Attack the Day

OK, this is much better. I went to bed extremely early last night...around 8:00 pm...and slept off my foul mood. It's about 5:00 am now and it's much better. Maybe that's all I needed. Perhaps I should start getting to bed early more often. And getting up early. Now, I go attack the day.

Missing Kid Back Home

The kid I wrote about a few days ago, who'd gone missing last Friday morning, is back home, safe and sound. I don't have details, but it appears he ran away. He was recognized by a police officer who saw a poster about the kid's disappearance; the officer made sure he got home. Now, I expect the parents are trying to wrestle with how to successfully combine their emotions into something more productive than a flogging.

Arizona Ash

I was awakened early this morning to explosive cracks of thunder, accompanied by a brilliant lightening show. I have not looked out into my front yard yet this morning, delaying the possibility of seeing a massive Arizona ash, horribly disfigured by the howling winds that roared in with the storm. I only hope the poor monster is still standing. He has lost far too many limbs during the storms of the past two years; something may be wrong with him. I think his life may be nearing its end.

AT&T: World's Worst Customer Service

In the interest of full disclosure...I do not have an iPhone and I never did. On the other hand, I have AT&T service at my house and, after my experiences with the company, I have nothing but deep disdain for the criminal bastards who screw their customers with abandon. Thanks to Konagod for sharing this on his site so I can share it here. (By the way, AT&T has the worst customer service of ANY company anywhere...you'd be treated better getting phone service from Al Quaida.)

Death Isn't Such a Big Deal Anymore

I think I'm onto something, but I don't know what.

During the past several years, it seems to me that a greater number of prominent figures have been dying than when I was younger. I know, that's what happens when one ages.

That's NOT it, though! No, I believe that there really are many more well-known people dying today than when I was a youngster...many more, as in orders of magnitude more.

As a consequence, the death of prominent figures has grown commonplace and not as jolting as it once was.


I'll tell you why! There are just more of us around and, in particular, MORE PROMINENT PEOPLE! That's right, there are many more people today that command our attention than in the past. When I was growing up, only a select few got to be famous. Today, everyone is; well, almost everyone.

Television, radio, the internet, and all the internet-based streams of information are flooding us with enormous volumes of information, much of which involves "special" people like actors and actresses, musicians, politicians, etc., etc. The simple fact that there are more media with lots of space to fill is encouraging this. Think of Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, the slackards who play on TV "reality" shows, NASCAR drivers, famous dog-fighting football billionaires, technocratic philanthropists with bad livers, and all the others who do not have any predecessors...they are the "new prominents" that are filling up our newspapers, magazines, computer screens, and water-cooler conversations. There are simply more prominent people, people who die and who, because they are well-known, create a media buzz when they "expire."

The result of this mushrooming growth of the prominently departed? Death isn't as big a deal as it once was. Sure, Michael Jackson's death brought about a media circus, but his departure from the land of the living was the exception, not the rule. We're just becoming desensitized to death.

Funerals aren't what they once were. We're becoming immune to the grief brought on by public figures' deaths. We no longer really care that someone like Walter Chronkite died; we muss around a bit and cough out a few expressions of appreciation for his life, but we don't grieve. Not like we used to. Or, I should say, they used to. Somebody used to really care. Now, it's just another adrenalin rush in front of the television or, more likely, a flush of joy at being among the first to get the word by Twitter or on Facebook.

We have a new attitude toward death because there are so many more people we're exposed to who have a 100% chance of dying. If their deaths don't give us chills up and down our spines, deaths of more "normal" people won't even be noticed for long.

Am I in it for the Profit or the Prophet?

I'm growing more liberal with each passing day. This is not a good thing in my business. But WTF. I don't like my business anyway. I'd rather feed the poor than lobby politicians in support of government largesse to support businesses that assign more value to "profit" than to justice. The difficult thing to reconcile in this mix is that I'm definitely a capitalist...and least up to a point. Maybe that's the problem. I'm a socialist at heart but a capitalist at brain, though I do not think it appropriate to turn religion into a money-making endeavor.

And to complicate things even more, I am not a vegetarian but could support nibbling their fingers and toes in situations of severe famine and social unrest.

Time to Retire Go to Sleep

I've been awake since 2:30 a.m.; actually, a bit earlier than that, I think. It's now 4:30 a.m. Why am I awake at this hour? If you know the answer, please write it on the deed to an island in the Pacific and send it to me, along with all necessary travel documents to get me there...and it would be helpful if you'd include sufficient cash to cover all my retirement expenses for the next 30 years.

Missing

I received a message tonight on Facebook from a friend. A colleague of his wife reported that her 15-year-old brother-in-law had gone missing yesterday. He arrived at his instructor's house for a violin lesson around 9 am, then went outside to retrieve something he had forgotten from his van. He never came back. This occurred only about 6 miles from where I live. And the kid is still missing. His family is frantic. All their friends are frantic. They have organized search parties to scour the area. I don't know anyone in the mix except for my friend and his wife, and we're not particularly close. But the fact that this kid is missing just tears me up. I can only imagine the pain his family and friends are going through. I hope it works out.

Self-Discipline

My efforts to lose weight and improve my physical condition are at odds with my lack of discipline, genetically embedded laziness, and fanatic devotion to food of all kinds and in unreasonably large amounts.

Today's feeble attempt at physical conditioning, a 1+ hour walk with my wife, was sabotaged after we got home by deciding to get a "breakfast snack" consisting of a sausage patty and cheese made into something of a sandwich with two thick halves of a roll.

If I'm going to slim down and get more stamina, I need a personal trainer, someone whose relentless insistence that I exercise cannot be quelled except through my following the prescribed regimen. How can I become my own abusive and commanding personal trainer? How can I berate myself into doing what I know I must do? Even when I try the other tactic, praise for my own performance and productivity, I fail. I need a partner who will insist on following a daily regimen, someone who will do the same thing. My wife is not up to it, especially with her heart condition causing her to tire far more quickly than I do.

It's not just the need to exercise and cut back on unnecessary food. I need to stop swilling alcohol in all forms and replace it with water or low-calorie cranberry juice or something else that will not fill me with empty calories.

I cannot be so weak as to unable to find sufficient self-discipline to do this! I will succeed in bludgeoning myself into submission, one way or another.

Fragility?

This stupid little blog of mine is too important to me; I won't let it die of neglect.

That's not to say I won't neglect it. But not forever, not for so long that it will wither and degrade into dust and grease and pain that didn't see the light of day. I will continue to embarrass it with words that have no real merit, save that they come from an old and fragile heart.

