Author: jennynazak

intercity bus service crisis; Greyhound station closures nationwide

I try to keep on top of stuff like this. I feel really bad that this snuck up on me. It’s really important. I myself have been an extensive user of Greyhound. Just had not ridden in the past several years since Covid started.

I usually only take one long-distance trip a year, to see my family several states away, and it is typically been by train for the past few years rather than bus. (I no longer fly, for many reasons. I signed a no-fly pledge a few years back.) This past fall, I decided to look into Greyhound bus again for the first time in a awhile.

By chance, I happened to notice that the station in St Augustine had closed down. That didn’t affect what would have been my ticket, but it gave me pause. (I ended up using Amtrak, my other usual travel mode, for my trip.)

I forgot about it until recently, when I was checking into interstate transit options just for future reference. I looked into Greyhound, and I noticed that many of the results that popped up for my home station, Daytona Beach, gave me results instead for a neighboring city about 20 miles away. And that the company name Flix bus kept popping up.

I was busy with stuff and didn’t think until this evening to look to see if this might be part of a pattern.

Looking back, I remember a trip I took by greyhound some years ago, I think it might’ve been a couple years before Covid started.

I remember that one of the layover stations, a city in the Carolinas which I was looking forward to because the bus driver told us we would like the food there, turned out to be this new building out of the city center, far from any services. There were no stores or anything we could walk to, or find any food. I heard later that it was because some university had bought up the land that the downtown stop used to be on.

https://www.vabc12.com/news/america-s-greyhound-bus-stations-are-disappearing/article_94622f54-c86b-5143-94c4-a666b2d01f2a.html

”A closure in Chicago would accelerate the crisis in intercity bus service in the United States. Intercity buses carry an estimated 60 million people annually — twice the number of people who take Amtrak every year — but companies have cut service and closed terminals in recent decades. Cities lost nearly one-third of intercity bus service between 1960 and 1980 and more than half of the remaining service between 1980 and 2006, according to Chaddick Institute research.”

Ugh. Now I’m off to go look for an update to see if the Chicago terminal ended up getting saved.

It sounds like a lot of it is driven by high real estate values in downtown areas, coupled with the privatization trends in USA life.

Also, how did a foreign company (Flix is a German company) come to own our major nationwide bus service? To me, bus service is public infrastructure. Seems like it would be a bad idea to sell it to foreign investors.

The article linked above does have a spot of good news:

“One promising model is in Atlanta, where Greyhound opened a new 14,000 square-foot dedicated terminal this year with financial support from the state and federal governments. The station is used by other intercity bus operators and is near public transit.”

So: financial support from state and federal governments; and proximity to city public transit; and shared use with other intercity bus operators. Sounds like a good formula.

From what I can tell so far, Greyhound service in Chicago is safe for now. Very important, because it is a massive transfer point serving millions of passengers, a large percentage of them people with low incomes For whom this is the best or only travel option.

* For numerous reasons, I have come to deeply loathe the airline industry. For more information about no-fly pledge, and how people are living full happy lives without getting on airplanes, check out Flight-Free USA, Flight-Free UK.

• https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18SDaFP9fL/?mibextid=WC7FNe
Krista Van Ness Oakes (Yoga instructor; author of Shedding Shame book; public speaker and more) at 1 Million Cups Daytona Beach

• “Truth and Transparency: All of Me” (Robin Greenfield)
https://youtu.be/4n5TwDhZGGY?si=9OXy_RDCQDxURoqW
This is a multi-part series on Robin’s YouTube channel. He shares deeply on various aspects of his life — past and present.

Social media is essential for my work. I stick to a few platforms that I have found to be relatively effective for building community and spreading ideas, and I only quit a platform when it is providing me with too little value for the hassle.

Similarly, I minimize my consumption (of stuff in general — electricity, gasoline etc.) for planetary reasons, as well as for personal benefit (peace of mind and financial etc) – but if I need something, I need something.

That popular saying, “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” It doesn’t mean we should just give up and go hog wild and buy everything without thought or conscience. And not try to push back against anything.

But by the same token, it doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just do without everything and live in a cave and not do our activism & creativity & other work etc.

Thank you for this post Lee Flier, very well said.

Photo of my favorite local beach dune wildflower, Blanket Flower – Gaillardia pulchella. Gorgeous, tough, drought tolerant, salt tolerant. Tough & resilient yet beautiful, just like a grassroots community both online & offline.

