Category: America Collection

America Collection/General interest
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Saying Goodbye to the Landline

by Fran Johns

SOME LIFESTYLE CHANGES ARE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS

Telephone of olden days (Author photo)

We go way back, the beloved landline and I. Maybe not really as far back as the above instrument, which was actually rescued from my friend Cynthia who wanted to toss it. But I have loved my landline and it loved me back.

For my part, I listed its number on my business cards, letterhead and with countless agencies which will now have to be alerted about its demise. In return it faithfully showed me who was calling, played a pleasant little message to friends if I were out or (most often) to foes who sought money —  either legitimately, for causes I support, or (most often) illegitimately. 

Good old landline would also tell me, if I happened to be nearby and paying attention, exactly who was calling — giving me the option of answering before the friendly machine did. And most delightfully, it took messages from friends while almost never recording anything from the scammers, who tend not to leave their evil messages on answering machines.

It was also boldly proactive. If you left a message while I was out, it would blink at me ferociously on return until I played things back. Unlike the cellphone, which disappears messages with abandon and is still mildly bewildering after all these years, the landline saved me untold embarrassment from friends who sought to connect.

“You left a message on my cellphone?” Oh dear. “Two weeks ago?” 

In short, my trusty landline has been, over the twelve years since I moved and had to change from the old trusty landline number, far more than just a relic of bygone days. But time came to hang it up.

(Another Author photo, after hanging up the phone)

AT&T finally pushed me over the edge. They’ve been trying to push friends of landlines over the edge for years by any means they can think of. Resistance has been fierce. Generally not for fleeting affections such as listed above but for truly valid reasons.

For one: not everbody in the world owns a mobile phone. I know that’s hard for anyone under 70 to imagine, but once there was life before cellphone towers. Also, cellphones can cost big bucks.

The main argument pro-landline, though, comes from people in remote areas where cellphone coverage is spotty to nonexistent. The telephone is both a friendline and a lifeline. I have friends in this category, as well as friends in cities like my San Francisco hometown, who are concerned about safety when the power is out.

“My mama,” says my friend Brian, “will shoot me if I give up my landline. When the earthquake hit? She was a hot mess until I got to my landline to assure her we were all okay.”

But apparently landline profit margins are thinner than the AT&T people prefer. They came up with a solution.

Several months ago, without so much as a heads-up — let alone an apology — my landline bill quietly rose from $60/month to something over $100. Because I have it on auto-pay, along with the confusing bills for cellphone and internet service I have had with AT&T for lo these many years, I managed not to notice the first month of astronomical charges. But not even right-brained I can overlook, for long, a bill that almost doubles without warning. 

For $60/month I could gulp, but in light of the blessings above which I have long enjoyed, just pay up. A hundred simoleons? Nahh.

So off I went to the Verizon place. Josh the store manager, who was quickly called in because some little old lady was asking ridiculous questions, came up with the answers. I may be in love with Josh.

My trusty landline number will now go to a new iPhone 16e — like I needed another iPhone 16e — which the Verizon people threw in for free. It’s blue. Unlike my white phone, which I generally keep nearby and on which I actually take calls from the few who have its number, the blue phone will sit in the corner formerly occupied by the landline phone. Eventually I’ll come up with an explanatory message for it to offer. Then I’ll try to train myself to check for messages left by friends and the occasional scammer.

Meanwhile, because I may not be techonologically smart enough to unplug the old router and plug in the new without messing up my internet service, the Verizon people will send a technician over to do it. And rather than the three confusing bills AT&T somehow never let me combine into one, the Verizon people are combining all three services into one fathomable bill for me to auto-pay. Take that, AT&T.

All of the above might seem like much ado about nothing to you, but that’s because I’m older than you are. 

Your messages will be welcome on the blue phone. Just please remember that it doesn’t blink at me.

America Collection/General interest
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Finding Calm Amidst the Chaos

by Fran Johns

TERROR. DISTRESS. EXUBERANCE. STRENGTH. HOPE. HOW TO DEAL WITH THE RELENTLESS EMOTIONAL TURMOIL OF THESE DAYS

Scene at edge of Lafayette Park (Author photo)

Anxiety? Through the roof.

For anyone who’s been paying attention, recent days and weeks have been more discouraging, and borderline frightening, than the days and weeks preceding. Those of us who hoisted protest signs got a little temporary relief.

