Ground Stop

It's Friday night. I'm walking out into the crisp November night in the heart of a college campus, the lights of the performance space behind me.

"Did you hear there's a ground stop at airports?"

Phoenix Arizona
from a plane's window in less-troubled skies

The car radio is tuned to a station that will deliver us the news. The news anchors banter back and forth and I go back and forth between the stations on Sirius trying to find out what's happening. So many questions! So many concerns! A cyberattack? The Iranians? What's going on?

And finally, Sean Duffy, reality tv star-turned Transportation Secretary, and Markwayne MuIlin, Secretary of Homeland Security introduced from the White House. The President was nowhere to be seen and from what I've heard since, he had been silent all day.

Unsettling news in the snow-specked darkness of November, watching anxiously for the random deer thinking he should cross the strip of blacktop to chase the female trailing her siren scent. Alarming after playing Vivaldi's complex harmonies and melodies side-by-side with other humans equally focused on sharing in that which is good in our world.

It's horrifying to hear which words were chosen to spill forth from the mouths of these men - men sent out to tell us - the American people - exactly why all the airplanes had been taken from the sky. It's even more horrifying when you listen to it rather than seeing the images on the screen where maybe your focus can be on Sean's jacket or the tie and crisp white shirt chosen by Markwayne's dressers to help distract us from the lack of real substance in anything they spew.

And it was once again the blame game. We told you this would happen, they said, but President ...  - and I don't even want to type his name here - has been working for you to fix this problem and we need money. Then jabberwocky about "incredibly old" outdated equipment - routers, software, hardware, looking for things on e-bay, 1980s little copper lines. A steady stream of propaganda - self-serving rhetoric designed not to calm the flying public's fears, but rather to stir up the terror of wondering if you're going to perish in a horrific air crash due to the neglect of people controlling the purse strings. It's all your own fault, America.

Never mind the cuts to the FAA by DOGE. Never mind the expenses of the reflecting pool and the ball room and the arch and the golf course and the 24k gold spraypainted in the oval office. It's ugly and festering and I wonder who really believes anything that these men try to spin in our direction.

And, like all in the administration of this President, sidestepping the questions asked by stalwart reporters shouting for attention, the reporters looking to offer a little reassurance to the public.  And Duffy's little correction - "we call it SI" when the other guy spoke of the role of AI in the debacle. (I will remind you that AI is an abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence and we should all remember the definition of artificial - not real! It surely is not SUPER - though superlatives are the coin of the realm for the MAGA crowd.)

It was appalling, outrageous, abhorrent, revolting and alarming - but isn't this what some of you voted for?