And here is my fragility for today. I'm feeling abandoned by people who never even knew me. The poets who could have taught me, the writers of narrative who could have shared their skills with me, or at least been gentle with me as they openly acknowledged that I have no skills to share and no emotions that haven't already been explored by writers who not only were closer to them, but who felt them in a visceral way that sometimes evades me. This is my fragility. The fragility of an aging geezer who remembers listening to writers who had something to say, something bold and emotional. I couldn't simply cry and let my tears fall as the may!

I'm not a writer. Never have been. I've wished I were a writer, someone who could translate into pen and paper or even computer screen. That's the way it was. And it's becoming the same.

Everyone Else

I read a book several years ago, no idea the title or author, that suggested that people grow to accept their own mortality as they grow older. Well, of course, that makes sense. But I'd never really thought about it.

Last night, though, I had a dream in which I had been trying to catch someone who had been doing something to me, or to someone I knew...not quite sure. Apparently, I caught the guy and had him in a box with a little opening where his head was. I opened it up and thrust some utensils down into his eyes and he started screaming. I then closed the door over his head and called the police, saying I had shot and killed a man.

All the people around me knew that I hadn't shot the man, but they did not know (nor did I) what condition he was in. At some point, I opened the little door and discovered he was gone. And then I called the police again and told them I had killed a man but that his body was stolen.

Soon, the police came and they looked inside the box and found no blood, no signs of a struggle, no evidence I had done anything to anyone.

But I insisted that I had killed him and that I should be arrested and executed. In this dream, I knew that the decisions on those matters would come fast. For some reason, it felt very good to insist that I be killed. I had a sense that it would be a welcome relief. I said something to myself, out loud, to the effect that "it's going to be so good to just get it all over with. I won't feel anything, but just knowing, that's going to be good enough."

And then I started thinking about what it meant to be dead. In my dream, I tried to imagine what it was like, but I kept coming back to the realization that it wouldn't be like anything. It would just be over and my consciousness would have been extinguished. And my death would be noticed by a few people, for a short time, and then the memories would fade and it would be like I'd never been here. It was very clear to me. And I was perfectly comfortable with it.

And then I woke up and was very disconcerted about the dream all day today, though I don't know why. I guess I realized in some especially strong way that one day I'll be dead and it won't have mattered, at least for long, that I lived. And that was disconcerting, but it was equally disturbing to realize that so it would be for everyone else.

Incompetent, Lying, Thieves, Anyone? AT&T

I know, you feel happy if you tell yourself you feel happy. Well, that's happy horseshit. It may work on the easily manipulated, but it doesn't work on me.

The reason? AT&T. If AT&T would just disappear, I'd be happy. I'd tell myself to be happy and I would gladly accommodate my wishes. But that's only if AT&T would disappear. Here's the reason; it's something I wrote on another blog to which I post occasionally. This is the story of my experience with AT&T. The blog post doesn't end it. After the blog post, I finally got some relief and a promise that I was finally back to a zero balance on my account. Until today. They have cut what they claimed I owed, but not enough. And now they say I am not only in debt to them to the tune of more than $270, they tacked on a late fee. This is AFTER I paid them the legitimate balance by credit card and was PROMISED it was all taken care of. Bastards.


I almost never make international calls from my home. There's just no need. But on May 27, I had to participate in a very long telephone call with a group of people who were meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. Because their meeting began at 9:00 am local time, I had to call in at 3:00 am local time. I was not interested in going to my office to make the call, of course. I didn't think anything of it; I just dialed in on my home phone and got on the call.

The next day, or the day after, I arrived home from the office to a voice message from AT&T's fraud department, asking me to call right away. When I called, I learned they wanted to verify that I made the call. I said I had and expressed appreciation that they would double check to make sure my phone service was not being abused. Toward the end of the conversation, though, I got a shock. The representative to whom I was speaking said, "You should get an international rate plan. That was a very expensive call." I asked how much; "about a grand," he responded.

I gasped and said that was preposterous. He agreed and suggested I call another department to get an international plan. I made the call as he suggested.

After a lengthy call that made me feel for all the world that I was being extorted into paying a monthly fee to avoid such absurd charges, I finally felt that the problem had been resolved. (The actual charge was $1,013.20; I was told the call would be about $35 under the international calling plan.)

The woman with whom I had spoken had assured me that the international calling plan would be instituted and would be made effective May 26, one day before the call. She transferred me to a third-party "verifier" who confirmed that I wanted the service, that I wanted AT&T to be my domestic and international long distance provider, etc. I obediently said "yes" to every question, as the woman had instructed.

About ten days later I received a letter from AT&T saying my attempt to get a new service had failed. The letter, dated June 9, said, "On June 9, you called us to request a change in your AT&T telephone service." It went on to say they could not verify the order and further claimed to have tried to contact me by telephone "today" but could not reach me. (Apparently they don't leave voice messages...I had received none.) Because I could not be contacted, the letter said, the order was cancelled.

So, I got back on the phone and started the entire process over. I gave the representative my confirmed order number, but they could not find any record of it. The only choice was to go through the entire process again. This time, I made a record of exactly what was said, what questions I was asked, etc., etc. The person I spoke to said I should call AT&T as soon as I received the phone bill that included the expensive call to Lisbon and that they would take it right off and replace it with the newly-rated call.

A few days later, toward the end of the week, the bill came. I waited until early the following week to call about the adjustment. Both calls from my office to AT&T that day were unsatisfactory; the customer service representatives could not find any records; I was told the "system is down" and they could find nothing. They asked me to call back; I responded by asking if they could call me back, instead, since I had made a number of calls already. No, I was told, we cannot. Period.

A later call reached a young woman who finally agreed to mark the amount of the Lisbon call as "in dispute." But the "systems" would not allow her to find anything of use, either. She advised me to try back later that evening and talk to the long distance unit. That evening, I called and spoke first to "Jude," who could find absolutely no record of any international calling plan on my account, any record of me calling, etc., etc. Then, he put his supervisor, "Tash," on the phone.

Tash said that what I had described (all of my calls heretofore) was impossible and, moreover, than there is "no way" that any AT&T representative would have ever told me an international calling plan could have been backdated to May 26. He then tried to explain that there are multiple AT&Ts and that what someone from another of the AT&Ts may have told me was not valid for his AT&T.

I was getting nowhere with him, so I asked to speak with his supervisor. He claimed he does not have a supervisor; he insisted that he reports to no one that I could speak to. He finally relented and said he did have someone who conducts his performance appraisals, but that he was under no obligation to give me that person's name.

