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The Apoplectic & the Aloof, FAA Style

At the Washington Nationals baseball park, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association is flashing a banner ad that runs along the first and third base lines and under the scoreboard. It reads, “Air Traffic Controllers: We Guide You Home.”

True to their promise, air-traffic controllers continue to guide planes to and from their destinations despite a partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration that has lasted 11 days and placed some 4,000 government employees on unpaid furlough and halted hundreds of construction and engineering projects.

All bravado aside, NATCA is apoplectic about the shutdown, watching more than 1,000 of its members go without a paycheck. “Don’t lose focus on the employees that are having to pay this price every minute,” said NATCA’s Mike MacDonald, who represents the units that have been laid off. Similarly, airport managers are in despair as they watch runway and tower projects go down the tubes. Airports Council International-North America has set up its own website listing airport projects that are stalled, some for a year or more.

Yet because the planes keep flying, neither passengers nor the airlines seem to have noticed that something strange is going on.

“We’ve not at our level seen impact,” said American Airlines spokesman Ed Martelle about the shuttering of FAA’s research and airport improvement activities.

“It’s not affecting us at the moment,” agreed Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Beth Harbin.

“There has not been an impact,” said United Airlines spokesman Michael Trevino.

US Airways referred me to the Air Transport Association, the official airlines spokesman in Washington.

ATA’s statement about the FAA’s partial shutdown was tepid in comparison to the “Oh, my God” reactions from airports and air-traffic controllers. “The ATA has long advocated for completion of a multiyear FAA bill, and we encourage members of Congress to expeditiously resolve their differences and pass a bill that moves the system forward,” said ATA spokeswoman Jean Medina.

The airlines are being slightly disingenuous about the impact of the FAA’s demise on their business. It actually has resulted in a small windfall for them. As soon as the partial shutdown commenced (at midnight on July 22), most airlines raised their ticket prices to make up for the lack of the 7.5 percent federal aviation tax.

“We adjusted our prices so that they were the same price as before,” said American Airlines’ Martelle.

Windows: Discovering Uri Avnery – Alice Walker |The Official ...

That fascinates me to this day.  In one instance my work is banned because I am accused of being “anti-meat eating” and in another I am said to be “anti-religious.”  That I permit young women to speak about sex in the crude euphemisms of their culture is considered abominable. I have also been censored for “political” views that to me constitute merely average humanitarian concerns.

With time, and the gorgeousness of Life to distract one from the arrows of pettiness and slander, one can forget how sad it is that one’s best medicine, offered with devotion, is routinely denied its usefulness and is instead thrown out of the proverbial window.

All of which is to say I only recently  discovered the work of the Israeli writer Uri Avnery, who is not young.  He is wonderful and courageous and all those things we want in writers.  But I never heard of him until two weeks ago.  Why?  Because obviously he’s been  kept away from most of the uncurtained windows of Israel into which curious outsiders might look.

In fact, looking him up on the internet (where he has a regular column! so perhaps I am solitary in my late rejoicing) I could barely stand knowing some of what has been done to him, as he followed his inner guide.  Including the breaking of his hands.

In any case, not to rouse my calm heart to weariness and rage, I offer these recent pieces that came to me via members of the fabulous contingent of humans who made up the Freedom Flotilla II en route to Gaza, Henry Norr, of KPFA, and Jane Hirshmann of All Over What’s Going On.

I am so thankful to encounter this voice.  I wrote to Uri Avnery at once and thanked him for helping me, and others, take in a full, deep breath, aware that another human being has been off his knees and standing all this time.

His life is a medicine for our time, to be absorbed with gratitude, not to be thrown away.

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