“At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this … It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.” – Rosa Louise MCauley Parks
Category Archives: people
Thank you, Sister Rosa
In honor of the 55th anniversary of my shero‘s momentous arrest:
I love the Neville Brothers and this tribute, but it does perpetuate the myth of Mrs. Parks as a “simple seamstress” with tired feet. Any cursory study of her life will uncover a very different story.
P.S. – Chicklet thinks this song is for her, since in our house, she’s Sister Rosa.
“Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds, will continue in others.” – Rosa Parks
October inspiration
It’s been a slow month (and a half) for blogging. The move, which I intend to write about at some point, (mostly from a “selecting a home for a car-free family” perspective) and which is still in progress (at least, the getting settled part) took a lot out of me. That, plus a couple of consuming projects, extreme technical difficulties, and seemingly endless weekend events had me shifting most of my alt-transpo energies to Twitter.
For the time being, I have returned to writing full sentences, and I’d like to use them to tell you about:
A mad, mad man
The New York Times recently published a piece about Vincent Kartheiser, aka Pete Campbell from Mad Men. Apparently, Mr. Kartheiser, who lives in Los Angeles, has been car-free for three years. Unlike a lot of high-profile non-drivers, Vincent prefers to get around on PT.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. “Instead of driving and being stressed out about traffic, you can work your scene, you can do your exercises or whatever on the bus. Everyone’s got their own deal.”
[…]
“I like that my life slows down when I go places,” he said. “I have all these interactions with the human race and I can watch people living their life and not just in their car.”
And the best quote of the article?
“They’ve done a study and they’ve found that people under 30 no longer view cars as status symbols or even positive things,” Mr. Kartheiser said. “They look at them as pollutants.”
Talk about progress!
A diet I can actually get behind
On September 15th, Zipcar kicked off its second annual Low Car Diet. Participants in 12 cities have agreed not to use their cars for one month (through October 15th) in exchange for transit passes, Zipcar driving credit, miscellaneous SWAG, and a chance to think differently about how they get around.
I had the pleasure of meeting the Seattle participants at the kickoff, and I’ve been keeping up with their progress (speaking of Twitter) ever since. So far, I’m impressed by the creativity and enthusiasm they’ve brought to the month-long challenge. Here’s hoping that they follow in the footsteps of 61% of last year’s dieters and decide to make a permanent switch.
Citizen activism in Queens
Streetfilms has a cool new film about the Jackson Heights neighborhood, which has succeeded in reclaiming some of its public space.
It’s just another reminder that individuals, when they channel their energy into action, can make a difference.
Bus Dad: Portland lover, “transportation expert”
My dad‘s family has been in Seattle since the early 30’s. My grandparents originally settled in a home mere blocks from where I live now. Dad was born at Harborview, grew up in Seattle and its environs, and raised his family here. And yet, I get most of my (considerable) Seattle love from my mother, a Northwesterner by marriage.
Truth be told, my dad is a bit of a Seattle hater.
To be fair, his hateration is less about the place, which he reveres, and more about the culture. Let him tell it, it’s lack of leadership and foresight that has led us to the current sprawling, transit-deprived, farmland-encroaching, treeless mess we’re in. There is also some complaining about the lack of a “scene.”* Tough words, coming from a guy over 70. I digress.
Every time my dad visits Portland (which is a lot, since one of his closest friends lives there), I have to hear about what a great time he had, and which jazz clubs he visited, and how much better Portland is than Seattle and blah, blah, blah. (In case you missed it, I’m a bit sensitive about such comparisons.) He called me last week, after his most recent visit, to rave about the street fair his friend took him to.
“Do you know they have a street fair once a month down there?”
“But Dad, we have those, too. Remember? Seattle Summer Streets?”
“Yeah, but all they do at those is…ride bikes and stuff.”**
It’s usually a good idea to attend an event before making those kinds of judgments, but hey. Who am I to disrespect an elder? He continued.
