My America 2005

I know I haven't posted very much to this blog, and I certainly apologize for that. Not a whole lost has happened to me that I couldn't put in the main blog, so I've included it all there. Now that I'm in Missouri, though, and back at Mizzou, there are a couple of things to say that wouldn't probably be inappropriate on the C-P site.

Some may recall the conversation I had with D way back last month, at that party, about journalism and its growing limitations. Or at least that's what I remember about it right now. Anyway, I was thinking about that conversation again while waiting in line at Shakespeare's Pizza, which is located just across the street from MU's beloved Journalism School. I guess somebody long ago figured that Shakespeare's would attract a bunch of writers, and maybe they were right, since the place doesn't have terrific pizza, yet it's the most popular eatery in town. It was packed yesterday with all kinds of people, mostly the families of kids on campus for orientation. To some extent, I think that Shakespeare's is the most popular restaurant in town only because it's the most popular restaurant in town. Like it's tradition to eat that mediocre pizza and tell everybody what a great time you had.

Anyway, I'm flying way off my point. Wading back: There may have been a time in history when Shakespeare would have been a journalist -- the early 20th Century, maybe, or even the late 1960's -- not not today. Today he would just be giving up on films to storyboard video games, twisting drama and bloodshed out of the fables of antiquity. Even if he dabbled in journalism, he'd stay away from newspapers. Their limits of space, truth and focus group would not allow his surprise endings. If anything newsworthy appeared after the fifth graf, editors would move it up.

Instead of eating the the restaurant, which probably would have been asking too much, I went out to sit on the quad and watch the folks walk by. A stream of high school-age kids entered Gannett Hall in front of me -- some sort of Journalism camp, I think. One girl was wearing a t-shirt that said I (Heart) Journalism. I almost laughed out loud. I don't know if the shirt's designer was trying for irony, but he hit it nonetheless. Out of all those kids going to the J-School, including the ones touring it as part of orientation, I wonder how many will actually reach its halls in junior year? How many will graduate, and how many will land a job? How many will (Heart) journalism after five more years? I love my job, but journalism has been a consistent disappointment. It's kind of like an abusive relationship, and the healthy thing would be to leave. But what else am I qualified to do?

I've never experienced anything like the mood swings of this trip.

I started out today feeling like crap because I was trapped in Tuscon, but once I finally got on the bus north, things started looking up. I spent a minimal amount of time in Phoenix, got a window seat on the bus to Flagstaff and a nice story sat down right next to me and started talking. When I got to Flag, there was a Dairy Queen in the bus station parking lot, a bus heading west fairly soon (midnight) and an open-til-11 Barnes and Noble right next door.

A few minutes ago, I was fairly flying. Now that feeling has gone to shit.

The digital camera nightmare continues. I didn't drop it, I didn't even handle it roughly. In fact, it takes great pictures and I can see them on the little screen and everything. But I can't get my computer to recognize that the camera is there, so I can't download the images. I've switched the cables, I blew on the connections, I turned every single knob and pushed every button I could push, to no avail. The whole setup worked great as recently as this morning in the Tuscon motel, and now I have no clue. On top of that, the memory card is so small that it's full, so if this takes a long time to figure out, I have to start deleting photos I'd like to keep in order to take more.

I don't know what to hope for, even. If its the camera and I have to get another one -- my third of the trip -- I'm going to freak. If it's my laptop, that's probably even worse. I had assumed that my camera problems were solved, and that I'd had my bad photo luck already, but I guess not. I don't even know how to go about figuring out what the problem is. I don't want to buy another camera and find out it's the computer's fault.

I'm sure somebody will read this and think I'm being overly dramatic, but as they say in those commercials, "Things are different out here." When you're in a string of unfamiliar places, operating at odd hours without a car or the freedom to wait a couple of days, every imperfection shows up. For instance, I'm on my fourth or fifth roll of film for the Minolta camera now, and none of it's processed because I can't find a place that does it on-site. Everybody that offers the services needs at least two days. If I were at home, I'd take it to the Cherry Hill Mall and have the images on CD in an hour.

So in the space of just 12 hours, I've been extremely frustrated, mildly depressed, upbeat, enthralled and now panicky. Anywhere else, I'd consider myself a fairly even-tempered human being. Things are definitely different out here.

