Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
I almost didn’t go inside. From what I could see, every table in the restaurant was taken. This was bad news for someone about to catch an international flight. This place in the departures area was my only chance to eat real food, but it was packed like a suitcase. I’d be lucky even to sit at the bar, I … >>
I’ve often complained about the Philadelphia airport. It was designed for air travelers of a different age, and for far fewer of them — maybe a third of the people who use it now. The path that an international traveler must take to get from customs to security, then to the gate, is labyrinthine and poorly ventilated. Lines were long, … >>
It takes only 30 minutes to fly from Flagstaff to Phoenix, Arizona; but 30 minutes can be enough to change your life. The propellers hadn’t yet begun to spin as the flight attendant, who resembled Hugo Chávez, gave his safety speech. “If you are seated in an exit row…” he said, his words becoming drowned in static. “If you are … >>
Well, it’s been ten long years since those towers turned to dust; the memorial is being dedicated on that site on Sunday. The mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is rotting away somewhere after being waterboarded 130 times. His boss, Osama bin Laden, is (supposedly) at the bottom of the sea. An attack of the same magnitude has not … >>
Everyone in America loves this weekend, and everyone dreads it. To us, Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November) is the biggest family holiday there is. Christmas is for the nuclear family, but Thanksgiving is for the extended family, from Grandma and Grandpa on down through the aunts and uncles to the children who have to sit at an extra table … >>
How lucky we are when our problems are trivial! Flying to Istanbul on Christmas Day, my only complaint was that Turkish Airlines had seated me next to a large, burly man instead of a lovely Czech supermodel. Had I instead been flying to Detroit that same day, I would have come close to being blown up. It was only a … >>
Some Americans who live on the coasts, or travel between them, refer to the middle part of their continent as “flyover country”. The states where most of the farming and mining take place aren’t, in their view, worth seeing from the ground. Last week we learned that Minneapolis, Minnesota, definitely belongs to flyover country. A Northwest Airlines plane to that … >>
Ordinary Americans, and members of Congress, needed a deep breath to think about spending another $787 billion to get the derailed US economy back on track. Only one-sixth of the total was for projects in infrastructure and science, but a small item received an undue amount of attention. It was a $1.3 billion subsidy for Amtrak, the national passenger rail … >>