After quite a lot more back and forth with him, he said the best he could do would be to cut 50% off the bill. I said "fine," fully intending to dispute any bill they sent my way. And we said our goodbyes. By this time, I though I had reached the peak of anger at the organization's customer abuse.

And then he called back and said his offer of 50% off was good only if I agreed to the international calling plan. I screamed into the receiver that I had ALREADY ORDERED THAT SERVICE TWICE! He said he just wanted to be clear about that.

I have not received a follow-up bill yet. But I have no doubt I will. And I have no doubt that, the moment this quagmire of customer abuse and torture is finally over, I will completely and irrevocably cut my ties with AT&T and will heartily recommend the same to anyone who will listen. Or who will read this blog.

My experience with AT&T in this incident demonstrates, I think, why customer service matters. Wouldn't it have been more to the company's benefit to make it easy for me to be rid of what I think any right-thinking person would agree is an indefensibly high telephone bill than to repeatedly go to the mat with me? Incidentally, that same call for which AT&T decided to charge $1,013.20 would have cost me $26.82 plus tax with the carrier I use in my office.

Food Frenzy on the Open Road

Today was another one of those blow-off days, during the majority of which we got nothing of any consequence done. I like those kinds of days. I want more of them.

Well, we started off rather early and drove first to McKinney, where each of us had a breakfast of tacos de huevos con chorizo (sound familiar...like yesterday?), with a side of Mexican rice and refried beans. Unlike yesterday's breakfast, today's was the real deal, made by people who have a stake in the place. Whilte they weren't terribly concerned with the way it looked, they paid attention to the ingredients; it tasted extremely good!


The thing is, this place in McKinney couldn't quite decide what to call itself. Here are the three separate signs that are posted to lure in customers:
























After breakfast, we found ourselves wandering around north Texas and we stumbled onto a large old tree. As the sign says, 1916's parents were pioneer residents.... I would like to change the sign to read: "Set out here in 1916 by Mr. John T. Ballard, whose parents were pioneer residents..."













And then later we had lunch at the Longhorn Ranch Store and Grill, an obnoxious-looking tourist trap on Texas 82 just outside Whitesboro. When we drove up, we assumed it was primarily a restaurant with lots of Texana knick-knacks for sale. In fact, the Texana "stuff" is far more extensive than I would have thought. Lots of metal sculpture, house bling, and vast amounts of knick-knacks. Even a couple of very nice looking (if overly urethaned) mesquite rocking chairs.

The place was not packed, not by a stretch. We were among the few there. But despite the fact that it was nearly empty, we had a nice meal there. We both ordered chicken fried steak, which was one of the better ones I've had in quite awhile. It was not overwhelmed with batter. Instead, it was nearly all meat that had been dredged in flour and then not deep fried but simply pan-fried (at least that's what I think). Tasty stuff.

Of course, it was gawdy. No matter how you do it, you can't present such a vast selection of Texana crap without looking gawdy. After I got home and checked the place out, I found some comments about the owners; the commenter asserts that the owner is abusive to the staff and doesn't know much about customer service. Here is said review.

OK, this is unrelated to today's adventure. It's a photo of the fish tacos my wife had yesterday at Kathleen's Sky Diner in Dallas yesterday; that place is fantastic!

Smoked Cameraman

It's official; it wasn't that my camera was not working properly, it was the operator.

I took my little Nikon Coolpix S6 (it's a couple or three years old now) to the high-end camera store because lately it has taken lousy photos, particularly of indoor or low-light scenes where there is any action in the shot.

Most recently, I was trying to capture the ambience of a barbeque place, a place where patrons are greated not by a host or hostess, but by a huge "warming grill" complete with grillmaster. The patron points to the sausage links or brisket or steaks or ribs or chicken of interest, then the grillmaster starts slicing off meat until the patron says "stop." That's where the camera problem comes in. I could not for the life of me take a shot that crisply captures the way the place looks. Instead, I got fuzzy moving images. I was quite annoyed that I could not get the shot I wanted...not even when I tried to stage it.

What I wanted to capture was a shot of the grillmaster. The grillmaster behind the warming grill is the first thing that gets your attention when you enter the huge open-air (but covered) cooking area. Behind the warming grill are a dozen or more enormous smokers where the brisket or ribs or steaks, etc. are actually being smoked to, we wish, perfection. The scene is reminiscent of a place in Central Texas that I love to visit: Cooper's Barbeque in Llano.

This place, though, is a much larger, much more upscale place. Unlike Cooper's, this place has an enormous, cavernous seating area...I suspect 400-500 people could be seated in this place. And, unlike Cooper's, the money that must have been invested just to build this place had to be in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, unlike Cooper's, the meat and the sides and the atmosphere just don't do it for me. It's bigger and newer and flashier, but it's not authentic; it's a businessman's vision of what a barbeque place should look like, not a grillman's vision of what a barbeque business should look like. But, to the credit of the people who built this place, it is attractive to a large and growing audience in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that doesn't give a shit about what I like or don't like about the place; they want an experience that has the look and feel of assembly-line authenticity without the gritty reality and the long distance drive.

What I learned from the upscale camera store is that the idiot camera operator apparently had fucked with the camera's controls beyond his competence. He had selected a scene mode and a shutter speed that virtually guaranteed a crappy photo. I had, of course, tried to adjust all the settings back to "normal" but had failed miserably. So, the photos I was taking were roughly equivalent to photos a 5-year old with ADD would have taken with a Brownie camera. Hence the quality of the photos above. I guess I'll have to suffer through another meal at the inauthentic BBQ spot.

All photos here are of Hard Eight Pit Bar-B-Q, and NOT of my beloved Cooper's. As always, click on any shot to embiggen it.

Turn Off the Questions

I read an interview of Leonard Cohen by Jian Ghomeshi, which was published in the Guardian. The interview was done in anticipation of another of Cohen's concerts in Weybridge, UK, perhaps tonight. The interview was interesting as much for the questions asked as for the answers given. Ghomeshi seems fixated on Cohen's views of and beliefs about death, asking questions like "Is there a way to prepare for death?" That's just one of several that struck me as odd questions to ask of a performer, even a 74 year old performer.

But then it occurred to me that so much of Cohen's music deals with life and death and emotion and depth of experience that it's no wonder some people expect him to have answers that he simply can't have. But they ask anyway. And I can't blame them.

I've often wished there were someone with whom I could have a conversation about questions to which there are no answers, someone who wouldn't consider the questions nor the ensuing conversations morbid nor self-indulgent. I can see how Cohen comes across as just such a person, someone who's approachable and non-judgmental and extraordinarily intelligent to understand that those questions bear discussing.