I apologize for not having posted much to the unofficial site, and would again direct you to the official My America blog at:
www.courierpostonline.com/blogs/mccann_america.html
This town, in the southern mountains of New Mexico, is gorgeous. I would truly live here for at least part of the year, if given the chance. The only blemish on my stay, which has lasted a day and a half now, was a bit of nonsense I had to go through yesterday (Thursday). One of the editors wanted a photo of me either on the bus or getting on the bus, or near the bus, or standing on top of the bus, or under the bus (you get the picture) for a house ad. My mugshot, which runs with the stories and the official blog, was not good enough. I'm only venting, so there's no need to name the editor, other than to say it wasn't the sports editor. Anyway, I tried a couple of times Wednesday and Thursday to get this thing done, but the photo came out hopelessly blurry both times. I had hoped that this editor would understand that things don't always go perfectly, and if the photo for the house ad was the only fuck up, that's a good day out here. But I would be disappointed. The word came from New Jersey that the need for this piece-of-shit photo was imperative.

I need to set the scene a little bit:
When I got this phone call, I had just spent an hour lost in a strange town, dragging my bag up and down hills in an ensemble meant for an overly air-conditioned bus and not a sun-baked roadside. I had just checked into the hotel, and was busy staring at the ceiling, trying to decide whether to go straight to sleep at 10 a.m. or go out and see what I could see. I had not slept for more than a 30-minute stretch in over 48 hours. I had not eaten food in more than 24 hours. If someone could have explained to me the importance of this house ad, I might have given a rat's ass, but the reason I was given -- Editor X really wants it -- wasn't making a dent.

Anyway, I got up to do my duty. Unfortunately, the suffering wasn't over. You see, my journey from the bus station to the hotel did nothing for my bearings, and while I thought I knew exactly how to get back to the station, I actually had no clue. So ended up lost in the woods part of the way up a mountain, turning what should have been a one-mile, 20-minute walk into a three-mile, hour-long nightmare. Thanks to a true angel, bus station co-owner Vicki Lee, I was able to get the photo and send it back to South Jersey at about 6 p.m. EST.

Was the photo good enough? Did I make it in time? Will I have to go through this again?

Who knows. I haven't heard word one since sending it.

I don't really want this blog to be the place where I come to bitch with impunity, but I have just one more thing. Many of you know that a Philly-area cable network is doing a cross-promotional thing with the C-P, and I go on their morning show for a five-minute segment twice a week. The only 'Suggestion" I got from them after the first segment is that I take more photos to go along with the story so they can have something to slap up on the screen. Whatever. The next segment is Monday, so it will cover the Friday story and the Sunday story. The Friday story, about ex-con Juan Carmen starting life after prison, did not have a single photo. The dude wouldn't let me take one, and I wasn't going to argue with him. The next story I found was on the bus Wednesday. Her name is Johna and she's from Wichita Falls in North Texas. She grew up in foster homes, but eventually landed in a very loving family. She's now married to an Air Force major, with whom she has four kids, one of which just gave birth to her first grandchild six weeks premature. Until Sunday, the baby's life was in danger in a hospital in Dallas. Her youngest daughter is in a hospital with suicidal depression. Her sister is sick in Salt Lake City, and her mother in law is near death in Wichita Falls, and her favorite nephew said the only person he really wants at his wedding in Utah this weekend is her. This woman is a battle-tested warrior of life who is nearing a very deep breaking point. When I met her, she was on her way to Salt Lake, and I don't expect her to break. It would be tough to get all of her story into 20 inches or less, but I was resolved to try. Unfortunately, since I met her on the bus, I only got her head shot. To get much more, I'd have had to follow her to Utah, something I was not prepared to do.

So you see the dilemma. Two stories to talk about during Monday morning's cable segment, with one photo between them. Not what the suggestion had in mind. So I had to put the Johna story on the back burner and find something else, something shootable, which I did without too much trouble. I still want to do the Johna story, but Wednesday seems out since that story will be the only topic of the next cable segment. Then we're talking Friday, and by that time, we're horrible out of order, and I can only assume that other things will come up. If I can get it to run online only, maybe that's the way to go, but I don't want to forget about it.

This whole situation is but a symptom of this disease: the stories I find on the bus are not photo-friendly. And given the fact that the bus-found stories are one of the main reasons for the project in the first place, it seems kind of whacked to treat them like unwanted stepchildren in this way, effectively limiting them to one of three stories a week (since I need at least one art-heavy story to carry each of two weekly cable segments.) I honestly don't know what to do. I want the cable coverage, it's a great thing for everybody, but the idea of a TV show's priorities deciding the stories I write makes me sick to my stomach. I need to think about this more, then talk to PA about it Monday. Any "suggestions" would be welcome.

