What was difficult was snapping it on my cameraphone without making the gentleman sitting next to it nervous.

Sign alterers took the “If you see something, say something,” slogan and altered it with two neat cut-out replacements:

If you see something,
Run like hell.
Bush does.

Too bad, as missbhavens said, that $1 info sounds like a good deal.

Now, did I ever mention that I am addicted to the podcasts of Flight Attendant Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase? Click that link for her blog with podcasts, or go to iTunes and subscribe (she’s in there). On a recent round-trip to Europe on her employer’s airline (which shall remain nameless, but loyal readers know), I secretly hoped she’d be on my flight. (Luckily, she has a distinctive voice., so if she offered me a soft drink, I’d know.)

I am not sure if it is Betty’s sparkling personality, or the way she gets fellow crew members, and even passengers, to tell the funniest stories of life in flight or her globe-trotting travels, but I am glued to my headphones. (I have a hunch that I could get into well-made podcasts even on topics I have no interest in, but there’s not enough time in the day to test that out in any systematic way!)

It might also be the fact that the verbal chameleon has a weak connection to the airline industry, having once spent a summer working security in the busiest airport in the U.S. It was there that I met fellow security guard Ibrahim, a Cuban marathon runner, who whiled away our long night shifts regaling me with tales of his three girlfriends (two of whom were otherwise attached, which meant many of the stories were of near-escapes, three steps ahead of potentially life-threatening situations).

It’s also where I met Mazur, the cleaning man who knew no English, but taught me my first words of Polish (note: I still only know a few.) Mazur was always mopping and buffing the walkway in Terminal One at 2:30 in the morning, when I went to “lunch.” This was the walkway where the rainbow neon lights flutter above, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue booms out.

In the daytime, filled with people, it doesn’t boom. But at 2:30 a.m., the tune ends slowly in the darkened walkway, barely lit at night except for the decorative rainbow lights above, and the recorded woman’s voice warning “the moving walkways are now ending:”

Boom boom boom
Boom boom
Boom boom boom
Boom boooooom boooooom boooooooom boooooooooooooooooom!

The effect was downright eerie. Mazur was a welcome sight.

When I left at the end of the summer to go to college, Mary and Wally and the other security guards gave me a silver pen and pencil set, engraved with my initials.
I still have it. I used it today.

Though it does sound like a sensationalist fundamentalist Christian novel about the aftermath of a medical supply Rapture, “When surgical tools are left behind” was the compelling title of a show on TLC tonight. The Sicilian and I were having dinner and looking for a little electromagnetically charged entertainment. However, as is so often the case, there were 200 channels or more, and not a single thing on worth watching. No Russian films on the CUNY channel, no CBC news, not even those wonderful commercials for South Asian psychics on Zee TV, nothing. And as compelling as the idea of finding out what happens when surgical tools get left behind was, I could not watch it.

But I did have a convulsive fit of laughter. At the title, at the idea of a show about this. What’s disturbing is that there are (a) enough cases of this to do a show about it, and (b) footage (I assume).

And here’s a photo I took of one of the vast number of painted cows exhibited last June in Prague. It’s modelling a representation of the Astronomical Clock in Staromestske namesti.

By Jon Hilkevitch
Tribune transportation reporter
Published November 16, 2004, 2:56 PM CST

Chicago Animal Control officers today captured and removed an unlikely traveler–a young deer–that wandered into the lower level of Terminal 2 at O’Hare International Airport.

The animal, a young buck, was spotted on airport grounds between 11 and 11:30 a.m. and inside the terminal shortly afterward when it apparently walked through a freight door on the side of the building, officials said.

The deer was at the north end of the building, away from the baggage claim area. Airport personnel used plastic construction fencing to contain the creature until Animal Control officers arrived.

The officers used a tranquilizer gun to shoot and subdue the deer. The animal was removed from the airport by 1 p.m. It did not gain access to any secured areas, and operations were not disrupted by its presence, officials said.

The buck appeared to have been injured, possibly struck by a vehicle, officials said. It was not immediately known if the animal survived its capture or what Animal Control would do with it if it had.

Officials theorized the animal had been pushed out of its herd by other males and was looking for a sanctuary. They suspected it may have gained access to O’Hare by following Interstate Highway 190 into the airport.

Copyright � 2004, Chicago Tribune