Blathr Wayne Lorentz

For the last few decades, when I read a book I use the stub from my most recent airline boarding pass as a bookmark. Since itʼs dated, and yellows with age, it encourages me to keep traveling, if for nothing else to get a fresh bookmark.

Because we now live in an age of print-you-own, and digital boarding passes the one Iʼm currently using isnʼt my most recent. But if I have a few extra minutes when checking in, I try to print a fresh boarding pass at the kiosk for whatever book Iʼve brought with me. The new ones arenʼt nice and thick and glossy — at least for domestic travel. But international passes on a quality airline are still thick, durable, and evocative of a time when it was de rigueur to fly to another continent, and then figure out hotel and transportation arrangements after you arrived. The conveniences of the internet allow us to move around more easily, but have leached much of the adventure out of travel.