One Million Ideas

During this morning’s rather crappy commute, I compiled a list of recommendations for MARTA to implement for better bus service in Atlanta. I’m not talking about routes or buses, but more quality of life stuff having to do with bus drivers and their behavior.

1) Create and promote hotline for riders to report bad bus drivers. “Bad” driving can include everything from actual driving (speeding, running lights, etc.) to rudeness to violating MARTA rules (phones, eating, taking lunch or pee breaks en route, having bus buddies).

2) Tell drivers that having “bus buddies” (friends or riders who stand up at front talking to drivers every day, for one or more trips) is not acceptable. It distracts the driver and intimidates riders who might need help knowing when to get off, plus it blocks people from exiting and entering the train.

3) When a bus driver is assigned to a new route, he or she should be given a map and written description of the route. Currently drivers on a new route seem to be sent out with no information and ask the -riders- where to turn, where to stop, etc.

4) Empower bus drivers to take a “No on my bus!” attitude. Instead of ignoring bad behavior — amplified music, loud talking, singing, eating, drinking, obscenities — bus drivers should be stopping bus and telling people off. Some of my favorite bus drivers have done this and guess what? It works!

5) No stopping the bus in front of the Quickie Mart to get a Big Gulp or sandwich or cigarettes or to take a long pee break. Especially no stopping and not giving riders an explanation — just stopping and disappearing. One time a driver got off, came back later with ice cream, and kept on driving while eating ice cream. What?!

6) If drivers are going to stop — say, if they are ahead of schedule and need to sit still — they should TELL riders why they are doing this. Often drivers just do it and don’t say a thing to riders. Everybody on the bus gets ticked off.

7) Drivers have digital meters telling them exactly how they are doing as far as schedule — behind, ahead, and when they are supposed to leave. Drivers should PAY ATTENTION to these things and do things like, say… leaving when they’re supposed to.

8) Bus drivers have got to stop having loud, obnoxious conversations with fellow bus drivers at stations, especially when their buses are full of passengers and are behind schedule. This also applies to bus drivers who stop buses when passing and talk across the road through open bus windows. Save it for later! Riders want buses on schedule and having your driving laughing and joking while your bus sits, late, and you know you are going to be late for work is maddening!

9) Drivers should be helpful. If a passenger is having trouble figuring out the fare box, don’t just let them fumble for 20 min. Help!

10) Do not keep buses at freezer type temps in the summer.

From about five years ago. Found this on my hard drive. I love finding stuff that is better than I remember.

The Change Goddess
by Wendy Darling 

Note: This poem was inspired by the panhandlers, street people and homeless of Downtown Atlanta, who take in an awful lot of coinage. According to those who serve this community, most of that money goes towards drugs and alcohol. I started thinking of what else it might go to. 

I imagine her sitting, cross-legged, arms crossed,
Atop her pile of spare change,
Glittering and shifting, silver and copper.

Her worshippers gather in the gloom,
A sub-basement of low beams
And ancient creaking machinery.

“What have you brought me?” she asks,
Calm and composed, voice hypnotic,
To the men who come, with cupfuls of their offerings. 

A man steps forward:
“Got ‘bout 50 dollars today,”
He says, placing his cup on the altar.

The goddess glances down and smiles,
Uncrossing her arms and reaching for the cup,
Which she pours at her feet. 

“Thank you,” she purrs, beckoning him forward.
“You know you’re almost at the minimum,”
She tells him, just like last week.

“OK,” he says, stepping back.
“I know it will be worth it, a woman like you.”
He turns away, knowing he has to make shelter curfew.

No one else is left tonight, and the goddess purrs,
This time to herself,
As she lies back on the pile of change.

She will be leaving that night, she decides.
Too many men have nearly paid their dues,
Offerings to the goddess who they hope will consort with them.

A cell phone call and soon a friend arrives
With a van and boxes enough to carry
The haul of sacred change. 

The next day the goddess saunters into Kroger,
A hand truck stacked with boxes,
And begins to feed the CoinStar machine.

As the youngest of five children I come from what is these days termed a “big family,” but sometimes — especially if I am being honest with myself — I feel like an orphan or someone who has lost most of their family to some catastrophe.

These thoughts came up this afternoon after finishing the book In the Beginning, which wraps up with the narrator’s family losing about 150 relatives to Bergen Belsen. The narrator has a brother, parents, an aunt and uncle, and a cousin in the United States and some other relatives who had moved to Israel while the getting was good, but everyone else in his family had either chosen to stay in Poland or had been trapped there. They were all slaughtered in the Holocaust. 

This was and still is a reality for masses of American Jews and Jews everywhere who survived while parts of their family, whole swathes of their family, even whole towns, were lost. How many Jews grew up without ever having met their grandparents or uncles or aunts or sometimes not even knowing where those family members went? Not having a real grave to go to? Thousands. Millions. It is a hole.

