Sunday, January 29, 2012
From Frederick, Maryland: "Driving Miss Mary," by Nancy Luse for the Frederick News Post
This story appeared in a blog by Mary Luse called Another One Rides The Bus. The blog was published on the website for the Frederick News Post. It used to be among the featured bus blogs featured on the sidebar for Bus Stories under the heading "Elsewhere." Sadly, that blog no longer exists. Below is a copy of Ms. Luse's story, "Driving Miss Mary."
Miss Mary and her walker didn’t make it across TJ Drive in time to catch the #80 and so she stood under a roof on the porch of a medical building waiting for the #60, her default choice.
I had just finished a doctor’s appointment and one last procedure had pushed me past my window of opportunity to catch the peak bus and so I stood at the stop, huddled against a brisk, cold wind, also waiting for the #60.
Miss Mary mauevered herself and the walker down to where I was standing and she fussed about the weather and then excused herself when she uttered the word, “hell.” It was clear this was a take-charge woman when she motioned to a driver pulling out of the parking lot, asking where he was going and could he give her a lift. He just stared at her.
“Maybe he doesn’t speak English,” she surmised.
The wind was picking up and the darkening clouds didn’t present a pretty picture. It felt like snow.
A woman in a car rolled down her window. “Do you all need a ride somewhere?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m waiting for the bus.”
“I do. Taney apartments, the high rise for assisted living,” Miss Mary said, hustling her walker into the backseat then sitting up front like a queen.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
From Austin, Texas: "Couple create cozy home aboard bus," By Nancy Flores for the Austin American-Statesman
Like most newlyweds, Mike and Natalie Young are navigating their new life together as a couple — figuring out details like how to agree on decorating styles and making sure piles of clothes don't end up everywhere. But unlike most newlyweds, they are learning how to do all this living in a roughly 300-square-foot school bus. (Read more here.)
Sunday, January 15, 2012
From Birmingham, Alabama: "Another Role for Buses in Civil Rights History," by Kim Severson for The New York Times
Get people talking about civil rights-era buses and it’s all Rosa Parks all the time.
Museums are dedicated to her role in the boycott in the mid-1950s that forced Montgomery to stop banishing African-Americans to the back of city buses. Schools and stamps bear her name. There is a Rosa Parks cookie jar and a Rosa Parks app.
But no one talks much about Worcy Crawford, who died in July at age 90, leaving a graveyard of decaying buses behind his house on the outskirts of Birmingham.
(Read more here.)
Sunday, January 8, 2012
From NYC: "Inside the City's Ghost Subway System," by Jim O'Grady for the WNYC News Blog
The New York City subway system has 842 miles of track, making it the largest in North America. And there's even more to it than riders see: dozens of tunnels and platforms that were either abandoned or were built but never used. They form a kind of ghost system that reveals how the city's transit ambitions have been both realized and thwarted. (Read more here.)
Sunday, January 1, 2012
From London: "Bendy buses were a godsend to us strugglers," by Peter Preston for The Guardian (3rd of 4)
The end of the bendy bus in London is a blow to the lame, arthritic downstairs lot. Does Boris Johnson think about us? (Read more here.)
From London: "A new bus for London" (Transport for London) (2nd of 4)
The New Bus for London is inspired by the much-loved Routemaster and will use the latest green technology when it launches in 2012. (Read more here.)
From London: "London's bendy bus bids farewell ahead of 2012's hybrid Routemaster," by Mark Brown for Wired (1st of 4)
London's last bendy bus will awkwardly snake through the capital's traffic today, on 9 December, as Transport for London is to discontinue the accordion-bellied vehicle at midnight. (Read more here.)
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