Daily Archives: June 19, 2009

Staying Grounded While in the Air

by
Monica Stoner, Member at Large

Since the end of May I have been in four states, flying back and forth from my New Mexico home. I’ve visited three new towns and encountered four new airports. I wonder how people can do this month after month, I’m certainly looking forward to staying in one spot, sleeping every night in my own bed and eating New Mexico food. There truly is no place like home. The supporting thread in all of this is, guess what?, books. I check for book stores in every airport – there’s actually a used book kiosk in the Raleigh Durham airport. Every airport has at least one chain book store, some stocked better than others. Looking around in the waiting areas and on the planes, in every row at least one person has their nose firmly planted in a book. Yesterday I watched a professionally dressed gentleman at the courtesy vehicle stand with his attention firmly on the hard backed book in his hands.

Certainly the first thing I pack is reading material, and I often make a trip to the local book store to stock up for a trip. At one time I tried to bring along an “important” book, thinking this was an opportunity to read something I “should” read. But I also bring along books I want to read, and those are the ones I reach for first. After a while I decided to save the weight.

This is a thankyousomuch to all those who get their books finished and published. They keep us going through times bad and good. Their imagination takes us away from ourselves for at least that brief period of time, and often beyond that. I was reading the Mercy Thompson books while in Washington state, and found a connection to the dense forests I drove through. Of course this also means I plot scenarios in new locations. If you hear about bizarre things happening to people forced to spend the night in an airport, there’s a possibility I finally stopped long enough to finish a thought, finish a book and get it to a publisher. Keep writing!