THE VIEW FROM THE BUS: Reflections on America
Many of my clients seem puzzled when I show up at their offices having arrived on some form of mass public transit. I love to travel around a city on buses, subways and light rail because it gives me a sense of place that I never get in a car. Fact be, I’d prefer to walk and often do.
How else would I have ever stumbled on the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum in Atlanta or ever struck up a conversation with an Eileen Ford model on Newbury Street in Boston?
That’s how you get to know a city. And maybe that’s the best way to learn about a nation.
I had an awakening on New Jersey Transit’s 165 Wedgewood Express from midtown Manhattan to Hackensack, NJ to see my good friends at NAI James E Hanson. That trip starts at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th Avenue just south of “where the underworld can meet the elite,” 42nd Street. The route is scenically breath-taking, descending through the skyscraper canyons into the Lincoln Tunnel, ascending the Jersey Palisades with postcard views of New York across the Hudson, winding through a variety of neighborhoods, meadows and waterways.
Aside from the visual surprises of the trip, I was struck by the diversity of the neighborhoods we traversed and the passengers we carried.
Most of us avoid mass transit and I suspect it is just because it allows us to travel without having to deal with our neighbors. I know that the convenience and privacy of my car explains why I drive as much at home. I have to be honest, my infatuation with public transportation doesn’t carry over when I’m at home.
Our preference for the isolation and insulation of our cars means, unfortunately, that we get out of touch with the rest of us. And that means we lose our sense of America… a realization that comes within a few minutes of any urban bus ride.
America was and is a nation of immigrants. Meaning no insensitivity to the indigenous Native Americans who hold true claim to the continent, the United States as a modern political and industrial entity was created and is maintained by a constant flow of citizens from other lands.
To ride a bus is to travel alongside working class people who cannot afford the luxury of cocooning themselves in an automobile. They and their children get to work and school, shop and play and come back home on buses and railcars.
On the 165 I am always impressed with the number of parents and children traveling together. Whatever the color or language the sense of protective love and hope in the future comes through in the mundane acts of a mother tightening the straps of her child’s backpack or the father reminding his child not to forget his lunch.
These are the folks whose sweat and long hours keep our economy churning. They are also the people who keep the dream alive. They look tired sometimes, even dispirited as the bus grinds to and from work, but they never look cynical. The people who do look cynical and often angry are the people I see outside of the bus when I glance into the air conditioned cars, mostly driven by single parties, alongside the bus.
In the latest debate about immigration I’m afraid a central point is lost… a conception that a ride on the 165 Wedgewood brings into focus. Diversity keeps the US strong. New ideas, even different values, allow for us as a nation to draw from a rich pool of solutions to any problem we face.
America to me is not about the language in which the Star Spangled Banner is sung so much as the values expressed in singing it. If someone is willing to risk a desert, barbed wire and German Shepards to live here maybe they are just the kind of neighbors I want. In fact, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer those folks to the cynical citizens who add nothing to the community.
Maybe a nation of immigrants best not get too exclusive about who we let in or how they get here. If it ever gets to be the case that people in other nations don’t want to come here, then we have a problem.
Many of my clients seem puzzled when I show up at their offices having arrived on some form of mass public transit. I love to travel around a city on buses, subways and light rail because it gives me a sense of place that I never get in a car. Fact be, I’d prefer to walk and often do.
How else would I have ever stumbled on the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum in Atlanta or ever struck up a conversation with an Eileen Ford model on Newbury Street in Boston?
That’s how you get to know a city. And maybe that’s the best way to learn about a nation.
I had an awakening on New Jersey Transit’s 165 Wedgewood Express from midtown Manhattan to Hackensack, NJ to see my good friends at NAI James E Hanson. That trip starts at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th Avenue just south of “where the underworld can meet the elite,” 42nd Street. The route is scenically breath-taking, descending through the skyscraper canyons into the Lincoln Tunnel, ascending the Jersey Palisades with postcard views of New York across the Hudson, winding through a variety of neighborhoods, meadows and waterways.
Aside from the visual surprises of the trip, I was struck by the diversity of the neighborhoods we traversed and the passengers we carried.
Most of us avoid mass transit and I suspect it is just because it allows us to travel without having to deal with our neighbors. I know that the convenience and privacy of my car explains why I drive as much at home. I have to be honest, my infatuation with public transportation doesn’t carry over when I’m at home.
Our preference for the isolation and insulation of our cars means, unfortunately, that we get out of touch with the rest of us. And that means we lose our sense of America… a realization that comes within a few minutes of any urban bus ride.
America was and is a nation of immigrants. Meaning no insensitivity to the indigenous Native Americans who hold true claim to the continent, the United States as a modern political and industrial entity was created and is maintained by a constant flow of citizens from other lands.
To ride a bus is to travel alongside working class people who cannot afford the luxury of cocooning themselves in an automobile. They and their children get to work and school, shop and play and come back home on buses and railcars.
On the 165 I am always impressed with the number of parents and children traveling together. Whatever the color or language the sense of protective love and hope in the future comes through in the mundane acts of a mother tightening the straps of her child’s backpack or the father reminding his child not to forget his lunch.
These are the folks whose sweat and long hours keep our economy churning. They are also the people who keep the dream alive. They look tired sometimes, even dispirited as the bus grinds to and from work, but they never look cynical. The people who do look cynical and often angry are the people I see outside of the bus when I glance into the air conditioned cars, mostly driven by single parties, alongside the bus.
In the latest debate about immigration I’m afraid a central point is lost… a conception that a ride on the 165 Wedgewood brings into focus. Diversity keeps the US strong. New ideas, even different values, allow for us as a nation to draw from a rich pool of solutions to any problem we face.
America to me is not about the language in which the Star Spangled Banner is sung so much as the values expressed in singing it. If someone is willing to risk a desert, barbed wire and German Shepards to live here maybe they are just the kind of neighbors I want. In fact, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer those folks to the cynical citizens who add nothing to the community.
Maybe a nation of immigrants best not get too exclusive about who we let in or how they get here. If it ever gets to be the case that people in other nations don’t want to come here, then we have a problem.
posted by Duke at 9:08 AM
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