Today’s buscapades are about emptiness, opaqueness, decisiveness, and succinctness.
Emptiness: The bus was completely empty when I got on this morning. That’s so highly unusual that I checked my watch to make sure my power hadn’t gone out or something making it much later in the day than it actually was. “8:25,” it said. Thanks goodness.
Opaqueness: Today’s bus was one of those buses that’s totally covered with advertisement. The windows look opaque from the outside (so the ad can be read, of course), and inside you can still see out, but only a little and certainly not clearly. I was trying to see something (okay, a hot man, if you must know) out the window and couldn’t get a good look. I thought, “Obviously the people outside the bus looking at it are more important than the customers inside using it.”
kind of advertising I’m talking about.
(I presume that’s a bag of dog food up front.)
Decisiveness: At one stop a guy got on carrying a car seat with a baby in it, with a blanket completely covering the thing, so it could just as easily have been a large watermelon in it. As his wife stopped to pay her fare behind him, he put the car seat down on one of the front, center-facing seats and then obviously debated (using what criteria, I can only imagine) if that was where he wanted to sit. Then, when the wife caught up with him, he said, “Should we sit here or back there?” Good lord, man! Some decisions can be made quickly and alone.” But I project….
Succinctness: Over the two-way radio, which you pretty much can always hear on the bus, this remote conversation took place between, I’m guessing, the dispatcher and the driver of another bus:
Dispatcher: “Are you at Artie’s?”
Driver: “That’s a negative.”
Wouldn’t just “No” be quicker and convey the same meaning?
I met with Justine Hollingshead today, who is the director of the NCSU GLBT Center to share my experience-to-date with the GLBT Speaker Bureau program. I’d never met her before. We had good conversation, and we’ve both done a good deal of GLBT advocacy and activism work, and so—no surprise—we know a lot of the same people.
I had a very productive work afternoon, but still have a heap o’ stuff on my to-do list that nags at me.
Before leaving work, my manager shared my six-months (a.k.a. “interim”) appraisal of my work, which was glowing. Nice affirmation.
I ran into Joy, one of my study circle facilitators, as well as fellow bus rider, at the stop where we both wait for our respective buses—mine the city bus, hers the one to Durham. We had an interesting conversation about the “GLBT climate” at NCSU, after telling her about the session I participated in yesterday and a survey I’d taken today, which assesses said climate on college campuses across the country.
When I mentioned how open,accepting, and comfortable the area I work in was, she said, “That is so not my experience here. From what I’ve witnessed, this campus is very homophobic and hardly at all accepting.” FWIW: She’s straight.
Her comment left me ambivalent: on the one hand I wanted to go back and change some of my answers on that survey, and on the other hand I felt very lucky about the area in the university in which I work.
Thanks to Robert for letting me know about Ronelda Early’s change of address!
| Ronelda S. Early, 94, died April 2, 2009. She was born on September 16, 1914 to William “Bud” Smith and Pauline S. Smith at the home in what is now Umstead Park.
Mrs. Early was preceded in death by her husband of 29 years, A.D. Lynn; son, Daniel Lynn; sisters, Evelyn Crocker and Una Marett; brothers, Ruel, Owen and Carlyle Smith; and her husband of 28 years, David Lee Early. She will be greatly missed by her sister, Pansy Carroll; daughter, Faye Childers and husband, Joe; grandchildren, Nelda Johnson and husband, Marshall, Kim Bernard and husband, Don, Tasha Wright and husband, Charles and Todd Lynn; great-grandchildren, Lindsay Johnson, Cameron Johnson, Andrew Bernard and wife, Donna, Joey Bernard, Tera Whitley and husband, Bobby, Daniel Krammes and Jacob Wright. She was a loving, caring, good Christian person who will be truly missed. Her new address is HEAVEN. A funeral service will be held 11 a.m. Saturday, April 4, 2009 at Ephesus Baptist Church. Burial will follow at Montlawn Memorial Park. The family will receive friends at the church one hour prior to the service. The family would like to thank the staff at Phoenix Assisted Living. |
I went to Flex tonight, where it was the 2nd Birthday of its version of 120 Minutes being put on there the first Friday of every month. I would never have guessed that that’s been going on for two years. Time flies when you’re having birthdays.