Back to myself, I did not lose family to the Holocaust. I’m not Jewish, nor am I a Jehovah’s Witness or from a family that was targeted by the Nazis. My family, at least my mother’s side, is German. And, no, I didn’t lose a chunk of my family to the First or Second World War. Remarkably, the big family on my mother’s side — my grandfather was one of sixteen children, my grandmother one of five — escaped pretty much intact. Shaken, but intact. As for my father’s family, they are rooted in England but had all settled in America by the early 19th century — some of them founding families of the early 1600s. 

So, no, there was no Holocaust or war that took my family away, leaving me an orphan. Instead, it was a set of circumstances that left me feeling like I am missing something most people have. 

The first circumstance is the fact that I had only one grandparent growing up — one I remember. My mother’s father died months before I was born. My father’s parents both passed by the time I was two years old and so I have no memories of them, although they did meet me. My one grandmother, with whom I was very close, was not around until I was five or six years old and she moved from New York to our home town. I took me until almost first grade to even know she -was- my grandmother because we called her “Oma” and no one had ever bothered to tell me that meant grandmother. We became very close and I think of her often to this day, but she died when I was nine. No more grandparents. 

The second circumstance is the fact that I have no connections to my mother’s family. My grandmother maintained contact with them over the years, mostly through letters and postcards, and also a few visits (back in the days of transatlantic passenger ships), but once she passed on, that contact was severed. I have a box of old letters but only received them recently. I don’t know my grandmother’s siblings names. I don’t know where in Bremen they lived. The same for my grandfather. Actually I know even less about his family. Even when I did genealogy work a couple of years ago and found records of the family, like my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather serving on German commercial vessels, I still don’t feel I know anything. My grandfather’s uncle immigrated to America too and I don’t know what his wife’s name is. I know my mother grew up with cousins who were also in America, but I don’t really know how many. That was all so far in the past, before I was born, that no one ever told me any of it. And it seems odd to go asking now but I would really like to.

Another circumstance adding to this orphaning is the fact that my mom was an only child and my family almost may as well have been. I have often thought that if my mother had had siblings they would have been wonderful, incredible people, just like her. But she didn’t because, I gather, her mother couldn’t have any more children and there wasn’t enough room or money anyway. As for my father, his relationship with his brother and sister, and also his parents, was quite distant, especially after he moves two states away, to Massachusetts, and then within a couple of years his parents died. He had many fights with his brother and sister, about which I still don’t know much except they result in years of not speaking to one another or bitterness or jealousy. By the time I was old enough to understand family, say in elementary school, I already knew that I didn’t know my aunt or uncle or cousins well — and when I did spend time with them occasionally, I didn’t feel comfortable around them. My older siblings spent much more time with my uncle and aunt and cousins but I never did except on occasions that always felt forced.

Speaking of my siblings, I arrive at yet another circumstance that leaves me feeling orphaned, and that’s the fact that I’m the youngest of five children. And not just youngest, but youngest by a lot. My oldest sister was 15 or 16 when I was born. My two other sisters are within three years of her. My brother is seven years older. They are my siblings and we grew up together, at least when I was young, but they began to leave the house when I was a toddler and we were never all together after that. From about the fifth grade onward, I was mostly an “only child” — an only child with no grandparents and AWOL relatives. These days we are separated by geography but we also don’t stay in very good touch — or at least they don’t stay in touch with me. My sisters, close in age, talk more to one another. We all talk to my mother. But honestly sometimes I feel like they are my aunts and uncles or cousins more than siblings. Yes, we are close, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as it would be had I been my brother’s age.

So here I am with this feeling there’s a kind of hole in my life where my family should be. I do not mean, as some would think, that I long for a “family of my own.” I am not upset about not having a husband or same-sex partner or about not having children. I have never been into that. I can live with being a genetic dead-end. But what bothers me is this yearning to be more connected to those who came before me. This includes the living but moreso it includes the dead, people who were dead before I was even born. How I wish I could have known my Opa. What I would give to talk to him. What I would give to be with my father’s mother as she made cookies. Or to be able to go to Bremen and have family there who had stayed in touch for all the years, someone who was the grandchild of one of my Opa’s many siblings. I would like to have that connection and be able to embrace it, feel a real part of the greater whole.

Writing this has been emotional for me, as I hadn’t put all of these “circumstances” together until this afternoon, thinking about the Holocaust. I have often longed for grandparents or felt like I had no relatives or found it odd how distant I am from my siblings, but coming from a family of five children, the orphan analogy, the loneliness, had never come to mind. I do not think I will forget it.

For some reason lately my thoughts have turned to all the dental work I had as a kid. The memories go beyond the actual medical stuff — retainer at six, braces in second grade, awful headgear in second and third — and mix in with a lot of other stuff, mostly good surprisingly. 

One thing all the orthodontic work required was frequent trips into Boston, where the Boston U. dental school residents worked on me. (Great arrangement, BTW.) Mom wasn’t working or was working temp at the time, so she would take me in and then afterward often we’d just stay in Boston. There was often no point in me even going to school late because my appointments could last 2-3 hours sometimes and then we’d have to get home. So instead of going to back to school I’d get to go to the Boston Computer Museum, the Museum of Science, shopping in Cambridge or some other fun thing. 