One of the questions that didn't deal with death that was equally intriguing was "Do you regret not having a lifelong partner?" I like Cohen's response: "Non, je ne regrette rien. (No, I have no regrets.) I'm blessed with a certain amount of amnesia and I really don't remember what went down. I don't review my life that way."

I wonder how many people who do have lifelong partners wonder how different their lives would have been had they not married or not lived in a single committed relationship? Is wondering equivalent to regret? I don't think so, but maybe it is.

Sometimes I do regret that I don't have a switch that will allow me to turn off the questions I constantly ask myself. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the answers or lack thereof.

Not a Fan of P.F. Chang's

We ate at P.F. Chang's last night. My food was only barely edible; my wife's was a bit better. Overall, though, it was extremely disappointing. And horrendously overpriced! Fortunately for us, we had an old but still-valid $20 gift card from the place...I don't recall exactly where we got it.

If you have a hankering for Chinese food, my advice is to find a small family(Chinese)-run restaurant that is full of Asians who appear content with the food.

P.F. Chang's was populated primarily by people who look like me--but are younger, more in-tune to fashion, and inexperienced in the real world---and who probably would feel uncomfortable in a place where the menu wasn't designed by a menu-design pro.

Despite my frequent protestations to the contrary, there are some decent chain restaurants that serve good food at good value. In my view, P.F. Chang's isn't one of them. And there you have it. If it matters.

What's Next

I wasn't expecting it today. It came as a shock, a surprise, a baseball bat from around the corner.

The day started off just fine. My wife whispered to me, "get up, time to go for a walk." I wasn't looking forward to it when I first got up and threw on my walking shorts, dangerously ugly t-shirt, and gym shoes, but less than a block on I started to feel good about it. I started enjoying it so much, in fact, that I got a little snarly when we had to head back. "We ought to just change our hours," I said, "and start coming in at 9 o'clock. That way, we could walk as long as we want and not have to watch the clock." My wife responded by suggesting that I should do that; that was her not-so-subtle way of saying she was not interested.

Back at home, she showered first while I made lunch; a salad of canned tuna, green onions, and strips of roasted poblano peppers, topped with a couple of tomatoes I cut into sections. Then it was my turn to return to the "go-to-office" routine: shower, shave, brush teeth, put on uncomfortable long pants, short-sleeved shirt, and casual but not even close to flip-flop-casual shoes.

By the time we were both ready for work, it was just after 7:30. And I was allowing my loathing of the trip to the office and the day soon to be spent in it to drag my mood into the cellar. I cursed loudly at a psychotic little witch who refused to give an inch to let me merge into freeway traffic. She was far too busy talking on her cell phone and putting on eyeliner to give me any courtesy. And then the hotshot in his Mercedes convertible, also busy on his cell phone, roared around several cars in two lanes behind me, then passed me and swerved into the tiny space in front of me and behind the dump truck I was following. If my wife had not been in the car, I would have given myself good reason to replace my car by slamming his little money-pit into the dump truck that was now in front of him. But, my wife would have slashed my throat before I could have fully relished the glory, so I simply sat on the horn and shot him the finger. My wife finds that childish behavior EXTREMELY annoying; I may have been better off with blood squirting from my neck.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot of my office, I was ready for a lousy day. Well, ready is not the word. I was resigned to it. I didn't want it. I wanted to go to the beach or for a drive in the country or to an animal shelter where I could pick up a pug-mix that really liked me!

The brief "cool" spell of the last two days, with temperatures getting only into the low nineties, has disappeared. So when we got out of the car, the humidity and heat struck us with the force of a board smashing against our chests. We limped inside, where the temperature was more hospitable, but only mildly so. And then we entered our office.

I struggled through the first hour of the morning with some mild degree of success, so when it happened, it was completely unexpected. Nothing of any consequence precipitated it, though a few things had gone "wrong" already this morning. But nothing earth-shattering. But then when I realized that I had to send out two board meeting agendas and found that the financial reports that ALWAYS must go with them had not been completed as they should have been...the 20th of last month...I just snapped.

I got up, pulled my keys from my pocket, and headed for the door. "I'm out of here," I said to my wife and anyone else within earshot. And then I added, not as loud, "and I'm not coming back." And I left. I went straight down to my car, started it up, and drove away. First I headed east, then south, and then just drove with no particular attention paid to the direction I was going. I passed two or three police cars and only after I passed each one did I look down to see that I was going at least 15 miles per hour over the speed limit. But I didn't even slow down. I just kept driving.

It was an hour or so later, I think, that I started thinking about what I was doing. And that brought me back to the office, eventually. And I walked in to the suite, past the offices up front, and into mine in the rear corner. And the rest of the day was pretty normal; dull, annoying, upsetting, occasionally interesting. But I just can't get it out of my mind that I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to leave. And when I walked out the door, I intended it to be permanent. I even thought of what I would tell my clients and my staff and how I would deal with the business.

I suppose my little episode was a warning to myself. It wasn't a warning that I need a vacation. I just took one. It was a warning that I better get serious about what's next.

The Promise of the Statue of Liberty

This poem by Emma Lazarus should make us remember who we were, and who we should always be, as we celebrate our independence this Fourth of July:

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset fates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Fourth of July

Today's plan was to have included an early morning walk.

But my wife could not sleep last night, and so was disinterested in waking up when I alerted her to "walk time."

I awoke last night at 1:30 to find her side of the bed empty; she was in the family room, reading. She had not been able to get to sleep.

Sometime thereafter, after I had gone back to bed, she came in and tried it again. She kept alerting me to the fact that I needed to clear my throat, turn over, or otherwise take action to stop my snoring. When I woke up, her side of the bed was again empty. I found her in the family room, again, this time fast asleep with a thin blanket over her. When I inquired about walking, she mumbled something about "in a while" and audibly snarled at me. She did not bother to open her eyes; I think she was not awake.

An hour passed and she was still asleep, so I decided to wash lasts night's dishes and make breakfast for myself: turkey bacon, "fried" eggs that I cooked in a no-stick skillet with a little butter-flavored Pam, and some slices of tomato and jalapeños. I just finished it and it was exceptionally good.

Now, she's up. But I haven't spoken to her. Let's see if her mood matches the fireworks of this Fourth of July! Happy day, incidentally!

Disconcerting Conversations

I think it's odd that I find Bill Moyers' Journal more interesting as time goes by. I find it particularly interesting that I'm intrigued by programs dealing with faith and religion, inasmuch as I have neither.

