The Joys of International Travel.....a cautionary tale

Earlier this summer, we packed up the whole family to attend my parents 50th wedding anniversary in the ol' country. Now I have had a passport (unlike a certain vice-presidential candidate) for most of my life as has my wife and our kids. We travel fairly regularly outside of the US and keep our passports current.

Before the trip, I was well aware of the expiration date on my passport, which was just about 3 months after we were planning to return back from the trip. You see where this is heading? I checked in with the airline the night before the trip and input all our passport information into the reservation system, printed the boarding passes and headed off to the airport about 3 hours prior to the departure time, ready to begin the domestic connection portion for the international (night) flight.

Well, not so fast. Upon having checked our luggage, the airline employee decided that I was NOT allowed to take the flight!

So there we were at the airport, bags checked, ready to go to a "must attend" event in 3 days (this being Thursday afternoon and the party being Sunday)and I am out of luck. Now what do I do?

First the good news. After learning where I needed to go to get something done with a valid passport that had more than 3 months of time remaining, the Boston State Department office was as helpful as they could have been. It took a lot of time waiting in lines, but the actual time to get a brand new passport and walk out of the door was less than 90 minutes from handing in the completed paperwork to passport in hand. I was very impressed.

Of course the bad news was that I missed the flight, but I was able to get a 24 hour delay and repeat the whole thing (boarding included) the next day and the party went off without further incident. But the lesson I had to learn the hard way should be a tale of caution for all international travelers.

The bottomline is that the expiration date on your passport is a bit like the "sell by" date on the milk....it may be good, it may not be. Apparently each country gets to set its own requirements for visiting passports and the time a passport needs to be valid after the expected trip return date varies widely (from 9 months to nothing).

So I now will forever heed the advice of the young lady who was the first State Department employee to hear my plea -- renew your passport when it is within a year of expiration. The State Department passport office does NOT work on weekends. Had this happened to me 26 hours later, I would have missed the one event my parents had been looking forward to for 25 years!

For more information about passports, the State Department's International Travel section maintains a "by country" listing of the requirements. General passport application procedures can be found here.

The State of Democracy and Public Interest

My friend and colleague at The Right Side of Lowell blogged (uncharacteristically brief) about the MA vote to allow the Governor to appoint an interim US Senator. Earlier he had asked about the lack of outrage in reference to the impending decision to change the law/rules. Frankly, at the time, I didn’t think the issue rose to the level where moral outrage was warranted or worth the energy. However, he indirectly does raise a point. Where does the slippery slope of democratic value deterioration start and when does the “public interest” become an afterthought in the drive of the political elite for self-preservation?

I ran across an article in one of the leading Dutch newspapers, het NRC Handelsblad, lamenting the lack of political will to define “public interest” and the resultant deterioration of democratic values. One particular phrase resonated with me. The author concludes that for a host of reasons, governing in the Netherlands is now “incident-driven” with “symptoms of ADHD.”

That made me wonder where we in America are on that spectrum? Are our democratic values secure or compromised? Is the tone of political discourse conducive to sound decision making , or are we sliding toward a system where the vocal minority overshadows the true public interest? Is the lack of political engagement by the silent majority a sign of apathy, complacency, or stupidity?

Can we have a reasonable, albeit ideologically diverse, dialog about the real issues facing our democracy, be they national security, health care, economic prosperity, or energy? I sure hope so….although I am afraid we are free-sliding on this side of the ocean as well.

SimTV: an I/ITSEC 2009 preview

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We all need a shot of courage - North Andover, MA - North Andover Citizen

We all need a shot of courage - North Andover, MA - North Andover Citizen

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Harvard's Gold Bars

A bit more about those elite schools up here in the North East. Today is the graduation for Class 2009 at Harvard, a school widely considered to have the most "gold" and prestige. One thing it does not have a lot of are Gold Bars; as in those of graduating second lieutenants.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the graduating class will include seven (7) newly commissioned officers for our nation's military; four Army and three Marines. As you may know, Harvard does not have an ROTC program and these cadets had to fulfill their military training at MIT. But of these seven brave and dedicated young people, I happen to know one. She is the daughter of a former classmate and squadron mate of mine; a fellow Dutch fighter pilot who now works for American Airlines and his wife, a former USAF nurse. Mark and I both met our future wives at pilot training, in the days when the US Air Force was smart enough to send its newly-minted gold bars serving in the medical corps to a training base in Texas filled with eager young pilots from the US and a handful of European countries. As joint spouse assignments a not the norm between countries, most of these unions either disbanded or resulted in one of the parties enjoying a short military career.

Mark and Karen's daughter was the first-born out of these international weddings and she is the first to graduate from college. We got her graduation announcements a couple of weeks ago in the mail and she is following in a proud tradition of service, being the first to begin her service in the US Army. Pretty neat! But first and foremost, our "thanks" for your commitment to our safety and security. Congratulations, stay safe, and be well!!

Supreme Backgrounds?

My friend and colleague posted on his blog about the lack of diversity in the background of our current Supreme Court justices. In response to his second question, what constitutes diversity, he points to a strong commonality of educational backgrounds and closes with a plea for some diversity in background (for Supremes) as we go forward.

I applaud his open-mindedness about the acceptability of the President's candidate for the Supreme Court and concur that the educational background of the sitting justices is more similar than dissimilar. But I would argue that educational background diversity is a red herring.

Being of the age where one’s children are active in the college selection process, it is clear to my why Supremes would have a similar educational background. Driven, smart, ambitious high-schoolers tend to apply, and get accepted, to the most prestigious (whatever that means in their mind, but the Princeton Review and others do a nice job of ranking the nation’s bastions of higher learning) universities they can. It takes a smart, driven, and ambitious person to rise to the top of their chosen profession. While we may not be personal fans of these character traits, it is undeniable that organizations reward these individuals with increasingly more complex and challenging assignments, leading to advancement and greater opportunities yet.

So that the cream of the crop rises to the top is no surprise to me. The diversity in educational outcomes is representative of the diversity of the student body that enrolls in these institutions. Students are critical thinkers, not brainwashed sponges that blindly absorb anything the institution throws their way. It can be argued that diversity of the student body in colleges is mostly lip-service, but I don’t believe that was The Right Side of Lowell’s point. I believe colleges, and the elite colleges in particular, very much try to create a vibrant and diverse student body, given their constraints on admission and minimum acceptable standards (a very high bar!!).

So I would argue that the true diversity comes from the accumulated experiences of a lifetime. I like President Obama’s tongue-in-cheek comments delivered during his commencement speech at ASU - -a body of work is never complete. Experiences gathered over a lifetime are important influences on decisions and points-of-view. But if psychologists are correct, a person’s character is formed at a very early age; Freud (I know, he was not a psychologist) put it a 5 years. The point I am making is that early childhood experiences are widely considered to be formative for a person’s path in life. I haven’t done the due diligence in comparing the early childhood environments of the current or future Supremes; my guess and sense is that these are not very similar at all. Other than that they were influenced in some form or fashion to exploit their abilities, escape their perceived confines, and be all they could be!

And that is what Americans are all about – so where is the diversity in that?

Las Vegas.....

As some may know, while we were getting a taste of the "empty nest" syndrome the last few weeks, my wife and I decided to take a quick trip up to Las Vegas during the April vacation week. Good thing we did not decide to make that a trip to Mexico (I do like Playa del Carmen). And my buddy Cliff (you know him from his blog) has bugged me for details and an updated post. I do admit to having lapsed in my responsibilities to the blogger sphere, but, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!

Sorry Cliff!