Brrrrr

I like school bus driving. I really do. Okay, the pay is lousy, but I like the job.

But there is one aspect of it I hadn't foreseen, and which at times makes that old office job seem awfully inviting: cold.

Cold, as in 14 degrees Fahrenheit.*

Which is what it was the other morning, when I arrived to prepare my bus for the day's schedule. Of course, that was before dawn, but dawn didn't bring much help; the thermometer reached only to 28 by the afternoon.

Worse, the heater in my bus is anemic. Running full blast, it didn't raise the inside temperature enough to make me think I could remove my gloves until the final run of the day, and it didn't feel even vaguely comfortable until I had dropped off my last kid for the day. And no, I never removed my parka. I was chilly all day. Very chilly.

I know, it could be worse. I could be our roving mechanic, working all day outside (and often under buses trying to thaw out frozen brake lines, or swinging a wrench to replace a frozen stop sign actuator). Or have any one of a number of other jobs that require one to be outdoors all day in all types of weather.

On the other hand, I could be in an office, where cold days mean 72 F (and hot, 78). Has a nice sound to it, y'know? Granted, back then I worked for a malevolent tyrant whose only saving grace was blinding incompetence. But I never came home chilled to the bone ....


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* Yes, I could say -10 Celsius, and Celsius really does makes a lot more sense. But using a positive number makes it sound warmer, or at least not quite so cold. And 28 definitely sounds better than minus two. The time to go metric is the summer, when 40 Celsius sounds so much better than 104.

She's twenty today

I remember so clearly holding her in my arms that first time, sending her off for her first day of grade school, holding her upside down so she could walk on the ceiling and then "berating" her for the footprints she left up there, coaching her softball and soccer teams, watching her dance in "Firebird," siting on the edge of her bed at the end of the day as we talked about things on her mind and then tucking her in (even through high school), hiking Billy Goat and Cedar Run and Rip Rap trails, going off with her to "rescue" a bewildered little dog and then watching the two of them become best friends, sharing her college road trip, sending her off to school ... and now she's not even a teen any more. It's amazing, it's astonishing, and I really don't believe it.

Friends have warned me that each coming era of her life would be the toughest, but they've all been good - each with its challenges and frustrations, to be sure, but each to be treasured and then remembered with the wistful smile that perhaps only parents understand. And I know there's a lot more in the future that will be wonderful in its own way.

But where did her childhood go? It seemed to take forever, but now it's gone in as if in a flash, and I mourn its passing.

Yet at the same time, I cherish the adult she's become.

America first

Like many others, my daughter's university offers "study abroad" courses and even semesters of study to its students, affording them the opportunity to experience living in a different cultural milieu and interacting with people whose life experiences are quite different from their own. The selection available to the students is quite broad, with over a dozen programs on five different continents.

This is a good thing, for although the America most of us know has an amazingly diverse cultural heritage, Americans are justly ridiculed world-wide for their cultural insularity and ignorance. On one of my parents' post-retirement trips overseas, a guide told a very telling joke that played on this:

Question: What do you call somebody who speaks three languages?
Answer: Trilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks two languages?
Answer: Bilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks one language?
Answer: American.

Emblematic of our cultural naivete, we've quite recently had a President who had been born into privilege but was apparently proud of having never left the United States, save for short excursions into Mexico.

Nevertheless, many Americans avidly seek out intercultural knowledge, and programs such as college "study abroad" semesters are popular. A number of companies serve similar interests by non-collegians, and also enjoy real popularity. Rosetta Stone, for instance, offers home-study courses in over forty languages, representing Africa, Europe; the Middle East; East, Southeast and South Asia; and Latin America.

Living on the east coast, I've met many people who have traveled overseas extensively, mostly in Europe, even if they haven't seen much of their own continent. When I ask them why, they usually talk about the importance of seeing other cultures, or lands quite different from their own, or to visit places where the language and the way of life are fundamentally different from our own.

And these efforts to broaden cultural horizons are all laudable.

Yet they're all missing something vital, and very, very American. There is within our own boundaries a cultural diversity unimagined in Europe, of which most of us are utterly ignorant. What we miss is extremely important: it's uniquely indigenous to our own continent, and we must know of it if we are to truly know ourselves. Our land is home to amazing cultures and people who are almost invisible to most of us, but whose history here seems ancient compared to most of the rest of us: these are the peoples who are actually indigenous to our own continent, and still live in a cultural milieu uniquely there own and have languages uniquely their own. Theirs is a cultural and linguist world which differs from the standard "American" more than any one might find in Europe.

I'm thinking most of the Navajo and Hopi peoples of the "Four Corners" region of the American southwest, but only because I am more familiar with their story. Yet theirs are only two of a substantial number of cultures indigenous to our soil which present fantastic differences from the experience of most of us. In both cases, the languages are very much alive - well over half of the Navajo nation, for instance, speaks Diné bizaad, and an even larger proportion of the Hopi people speak Hopi. In both cases, the languages differ from English by a far greater degree than any Indo-European language. Both people have a spiritual heritage which differs in very profound ways from any Judeo-Christian religion (yet also differs significantly from each others). In both nations, many people follow a pattern of life which differs more from what an urbanized American knows than anything a visitor to Europe might experience. And both, as is the case with all other native American cultures, look back to a rich history of which the rest of us are totally ignorant or, worse, suffer from gross misconceptions. Most important, though, is that the rest of us could learn and benefit greatly from knowing.

Yet the vast majority of us not born into a native American nation are utterly ignorant of the lives and culture and history - and wisdom - of these, our neighbors.

In short, an American unfamiliar with the worlds of our country's first peoples would do well to explore the amazing diversity found within our own land. Yes, Europe (and Asia, and Africa) hold a fascination for me, but I would much rather learn more of the people who share this land I call my own.