Tonight, he had a conversation with Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien about America's fundamental ethics and values and what they say about our society. The conversation was presented as, and acknowledge to be, an inherently "biased" conversation, since Moyers himself and his three guests are committed Christians.

They talked about what our society and the way it operates says about America’s politics, our policies, and the appropriateness of democracy in a society that describes itself as being based on morality.

West, in particular, made it a point to say that many of his personal beliefs are well-aligned with those of many devout atheists and agnostics, though the others seemed to be in agreement.

I found it intriguing that all three are connected to the Union Theological Seminary, a nondenominational seminary based in New York City. I did not even know there were any such things as nondenominational theological seminaries. Serene Jones is president of the seminary and the others are professors.

What always surprises me about Moyers and his guests is that they almost always speak about morality, right and wrong, and guiding philosophical principles, the justification for which they always attribute to Christianity or, at least, religion. His religious guests always wear this badge of "faith" on their sleeves with great pride; that is the only thing about them I find offensive and, frankly, blind.

That not withstanding, I find these conversations very interesting. I agree more often than I disagree with their almost universally liberal worldviews. Their sense of justice mirrors mine almost perfectly. It's their damn insistence on believing in supernatural beings that I find disconcerting.

New York City - Part 1

Before I start with the travelogue, here is a link to the voluminous photos from the trip. The photos are, by and large, miserable. But they tell the story.


We got to Newark airport a little earlier than scheduled on Friday, June 19, but by the time we took an AirLink shuttle to the hotel, we had lost all the time we had gained. That turned out to be not so bad, though.

After all passengers were boarded (there were 11 of us in the van), we exited the airport and headed, initially, in one direction. The passengers were a motley lot, some from Sweden, some from Germany, some from Mexico, and the rest various stripes of U.S. citizens, I gather.

The shuttle took several detours because the Holland or Lincoln tunnel (don't recall which) was horribly crowded. We went the back way through downtown Jersey City, which I thought looked like a very interesting place...a place to return to and learn more about, one day. That's what made the lost time worth losing. We saw some odd back streets that called to me...one day...

But with the good things came bad things, namely a problem with my left foot. It had started bothering the hell out of me almost immediately upon arrival and just got worse. We planned to do a fair amount of walking around once we got here, but it hurt too much. We went around the block and then down the street a bit the evening we arrived, but it just hurt like hell and I did not want to walk on it. So, we opted for a dinner very close by, Lindy's Deli, an obscenely overpriced place where I had a hot pastrami sandwich on rye with a pickle and some slaw, along with a light beer, and my wife had meatloaf with whipped potatoes and a side of cooked veggies (broccoli and carrots) that were horrific. It cost us $40 + for this not-so-good dinner.

After a night of snoring too much and keeping my wife awake, we awoke about 9 am and then slowly go ready to go out. My foot was better but still hurt. We took a bus south and got off in the Tribeca area, where we stumbled across a little restaurant (Edward's) with some mixed alfresco dining. My wife had chilaquiles with a watermelon gazpaucho starter. The gazpaucho was exceptionally good! I had a burger with bleau cheese; my burger was a bit dry but certainly edible. We selected from the specials menu; neither chilaquiles nor watermelon gazpacho were on the regular menu.

Then, we headed south, back on foot, to the site of the Wolrd Trade Center, now aflutter with cranes building a new structure. Lots of people wandering by. On the way, we went into a place called The Path, with I gather is a train station which used to serve the WTC and now is back in operation. Then, more walking and we stopped by the Trinity Church, which survived the blast. The Trinity Root, an upside down and now painted version of a tree trunk that was torn from a tree near the church is on display. The cemetary at the Trinity Church intrigued me; I took several photos, trying and failing to express my artistic capabilities.

More wondering by foot south, to Battery Park, near to where the boats and ferries leave for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. After wandering there (and beforehand wandering through some very neat street markets where farmers and fisherman were selling their products), we jumped a bus and headed north, finally getting off about 65th street. We went to a pharmacy where we bought a nitelite, a coke, some pretzels, etc. and then walked down to Broadway where we caught a bus back to our hotel.

That evening, we walked to a "Mexican" restaurant for dinner. I would classify the place as nouveau Mexican. Very, very good, but not typical Mexican fare. For the record, here are details:

Hell's Kitchen
679 Ninth Ave, NY
Phone: 212-877-1588
www.hellskitchen-nyc.com

My wife started with a drink, a wajito (watermelon mojito). I was less adventurous, having a basic margarita on the rocks. Here wajito was very good, I had to admit.

For dinner my wife started with scallop tostaditas for an appetizer, which was scallop ceviche on a guajillo tostada with avocado and radish salsa. For her main course, she had seven-chile pork chop mixiote, drunken beans, and sweet potato flauta. I had ceviche tuna, crusted with ancho chiles and served with yucca cake, for an appetizer, followed by an absolutely fabulous grilled pork loin.

The next day, we took a subway down to the Meat Packing District, where we went wandering off, in search of a newly-completed first-phased of a park that was built on a raised train platform. The park, called the High-Line, is absolutely beautiful. The High Line is located on Manhattan's West Side. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues. Section 1 of the High Line, which is what we walked and is the only part presently open to the public, runs from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street.

After wandering down the High Line, we wandered through part of the Meat Packing District and then made a brief stop for a drink at a little German restaurant called Loreley on Rivington St. I had a 1/2 litre of a dark German beer (Koestritzer) and my wife had a apple spritzer drink (Apfelschorle). Then, more walking, whereupon we found ourselves in Little Italy. On Sunday in Little Italy, the main north-south street is closed to traffic except for a few cross-streets and people are crowded in the streets and at the dozens of restaurants that line the street. I saw a cold bar where a guy was hawking fresh clams; I could not help myself...I had to have some. So, we stopped and I ordered a dozen steamed cherrystone clams. The counterman picked out twelve enormous specimens from a cold ice bath, took them away into the kitchen and returned with them in about twenty minutes. He brought me a bowl of melted butter to use as dipping sauce. They were good, but unexpectedly chewy. By the time I had the clams, I was absolutely stuffed.

From there, we continued south to China town and to a little park that was filled to overflowing with all sorts of Chinese and, perhaps, other people of recent Asian heritage. The park was full of Chinese music, including a woman singing with backup musicians playing all sorts of string and wind instruments that looked utterly unfamiliar to me. The people in the park represented five or six generations, I think. Also in the park was an odd couple who were surrounded by a small crowd of Asians: a guy who was dressed in what I believe was an American Coast Guard uniform and a young American student playing Chinese instruments. The student also sung, in Chinese. The people in this park were milling about, talking to almost everyone they encountered and generally behaving as if they were very much an integral part of this community...this appeared to me to be their social outing for the week.

