EAP: The Magazine Archive

by Marie Davis and Margaret Hultz.

What I think you are saying when you say, “I want the world to be kinder” is that you want a kinda kinder world that holds the door for the next person, makes space for a car or two into traffic, smiles and says hello even if you are a stranger chatting on about delightful nothings. You mean a world that visits the elderly and collects them from homes, wheeling them around to citywide adventures. I get it. You want the world to understand their own history and the struggles that others have made — remembering that we all struggle through something.

What I think you’re saying is that you are looking for the kinda world that makes us less scared of others, more trusting in our neighbors, and focused on giving rather than always just getting.

I know. You want a world that delights in differences and oddities. Full of people, for example, that would barely look twice if a person chose to wear their toes on their head, or fingers in their ears. No, differences would spark a wave of compassion, thoughtfulness, acceptance, and even — doggone it — copy cats. Yes, a million-kazillion heads exuberantly flaunting wriggling toes while festive fingers cheerfully bid hello from unexpected places.

You are right for crying out loud! I completely understand, and I totally agree with you. If everyone wore their toes on their heads, for one thing we wouldn’t need so many shoes. But, that’s kinda the nugget of what you are saying —the world would be so much better with fewer shoes.

 

by Rustin Wright. The money question. There is a central part of all of this which I have not mentioned at all. A defining part. Funding. The Daviesville Transit Citizens, in their research, discover a few things which shock them. And one is that fare collection is as much as a third of the cost […]

by Rustin Wright. Getting more from less. As the system started to get built, the DTC found that once it was going all around the city doing so much research and building all of this infrastructure, perhaps there were other things that these same tasks could assist in as well. After all, a modern bus […]

by Tamra Spivey and Ronnie Pontiac. Perhaps some among my readers a few may have seen a group of old buildings of Mayan inspired architecture surrounding a small but elegant old library in the neighborhood of Los Feliz, California, not far from Griffith Park. I say few because the precious books on those shelves were […]

by David D. Horowitz.   “How’s it going today, David?” “Fine.” “Just ‘fine’? Normally, you say ‘fabulous’ or ‘marvelous.’ Is anything wrong?” “I’m fine—but not with fanatics bombing dozens of families picnicking in a park on Easter. My weekend was fine, but I’m not feeling totally fabulous.” “You’re referring to the bombings in Pakistan,” observed […]

by Marvin Bruce. Some towns are best seen through the bottom of a glass. No greater shame than when your hometown’s one of them. The stranger holding down a barstool at Bud’s and shaking his head, wondering why he’d come to Oil Heritage Days is one thing. The hometown girl herself is quite another. I’m […]

by Rustin Wright. Daviesville begins to build. As they begin to experiment they realize that some of how mass transit is built is artifacts of decades old problems which have long had solutions or presumptions of conditions which don’t always apply. For example, mass transit vehichles have massive, heavy, complicated roof designs. After all, back […]

by Rustin Wright. The Daviesville Transit Commission now knows, at least, that they don’t know. So step one is to start to learn. Every high school is asked to devote three classes to designing mass transit. One a day of a physics class. Another a day of a social studies class. A third a day […]

by Rustin Wright. Daviesville is a midsized city surrounded by small towns and farmland. It’s about a hundred years old. Cold winters. Hot summers. Pretty much middle class enough. Back in the late 1800’s it had a cute little trolley but nobody really thinks of that as anything but a curiosity. Like barber shop quartets […]