Cell phones and driving

On December 13 the National Traffic Safety Board came out with a recommendation that all states "Ban the nonemergency use of portable electronic devices" in response to its study of a fatal traffic accident caused by a driver texting while in heavy traffic. Although the recommendation deals with all portable electronic devices, most of the media attention has pertained to its impact on cell phone usage by drivers. The recommendation has gotten a lot of press. It's also generated a lot of opposition, much of which, it seems to me, raises the red herring of other distractions to drivers.

It seems to me that the big difference is the context of the distraction. Whether it's eating or listening to the radio or carrying on a conversation with a passenger, the context of the distracting event remains the car and the traffic conditions in which it is operating. The driver and any passenger are aware of what's happening on the road, and automatically pause while the driver deals with anything requiring a reaction.

It's happened to me countless times. A conversation will halt while I deal with the suddenly changed traffic condition, and then resumes without a break when the situation permits. Or I disregard the piece of fruit or sandwich I had been considering a moment before. Or the radio is ignored until I am able to listen again. The normal sort of distracting event hardly interferes with my attention to the road at all, or with my ability to handle the car.

A phone call is different. The other person on the call has no awareness of what's happening in traffic, and indeed may have no awareness that the talkative driver is even driving. So they won't pause if somebody suddenly turns in front of their conversationalist, or the driver needs to check a blind spot while changing lanes. Worse, the driver too easily falls into the trap of concentrating on the phone call, and truly is distracted from the demands of safely driving. How else to explain such egregious lapses of attention, such as one I saw the other day when a driver at a "T" intersection when straight ahead when the light turned green, and plowed into the signal box controlling the intersection's traffic lights?

As a professional driver, I see many, many questionable and dangerous maneuvers, and almost invariably when I look at the drivers, I see that they are holding a cell phone to their ear, or are talking to somebody who isn't in the car with them.

Cell phones are wonderful conveniences. I rely on mine so much I've given up my land line. But they become dangerous when used by drivers. It's as simple as that. There can be no justification for driving while on the phone.

Herons in the 'burbs

Driving a school bus has its little pleasures, which do a lot to grease the wheels. Before "my" elementary school lets out in the afternoon, we drivers stage along a street out in front of the school, waiting for the signal to pull in and pick up our kids.

Adjacent to that street is a small pond which provides its share of those small treasures, even among the signs warning trespassers to not enjoy the view (okay, they actually tell them not to swim, boat, fish or ice skate, but the meaning is clear). It's a little oasis despite the prohibitions, a reminder that there is a world of beauty beyond the commonplace.

Occasionally gracing the pond is a great blue heron, patiently fishing the shallows, largely oblivious of the big yellow boxes parked just beyond the bank. They're my favorite bird, and it's a delight to watch this one stand motionless intently watching the water or slowing wading through the shallows stalking its prey. Watching it, one can readily shake free from the mundanity of the surrounding cookie cutter architecture and appreciate in microcosm the beauty of our remoter estuaries and rivers. Indeed, even in the midst of soulless suburbia, one can find a glimpse of that wildness Thoreau found to be the preservation of the world.

Good for the body, good for the planet

After I got the job driving a school bus and decided I liked it, I moved to be closer to work. Now, if I drive to work, I've got about a 7.1 mile round trip by car ... and since we get an enormous (unpaid!) break in the middle of the day, it's a round trip I usually make twice a day.

But I don't drive my commute; I bike it. Granted, the bike route saves about two miles on the round trip, since I can take a short cut that's not available to drivers. Thanks to that short cut, the elapsed time is about the same. But still, it saves 14 miles of driving every day I hop on the bike.

More to the point, biking puts me in better shape. Which is not an inconsiderable benefit, considering that I'm in training for yet another Grand Canyon hike. (see my other blog, ketches, yaks and hawks.)

But it also saves on gasoline. Assuming I bike both my commutes, morning and afternoon, every day of the week, I'm saving about 70 miles of driving. Which for me, would be about three gallons each week, which is three gallons of irreplaceable gasoline which isn't being pumped out of the ground, and three gallons of gasoline which isn't ending up as greenhouse gas emissions. Not a large amount in the scheme of things, but every bit saved really does help.

It also means I'm saving about ten dollars each week. Which isn't bad news for somebody who is still adjusting to being seriously underemployed.

So it's a win-win-win solution. I commend it to everybody who can find a way to get to work on a bike

Plan B: the big yellow box

I had mentioned that I was laid off in the summer of 2010, and that I wasn't very optimistic about prospects in my profession.

Alas, that proved true, and despite a year of searching I wasn't able to find any position within my field. There weren't that many to begin with, and what there were paid far less than what I had been making. The few interview opportunities I was able to obtain seemed to end the moment I walked into the room, with the unmistakable look of "Oh my god, it's a geezer" spreading across the interviewer's face.

The best chance I had was with a small town library in a remote part of the state, working four full days and two half days each week, for less than half my previous salary and with just two weeks of leave annually. I was grateful for the confidence the interviewer had in me and was impressed by the library, but it was a mistake to have even applied. I suppose I'm stuck in my ways, but taking the job would have meant never seeing my college-age daughter or my very elderly father, save by splitting those two weeks, and never taking a trip just for my own sake. It also would have meant scrimping each and every day, but I knew that was to be my future under the best of possibilities.

So I finally opted for Plan B, in earnest. And landed a job driving a school bus for a suburban county on the outskirts of the metropolitan region. The pay is lousy - about half of that library position that was less than half of my "real" job. But the work is oddly satisfying and generally pleasant, and in many ways I'm far happier at the wheel of my bus than I ever was working where I had been. And I get summers off.

But more on that anon. Suffice it for now just to say that I'm a school bus driver, and consider myself fortunate for that fact.