Traveling Light: On the Road with America's Poor

Only read like a chapter of it because that's all my professor assigned from it, but that chapter was actually pretty interesting. Might get around to finishing it sometime, pretty good book from what I saw.

Came in expected condition

I haven't laid eyes on this book, but I very much enjoyed the author's talk at the Harvard Co-op on C-Span Book TV.Thought I'd speak from my own and my son's experiences on long bus trips. When I attended Smith College (1962-66), I didn't want my parents to feel that my expenses were a burden, and I rather stubbornly insisted on bus and train transportation from St. Louis, Missouri, whenever possible. I'm sure I was influenced by books like Carson McCullers' Ballad of the Sad Cafe and movies like... what else?... Bus Stop, with Marilyn Monroe, based on William Inge's Broadway comedy.Not surprisingly, back in the 1960s I had many interesting conversations with a wide variety of people on the 24-hour bus trip from St. Louis to New York City, and on the 6-hour trip to Northampton. It was a good balance to going to college at an Eastern women's college.I was already well aware of the value of seeing how the other half lives. After all, I had been deeply influenced in high school by James Agee's chronicle of his stay with white sharecroppers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with Walker Evans' unforgettable photos.The St. Louis-to-New York bus trips had their own aesthetic. It was unforgettable to see, at 4 a.m., Pittsburgh's then glowing steel founderies reflected in the Allegheny, Monongehela, and Ohio rivers, punctuated by the great bridges designed and built by U.S. Steel.Much, much later, in the late 1990s, our son was attending community college instead of putting in two miserable and completely unproductive junior and senior years of high school. (Enrollment in home schooling, though no cure-all, is the magic key to loosening the legal hold of organized school systems on young people sinking like stones in high school.)To expand out son's horizons, we urged him to take an Outward Bound backpacking course in Montana. And we had him take the bus, from southern Michigan through Chicago to Minneapolis and west to Montana. His wallet was stolen in the Minneapolis bus terminal.... not the end of the world, thanks to a Visa advance. He was the only Outward Bound participant not to arrive by air.Back at community college in fall, his English teacher asked students to write about summer experiences that influenced them. Our son described not Outward Bound itself, but his bus trip and the people met. For them, he wrote, life was Outward Bound . . . full of everyday challenges in survival.Was I proud and impressed! At a relatively young age, that boy got it....he really understood and appreciated what some other people go through in their difficult lives. He had passed the test of empathy and understanding.I've had a few occasions to take a bus recently on Indian Trails. It connects Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan towns to Lansing, Flint and "down below." The bus was clean and comfortable... almost on a par with those I've taken in Europe. Just as Kath Weston has written, there's nothing like a bus trip to connect you with a broad cross-section of humanity. One bus trip included a poignant stop near a prison to pick up an ex-convict re-entering society.Another distinguished bus traveler and natural anthropologist (though not by training) was Kentucky author Janice Holt Giles. She was a most perceptive chronicler of rural Kentucky circa 1940, starting with her nonfiction classic memoir "Forty Acres and No Mule." College-educated, she met her rural Kentucky husband, then a soldier, on a long bus trip. She lived among his kin on a remote ridge for the rest of her life. Several distinguished historical novels grew out of the interest first stimulated on that long bus ride.

No, I haven't read the book either. But I'm delighted it has been written. I regularly ride the Greyhound between Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Brownsville, Texas, on my way to and from my second home in Xela, Guatemala (thus I also ride the buses in Mexico and Guatemala). Most educated Americans, including nearly all my friends and family, are clueless as to the 5% of Americans who are at the bottom of the social/economic/health/IQ bell curve. Riding the bus is a crash course in who they are. I've often thought Washington politicians should be required to make one 24 hour Greyhound trip annually. Then again, Washington politicians don't seem very trainable. Ride the bus! Read the book!

While reviewing information on my writing name online, someone posted a picture of the greyhound bus that ran next to your online story on Real Change. I just found out about your book as I followed to picture....I have been "traveling Light" for 3 years...mostly on the train, some airports. My journey has mostly been about "looking for my homeland - and my people, and listening to the worlds change around me via words from others." It's been delightful and hard." While I wasn't sure why someone would post this picture, I am delighted to find that it lead to your book. It has given me more inspiration to write, write, write..... and read. Blessings to you.