“And you want to talk about public transit…”
I braced myself for the long list of Pdx’s PT virtues, but was instead treated to the tale of how he’d made it all the way from his front door to Portland without setting foot in a car: Short walk to Seacrest Water Taxi dock>Water Taxi to Pier 50>Longer walk to King Street Station>Amtrak to Portland’s Union Station.
The car-free adventure ended there. Dad opted to have his friend, who lives right in the city, pick him up. The streetcar apparently doesn’t run close enough to his friend’s house, and he wasn’t up for dealing with the less discoverable and predictable bus. Go figure.
I was impressed with my dad’s adventure*** despite its anticlimactic ending, and I told him as much. I even offered to come up with a catchy nickname for him, like “Train Dad” or “PT Traveler,” but he’s not so into nicknames.”Just call me the transportation expert,'” he said. And so I will.
*Oh, and he does tend to hate on Seattle sports teams, which used to make me mad, back before Clay Bennet and David Stern stole my Sonics. These days, I’m numb. But that’s a discussion for another venue.
**I think he appreciated the commerce at the Pdx version. He got very exicted about the booth that sold old records for $1.
***I should note that my dad has had many more officially adventurous adventures (hoo boy–has he ever!) than taking the train to Portland, but hey. He could have just hopped in his car and headed down I-5. I think it’s cool that he didn’t.
A new bus hero
Congratulations to Marvin White (aka “Superman”), Metro’s 2009* Operator of the Year. I missed the big surprise ceremony (again), and that’s unfortunate; I would have liked to have had an opportunity to meet him.
Here’s what the folks at Metro had to say about the 31-year veteran, who currently drives the 271:
Bus riders on many Eastside routes think White is the Superman of Metro drivers. They describe him as kind, courteous, skilled, and gifted with an ability to stay on schedule “…despite I-405 traffic.”
[…]
“Marvin is one of those operators who knows many of his passengers by name, even though he picks a new route to drive three times a year,” said Metro’s Manager of Operations Jim O’Rourke. “When he goes on vacation, his passengers actually send us emails to tell us they miss him.”
[…]
White does manage to sneak in a little free time away from his driving duties. He’s an avid bicyclist and an accomplished musician. He’s played in several Metro-employee bands during his years with the agency.
But he can’t stay away for long – his customers won’t stand for it.
Here’s a sampling of comments from Metro passengers about White:
• “He always has something good to say to everybody, and he greets at least one-third of the passengers on his bus by name every time they get on or off.”
• “When he is not driving the route, the passengers just sit and avoid eye contact. As long as Marvin is at the wheel, everyone is jovial and filled with camaraderie.”
• “If Metro could clone Marvin White, you would double your bus riders in a hurry!”
A multi-modal type who cares about people and sparks bus-wide discussions? Time for a trip on the 271!
*Yes, I know it’s the middle of 2010, but it’s how Metro does it:
Since 1978, the drivers themselves have selected the best of their peers to hold the title of Metro Transit’s Operator of the Year. In order to receive the award, a driver must be chosen as Operator of the Month from one of the seven transit bases. At the end of the year, the Operator of the Year is selected by a vote of all fellow Operators of the Month. The annual ceremony is usually held the following summer.
On writing and riding
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I have many obsessions: libraries, Rosa Parks, Three Girls Bakery, Mount Rainier, and–oh yeah–buses. You might not know, since I have not thus far had occasion to write about it here, that I am also obsessed with August Wilson.
I am a huge August Wilson fan. The first time I saw one of his plays staged (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Alley Theater in Houston, back when I was a student at Rice) was transformational for me. The man has an unmatched ear for dialogue, and [ahem] I happen to enjoy listening to people talk. It’s one of the primary reasons I love the bus.
Apparently, Wilson enjoyed buses for the same reason. Transit geek/novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez just hipped me to the fact that the famed playwright, a resident of our fair city (incidentally, another of my obsessions) from 1990 until his death in 2005, rode Metro. A lot.