I was out with my KAKISTOCRACY sign (It’s in the dictionary: Government by the worst. The least efficient. The most corrupt.) But I feel almost as strongly about the message on its flip side:

With my second-favorite marching-sign message (Author photo)

Because sometimes kindness seems the only response to the firehose of brutally bad news: political violence, discouraging court decisions, indiscriminate ICE raids, the cruelty and inhumanity a majority of the country wants to see end. The pressure is already beginning to build again. That may be a good thing for the country, since it seems nothing but public outcry will save our democracy. But what about us cogs in the juddering wheel of justice? We, the little people who need to gather strength?

Many recover with the help of music and art, visits with friends, immersion in a good book. I use all of the above. But I find solace, plus instantaneous comfort and joy, in the urban landscape. Mother Nature busies herself in the midst of the busiest built environments, the American city.

Most U.S. cities, with the help of local conservation groups or non-profits like the excellent Trust for Public Land, have pockets of open space where Mother Nature does her tranquilizing thing. In San Francisco, our cup of wonder overflows, including hilltops for viewing the world:

View of the Bay on a foggy day, seen from a hilltop porch garden. (Author photo)

Whether it’s outdoor walks in the country, where green fields or sparkling lakes serve as gateways to the calmer soul, small-town gardens or city parks, Mother Nature has a way of saying, “Breathe. Look around. Look up.”

Sometimes, she even throws in a hummingbird.

Keep the faith.

America Collection/General interest
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Two Lessons from One Good Dad

by Fran Johns

DO GOOD. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. MANTRAS FOR YESTERDAY AND TODAY

His four daughters at Earl Moreland statue (on R-MC campus) dedication, 2002. (L to r, Oldest sister Jane, yours truly, closest sister & bff Mimi, second oldest Helen.

“Do good, and love thy neighbor,” my father would say. “That just about sums it up.”

Not that he didn’t have plenty of other lessons and admonitions. My father, J. Earl Moreland 1897–1987, was a fierce believer in books & education (the more the better,) in interfaith relations, music and the arts, justice and equality, God and country. But when pressed for something like the secret to long life or prosperity he was prone to rely on that two-pronged moral motto: Do good and love thy neighbor.

My father didn’t set out to raise four daughters. The second of five sons himself, he grew up poor but proud — at least, that was how he told it — in a sturdy, God-fearing home. Left in charge at age 10 when his mother died, his tale was all about rough and rugged Texas, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that sort of thing.

But stuff, and daughters, happened.

My dad left Texas, but kept his Texas soul. After SMU, Class of 1917, he set out for Brazil where, as an educational missionary for the Methodist Church he helped start a college that’s still there and happily met my mother. Then came the daughters. Not long after we came back to the U.S. for good in 1935 he wound up heading another college this one in Virginia.

Aboard ship to Brazil, c 1925 (He was back & forth a half-dozen times in twelve years)

For the record, keeping a family & a college afloat through the Great Depression and World War II was a full time job — (twice that for my mother) — so my father worked 18-hour days and spent a lot of them on the road. But there were always hand-written daily cards and letters, and paternal wisdom wasm freely dispensed.

The only moment of deep disappointment I recall creating was the night my date and I won a jitterbugging contest at a dance chaperoned by my parents. Their love of music and dance did not extend to be-bop and jitterbugging. But episodes of that sort magically disappeared by morning, as if they’d never happened.

My father was, by design and necessity, a feminist ahead of his time. He firmly believed and regularly proclaimed (sometimes to our extreme embarrassment) that his daughters could do anything, be anything, accomplish or inspire anything — as long as it was within the parameters of doing good and loving neighbors. The same applied to his flawless granddaughters — he had 10 of those, though he did finally acquire two flawless grandsons.

In the haphazard one-room schools of his upbringing my father memorized countless speeches and parables — I think the way those 19th century teachers kept order was by setting their charges to memorize entire books of wisdom. One poem that stuck with him forever, and was forever repeated, bore the wisdom of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose.

Wasting time was not an option, though creative daydreaming, especially if you had a book in your hand, was respected and that was my usual excuse.

Because he loved the country chosen by his immigrant grandparents, loved justice and democracy and his fellow humans, my father would be appalled at the U.S. today. I am sincerely grateful that he and my genteel mother never had to hear the words, especially the lies (Thou shalt not) and vulgarities that spew from our narcissist in chief. But while his three-piece-suit persona didn’t lend itself to protest marches I am absolutely certain he’d be cheering on this daughter, along with her pro-democracy rantings and KAKISTOCRACY sign. He’d also be writing letters and making speeches and admonishing ordinary citizens and government leaders alike:

DO GOOD. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.

