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	a quiet place by peggy o'mara

We're More Than That
Issue 112

Every time I fly, I look forward to flirting with the handsome man who checks my bags at the Albuquerque airport. I'm grateful for the curbside check-in service and tip to show my appreciation. But times have changed. The lines are long, and people are serious. My man and I no longer banter about the ocean; I barely have time to say, "Hey." Now in line with people who have come hours before their flights, compliant with the new system, I barely have been able to improve upon my one-hour window. With curbside check-in, I'm confident there will be enough time, however, and there is.

The tension and uncertainty outside is palpable but does not compare to the "war zone" inside. Armed men in military uniforms patrol the airport. At the security check-in, a uniformed guard looks at my ticket and allows me to enter the area. I put my purse and backpack through the scanner along with my jacket and shoes. As I walk through myself, the attendant asks me to take a drink from the water bottle I carry. I notice that my purse does not come through the scanner and that the woman scanning has it hung over her shoulder and is requesting someone to search it. A woman comes to get my purse and summons me to a counter, where she proceeds to go through, rearrange, and leave in disarray the contents of my purse.

The culprit is the 1-inch Swiss army knife that has been attached to my keys so long that I have forgotten I had it. But I realize, much to my chagrin, that I've unwittingly "smuggled" this item on several previous flights. An armed young man in uniform asks me to surrender my Swiss army knife. I can, he tells me, go back downstairs and reclaim it there, but of course I don't want to take the time. He also confiscates one of the two boxes of matches I have, telling me that only one box is allowed, although later I find a matchbook lost in the folds of my purse. It's unsettling.

The woman searching my purse is sweet and demure and notices my conversation with a man being searched at the adjoining counter. "They search me every time I fly," he says, "and I fly once a week for work. No job is worth this." He believes that he fits some profile and is often searched both at the security check-in and at the gate. "The newspapers say that people are afraid to fly. They're not afraid to fly. They hate this," he says, motioning around the security check-in area. He storms away. The searching woman is disturbed by his comments and remarks that she is only doing her job. I am in line to board when a man near me is chosen to be searched. He looks a bit overdressed and flashy but certainly not dangerous. The man beside me in line, whom I have secretly befriended because he looks Middle Eastern, makes a sound of disapproval with his tongue as if to suggest that the man being searched was in some way responsible. I'm surprised at how easily the man beside me participates in this atmosphere of suspicion.

In less than an hour, I have been asked to show my identification four times: at the curbside check-in, the security check-in, the check-in at the gate, and as I board the plane. It's unnerving. By the time I enter the plane, I'm agitated and surrounded by people who look as if nothing unusual at all is happening. They quietly read their newspapers and make a point of neither touching, talking, or looking at one another. I wonder why we're not all screaming. As I enter the plane, I notice how cramped everyone looks and remember my mother's stories of plane travel during the 1940s. She tells me it was luxurious, that the seats were roomy and comfortable and the food was great. After I take my seat, I notice that my "direct" flight makes two stops before I get to my destination, and I realize I won't be able to leave the plane for nearly five hours. I find it curious that under these circumstances food is not available on the plane, even for a price, while liquor is.

Through the fog of my low blood sugar, I realize the negative mental state that has resulted from the fight or flight atmosphere of the airport as well from my lackof food. In this setting, I find it difficult not to fall into black-and-white thinking and blame others. I'm under the control of an environment that has not been designed to meet my needs, and while I believe that these travel inconveniences have a nobler purpose, it is sometimes hard to differentiate the ones that are for my safety and benefit from the ones that represent cost savings for the economy. I am tired of increasingly being subjected to impersonal universal measures because of the fear of the worst-case scenario. We are living our lives in a state of emergency. We are better than that.

I'm afraid that we now tolerate the abusive as normal, are willing to trade personal liberty for justice, and are afraid to speak up about things that deserve questioning. I fear that we may fail to see my airport experience as an example of the overall erosion of our public places. Public places no longer belong to the people. Buses, taxis, and hotel elevators, all of which used to offer moments of privacy, have become advertising mediums. Elevators in major hotels are equipped with small televisions always turned to CNN, and although the volume is largely unintelligible the CNN logo is ever present. This idea of brand recognition is the latest in marketing theory, and we see it increasingly and tragically used in the arts, for example, during feature films. It's difficult enough to endure the banal advertising to a captive audience that precedes a film and the new, stereotypical Coke ads that trivialize patriotism. Recently I went to see In the Bedroom, and it's a miracle that I didn't leave the theater before all of the commercial messages were over, but I really wanted to see the film. It's a provocative film, and right in the middle of it, during a pivotal emotional scene, the main character answers the door to a young girl selling candy bars for a school fundraiser. After buying a few candy bars, he returns to the room, where he casually throws them down on the table as the camera pans in unnecessarily on the Hershey and Kit Kat logos.