I'm actually on the verge of leaving this Southern berg after about 32 hours of relative leisure. I gave myself a "day off" yesterday, but still went to see what trouble I could stir up in town, relating most of it on the official blog.

Check that out here:

www.courierpostonline.com/blogs/mccann_america.html

I'm headed west again, as soon as I can check out of this Days Inn, get my Waffle House breakfast and walk the three miles to the train station. Hopefully I'll be in Louisiana soon.

Last night was bizarre.

I left Savannah in the late afternoon on a bus for Jacksonville, made interesting by the incessant prattling of the lady behind me. She kept talking about how she needed to get to her mother's house in Brunswick, Ga., in time to see Stargate, which apparently started at 6:30. Somewhere in there, she handed me a pamphlet on how to be a Jehovah's Witness. I knew they didn't celebrate birthdays or holidays, but did you know they can't eat meat unless "it's been properly bled"? I wonder what that means, exactly.

So I get off the bus in Jacksonville, and get on one for Tallahassee. There were a couple of nuggets from that trip, including an absolutely spot-on euphemism for taking Greyhound, so simple it's brilliant. A man was in Jacksonville in lin in front of me, about to start a two-day trek to Vegas. I guess his wife was going to meet him there by plane, and he said, "That's always the way. She gets to take a four-hour flight and I get stuck ridin' The Dog." Maybe it's my addled brain, but I think when you get past the obvious allusion, and it's even funnier. Imagine trying to ride a dog anywhere, even a big one. It would be slow, uncomfortable and dirty. Anyway the other gem from that leg of the trip was my initiation into the screaming baby syndrome common among complaints about The Dog. What's more, the kid was in the seat directly behind me, in his mother's arms, so his wailing little mouth was about 12 inches from my inner ear for the entire 10-minute infant anthem. When it was over, I felt better about myself for not having complained.

But those were just the warmup acts for the Tallahassee-to-Mobile leg.

So we all squeeze onto this bus, and a couple people don't make it, relegated to the next one two hours late,r at 2:15 a.m. Everyone is tired, the coach is about 90 degrees, and the driver is agonizingly conscientious, counting up everything three times over. Then he realized there's one person missing, a "chick" from way in the back. Normally, I wouldn't relate a demeaning term, but this girl did a terrific job of demeaning herself. The held up the bus for 10 minutes while, as the driver said, "she paraded around the platform" in very few clothes. When she finally did get on the bus, she complained loudly about the heat, hiked her shirt up nearly to R-rated level and parades up to the front of the bus, ostensibly to address to problem with her best pal, the meticulous driver. Well, the driver was there, ready to answer questions or concerns, but this girl just wanted to walk. She just turned around at the front of the bus and strutted her way back to the back without saying a word about the heat.

A few minutes later, we're on the road in the dark, and she starts hitting on this dude in the second-to-last row. He's digging it, we're all listening, and their talk is priceless. Get this: he's two weeks off a 10-year hitch in the Florida state correctional system, and her boyfriend just went in for a life term. Well, after about 15 minutes they shuffle seats to be next to each other. 20 minutes after that, the talk isn't so loud anymore, and a little while later, some dude goes back to the bathroom and we all hear a burst of nervous laughter. Somebody a few rows up started singing Lollipop just barely audibly.

Anyway, the fun didn't stop for me when I arrived at Mobile, but you'll have to read about that on the official blog at:

www.courierpostonline.com/blogs/mccann_america.html

Next up is Mississippi. Yee haw.

Standing in line in Fayetteville, I met a woman named Tracey Thompson. She was on her way home, to Savannah, from Philly, and until three years ago, she'd live in Glassboro, N.J., the heart of the C-P coverage area. We had a nice talk, which I'll relate at another time either in print or in a post, but that and a lovely ride to Georgia were the last things to go right for a while.

Savannah is one of America's beautiful cities, without a doubt, but I think it would be even more beautiful with a nice big photo shop on every corner. I looked all over the historic district for a photo processing place, but to no avail. Then I took a $25 taxi ride out to Target at the Savannah mall, and they only had two-day processing. What's more, they did not have the digital camera I needed, the Canon Powershot A95, so I ended up buying a Canon Powershot A520, while doesn't read the type of memory card I have. I should be alright for the rest of the trip, but the Richmond photos are trapped in a memory card I can't read.

I had an interesting conversation with the cab driver which I'll elaborate on in the official blog. Just click on the link.