America Collection/General interest
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Children, Try to Get Along, OK?

by Fran Johns

SECOND GRADE TEACHER TO DONNIE AND LITTLE ELON: IF YOU CAN’T BE KIND, BE QUIET. AND A FEW OTHER APPROPRIATE ADMONITIONS

Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash

No offense to Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Musk, but some things just didn’t get through to your little boys.

Having raised three children who survived into adulthood without causing bodily harm to one another, or humankind in general, I know what’s possible. One of mine is actually retired now, and he still hasn’t shouted obscenities at former friends (or caused the deaths of thousands of poor children for that matter.)

In the interest of world peace, I’d like to remind Little Donnie and Little Elon about a few things that surely their mamas tried to teach them.

Such as: You never look good trying to make someone else look bad. We grown-ups are getting really tired of you trying to out-badmouth each other. Most of us had second grade teachers — didn’t you? — who taught us that insults are only used by small people.

My second grade teacher Miss Fretwell (I’m not making this up, that was her name) had a list of adages always at the ready. One offense and you’d be copying the appropriate sentence fifty times. So, Donald and Elon, if you didn’t get these messages from your moms, I would like to pass along a few lines from Miss Fretwell:

People with dirty hands point fingers.

A narrow mind usually goes along with a wide mouth.

None are so empty as those full of themselves.

And emphatically:

It’s okay to be angry; it’s never okay to be cruel.

Finally, to get back to that name-calling and finger-pointing, National No-Name-Calling Week was celebrated the third week of January; maybe you weren’t paying attention. Miss Fretwell would have loved No-Name-Calling Week.

Miss Fretwell would have had Donald and Elon at the blackboard, writing a few of the above. Or perhaps, Be Kind. Or even yet,

If you can’t be kind, be quiet.

On a personal note, as if this entire ramble weren’t personal notes, my birthday is June 8, which a friend just texted is National Loving Day this year. Actually, he was a few days off, but I’ll take it. (Bob Liner says he has moved the celebration four days over from the 12th.) It’s also Pentecost, the day we Christians celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit, which has seemed in short supply lately. Let’s take love and the spirit of peace wherever they can be found.

Be kind

This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye, where I regularly post observations on the political scene (which I try to limit here on dear old WordPress. C’mon over any time; it’s free.

America Collection/General interest
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The Stranger in the Lyft Zone

by Fran Johns

AN ACT OF KINDNESS CIRCUMVENTS A VACATION-ENDING CALAMITY

Photo by Jacob Narkiewicz on Unsplash

The trip had been close to perfect. A granddaughter’s graduation, a few rainy days at the lake with time for good books and long naps, a weekend with friends in their new home after years abroad.

But somewhere between farewell brunch and Reagan National Airport I had caught a soul-killing bug. Or a bug I’d picked up hugging school-age kids caught me. Whichever, by the time I got through security I was feeling feverish and wishing more for a bed than a window seat.

I bought a test kit to make sure it wasn’t covid, put on double-masks and scrunched against my window for one of the most uncomfortable flights I can remember. I ached, I sniffled, I tried not to cough. Six hours felt more like six days.

Finally on the ground in San Francisco I hooked my backpack onto my carry-on —at least I travel light! — and sped toward the Uber/Lyft pick-up zone. It’s on the top level of the parking garage so these rides can be kept separate from vans, buses and other pick-ups. I’ve done this often enough to know exactly where, once off the jetway, to stop and book my ride so that (hopefully) it will arrive not long after I get to the pick-up zone.

No such luck.

On reaching the garage top floor I was greeted by a mob scene of distraught Lyft and Uber riders trying to negotiate phones and luggage while struggling to find their cars or figure out what was going on. The next day I’d learn there had been a communication breakdown; at the time there were no explanations, just a log-jam of palpable anger and frustration.

I backed away from the crowd, still wearing my uncomfortable double mask, and saw on my app that my car had suddenly switched from showing right at the door to 17 minutes away. I wasn’t sure I’d live another 17 minutes in my debilitated state. It was getting close to midnight — long past midnight Eastern Time, which my body was still on.

“Excuse me,” said a calm voice. I looked up to see a pleasant, slightly gray-haired man carrying a small bag, a computer case slung over his shoulder.

“This is a zoo,” he said. “Do you want to come with me to find a cab?” I would have followed him anywhere.

“I don’t know what level the cabs are on,” I said. “It’s been a really long time since I took one.”

