DAY 1- AIRPORT DETROIT — ET's Travels and Talks

SYNOPSIS: Last minute thoughts before boarding my plane to Frankfurt.

The airport feels like a ghost town. Ample space for drop offs. No waiting in line at the ticket counter. Nobody in line for the pad-down. This was my first experience with the “nude” monitors. Really, who cares? It’s all a big waste of money if you ask me. You walk into a glass “box”, similar to an elevator, lift your arms, have a scanner roll from left to right and that’s it. Somebody, somewhere now sees a mannequin stripped down. So what? It’s much less intrusive than that actual pad-down I always have to go through because of my loose clothing.

Except for our flight and a couple others going west, the monitors show strings of cancellations; not only for tonight, but all through tomorrow. The storm of the decade is rolling in: 12-16 inches of snow are expected over night. We are scheduled to leave at 6:50 PM – ten minutes before the official start of the storm. But passengers are asked to board early so we can actually leave before the scheduled hour.

In Egypt the riots don’t show an inkling of slow down. On the contrary; as I gather from the TV monitors Mubarak’s speech not to run in the fall elections, only prompted demonstrators to shout that they won’t leave today, or tomorrow, or Friday. Even Lufthansa has stopped flying to Cairo! I guess the decision on where to go next has been made for me. But I will have to make the final arrangements in Frankfurt tomorrow. I would still like to go to the South of Egypt, regardless of what is going on.

I was sent an article today on the widespread looting of cultural artifacts – way beyond the one report that came out a few days ago about looters smashing a couple of mummies and small objects in the Cairo museum. Why is political unrest so often coupled with senseless vandalism? Toppling a corrupt dictator is one thing. Directing anger against those who are perceived responsible for economic hardship is understandable. But destroying one’s own culture?! And this does not seem to be driven by aniconic Islamic fanaticism, but by pure greed. I cringe.