What World Recession??? People are a-Travelin’! - Sunday, 14 June

Northwest Airlines’ direct flight to Paris is now operated by Delta. All 250 seats of the Boeing 767 were full – young, old, families, vacationers, business people, a variety of nationalities. Based on conversations I heard around me, I’m guessing that about half of the travelers were French. As I recall, Northwest used a slightly larger plane for this route, an Airbus 330 that seats about 300, but in any case it’s been a LONG time since I took a totally full flight to Paris! Gotta say the service was efficient, the leather seats comfy, and the woman in the middle seat of my 3-person row didn’t have to climb over me to go to the toilet (she made her husband get up!).

But the guy in front of me felt compelled to fully recline his seat as soon as he could, and left it that way whether he was resting or eating or helping his daughter or walking around the cabin, causing me a bit of discomfort and irritation whenever I would whack my knee into it! So thank goodness for MP3 players – about 2/3 of the way through the flight, I decided to combat the frustration by spending some time with two of my favorite geniuses – Hélène Grimaud and JS Bach. Her first Bach album is absolutely transporting. The high art of the works themselves and of her insightful and passionate performances successfully overcame the minor irritations of my situation! Ms. Grimaud plays Bach’s original keyboard works and also some transcriptions (Busoni, Liszt, and Rachmaninov) with astonishing skill, intellect, power, heart and transparency. Buy a copy of this CD and support one of the greatest young artists around! Heck, buy a copy of each of her CD’s! You won’t be disappointed!

Quick international travel tip: if you want to speed through passport check, use a cane and limp a bit! Hopefully, some of the staff in the arrival area were scanning the crowd for evil-doers. But at least some of them were attuned to people that might need help. They flagged me over and opened one of the crowd-control barriers for me, allowing me to move right to the head of the line at passport check. I’ve often observed a real graciousness by the French towards handicapped people; this reinforces it!