“Not a problem,” he said, grabbing my stacked bag. “I’ve done this before.”

Within minutes we had made our way back into the terminal and down to the proper level where signs pointed to the taxi line. There was a steadily moving line of cabs; a half-dozen passengers were moving calmly into one after another. It had taken us less than five minutes to get from the Lyft/Uber Zone to the front cab. I had said nothing except that I wasn’t feeling well and thus the masks.

“You take this one,” my rescuer said, handing my luggage to the driver at the head of the line.

“I cannot thank you enough,” I said as I shook his hand.

“You needn’t,” he said. “Just feel better soon.”

I gave my address to the driver, settling gratefully into the back seat. And felt better already.

As we pulled away from the curb I turned to see my benefactor climbing into the next cab. I don’t think he heard what I said.

It was “I love you.”

America Collection/General interest
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Truth Demands Our Attention

by Fran Johns

MURDER, INTRIGUE, CORPORATE GREED, CLIMATE CRISIS — THEY’RE ALL IN THIS REMARKABLE NEW BOOK. YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK IT OUT

Author Reyes onstage at Climate event (Fran Johns photo)

Your young partner is found murdered, his bullet-riddled body abandoned in a Venezuelan cow-field? You could be forgiven for falling apart, clamoring for answers and possibly seeking revenge . . . But after a few years, somehow putting your life back together and moving forward, the terrible darkness eventually receding into the past.

Not so Abby Reyes.

Abby was in her early 20s, just before the turn of the last century, when she met Terence Unity Freitas; both were deeply committed to environmental justice and to addressing the critical global crises that existed then and continue today. Terence was making a serious, complicated presentation on the day they met when he stopped, mid-sentence, and asked her for a date that night. Their love story underlies the larger story told in her new book, Truth Demands, and manages to make its unspeakable tragedies somehow more bearable to anyone who has ever loved.

In 1999 Terence was working in the Indigenous U’wa territory in Colombia, listening to U’wa community needs and trying to help preserve the centuries-old ways of life that were being imperiled by multinational oil interests. As he and two companions, Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa (Menominee), and Lahe’ena’e Gay (Hawaiian) were on their way to the airport they were kidnapped and subsequently murdered.

For decades there were no answers.

Reyes recounts her journey through the grief that was made more terrible over the next two decades for lack of justice. A still-youthful woman who is closer to the earth than most, she found healing through its trees and grasses and waters, and through spiritual practices of meditation and self-care. Moving back and forth in time throughout the book, she tells the story in a lyrical language that also keeps hopelessness, for the reader (as the pathway did for Reyes herself), at bay.

Twenty years after the murders, Reyes, alongside Terence’s mother, with whom she has remained close, became a central part of Case 001 of Colombia’s truth and recognition process. Now there were others who sought some sort of justice, who wanted to hear her stories and promised to seek answers for her questions.

Johns & Reyes (who had to be nudged to show the book) at the Climate One event (Fran Johns photo)

Truth Demands is newly released. It gives no linear pathway from tragedy to solution, and it would be a disservice to readers to share here what it does (and does not) reveal. It’s simply a story for our time.

Actually, a two-part story for our time. One part is the journey through grief that will resonate with — and offer gentle assistance to — anyone who has suffered loss. If sometimes similar, all such journeys are unique; Reyes’ is unlike any this writer has encountered in many years of working with end-of-life issues and people in pain.

The second, and clearly atop the author’s lists of concerns, is the work that needs to be done if the planet itself is to survive. Currently Director of UC Irvine Community Resilience Projects, Reyes has a unique understanding of the state of the planet and particular insight into the effects of multinational oil corporations on today’s politics and tomorrow’s health.

Reyes spoke of it all at a recent Climate One event at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club World Affairs building, interviewed by Climate One Co-host and Producer Kousha Navidar.

These issues — overwhelming grief, overstressed earth, and all the complex peripheral problems accompanying them — are not going to be solved tomorrow. Regularly, they get distorted by twists and turns and lies.

Truth Demands is on the side of truth.

America Collection/General interest
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Will I Outlive My New iPhone?

by Fran Johns

CONTEMPLATING LONGTERM PAYMENT PLANS CAN BE GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH. BECAUSE WE NEED TO HAVE THESE LITTLE VICTORIES

This (above) is a selfie with my new iPhone 16e. I was going for an Edvard Munch ‘The Scream’ effect, which is how I feel about the thing.