From there, we walked east and finally took a bus north on 3rd Avenue. As we were waiting for the bus, we got a call from my wife's sister (actually, her sister's boyfriend called), saying they had just arrived. It was about 2:30 pm and I thought they were to have arrived at 4:00 pm, but I had been mistaken. Anyway, we took the bus north to 31st street, then walked the very long blocks to 7th Avenue, where our hotel was located.

We met up with them, talked them into buying Metro Passes to allow them to ride the buses and subway for the two days they would be in NYC, and then the four of us took a subway to Central Park. As we left the subway station, near Columbus Circle, it started to rain. We went into a huge mall (The Shops at Columbus Circle, inside the the Warner Center) for a bit, then when the rain stopped, we walked briefly in Central Park, but the rain started up again. We grabbed a bus and took it to 45th Street. From there, we walked up to the Marriott overlooking Times Square and went inside to have drinks and look out on Times Square (the bar is on the 8th floor and has a spectacular view of the lights of Times Square).

From there, we walked to 9th Avenue and had dinner at a Thai restaurant...Yum Yum Bangkok, a place my wife and I had eaten in during our last trip to New York. It's a very tasty little place. After dinner, because it was pouring rain, we took a taxi back to our hotel. My sister-in-law's boyfriend decided to pay for the cab (I was happy to accommodate him), so we all jumped out and ran inside to get out of the rain. But when I got inside, my wife and her sister asked where he was. He was nowhere to be seen. He has a degenerative eye disease and cannot see well, especially at night, so I assumed he must have headed in the wrong direction. I ran out to find him and, sure enough, he had headed to the side door of the hotel where they had entered before. it was locked by that time, though, so he could not get in. He was standing there smoking, waiting for someone to find him. The came up to our room and we lent them our umbrellas so they could walk the few blocks up the street to their hotel.

The next day, we all got up late and so started the day very late. We took the E train south to 4th Street and walked to Washington Park at New York University, in The Village. We wandered around the park and the area in general and then stopped in the get my glasses fixed (nose piece was loose)...then my sister in law had her sunglasses fixed. I bought a hot dog and boyfriend bought a pretzel...we did more walking.

We walked to Bleecker street and found that the Peculier Pub (where I wanted to stop for a drink) was closed, as were many places like it. We finally ate at Caffe Dante (I had a mortadella sandwich; my had an eggplant & zuccini sandwich). This was after we roamed all over looking for a place that boyfriend swore was across the street from a famous guitar store, which we never found. And he was not into eating anything that attracted us, like tapas, etc.

At any rate, we all wandered around more...through the Vilage, Trebeca, Little Italy, and China town. We started heading back up Canal street to West Broadway, then got on the subway and headed back to Penn Station, where we got off and I bought another hotdog...but I intended to order a hot Italian sausage.

Then, a brief stop at the drugstore to get shaving cream and another coke, then back to the hotel.

My blogger friend called after my wife and I got to the hotel and and she would meet us after awhile at our hotel.

Blogger friend came over late Monday afternoon and we went over to Harrington's Bar & Grille across 7th Avenue from the hotel. It's a modern, upscale, overpriced little place. My wife, blogger friend, and I all had a glass of merlot....I had two. Sister and boyfriend joined us for awhile, whereupon we all bared our souls about what we did, did not do, etc. Lots of conversation about bloggery, etc.

Then, we decided it was time to eat. We wandered over to 9th street and then north to about 38th before my feet exclaimed loudly that they could no longer tolerate walking. We stopped in a little Pakistani cafeteria style joint where they served food on china plates but gave us plastic utensils. I had a lamb dish and a chicken dish and also bought an aloo tikki; my wife had a lamb dish and butter chicken; Blogger friend had various dal and other veggies. No telling what sister and boyfriend had, but he did have a rather odd meatball dish. We all shared the aloo tikki.

After dinner, we wandered toward our hotel in the slight, then heavier, then slight rain. We stopped in at a little store and I bought some wine and my wife bought a candy bar. At around 34th street, Blogger friend decided to head over to sixth to get a taxi back to her hotel somewhere on 76th or thereabouts. I gave her one of the umbrellas to take with her.

Boyfriend called about 9:15 and then they finally showed up after 10 with their bags, which they left in our room. The idea was to allow them to check out and then they could come back to our room to get their bags and zip over to Penn Station...they could take our key and leave it in the room.

We walked over to the subway at Penn Station and got on a subway toward the Roosevelt Island tram...after changing trains once, we emerged from underground and walked to the tram station, only to find that it was running only on the hour between 10 am and 2 pm Tuesday and Wednesday. We had just missed a tram, so would have had to have waited for another and by then it would have been dicey for boyfriend & sister to have gotten back to catch their train. So, we trudged off to Central Park and wandered around a bit, viewing a merry-go-round, a gift shop in the old dairy, and otherwise seeing a few sights. Then we walked across to the west side and headed over to Broadway, where we walked north until we found the West Side Restaurant, where we ate lunch....I a ham and cheese club and my wife a gyros on pita bread with a Greek salad. Sister in law had a goat cheese wrap, which I was thinking of ordering; it was delicious, as was my wife's gyro. Mine was pretty decent.

After lunch, we went into a fabulous grocery store at 75th at Broadway...incredible place! It had the most extensive collection of cheese, olives, meats, seafood, etc. that I've seen outside Central Market and Whole Foods Market, but it is a small place, not a chain (as far as I know).

Shortly thereafter, sister in law and boyfriend left, heading back to the hotel to get their things and head over to the train station.

My wife and I got a bus to 95th street, where she was looking for Murder, Ink. a bookstore that unfortunately was no longer there. So, we got another bus and headed south to about 60th, then a bus west to near the Roosevelt Island tram. We walked to the tram and were able to get on board and take it to the island. Beautiful views! I took a bunch of pictures. Then back across on the tram, then a walk to the subway station at around 4:00 pm. We got on the very crowded subway and took it one or two stops, changed to another line and rode it to Times Square. We got off at Times Square (42nd and 7th/Broadway) and walked back to our hotel at 31st and 7th.

Shortly after we walked in the door, Blogger friend called...we agreed she would come over to our hotel in an hour or two. After she arrived, we headed out to dinner on 9th street again. This time, at an Italian restaurant called L'Allegria. I had linguine alle vongole with red clam sauce; my wife had eggplant parmegiano; Blogger friend had ravioli. My wife had a great glass of wine...of course I didn't write down what it was.

More later. Enough for now.