All these years of semi-stalking the man, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t mentioned in any of the zillions of bios I read about him over the years–or at either of the memorials I attended after his death. And yet, all it took was a quick online search to confirm* Dolen’s assertion. August Wilson did, indeed, ride the bus–probably, given the location of his home and his regular haunts–a lot of the same routes I frequent.**
So, it seems that, in addition to providing us time to enjoy the creative work of others, riding transit can also aid the creative process. Toni Morrison (yet another of my obsessions) has said she used her subway rides to work on her first novel, and, as I’ve just discovered, Wilson found inspiration (and probably a lot of material) on the bus. Perhaps I should break out my own (10-year-old-and-as-yet-unpublished) novel. After all, a good quarter of it was written en route.
*This article is in the Boston Globe archives, and I had to pay to read it. I doubt the link will actually show the full text.
**Too bad we never (that I know of) shared a ride. Even my friend Aileen, who boasts of actually meeting him at Red and Black Books back in the day, would be jealous.
A memorial for Memorial Day
On a recent Wednesday, I got to talking with the man in line in front of me at the grocery store. He was an older man, probably a good decade older than my father, and he showed a lot of interest in Busling. His eyes lingered long after the initial “Look at the baby!”, and he asked lots of questions–the kind asked by people who are missing the days when their own were still tiny. So, to keep the conversation from being completely one-sided, I asked the man if he had children.
“Yes, two grandchildren,” he said, “a boy and a girl.” He paused a moment, then added, “My son was murdered on a Metro bus in 1987.”
He told me a few of the details–that it was a robbery, that his son had been counting his recently cashed paycheck in the back and then had refused to surrender the money to the gunman who demanded it. That it was the first ever murder on a Metro bus.
We talked a bit longer–about his grandchildren (who live in Portland but visit him often), and about how he wished his son had used better judgment on that April afternoon 23 years ago–and then went our separate ways.
Our encounter didn’t last longer than five minutes, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. About all the hours and days and years that kind man had spent loving his child, watching him learn to smile and laugh and roll over and crawl; discovering his preferences, his quirks, his weaknesses, his gifts; attending games and graduations; giving advice about important tests and first dates.
I felt compelled to honor his loss by learning all I could about his son–not about the way he was killed, but about who he was, what he cared about, and who would miss him. Here’s what I know:
His name was Larry Curtis Walker. He was 30 when he was killed, an employee at The Plush Pippin at Southcenter. According to his boss, David Jensen, he was wonderful to work with.
“Larry sparkled with integrity and loyalty,” he said in a PI interview a couple of weeks after the murder. “[He was] the best employee I’ve ever had.”
Larry left behind two children, a son and a daughter. His son was six when he died. His daughter, from what I could gather, was younger. Many people knew and cared about Larry, including parents, students, and staff at his son’s school. They started a memorial fund (administered by David Jensen) for his children.
And he had a father who loved him dearly.
What I learned on the 27
This is not a totem pole.
The Douglass-Truth “Soul Pole”
I never really looked at this library landmark (despite the kajillion times I have walked and ridden past it) until a late-evening bus conversation with a history-loving fellow native of the 2-0-sickness. After I explained the origins of Chicklet’s name, he decided we were kindred spirits and so proceeded to school me about–among other things–the history and meaning of this particular work of art.
“The First 400 Years”
I am grateful that he took the time to talk to me. I am also, as ever, grateful for the bus–and for the many opportunities it provides for me to form deeper connections to my community.
Happy last day of Black History Month, ya’ll.
Respect to those who came before, 2010 edition
I decided to take a break from the quote I usually post on this day and hit you with some new ones–some that happen to reflect my state of mind right about now.*
We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concerns of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.
Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion… Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of becoming different.
Happy birthday, Dr. King.
* All quotes were taken from The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Coretta Scott King. The book was a gift from my brother, Jeremy, many years ago on my own birthday (which happens to be today as well), and I continue to refer to it for inspiration and guidance.