I was actually very happy with my elderly iPhone 11, but oh, the horror of having a device that’s several models out of date. Plus, like all else in the Age of Technology it was created to reach obsolescence, one way or another, in short order. My 11’s battery died and went to heaven. No resurrection for iPhone batteries, just go buy a new phone.

I picked the 16e as opposed to the 16-with-no-letter mainly because it was $200 cheaper, even if it didn’t have a wide-angle camera (everybody needs a wide-angle camera?) or some Mag stuff — I am WAYYyy too old to get into Mag stuff.

As I prepared to pay, the nice, green-jacketed Apple person said, “Oh, you needn’t pay it all now! There’s no interest if you space out the payments.” No Apple employee is old enough to remember outright paying for stuff, though most are old enough to have heard a grandparent preach against credit card interest. Life before credit cards? — nobody remembers that.

But here is the revenge of the geezer class: Maybe I will expire before my payment plan does! Ever looking for a bargain, I scheduled the iPhone 16e payments for the maximum length of time and we have both now begun the race toward expiration. Where does Apple think it’ll find me if I exit the planet owing $200 on one of their devices?

It reminded me of the time, not long ago, when I picked up some new light bulbs. In not-so-small print they advertised themselves as Guaranteed to Last for Twenty Years.

“I’m going to have to put these things in my will?” I asked the check-out clerk. He just went on ringing me up.

But speaking of dead iPhone batteries, which I was a few paragraphs ago. Lately I’ve been joining the locals in friendly gatherings at the Tesla showroom, protesting against their unfriendly, chainsaw-wielding founder. Tesla is big on advertising its long-life batteries. I have some empathy for those batteries. “It’s important to understand,” writes one expert on the subject, “that very few EV batteries suddenly stop working.” (In other words, some of them do.” 

To continue that report: “Instead, they degrade slowly over time, gradually storing less and less energy . . .” I know exactly how they feel. But unlike a Tesla battery, which will probably degrade the planet for a few eons despite everything they tell us about elaborate recycling, my ashes will at least be dessert for some marine creature in the Chesapeake Bay, so take that, Elon. 

These are the sorts of reflections one has upon reaching a certain marker along life’s journey. Should I trade these comfy old sneakers for a new pair of Hokas designed to travel hundreds of miles? Is buying this large, economy size container of lemon pepper an overly optimistic strategy? These sorts of decisions eat up a lot of brain space.

Which brings me back to the iPhone. However much the Apple people get out of me, it’s a $600 thing. I use it as a communication device — and OK, picture-taking is fun and phones that don’t take pictures are so last century. Still, the transaction included a one-hour class just to discover how it can track your exertions related to sneaker use and your dietary relation to lemon pepper. I took the class, and since nobody else did I turned out to get a one-hour personal tutorial.

I learned all about the health app and the action button and the plant identifier and the text translation capability, but the instructor seemed a little baffled when I asked if there were an On/Off button. (No, there’s not.)

There are more bewildering things about my nifty little device than it is possible to learn within my anticipated lifetime.

But at least we’re both on the same pay-as-you-age plan.

America Collection/General interest
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The Drama of Geezer Traveling

by Fran Johns
Globe showing flight path from Rome to San Francisco

LITTLE OLD LADY, TRAVELING ALONE! OH THE HORROR!!

ITA Airlines flight tracker (Author photo)

Blood was beginning to drip across the marble tile. What can I say?

After a trip to Sicily with a short stop in Rome, I had made it without incident from my hotel to Rome Airport FCO Fiumicino well ahead of 7 AM for a 9:10 AM flight home. I found my way to the ITA Baggage Drop area to trade my one small bag for a boarding pass. That was when the drama began.

Reaching for my passport, and briefly forgetting about my cheap-tissue-paper skin — i.e., thinner than even the better quality tissue paper — I brushed the pocket of my backpack and came up with a half-inch gash across the top of my left hand.

If someone is trying to find a vein below my paper-thin skin when a blood test is required, good luck. Veins are nowhere to be found. But in the Baggage Drop area of Fiumicino Aeroporto, one small scrape and you’d think Vesuvius had just erupted in A-negative.

I had managed to grab some tissues from my pocket as the gusher began. But keeping it at bay required pressing one tissue, with my right hand, onto the back of my left. This left no available hand for doing stuff, and stuff needed to be done. I quickly attempted to wipe up the mess on the floor with the remaining tissues, deploying one foot before I ran out of appendages.

A horde of uniformed ITA people descended from nowhere. I had triggered the “Little Old Lady” alarm. I heard, for not the first of a zillion times in recent years, “Are you traveling alone?”