Television as a Surrogate for Reading

I watched some interesting programming tonight on the Sundance Channel. First, I watched Iconoclasts, which apparently is a series which pairs culturally influential people for a dialogue. Tonight, it was Dave Chappelle and Maya Angelou, a very strange pairing but extremely interesting. Then, I watched Spectacle, a talk show that I assume is regularly hosted by Elvis Costello; in this episode, he interviewed Bill Clinton. The conversations revolved around music for the most part. I was intrigued by the depth of Clinton's knowledge of music; I always knew he was a musician, but I was surprised at how much he knows about jazz, blues, and the people who play them.

And then I could find nothing else of any interest to watch on television. And, of course, I could find nothing to read because my damn glasses make it almost impossible. I suppose I could take off my glasses, close my left eye, and hold a book close to my right eye, but that is troublesome and tends to put me in a position that causes my neck to ache badly for days, nay, weeks. I still haven't read The Kite Runner, which I want to read, nor have I read A Thousand Splendid Suns. There are dozens more, the titles of which I can never remember until I see them on the shelf in bookstores on in libraries. Hell, I still haven't finished Ringside Seat to a Revolution, which I have had in my study ready to read for almost two years, I think.

Note to self: when we get back from NYC, I MUST go in for an eye exam and a new lens prescription.

Just one more day of work until we leave for NYC...and a visit with a special blogger!

Spake

I just noticed that I've only published 190 posts to this blog, a fraction of what I posted to the blog this one replaced. My old personality was more prolific than the one I'm wearing now, I suppose. It's too bad, actually, that my old personality never had a proper introduction to the new me and vice versa. Both of them would have learned from the other, and both would have been better had they adopted some of the more desirable traits from the other. But both have plenty of less desireable traits, including the propensity to communicate in this way...you know, this way in which I'm using the third person to explain aspects of the first person, and so on.

Were I more adept at understanding, and explaining, grammar, I would attempt to put all of this into a more appropriate form but, alas, I did not inherit my mother's capacity for grammatical wisdom. But I know what I think is right, by God! And I am an absolute wizard at proper usage of its, it's, they're, their, there, etc. But I cannot, no matter how hard I try, comprehend pluperfect, past perfect, preterite, and so on. I get lost and start trying to insinuate mathematics into the process, suggesting somewhere along the way, for example, that a sentence is written in the pluperfect present tense to the fifth power. And it gets even uglier from there.

I love the spoken word, spoken as it should be spoken. But I cannot grasp arcane linguistic structures that ascribe more complexity to speech than it deserves. And there you have it. I have spoken. Or spake.

Nature with a Hot Poker

Last night was a weather monster. Winds of 70-80 miles per hour, rains pouring down at the rate of 4 inches per hour, explosive claps of thunder that rolled and rolled and rolled in the sky, lightening strikes like I've never seen. And then this morning I found two enormous limbs that had been ripped from a giant tree in front of my house; they filled one entire side of the front yard.

The storms returned just before daybreak, repeating the ferocity of the night before before we got in the car to go to work. And then the weather became cataclysmic. Shrieking winds blew the rain at a 90 degree angle and hail started pelting the car; the roads were damn near impassable. In fact, I drove through some water that was far too deep to have waded safely; I'm an idiot.

The forecasts for next week: hot, dry, and worsening. Temperatures will climb into the mid to upper 90s. Nighttime lows probably will be so damn warm that we can't sleep without cranking the air down to arctic levels. I love storms, as long as they're not heat storms.

Daydreaming

I confirmed our Christmas-time trip to Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico a day or so ago. Nine days in the village, beginning with two days in a B&B, followed by seven days at my brother and sister-in-law's house. I want to go now. Ajijic is beautiful and laid back and it tends to drain stress out of me almost immediately. Not all of it, but a lot; and I hope to allow it to get at even more next time around.

Now, I will spend six months daydreaming about the trip.

Appreciation

Do you know what this image is? Really? After I took it, I was surprised by the way it looked. I don't know what I expected, but this wasn't it. But so it is. It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.















When I was in Houston recently, I went to Pappas' Barbeque for lunch, twice. During my second visit, I noticed a family who, for various reasons, I believe had just left church and gone to Pappas for lunch. There were seven or eight of them, from the sixty-ish patriarach to the baby and every age group in between. After their food arrived, I watched as the all grasped hands and the man said a prayer. I assume it was a prayer; while I couldn't hear it, it appeared to me that he was saying a prayer. After he finished, I saw and heard some audible "amens" from the family. So, I'm convinced they had said a prayer.

For almost as long as I can remember, I've considered that saying prayers is a fundamental waste of time. I mean, what do people expect to get when they say a prayer, anyway? Do they expect to hear a booming voice say, "Gottcha. I'll take care of that after I eat lunch and resolve the conflict in the middle east."

Seriously, I've been pretty brutal in my assessment of people who say prayers. But something that day made me think a little deeper. While I haven't converted into a believer, I have had a bit of a change of heart about the people who say prayers. Not all of them, mind you, but I suspect a lot of them are people who are simply expressing their hope that good things will happen to their family, their friends, and humankind. And they are expressing gratitude at the good things in their lives.

And it occurred to me that a lot more people ought to express gratitude, not to a being, per se, but simply because there is a lot to be grateful for. Even nonbelievers like me love their families and their friends and want good things to happen for them. So when good things happen, we're grateful; not TO someone or something, but JUST BECAUSE. We're happy for other people. We're GRATEFUL that good things are happening for someone we care about.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the Christian and Jewish and Muslim practice of regularly expessing that gratitude is probably a good thing. I wish the people who believe in the teachings of those religions would admit rational thinking into their minds, instead of "faith," but I admire the fact that they take a specific moment, on a regular basis, to acknowledge the good things that are happening and to express their desires for more good things for more people. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe if the rest of us, including those "pretend" Christians and Jews and Muslims who say one thing and do another, would make it a point to regularly and consciously look around and acknowledge the things and the people around them for which they are grateful...maybe the world would be a better place.

Atheists and agnostics and wiccans and the rest all could benefit from taking a few minutes every day to consciously express appreciation for the goodness that surrounds us. Maybe that's the spirituality that I think is in all of us. Maybe not.

Of course, when I hear prayers that suggest to me that people believe in some grand plan that is being actively managed by a supreme being, I go a little nuts, but at least I'm making progress. In time, perhaps, I'll allow myself to think of those people as a little brighter than I think of them today. But for now, I am glad they at least acknowledge that it's right to look around us and express gratitude.

By the way, the image is a view of a little crystal container full of toothpicks, looking down from above.

