that I could find a community just as small and isolated, not too far from Yellowknife. A community probably only accessible by dog sled or small plane. But how much beer would get sold? There must be a tangible level of possibility for any New Years resolution in order to turn it into  a feasible goal. Otherwise, what is the point? I learned this from a redhead. 

“You really should try living somewhere normal for a change.”
Normal. Here she was staring at me from across the room, knowing all that she knew about me, and yet talking about normal.
“Normal? Scarborough was normal. About as normal as you can get.”
“Don’t confuse normal with a comfortable middle class community of WASPs and  Father knows best,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Have you been to Scarborough lately?”
Point taken.
“What’s a normal location in your eyes?” I asked.
“A nice small, comfortable apartment in Tel Aviv. A short walk to take in some culture or eat at a good restaurant. A stone’s throw away from an evening stroll along the promenade by the sea.”
“Have you been talking to Adva?”
“No, I have been eavesdropping.”
She would always have the upper hand, living in this invisible world of hers. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get both feet in.
“There is only one problem with that vision,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“The people.”

Maybe that is the key. Both the Negev desert and the Canadian Arctic offer places where most people wouldn’t want to even visit, let alone live there. I probably missed my calling in not becoming a hermit, but then they didn’t have Internet back then.

But I am no closer now to a New Years resolution than I was when beginning to write this piece. Am I doomed to now wander through 2012 without any direction at all? When does a nomad simply become someone who has lost his way?

I am open to suggestions. Can anyone suggest a New Years resolution for me?

If airplanes were meant to fly

When our first child was three, we took him with us on a trip to Canada.
“We are going on an airplane!” we told him, much to his delight.
At that time, a bus took us from the old terminal building at Ben Gurion airport and drove us to the foot of the plane, where we climbed the steps up into the airplane.
After settling in and after a long strenuous 12 hours of keeping Edan amused during the flight, we finally landed in Toronto, heaving a sigh of relief as we walked through the “sleeve” from the plane into the terminal building.
Edan looked back at the airplane through the terminal window.
“When are we going up in an airplane?” he asked.
“We were just up in an airplane,” I answered, patiently. “That one,” I said pointing back to the airplane  through the window.
“No,” Edan said, pouting. “I want to go up in an airplane.”
Adva and I tried to dig deeply into our collective wisdom and convince Edan that we had been up in an airplane, but no matter what we said, he was not convinced, and it was clear that he would no longer trust anything that we said, not then, not ever.
For Edan, airplanes had nothing to do with being on the inside looking out.

There is a life lesson here. I just have to figure out what it is. And this year, 30 years later, I travelled the airwaves from Israel to Canada yet again. Or so it seemed. Now you never really see the plane on the outside. You walk into the plane through a sleeve at the new Ben Gurion terminal building and out of the plane through a sleeve at Pearson International. Yes, the plane does appear to take off, and there is constant turbulence through the next twelve hours, and then there is the bumpy landing. But were we flying? Really? Sometimes flying reminds me of that magic trick where the magician goes through one door on the stage and magically comes out through the door on the other side of the stage. Magic? Illusion?

All a matter of perspective, I suppose. I live in two parallel worlds: one in Israel, and the other in Canada. They both appear extremely far away from each other during the year. “Worlds apart”, one might say. Yet, all it takes is to walk through the door into a plane, count to 43,200, and walk back out. And “magic” - your body has been transported from one side of the world to the other, while your mind struggles to keep up.

I am waiting for “Beam me up Scotty” to become a reality. Many things which once seemed to be  science fiction have since become reality. Why not that also? The airline unions may have a problem with it, though. I can see the ensuing strikes as airlines move to body transportation machines. Of course, not everyone could be transported at once. There would still be lineups. Baggage might become an issue. Body weight might have to be factored in. They may still have to serve food and drinks while people wait in long lines. Maybe even play movies on widescreen tv or hand out handheld video players to entertain people while they wait. I’m sure that airlines, or whatever they may call themselves then, could tweak out a substantial profit.

And, as with anything, many people will look back with romantic nostalgia to the days of flight in an actual airplane, when this happens.

“When I was young, we travelled from continent to continent by flying in an actual airplane!”
“Gee dad, what was it like?”
“Well, if you looked down, you could see mountains. And they actually served us sitting down. No standing for hours awaiting your turn in the transportation booth. And the movies were better...”

Some people have a problem with change, of any type. They are used to something one way, and this makes that thing sacrosanct by default. For some people, the cinema came to an end when they moved from silent movies to talkies - and transportation lost its romantic appeal when we no longer rode the rough seas in a ship but flew high above completely detached from the earth below.