Do the Illiterate Get Less Depressed?

This was a poster at the adult spelling bee we went to the other day. I have scant ability to spell out loud so while I enjoy words and even spelling them, spelling bees even with other people spelling words by pronouncing each letter make me nervous. Although the team of pirates who pronounced each R like a pirate relieved the tension somewhat.

Perhaps this entry should be in the Journal of Unintended Consequences because it gave me the kind of pause where I wondered how effective the startling statistic was when buses (in our city anyway) are so notoriously hard to navigate. First I just shot a picture of it because it had numbers. The City Daily Photo theme for May is numbers. I've decided to use a different shot for that. When I carefully read what the poster said, though, it did set me thinking. How well do you have to read to read a bus schedule? Is it harder in Berlin? In Russia? In Dallas? One of the smartest people I know rides the bus in Dallas. Or used to do. I rode the bus exactly twice in Austin (not counting a couple of Armadillo rides) and I used a WEB page to get the schedule. I had to be able to get on the Internet, of course. And read the menu for "Riding Capital Metro" and "Trip Planner" and "Starting Point or Origin" etc. It's not literature but yeah it's reading. Since there is a big dust-up here about parking problems for the Long Center/Auditorium Shores/Palmer Events Center I decided to have it calculate a bus trip from my house to the Long Center. All the trips they suggested left one north of the river and the shortest amount of walking, adding up from the house to the stop and the termination to the Long Center was .9 mile. (In fairness, they would let me minimize walking, but one shudders to think how they would do that and how many transfers would be required.)

So, yeah I guess you need to read pretty well to master a bus schedule. In Austin anyway. But I digress.

It would be depressing to not be able to read, but do the literate, fully able to absorb bad news about credit crises, death and destruction, war and such and drowning in the gibberish that most reading actually is (this sentence included), become more depressed? Particularly when encountering run-on sentences?

I've been a little depressed. So I've been writing in my journal and trying to exorcise the demons. I guess the illiterate can't do that either. Oh, and I calculated the journey to the Long Center by bus from our future home. If you are foolish enough to ask to be taken from just north of the river they will calculate the trip. I guess you'd have to transfer to use these from our current house.

I don't really have much to say today. I'm depressed. About real estate, moving, downsizing, the inevitable decline. (Watched "History Boys." Posner says "Nothing saves anyone's life sir. It just postpones their death." That says it, dun it?) [Ed: You like typing that colloquial dun, trying in vain to imitate some British accent or the other, because the spell checker is happy to accept it as a word. LB: So?]

Perhaps I'm not exercising enough to enhance my mood. (Posner is talking to the gym teacher in that scene. The gym teacher thinks exericse and Jesus Christ will save your life.)

[Ed. We are labeling this and wanted to know whether to include 'moving and downsizing.' LB: Is there anything else?]

Things to Do in Retirement

I retired in late September 2002, and, at the usual moment for such things (the new year), I made a list of resolutions (show here with comments made April of 2003). There were things on it both ridiculous and sublime. Well, the former anyway.

It is extremely sad that, well over four years later, so little is really accomplished from that list. As I like to say, I am always intending to write but instead I only blog. I gave away the video camera. So much for learning how to make a movie. I still use the point and shoot camera on the most basic setting. Although I have added lots of shots to the shop windows and reflections collection. I gave up learning to play Bridge. I gave away the large collection of Bridge books even. As the time approaches when downsizing is really, really needed (since we are moving to a condo) things are still a mess in most closets and storage.

But...I rode the bus! Now why I decided that I should ride the bus here in Austin (not the most public transportation friendly place in the world or even in the U.S.) I don't know. But I've ridden the bus twice in the last couple of weeks. Both times I wanted to go somewhere downtown or close to it. And I was meeting someone who was coming from the south but who lives close and could take me home so I didn't have to actually ride a bus back. Once I rode Route 19 which seems to be the domestic workers' express (since it goes by a prominent retirement home and lots of fancy houses). Once I rode route 3 which seemed to be a slacker express. There were rude, loud young people on board making sexually explicit comments and self-indulgent cell phone calls. Also, excessively using 'like' in their conversations. The domestics and yard men were better companions, speaking quietly among themselves in Spanish and English, tired from a hard day's work. This is a generalization, of course.

One problem with riding the bus from my current home is that you have to walk several blocks to get to a stop. Around a half mile, a little less. In the heat and with a wait at the stop, you can wilt a bit before the air-conditioned bus arrives. At 50 cents a ride it's a bargain, though, with gas costing six times that a gallon.

On one trip I went downtown. I had to walk a few blocks to my destination. But it was fine. And, of course, after a little walking around and dinner with friends, I had a ride home.

On another trip, I went to S. Lamar to the strip mall where the Alamo Draft House South is located (a movie theater that serves beer and wine and food). The photo shown today is the window of one of the junk shops there. Fortunately this bus goes down S. Lamar so no transfer was necessary.

I feel for people who have to ride these buses wherever they go, waiting for the late bus in the heat, having to transfer downtown to get where they want to go. And it was amazing how incredulous my friends were that I rode it. Even someone who owns a hybrid and worries a lot more than I do about the earth seemed shocked that I rode the bus to meet them.

Well, it took me over four years. But I finally did something I said I was going to do. Never say never! [Yes, I know that no one but me would even consider riding the bus an accomplishment. I often take public transportation when traveling. I once avoided taking a cab even one time in Berlin, even making the trips to and from the airport with luggage on public transportation. But here in Austin it seems an accomplishment. And if you had to be really dressed up and it was this hot...it would be a disaster!]