Still, this product placement was subtler than that in I Am Sam, much of which was shot in Starbucks or a chain hamburger place. The labels of several brands of sugar substitutes were prominently shown, and there were the usual ads on buses and the clothing of passersby. The worst example of product placement in movies that I've seen, however, is the movie as advertisement, Evolution. Major heart throb David Duchovny battled with an alien enemy that could only be defeated by the use of a name-brand dandruff shampoo, Selsun Blue. The movie ends with the three main characters holding bottles of Selsun Blue and singing its praises.

A friend tells me that product placements are a way to finance independent films, but none of these examples are of independent films. I don't go to the movies expecting them to be advertising mediums. This blurring of the line between entertainment and advertising erodes my trust in the commercial sector.

I've lost trust in the commercial sector because I'm increasingly treated as an object in public places-in airports, hospitals, elevators, buses, and taxis. Even in our homes phone calls are often solicitations, and much of our mail is as well. As adults, we may be able to successfully negotiate these commercial messages that surround us with only annoyance, but I worry for our children. It's bad enough that commercial interests rather than service to the common good dominate our public places, but what seriously alarms me is that our children have become both the conscious target and the pawn of this commercialism.

We no longer share a common agreement in our society to protect our children. In the US alone, advertisers spend billions of dollars each year to convince children that they are not good enough without their products. They do this with the help of psychologists trained to know both how the mind works and how to manipulate it. I worry that our resources are insufficient to protect the children from a society that preys on them. It is bad enough that they are marketed to in schools where they are required by law to be, and that school administrators participate in this marketing, but we have also allowed our children to become walking advertisements. Everyplace and everything, including our children, is for sale. When my three older children were growing up, marketing had not become quite so intrusive, and Nintendo was a thing of the future. I watched with dismay as my youngest daughter required the Nike logo on her attire, blindly ignorant of the fact that her shoes were likely made by women and children in sweatshops. When I talked to my daughter about the social implications of her shoes, she couldn't afford to care. Her social conscience had been usurped by her need to belong. My words had little effect until years later when she matured.

My daughter's maturation to social consciousness and individuality is not encouraged by the consumerism dominant in our culture and so requires that the home model another set of values. I don't like feeling at odds with my culture. I long to live in a culture with which I feel in harmony and in sympathy. Fifteen or 20 years ago I could protect my children from the excesses of consumerism and materialism by schooling them at home and putting the TV in the closet. In the last ten years, as public and private restraints on advertising to children have eroded, it has become increasingly difficult to protect the innocence of children.

You see the prematurely knowing faces of children in print advertisements, babies with lipstick and rouge, toddlers with styled hair. You know the children in your own life who feel deprived when you protect them from a video game or keep their clothing logo free. Most of the world has real things like hunger and poverty to worry about; we worry about clothes and television. With all due respect to the war on terrorism, it is not that war that I am worried about. It is the war against families, against parents, against children, against civil society that breaks my heart. Where is the national conversation about the common good? How can we teach our children to live an ethical life when they are surrounded by selfishness and immorality?

I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to see it. Like you, I'd rather not know about it. I want to tell you only good news, to reassure you as you go about the important work of raising a family. I want to tell you that things are getting better, and in some ways they are, but the values of our culture are seriously at odds with the values that it takes to raise a healthy human being. I have to look hard for hope right now, and yet I find it everywhere.

I found hope at the Sacramento Waldorf School I visited on my travels, in the fairy dresses and the watercolor paintings and the wide expanse of green lawn. I found it in the stories of the public and charter Waldorf schools that are thriving in California. I found it in the thousands of California homeschoolers. I found it in the growth of mother and parent support networks throughout northern California. I found it in the respect for children that I witnessed in all these settings.

After I returned to my home in New Mexico, I found hope in a most surprising place, the Academy Awards. The show deliberately portrayed a positive view of humanity. Both the short film pieces created for the show and the individuals honored emphasized humanitarian work, peace, and personal striving for excellence. Just as my travels with California Waldorf and homeschooling parents had underscored the spiritual dimensions of parenting, so did the Academy Awards acknowledge the deeper side of life and the importance of personal character. It was a wonderful example of the media using its influence in a positive way. And the long-awaited honoring of African American artists, as well as other well-deserved awards, made us all bigger.

During my travels, others made me feel bigger. Old friends reminded me of the critical mass, the increasing numbers of what some call "Cultural Creatives," a growing group in society that is interested in positive social change. But what really gives me hope, what really spurs me to action, are the eyes of the babies. The eyes of the babies in Sacramento, in Davis, and the eyes of Max and Camilo here in Santa Fe are absolutely compelling. I ultimately trust that nature would never provide such brilliant new beings for our delight if there were not an inherent order to life, perfectibility. For them, we must take our culture back. For them, we must be our biggest selves. For their eyes to behold, we must never abandon the struggle for a better world.