So although the appointments sometimes sucked (ow! ow! ow!) those days were in a way field trips with bonus of being with mom and being away from the more nasty aspects of school. I liked school and schoolwork, just not the way most every kid treated me. The fact dental work was preferable… :) 

Meanwhile my braces were off by the time I was 12, by which point everyone else was just getting them. And I have straight teeth even!

Tried for 1 1/2 hrs. to get tickets to one of the eight shows Kraftwerk is playing at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC this April. Each night it will be a different album — live. Alas, combo of limited space, rabid fans, and a really stupid online ticket buying system means only a few people get to go. Sad because Kristina and I had dreams of getting tickets to at least one of the shows and planning a NYC trip around it. Now I will just listen to a whole lot of Kraftwerk.

I’m not easily embarrassed, but there have been some moments:

1. Time I went out to meet someone and forgot to wear… bottoms.
   Yes, this actually happened. I had been debating between two skirts and apparently didn’t make a decision before running to catch my bus. Fortunately I was wearing a long winter coat and, again, fortunately, while standing at the bus stop, I realized I didn’t remember which skirt I was wearing and then, that I wasn’t wearing a skirt, just pantyhose. I went home and later caught the next bus.
2. Time I threw out my camera. 
   10+ years ago, I had a couple of cameras (different) and a couple of camera cases (identical). One was good, one was bad. I was cleaning up and threw out the good one. I was so embarrassed by this I went without taking pictures (at least film pics) for a year or so, until finally my friend wanted me to a bring a film camera on a trip and I had to confess. I did buy a new one during the trip, which I still have but never use because I am all digital all the time now.
3. Falling like a tree and skinning my knees rushing for cake.
   There was a baby shower at work and I was in such a rush to get some cake, once it was announced we could, that I rushed up to the table — so quickly I ran clear out of my shoes, tripped, and crashed in front of like 40 people. For cake! And I massacred my knees. 
4. Walked over a mile with my skirt tucked into the back of my (grandma) undies.
   I used to walk about two miles to work, up Techwood Drive here in Atlanta, and one day as I was going along, people started shouting out to me. “Hey, lady!” and “Excuse me!” But since I was near Union Mission, I assume it was guys either hitting on me or trying to hit me up for money. Finally one guy got my attention by yelling: “Your panties are showing!” Oh, man. I thanked the guy. This has happened more than once, but never with me going 20-30 min. in public without noticing.
5. Trying to go to Europe on an expired passport.
   My friend Caleb and I had carefully planned and 1 1/2 wk. trip to Berlin. We were all set. Except at the airport, it was pointed out that my passport had expired a week earlier. I had known it was going to expire, but I thought I had a month left. Had I actually checked it? Nope, guess not! We went through motions of seeing if we could get me a new passport and rescue a trip but we concluded quickly that we just needed to cancel. Caleb was so pissed off but I think he knew how incredibly embarrassed and upset I was, so he withheld much comment. He got his frequent flier miles back and I repaid him for things he couldn’t get refunded, like hotel reservations, etc. And I got a new passport photo taken that day — and received a new passport about nine days later.
6. Showing up at the wrong Diane’s.
   As a kid I was always being embarrassed at school, but one time I managed it out of school. One afternoon, I think in summer, I got a call from my friend Diane asking me to come over and play. Sure! Hardly anyone ever asked me to play so I had my mom drive me right over. I showed up at the door all excited, but Diana was like “Why are you here?” Her mom was the same. I said “You called me!” Diana said she hadn’t, but they let me come in anyway. (My mom had left already.) So we were playing for maybe an hour when my mom called. Diane was wondering where I was. Diane? Turns out, Diane D’Angelo had called, not Diane Aikman. I hadn’t recognized her voice and didn’t ask, just assumed. Smooth! So, embarrassed, I let Mom collect me and bring me to the other Diane’s.
7. Making a big assumption about Swedish people.
   For several years I’ve been part of a local program that connect international students, usually grad students, with Atlantans so the students can feel more at home in the U.S.  Well, a couple of years ago, I was connected with a Swedish student named Inga or something similar. She was a GSU student so we agreed to meet outside a GSU building that’s right by my house. We set the time to meet as around 5. So I go there around 5 and don’t see anyone waiting. Lots of students come and go. I keep looking for this Swedish chick. Waiting and waiting. I walk all around outside the building, in the lobby. The only person I see there is another woman, also waiting for someone, but I dismiss her. Finally, 45 min. after our meeting time, I pull out my cell phone and ask where she is. Um, it’s that other woman — who is INDIAN. Well, of Indian descent anyway. She is dark with black hair. Swedish? Never woud have guessed. I was SO embarrassed but we just skipped over that and had a nice dinner out somewhere.

So there you have it. I was going to list 10 but at the moment, only seven are coming to mind.