Daily Chai

Northwest's shortage of gate agents + elimination of milk in flight does not a happy child make. Nor a happy parent, nor other happy passengers on board, for that matter!

I started blogging once before about my horrible experiences with this one airline that bumped me over the Christmas holidays, even though I had had been one of the first people to check in, and was suffering from a horrible cold to boot. But I never published that entry because I came to realize that flying is just pretty darn horrendous across the board these days, and there's no point in singling out any one airline.

But my recent experiences flying with Susie Q. on Northwest were really unacceptable, even considering today's all around crappy service. Northwest has, in the interest of saving some money, stopped serving milk on all its flights. Notice I did not say it has stopped providing milk for free, because I assure you, I would have been much more understanding about that, more than happy to fork over $5 for a small carton if it meant sparing my one-year-old the sweet airline apple juice on our recent flight from Detroit to San Francisco. 

But you can just bring the milk with you, you say. Or, you can just buy it in the airport. That would be no, and no again. Yes, you can get one small bottle of milk past security, but that is usually only enough for the first hour or two of flying. Our flight originated that day in Bangor, Maine, and even though it was quite late taking off, we still had to wait so long to get off the plane in Detroit while the gate agents made their way to our gate, that I had to run with baby, through the odd nightclub themed undergroun corridors at the Detroit airport, to make my connection, and had no time to do any shopping in the airport. So the two of us are beyond frazzled and after we navigate our way to the one remaining seat in the back of the plane, buckle up, take off, and wait aixiously for the drink cart, I am shocked to learn there is no milk on board.

Like many parents of one-year-old babies, I had not yet even introduced milk to Susie Q. so this was not as simple as swapping Coke for Pepsi. It took her a long time acclimate to this new taste and drink any at all, and on this hot August day (did I mention that they left us waiting for a half hour in Bangor with all the air vents turned off??), I started to worry she'd get dehydrated.

So yes, even though air travel sucks plain and simple, I've flown recently on several other airlines that have provided milk, and provided it for free. If Northwest wants to impose such seriously inconvenient cuts, they ought to warn passengers ahead of time, or at least make sure they have enough gate agents to get connecting passengers off the plane in time that they can buy provisions for their baby in the airport. 

 

What keeps edgy people up at night?

Beth Lisick is a reasonably well known Bay Area writer and even though I was not personally familiar with her work, when I found her new hardcover in a store in the Castro recently, the name rung a bell and the bio on the book jacket was compelling enough to me that I ... purchased one of her older books, "Everybody Into The Pool," now out in paperback.

It's a memoir of sorts. A collection of essays about her life from her admittedly upper middle class childhood to her ascent/descent into the edgier life of Mission warehouses and one night stands, aspirations to lesbianism, dive bars and the dive bands that play in them. Much of it is quite well written and, in fairness, many of the descriptions of Bay Area culture were right on. It kept me going.

Here's my question: Are some people really too cool to have genuine angst, really deep fears or insecurities? Because judging from Lisick's work you'd think her troubles are all of the most superficial nature: which thrift shop to buy her clothes and coming to terms with the truth that much as she'd like to be, she really isn't attracted to women. Oh yeah, and basically bragging about how bad a mother she is, letting her little boy out in public with baby acne and a girlie outfit on, when we all know that this is a tone that is only acceptable among educated upper middle class types confident that their parenting skills are beyond reproach.

Lisick tends to get good reviews, perhaps because all of us wish that the only troubles we had were cool troubles. But this one review on Amazon really summarizes some of my own problems with the book: "Okay, so Beth Lisick is cooler than you. And she's going to pound that into you over and over again so you know it."