Ohforheavenssakes! At what age is it required that “Little Old Ladies” be accompanied by a “Keeper?” Admittedly, if I’d had a “Keeper” he or she would have produced the passport and avoided the whole drama. But still. The wound, which drew attention to my amply-wrinkled face, had triggered the “Little Old Lady Traveling Alone” alarm. The horde had taken over.

“No problem! No problem!” they were saying, guiding me onward and leaving the insufficiently wiped mess on the tile. Who cleans the floors at your houses? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. I watched politely as someone picked up my tiny carry-on (the under-seat size) and backpack and guided me onward, away from the unsightly splatters.

I had a Band-Aid in my backpack. All I needed was that one Band-Aid and I’d be on my way. I desperately wanted to shout, had anyone been listening, Could someone please just help me get the #$%&+ Band-Aid so I can have two hands again!?! But I didn’t. I had been trying very hard to represent the Friendly American despite our current unfriendly administration.

One young helper agent disengaged himself from the horde to take over my small bags — and me in the bargain. I began to understand I had an invisible tattoo, “LOL-TA.”

“The chair is coming,” said the polite young man. “Wait here.”

I was apparently to be wheeled off, through Passport Control and the two-mile maze I had negotiated on the trip through FCO Fiumicino from which I was now returning. It had been an altogether pleasant walk — but of course, I’d managed not to injure myself on that leg of the journey.

While waiting, I engineered a raised left-hand maneuver long enough to reach into my backpack and retrieve a Band-Aid. Problem solved. I was anxious to be on my way, but once a wheelchair-designate, always a wheelchair-designate. I waited, obediently. However, I noted with some relief watching other wheelchairs come and go, that Rome Fiumicino features motorized chairs complete with a platform in the back for the driver.

My only previous airport wheelchair experience was once when I was re-routed through Seattle with 20 minutes to make a connection. I had played the “LOL” card and requested a chair. It was operated by a frail woman in a hijab who whisked me through a complicated series of passages and elevators to deliver me at the gate with several minutes to spare — and an overwhelming sense of guilt.

At least this trip would be guilt-free. Eventually, it began via a motorized chair with a pleasant-looking young woman who maneuvered me into the seat with my backpack in my lap and the other bag on the platform beside her. We were through Passport Control in a matter of minutes and headed to the A — E Gates.

“I take you to your gate,” said my driver as we sped along. “E-23.”

“Umm, if you don’t mind,” I said, “could we go to the ITA lounge?” This seemed a reasonable request. We were now navigating the swirling mobs of E Gates, and I knew, indeed, that the lounge was within range. As I had tried in vain to explain ever since the wound incident, I had done this entire business just fine, on foot, “LOL-TA,” when headed in the other direction.

The lounge had great appeal. I had access to it thanks to having declared myself years ago too old to fly overseas any way except Business Class. The lounge, I knew, had breakfast choices and hot coffee (I now also know to ask for “latte con café” to avoid the 80-octane Italian drink) and bathrooms, not necessarily in that order of importance. I still had over an hour before boarding, and E-23 was without any of those niceties.

“I think E-23,” said my friendly driver.

What to do? We were speeding towards E-23, and it seemed my destiny. At E-23 we came to a stop. I was gingerly assisted in getting off the fancy wheelchair and handed my tiny bag plus my backpack. “Arrivederci,” we said.

When my driver was safely out of sight, I picked up my bags and made my way through the cosmetics area of a mid-gate shopping center toward the lounge about an eighth of a mile distant. (As I mentioned, I’d done this before.) There I found breakfast, coffee, bathrooms, and easy chairs; what’s not to love about airport lounges? It was now 8 AM. Boarding was advertised as beginning at 8:10.

I was enjoying my latte con café in an easy chair when a smiling young man in an ITA Assistant uniform appeared at my side. He was piloting a motorized wheelchair.

“I will take you to your gate,” he said. Maybe a tracking device had been attached to my forehead, just below the “Little Old Lady-TravelingAlone” tag?

By now I had learned not to argue with management. Feeling a little sheepish, after having zipped from breakfast bar to coffee to bathroom to easy chair and to and fro for an hour or so in front of all these other able-bodied people, I handed over my bags and arranged myself primly upon the wheelchair.

This report comes to you from Seat 3A, ITA Flight AZ 640 Rome to San Francisco, where I continue to be treated with the exquisite care accorded a “LOL-TA.”

Safely deplaned, unassisted (Author photo)

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