The New Yorker

Okay, I realize that I fell of the face of the planet, and hopefully that will be the end of that, and I will become a much more dedicated blogger, as I learn to adjust my time more successfully here in ABQ.

I have quite a few stories saved up, but I'm thinking maybe I'll go with shorter entries, daily.

Today, I want to talk about a man that I see when I take the later of the morning buses to work (sometimes I want to sleep in, sometimes I hit too many red lights, and sometimes I am just fat and bike slow, so I miss the earlier one).

This man looks to be in his late 60s or early 70s. He often wears those awesome super faded jeans, but usually has a pretty nice, clean shirt on, with a fleece or something over it. His hair is decidedly gray, and he has a rather thick mustache. He always has his briefcase/messenger bag with him. His bag is old, dirty and a little torn. When I look at him, I always expect that he will pull out some beaten up old magazine, a faded murder mystery novel, or maybe even a tattered newspaper. I always expect the reading material he is about to pull out to be dirty and tattered.

Instead, he pulls out a used, gray three-ring binder. Inside of the front pocket of this binder are carefully placed and protected articles printed off from the internet. There is usually at least one from The New Yorker everyday, and others that look to be scholarly in nature. His tends to favor political pieces. When I see him reading these articles everyday on the bus I image that he is a learned college professor, or perhaps a retired high school history teacher, who prefers to save the world one car trip at a time.

I don't know anything about this man. He could be nice, intelligent and well rounded, or he could be mean and sharp and hold the world and its youth in judgment. But I like to think of him as a sweet older man, and feel a sort of strange-stranger connection to him. We will probably never speak, and I'm sure he doesn't notice me like I notice him, but in the sea of who rides the bus, its nice to see someone cares about world news.

He is my ally, whether he knows it or not.