About 75 people were sitting at Gate F9 in the Minneapolis airport tonight. As usual, loud overhead TVs competed with passenger conversations, cell phone calls and crying babies.
Then it grew eerily quiet, so much so that I glanced up and around in curiosity. Everyone was fixated on the overhead sets as CNN reported on the chief executives of the Big Three automakers each flying to Washington in their luxurious private jets to ironically ask Congress for millions in taxpayer money.
Suddenly the TV set had become a gathering place. We often refer to television as a “national gathering place” in a time of crisis or significance, the place where a nation becomes a community.
That same sense occurred momentarily at Gate F9, where we all were awaiting our direct flight to, of all places, Detroit.