But Savannah is beautiful, with its Spanish moss everywhere and its old architecture and its riverfront historic district. They should probably call it the histouric district because it's positively choked with horse-drawn carriage-riding tourists, the vast majority of who are complaining about the heat. Hello Georgia in June. Anyway, the whole idea of a tourist district runs counter to my goal for this trip, which is to meet real people in the places they live, but in a place like Savannah, the pull of the tourist destination is so strong that it overwhelms everything else. If I ask Tracey Thompson, or the Johnnie Mae Harrison, the taxi driver, where I should go to meet real folks, they tell me about the riverfront without even thinking about it. It may be the cultural center of the entire state of Georgia, but in my short stay, I haven't been able to separate the historic theme-park Savannah from the real one.

Oh well, I haven't got much time to check out. Sorry this post was so scattered. Check out the main blog for something I hope turns out more focused.

So now I know what purgatory's like.

I had a great time at a little bar called The Dog House in the Shockoe Bottom section of Richmond last night many thanks to the bartender, April, as well as to Mark the retired fireman, Dale from Southwest Philly and my man Grasshopper, who got me a cab at the end of the night. But that's when stuff started to go wrong. Long story short, I almost lost my Ameripass, my digital camera got pretty much smashed, and the first real tactical error of my navigation of Greyhound's system conspired to leave me all but beaten.

The plan was to head to Raleigh, but why go to Raleigh when Savannah sounds so much nicer? That's about as much thought my addled brain put into the decision that resulted in me switching lines at the Richmond terminal. I barely made it onto the packed bus, which was scheduled to empty and reboard after an hour-long layover in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at 5 a.m. Those going onto Savannah had to switch buses at 5, but the bus we were supposed to switch onto was already almost full. With only an Ameripass and not an actual ticket, I was stranded until the next Savannah-bound departure, scheduled for 8:15.

So what was a chaotic mess of unwashed humanity gradually faded into a few lost, soiled souls.

There was the kid slumped over the little TV chairs who claimed he'd been there since 1 p.m. the previous day. There were the drug dealers who tried to wander onto a bus bound to New York even though they didn't have tickets, and there was the drug dealee -- think Justin Timberlake if he didn't bathe, change his clothes or sleep for three weeks. A very self-assured young terminal employee kept herding them politely but firmly out the door, until about the fourth or fifth time they had wandered back in. Then he called the police. The squad car pulled up, the cops walked inside the terminal to get a cup of coffee and stood outside drinking in the light of dawn, and that was enough. The overtly drug-affected trio was gone.

So I figured this might be what purgatory is like. You have the helpless damned, waiting for the cops. You have the hopeful-to-be-saved waiting for the bus. And then you have the Greyhound angels, with the entire spectrum of dispositions, herding us around, telling us which line to stand in, when the bus was leaving, when the bus is full, and occasionally mopping the floor.

One good thing about Fayetteville's bus station -- and I had to think hard -- was that they eased up on the price gouging. In Washington, D.C., I bought a bottle of Nesquick chocolate milk for nearly three dollars. Three DOLLARS! Same in Richmond, although the five-dollar bacon cheeseburger was worth every penny (who would have guessed?) What's more, I was elated to find Mz. Pac-Man machines to be pretty much standard in the terminals, until I saw the price in D.C. and Richmond: a dollar a play. Practically everywhere else in the world, it's a quarter, owing to the hypothesis that the inflation of American currency has maintained about the same rate as that of the coolness of video arcade games. So what's worth a quarter in 1981 can still be worth a quarter in 2005. Well, Fayetteville Mz. Pac-Man costs 50 cents, I'll have you know, and I nearly got the high score.

Anyway, by the time the bus to Savannah arrived, only half full, I was so glad to be on it that I temporarily forgot about the other stuff that was going wrong. I've got to split now, or I'll miss the whole Georgia night, but I promise to fill in the blanks in the next post, hopefully early tomorrow morning.

The home of VCU, and of the Richmond Braves, as well as -- formerly -- the Confederacy. I've just arrived here after a long bus ride and a short cab ride, and the most meaningful conversation I've had so far was with the taxi driver. He emigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria four years ago, tried Los Angeles and Boston but landed in Richmond.

I was going to go on to Raleigh, but the bus I was on was pretty dead as far as character, so decided to stick a few hours and try my luck with the overnight crowd. I'm sure most of the difficulty is my own fault, as I'm still adjusting to my new surroundings. The bus is exceedingly cold, as in blasted with air conditioning, and surprisingly quiet -- not much diesel-engine roar to be heard. I was on a Carolina Trailways bus that I caught at the Mount Laurel terminal. I might have saved an hour or so by picking up in Philly, but I figured the symbolic value of beginning in South Jersey was worth the extra hassle.