REVISED: An Affront to Grammatical Purity

I just read a blot post that upset me. It argues that good grammar is not as important as I think it is. It suggests that someone who writes "Its going to be a long time until we meet again" is not necessarily a lesser human form than someone who writes "It's going to be a long time until we meet again."

Until I can frame a good, strong argument against this monstrous attack on the value of good grammar, I'm going to pout. And I'll go for a walk in the pre-horrific heat of a June morning in Dallas.

OK, I'm back and I'm ready for a fight! Granted, the meaning of the sentences above does not depend on proper usage, but that argument does not hold water in the real world. Let's say, for example, that people decide to stop using punctuation or capital letters. Would it still be possible to understand what they write? Most likely. But does that fact negate the value of punctuation and capital letters? Hell no! So, I steadfastly refuse to accept the assertion that grammar and usage are archaic remnants of "old language" skills that are no longer valid.

I accept that even some very smart people may be very poor at grammar and usage, but that does not make grammar and usage any less valuable. A blind person may get along just fine without sight, but that is not a persuasive argument against eyeglasses. So there!

Snarky Liberal

I've spent the morning, thus far, drinking seriously strong black coffee and looking through a catalog sent to me by Gilbert Realty in Mountain Home, Arkansas. There are dozens of listings for homes on acreage, from just over one to 40 or more, that look very attractive...and they are inexpensive. Of course, photos don't always show the warts. And I'm not sure I want to live in the Ozarks because next time I move someplace, I want it to be a place where there are more people whose political perspectives I can more easily tolerate...people who are, at least, liberal and tolerant of lifestyles dissimilar to theirs. Maybe I don't know the political climate in the Ozarks, but I bet I do. And it's probably is just as offensive and right-wing and unyieldingly intolerant as Dallas ever hopes to be.

So, just because housing is cheap, the Ozarks probably aren't for me.

I read quite some time ago that Arcata, California is quite a liberal place and is a college town (home to Humboldt State University), to boot. Unfortunately, I think I read in the same place that Arcata is a very expensive place to live, better-suited to über-rich liberals (whose embrace of the underclass is likely to be intellectual) than to liberals who came by their liberalism through more experiential means. Now, that was the statement of someone who just stereotyped the entire population of a town and a "class" of people...not very liberal of me at all, was it? And that was after I stereotyped the entire population of a region of the country. I need to chill.

A blogger friend is in the process of moving to the coast (I think she's planning on living on or near the coast, anyway) of Nova Scotia. That has some appeal to me; very low population density but who knows which way the people lean, politically. Or there's always the nice place I once found advertised in Chile; it was my dream house, sitting on the side of a mountain view views of the Pacific and a large volcanic lake. Of course, if I seriously considered that place, I'd probably have to make snide comments about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the need to learn to speak fluent Spanish.

Back to Normal

My sister had an angioplasty on Tuesday that went well, except that it was complicated by severe breathing problems during the procedure. She improved enough to be released from the hospital yesterday (Saturday), so all is right with the world. Well, almost. I filled a new prescription for her that the pharmacist said her insurance wouldn't cover because of the way it was written (the dosage). It was horrifically expensive, at $329 or more (I forgot), but I was happy to pay it. Sister, though, was not happy and insisted I take it back to get a credit on my credit card...she has other sources.

So, this morning I will take it back. And then will return my rental car and head home. I was going to take the bus home, but the logistics of getting from the rental car return place to the bus station are just too damn involved and unreliable (and expensive), so the bus will have to wait for another trip. Speaking of which, I better make my reservation online.

OK, and now I return to normal, to the extent that is possible.

Bus Ride

There's something alluring to me these days about riding the bus cross-country. I don't know just what it is, but there's something inside me that, when I think about being on a bus, evokes a sense of loneliness and a feeling of being down on one's luck, but not far enough down to have let it get the best of me. I want to explore those feelings, but with the security of knowing I'm not there...at least not yet.

Those are artificial senses and feelings, I know, because I am neither lonely (in the sense of having no one around me who cares) nor particularly down on my luck. I'm a 55 year old guy who owns my own little break-even business and who lives with my wife in a perfectly respectable middle-class neighborhood in north Dallas. I'm the epitome of a middle class, middle-American, white man with a mortgage and a growing belly.

Those traits notwithstanding, I want to feel what it's like to have to scrape by to take public transportation from city to city. I'm not asking for poverty and heartache, I'm just looking for an experience that might help me understand something more about just a few more of my fellow humans.

I suspect that my desire to ride the bus would be viewed as symptomatic of an emotional void of some kind, at least by some. Or I would be just another pitiful liberal with a capital "L" who wants to understand and even walk among the "little people." Or maybe I'd be seen as someone who needs to demonstrate that he has a "bond" with the blue collar working man who defines America.

The unfortunate thing is this: it may be that all those things are true. Or none of them. I just don't know. I can't explain in terms my wife can understand why I want to jump on a Greyhound and ride to Austin. No one else seems to "get it" any better than she does, or I do.

"Why would you want to get on the bus with a bunch of people, many of whom don't even speak English, and be stuck there for hours while they sweat? Wouldn't you rather be in a car, where you have control and can stop whenever you want?"

The answer is, 'sometimes, but not always.' There are plenty of times when I just want to get on a bus and go. Maybe I don't want to take a trip to Austin and then come back. Maybe I want to take a trip to the West. Maybe I want to buy a ticket to the next town, then buy another ticket to the town after that and then the one after that, but not leave a trail. Maybe I want to escape.

Riding a bus isn't what it once was, though. I remember riding a bus many years ago with two of my friends. We travelled from Corpus Christi to Dallas, with our parents' consent, on a Continental Trailways bus, I think. I remember an old man was kicked off the bus for groping children; it may have been us he was groping, but the memory is now long-since clouded. He was put off the bus in the middle of the nowhere. Of course there were no cell phones then. He was just suddenly on the roadside, left to his own devices. I don't think that would happen now. Everyone, almost, has a cell. But back then, the old guy probably got a ride quickly. Not so today; who picks up hitchhikers anymore?

Maybe I'm looking for experiences that are just no longer available. Maybe I'm wishing for a way of life that's gone. Maybe the bus ride is my attempt to travel to places that no longer exist, except in my mind.

Whatever the reason, whatever the emotional draw that the cross-country bus-ride has for me, I'm planning to take it, and soon. And then maybe I'll know enough about my emotions to write intelligently, and intelligibly, about them.

By the way, as I was exploring my senses about the bus, I came across this blog as a result of a search for "the allure of riding the bus." Read it; you'll like the blogger.