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Despite cramped seats, occasional delays and what seems like a never-ending series of airport lines, I’m a big fan of the miracle of air travel.
To fly out of Albany early in the morning and have lunch on the beach in California is one of the great advancements of humankind. I still find a certain excitement in changing planes and in taking in the bustling crowds in airport corridors.
I consider myself fortunate that I have the means and initiative to still travel on a whim.
Of late I’ve noticed something unusual.
My fellow passengers generally close the window shades before takeoff, keep them closed during flight and don’t open them again until we taxi to the gate.
There seems little interest in the earth below.
Or the wonder of flight.
Or the courage it took for Wilbur and Orville Wright to attach themselves to an engine and push off down that windy slope that December day in Kitty Hawk, N.C.
The passengers today are of another generation and generally are fixated on their phones, playing games, watching videos or working on a laptop.
Give me the window seat any day of the week.
On cloudless days and nights, I like to track the cities we fly over, the rivers we cross and the endless expanse of America.
Over the years, I’ve passed over Niagara Falls, a smoldering Ground Zero, the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains. On the way to Hawaii over that endless expanse of Pacific Ocean, there is a sense it would be easy to miss the intended destination, just as Amelia Earhart did at the dawn of American aviation.
When flying over a city, I look for ballparks, football stadiums and familiar interstate highways.
When you fly out of Albany, you often fly over New York City. I never tire of looking at the famous skyline, of searching out the Statue of Liberty and Yankee Stadium and thanking my lucky stars that I am not in the traffic below.
Yet, while flying this weekend, I was frustrated that almost everyone had their window shades closed. Stuck in an aisle seat, I had no sense of where we were or how close to landing we might be.
The destination was Atlanta, where my son’s fiancee was having her bridal shower.
It would give me the opportunity to have lunch with my son, get fitted for my tux and wish the bride-to-be well one more time.
But late Friday evening after landing in Charlotte, a cascading series of events took hold and blew up those plans. Thunderstorms in the New York City area grounded planes at Newark, JFK and LaGuardia airports.
The plane scheduled to take us to Atlanta never arrived.
The flight was canceled.
The next flight to Atlanta was Saturday afternoon, long after the shower ended and just hours before a return flight was scheduled. There was no other option but to turn around and go home.
I spent an hour on the phone with American Airlines as they booked a return flight to Albany for 1:30 the next afternoon.
All of a sudden, the miracle of air travel didn’t seem so bright.
I was frustrated and disappointed.
It had been years since one of my flights was canceled and I did not make my destination the same day.
I guess, it was my turn.
My luck had run out.
The return trip to Albany Saturday wasn’t much better, but that’s a story for another time, and I did make it home.
I don’t have any air travel scheduled again until the wedding in October. This time, I’m flying out two days early.
Just in case.
Being ethical is the starting point for any civilized society, and when elected officials routinely ignore those ethics, it’s time to get new leaders.
That’s my position regarding the Queensbury Town Board’s failure to act on an ethics violation for 18 months, and I repeated that stand in a letter to the editor published in Thursday’s Post-Star.
I’ve been patient.
I waited three months for the Ethics Board to rule and 18 months for the Town Board to act.
So now I ask voters in Queensbury to act and vote Tim McNulty, Anthony Metivier, Rachel Hajos and Scott Gushlaw out of office.
Here is my letter to the editor. Spread the word.
With the world premiere of The Last American Newspaper coming at the end of September at Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, I figured I should take in a show there to see what it is like.
What I found was exciting.
There was an electric atmosphere in the lobby before the performance. The theater is configured to envelop the stage on three sides, so no audience member is any more than seven rows from the stage.
There was a sold-out crowd Wednesday night to to see the musical “Mystic Pizza.” You might remember that it had a reading at Adirondack Theatre Festival a couple of years ago. Capital Rep is in downtown Albany — not far from the Palace — and it has a small parking lot, but I found plenty of street parking nearby and a quiet neighborhood. Take note if you plan on seeing “The Last American Newspaper.” There are also a number of excellent restaurants within a short drive.
It was especially nice to see that my play already has a full page ad in the program, is on the billboard outside the theater and also part of a rotating neon sign on the side of the building.
Heady stuff.
You never know what to make of internal polling paid for by political campaigns, but the Democrats in NY-21 — the North Country — boasted that Blake Gendebien was down by only one point to Republican Anthony Constantino after the primary.
That was a startling boast in a such a red-leaning district, but maybe there was some credibility to that early poll.
The Times Union reported Friday that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced it had added NY-21 to its list of “Districts in Play.” That means that Gendebien could see money from national Democrats.
In an odd statement after the announcement, Constantino said the Democrats’ announcement was a “scam.” The poll may not be accurate, but I’m not sure what he means by “scam.” The announcement was real and political organizations don’t usually spend their money frivolously.
The T-U reported the DCCC considers 58 congressional districts to be “in play” across the country.
Lee Enterprises, which owns The Post-Star and many other newspapers across the country, announced a $5 million profit for the most recent quarter. Last year, it had a $7 million loss for the same quarter.
The Poynter Institute’s Tom Jones reported that the last time Lee reported a profit was in the first quarter of 2024.
Executives attributed the profit to paying lower interest payments on loans. Billionaire David Hoffman took control of the company earlier this year with a $50 million infusion of cash that helped lower those interest rates, and interest payments were reduced by $4.6 million.
What bothered me was that Lee saw its expenses decline 14 percent, which indicated to me that the company is still cutting. Its revenue also declined 11 percent.
Lee executives again stressed they were focusing on growing digital revenue, much as they did when I was editor of The Post-Star over the last 10 years.
It was good to see that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has announced plans to equip its officers with body cameras over the next two months. What was discouraging was the agency has said it will only release footage to the public if doing so is in its “best interests.”
What ICE officials seem to be saying is they will release body camera footage only if it doesn’t implicate them in a crime.
The cost of the cameras will be in the millions, all paid for by taxpayers who may never see the complete picture of ICE’s actions.
The New York Times reported “ICE will promptly release video of shootings and other encounters in which its agents cause death or serious injury only after determining `it is in the best interests of the agency’ to do so. That gives its director discretion to release recordings that reflect well on the agency’s image while working to keep others secret, experts on body camera policies said.”
“In some ways, ICE is saying the quiet part out loud,” said Christopher Schneider, co-author of the book Police Body-Worn Cameras: Media and the new Discourse of Police Reform. “Body-worn cameras are being used as contemporary image-work tools to present the police to the public in the most favorable way possible.”
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and his play “The Last American Newspaper” is being produced by Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany Sept. 25 to Oct. 18 . He currently lives in both Queensbury, N.Y. and New Orleans, La.
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