Flights were grounded en masse at the turn of millennium and the bizarre quiet of the skies over the San Francisco Peninsula gave me a sort of surreal feeling t

Flights were grounded en masse at the turn of millennium and the bizarre quiet of the skies over the San Francisco Peninsula gave me a sort of surreal feeling that made me think, contrary to the elegiac vision of the author of this piece, "what would it have been like to have been born, lived, and died without planes, electricity, running water, and other modern conveniences and probably fallen victim to some pestilent disease by the time I was 30, just like my great-great-great grandparents did back in the villages of Greece from which they never traveled more than 25 miles during their entire lifetimes?" It made me kind of shudder to think that this had been the lot of most of humanity throughout all the centuries and made me grateful for what we have today. Nicely written piece, though.