The bus was crowded enough that several folks had seatmates. I got a little unlucky, I think. It wasn't that somebody sat down next to me -- I was hoping for that -- but that the person just wanted to sleep. I was able to jealously overhear several inane conversations, confident as I was that I could have steered them to interesting ground. But the unluckiest aspect of the crowded bus was the inability to move around. In particular, I wanted to get back to the rearmost seat, where a family of four was sitting. The mom and dad couldn't have been more than 22 or 23, there was a little girl of about three in a big sunhat, and an infant that couldn't have been born more than a month ago. Had they been continuing on past the Richmond layover, I feel certain they would have had a nice story to tell about where they were going with this newborn, but they escaped into Richmond.

Oh well. I'm going to spend a few hours in this place and then head back to the terminal. I'll try to post again tomorrow morning.

I probably ought to be panicking, but I'm not.

Just a minute ago, I had six months to prepare for this trip, and now there are only about 10 hours to go, and most of them need to be spent sleeping. I haven't packed a thing, I don't even know if everything will fit, and I keep thinking of more stuff that I should bring along.

But it's cool. Everything will be fine.

I spent the day trying to tie up every possible loose end at work. I got a new head shot taken, learned a little about my point-and-shoot digital camera, figured out how to access the blog, had my annual review, finished up the boys' and girls' lacrosse all-stars and said goodbye to the newsroom for a month.

The rest of the day belonged to various members of my family, including and especially my wife Kristen. This will be the first time since we met in the office of the Temple (University) News in January 1999 that we'll be apart for so long. When she goes away, I always have trouble sleeping, so I wonder how much sleep I'll get in the next 30 days. Tonight might be the last good night.

Family has been a big part of the last few days. Since I'll be gone for my birthday (July 9th), Kristen threw me a barbecue on Sunday, so I got to see a lot of them then. It felt like I was going away to college again, because everybody took the opportunity to wish me good luck and give me advice. Everybody's favorite piece belonged to my grandfather, Pop Pop, who shook my hand on the way out the door and said, "Don't forget to write."

So I've been hearing that one over and over again, from Kristen, from Richie and Patrick on the golf course, from my sister and my mom. Richie, just finished his first year at Scranton, was kind enough to add a packing tip: "Forget about doing laundry. Just bring lots of deodorant."

Sage.

Anyway, there's a ton of stuff I have to do, so I'll cut off here. I can be reached via email at seanmc76@gmail.com. The next time I post, I'll be doing it from somewhere other than my living room sofa.

By the way, this is unofficial My America site, guaranteed to reach you -- the public -- untouched by editor hands. If you'd like to see the official version, go to courierpostonline.com and follow the signs for the blogs. The direct address, I believe, is courierpostonline.com/blogs/mccann_america.html

Enjoy. See you tomorrow.

I was listening to NPR Saturday afternoon on my way to cover a lacrosse playoff game, when Michael Feldman nearly drove me off the road.

It appears that the Wisconsin-based humorist is planning on kicking off a bus tour the very morning, June 15th, that I'll start mine. I have nothing against bland people pissing themselves over bland jokes accompanied by a tittering piano, but the very same Wednesday morning?! If I'm really lucky, our buses will cross paths and I can write about the deep-seated but unfortunate intersection of liberal-elite NPR and an affinity for lame puns. I'm sure many funny folks -- George Carlin leaps to mind -- believe a generally flaccid sense of humor is one of the factors trashing the credibility of educated America.

How much does it suck to be scooped by "What Do You Know?" A little bit.

Anyway, I got no closer to being ready to leave today, but I figure I could get it all done in two days, with no sleep. I still have nine, if I'm counting correctly. I did go to a party with K and D for my wife's newspaper's youth movement. It was supposed to be some kind of brainstorming session, and we brought D along as our idea of the ideal, informed customer. She and I had a nice conversation about the fool's gold of marketing data -- probably the kind of thing that the bigs wanted to hear -- but the party at large turned out to be more of a networking session. The jazz quartet struck the right vibe, the food was good and it as a nice evening, but I'm not sure the folks got what they were hoping for out of it. I still don't know what young readers want, but if newtorking parties were the answer, newspapers would live forever. D said she was anticipating more of a meeting than a party, with more structure, and I think that might have worked better.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to nail down the photo transmission procedure, since the text problem is pretty much solved, assuming I can find myself some wireless access every couple of days. I still have to buy my ticket, put in for an advance on my expenses, and finish up my all-star material, while making one final dash to get in better shape.

More to come soon.