Bus Eldering 1,2,3

RantWoman's readers, considering the RantWoman slightly less interpersonal finesse than a Brillo pad demeanor, may be surprised that RantWoman manages to have friends. Perhaps it will come as no surprise that RantWoman, challenged as she is by many standards of humanness, also has friends who are challenged by some or another standard of civilization.


RantWoman's life is also filled with realities such as the city bus, a realm which might as well be another universe for many Friends. These Friends when presented with data from this universe may thus not even be equipped to detect exactly what about the data suggests need for eldering. Below are several items that finally crystalized in connection with the intersection of RantWoman's and another Friend's spiritual paths in the realm of public transit. This Friend being a particularly tough study, RantWoman tried several approaches.


RantWoman is humble about the limitations of her methods even for herself and the fragile tremulousness accompanying striving for gestures of faith in this environment. RantWoman is humble about the possibility that the RantWoman efforts at spiritual path are not going to work for Other Friend. RantWoman is meditating about the possibility that speaking too plainly of the issue is just recreating and re-energizing all the the downside points motivating RantWoman's massive spell of eldering. With all those disclaimers, RantWoman is going to plunge in anyway.


Rantwoman apologizes that the phrasing falls considerably short of a very gentle "keeping low" she has observed among many very centered Friends. RantWoman is TRYING for better Quakerese but definitely does not have it down yet. RantWoman also freely acknowledges that some of her amusement categories may be telling rather too much of the truth about people and circumstances where That of God may be difficult to detect and RantWoman strives to maintain strict spiritual discipline about holding all such in the Light. Frankly, sometimes one just has to work with the material one has.


Dear Friend of RantWoman

In an effort to deal with some of RantWoman's own psychic sludge, you and others in RantWoman's orbit have been selected to receive slight variations of the following comments and requests.


Every time RantWoman talks to you by phone or in person, you have bus grumbles. RantWoman urgently requires either less input, better narrative, or more blessings. By less input, RantWoman means only the most piquant, poignant, humorous, or earthshatteringly vexatious and with narrative to document your impressions. RantWoman knows you CAN do narrative and may or may not even demand a two-way narrative exchange.


RantWoman fears that a certain level ofaggravation may be necessary to remind one of one's spiritual path and calling. RantWoman can perfectly well understand why you might think you are overfulfilling plan in this area. RantWoman's spiritual path seems littered with such overfulfillment. But then who is RantWoman even to pretend to understand your path, let alone to evaluate your pathbased on her own experience?


Perhaps in offering less input and focussing on better narrative there might be openings to cover the various categories here. Other blessing that may be fair game:


--weirdest or most outrageous driver lapse


--best overheard cellphone call.


--top rated little known fact of politics, demography, medicine or all of the above.


--most entertaining example of spectacular familial or interpersonal dysfunction.

--most intriguing or inscrutable clash of cultures.

--In honor of the Dona S the Interpreting teacher school oflinguistic research, the best samples of new argot in any language one knows enough to catalog terms in.

--Best Rolling Anthropology Project moment, unspecified category.

Why pay the cable bill when you can get all this entertainment live for free?

If you have made it this far and not managed to think of some blessings of your own, maybe you can borrow thoughts from one of those earnest African American folks in RantWoman's 'hood who always says, when asked how they are, "blessed." Or maybe there is no hope, but perhaps you could still sit with the question of what this is teaching you.

In the Light.

RantWoman

=========
Dear Friend of RantWoman


In an effort to deal with some of RantWoman's own psychic sludge, several people in RantWoman's orbit are receiving slight variations of the following comments and requests.


Every time RantWoman talks to you, you have bus grumbles. RantWoman can faintly entertain the hypothesis that you are some kind of intergalactic nexus of bad bus karma or a malevolent global conspiracy against you specifically. RantWoman can entertain that hypothesis for maybe a nanosecond or two, but the Occam's razor thought would beg for a simpler explanation, say a vast wave of generalized vexation calling you to some as yet unspecified service: drivers not doing their jobs, shrubbery that needs to be trimmed, bad lines of sight for drivers at certain shelters....


In this universe, rather than a personal nexus of bad bus karma, perhaps the operative concept is calling to specific service. Metro like all bureaucracies is NOT going to figure these problems out telepathically out of thin air and it REALLY is RantWoman's experience that sometimes honest complaints get results, results that not only improve life for the complainer but SOMETIMES accidentally, willy nilly, unintentionally wind up benefitting other people too. RantWoman has previously encouraged you to report at least the highest highpoints of your disasters.


Perhaps you will draw encouragement from a heartwarming tale of RantWoman's big mouth working to positive effect:


http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/08/heartwarming-tale-of-successful.html



Please consider whether you also are being called to public service in the form of sharing your observations with Metro.

In the Light

RantWoman


==========

Dear Friend of RantWoman


Do YOU want to drive the bus?RantWoman is guessing that driving a bus is not really consonant with (...) , but if by chance you do want to drive the bus, RantWoman expects Metro is hiring drivers, part-time, two-year probationary, bottom of the route pick priority, (intemperate ranting deleted). Oops sorry. not helpful digression, but you get the idea.


See, aside from the fact that no one would letRantWoman drive the bus, RantWoman has NO desire to drive the bus. First there are the physical demands. Then there all the delightful but clueless, pickled, addled, sour, hostile attitudinal bus-riding masses, excepting of course thee and me, both of whom are perfect delights to deal with at all times (Not!)

RantWoman is extremely, extremely grateful that buses get driven and she can get around. Some of the bus drivers are kind wonderful helpful souls plugged into the zeitgeist and able always to evoke a sense of community. Some of the drivers are works in progress, overwhelmed, stressed out,struggling in the face of humanity. Some of them are real jerks. RantWoman HAS to hold all of them in the Light. It's not really that RantWoman is wonder Quaker. It's more like RantWoman is not a Quaker because of being any good at this peace and love stuff, RantWoman is a Quaker because she needs all the help she can get and holding things in the Light seems to help. Have you considered trying it?


OR you could

--Filter the vast Metro conspiracy in comparison with your wackiest public transit experiences beyond our borders.


OR

--Try reading the public transit items in Peggy Parsons' So there Iwas in Africa book.


OR

--Meet (another Bus Grumbler in Rantwoman's life). Pick a route where the smaller browner people have mastered the practice of occupying three seats as a survival skill among the larger and paler they ride with. Mix in some mobility aids and shopping carts, a few mysteriously overstffed garbage bags, miscellaneous questionable animals and small children in the disabled area of the bus and hang out and have a peevish white people resentment contest all the way downtown. If you say your prayers and floss regularly MAYBE you will be permitted to get on a stop or two before a couple spots almost guaranteed to have extra vexations (including voardings by RantWoman and her many colorful neighbors). Or you could return to one of RantWoman's other items and try something from there.

In the Light.

RantWoman

========

Dear Friend of RantWoman


A couple more items:


--Thank you for invitation to Quaker accompaniment for your moments of bus karma. Honestly the RantWoman reserves of Quaker accompaniment are a little thin due for example to a couple underpublicized bouts of hanging with a family member in ICU over past few years. Also, it keeps occurring to RantWoman that your bus karma moments may somehow be intended for your particular path to spiritual perfection, that you have been gifted with capacity to cope, and that in any case maybe you just get to be grateful to be basically ambulatory and as far as RantWoman knows so far to have evaded personal experience as patient in ICU. In any case, RantWoman has to pass on personal presence, but will try to think some kind of well-humored thoughts in your direction and again ask you to consider whether you are called for the good of ourselves and others to speak as plainly and hopefully incisively as led to Metro.

--RantWoman's individual bus karma theme is the route with the most service hours, the most passenger miles, the most security incidents, the most cultural diversity. Because this route leads in so many happiness indicators, this route is likely also at the bottom of the lists of routes any driver with the seniority to avoid the route will pick during their thrice yearly bus route shakeups. Thus it tends to be staffed by the newest least experienced bus drivers in the entire organization. RantWoman's reward for holding each of them resolutely in the Light HAS to be some pool of pardons and peaceable atonement for personal screwups while learning RantWoman's way around something new.

RantWoman needs to apologize for several inappropriate elements of recent emails. Just about the minute RantWoman sent email about messages finding right messenger RantWoman received EXTREMELY topical and helpful phone call. RantWoman tries to expect better of herself on several grounds and needs to apologize on that basis.

In the Light.
RantWoman