And please enjoy the following wisdom from Lee Flier (fellow permie, and artist/musician, and very deep and creative and astute thinker on social issues) – well said as always!

“A few more thoughts on the social media mess. It’s going to sound like I feel “hopeless” or think we should “give up” but I actually don’t. I think my positions on a lot of things are being mischaracterized, and that sucks.

But the thing is, we are in an oligarchy and have been for awhile. It’s just accelerating now. You’re currently having a crisis because Facebook is, in your view, about to be overrun with Nazis and haters. But the thing is, EVERYTHING IS RUN BY THESE PEOPLE. Everything. Are you going to give up the Internet entirely? Stop going to websites? Because any website you go to is probably hosted on Amazon Web Services. The computer or smartphone you’re using? Made by evil oligarchs whether directly or indirectly. Same with the car you drive, the banks and credit cards and other financial services you use, the property management company who runs your apartment complex. The stocks that make up your investment portfolio or retirement fund if you’re fortunate enough to have one. We are all participating in this shit and there’s no getting away from it unless we all want to go live in a cave. EVERYTHING has been leveraged to the gills to extract value from the environment and from other people and benefit someone else, and funnel more money to the top.

Again, this is not to say it’s hopeless and we should do nothing. ALL I’ve said is, whatever we do has to be well thought out, well organized, and massive. You deleting your Facebook account or cancelling your Prime or WaPo subscription is not going to make a damn bit of difference. But we still get to use these tools, and we do, in spite of everything, because they have value to us. If you want to organize and protest oligarchy but you refuse to use a computer or a smartphone or the Internet or social media to do it, that’s obviously not a good move.

We all know people who won’t vote, or aren’t paying much attention to politics. Those people cost us the last election, and the one in 2016. They might tell you that both parties are corrupt, there’s no difference, so there’s no point in voting. But what I always tell people like that is: no matter what you do or don’t do, one of these people is going to be in charge of a lot of things that affect your life. And your failure to vote ensures that the very worst possible person will get in. You don’t have to spend all your time obsessing over politics, but FFS pay some attention to what’s going on and vote accordingly! Right?

I feel the same way about social media. It exists, it’s ubiquitous and really, it’s become necessary in modern life. Whether or not we who are morally sickened by what’s going on participate in social media, it’s going to be there, and FB is by far the largest platform of them all. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take breaks, do things to limit our time here for the sake of our sanity, etc. But if we don’t participate at all, we leave it to the wolves. It’s not going to just go away, and what happens on it will affect our lives and the lives of people we care about, whether we want it to or not.

Eventually there’ll be a better platform, and eventually the oligarchy will likely collapse on itself, or we will figure out how to overturn it. But for now, we’re swimming in it. Only by sticking together can we ever hope to change anything.”

I posted on Deep Adaptation that I have a deep suspicion that the airline companies are systematically undercutting the train companies in Europe.

Also posted my frustration that airline tickets seem to be getting unnaturally cheap, all the while planetary resources are being depleted and it would seem more appropriate for them to be getting more expensive.

This is my original post which you can look up if you join the DA group (and then you can follow the comments.):

#rant How are airline ticket prices so cheap? Seems like the prices are totally backwards in keeping with planetary situation; ecological limitations. I’m thinking it must be some predatory pricing or something. It’s hard to listen to people talk about how they’re going here and there all over the place and how cheap the tickets are. Very sickening.

I feel the same about all this trashy consumer junk that’s sold online. How can it be that it is getting cheaper??? < horror, crying, and anger emojis.>

It’s really sickening. In the 1980s, when I had what I considered my fair lifetime allotment of Europe travel (a five-week trip around England, Wales, and Scotland, including 2-week stay in London), trains were the main mode of transport in UK and continental Europe.

Flying was practically unheard of, at least as far as I had understood. Now it seems totally reversed.

I have become convinced that the airlines have deliberately undercut the trains.

Glad I got that experience before all this stuff started happening.

Full disclosure: I said I considered my England Scotland Wales trip to be my fair lifetime allotment. However, before I thought this way, I had other trips.

In 2004, I went on a group tour to Spain with one of my aunts.

And in 1998, I went on a work-related trip to Sheffield England. And while over there, we took the ferry across to Rotterdam and toured around the Netherlands by train and bus.

That was just my Europe travel. Between 1990 and 2004, I also did three back-and-forth trips to Japan from the USA, for work. (Including my five-year stay living in Tokyo.)

Wish I had known then what I know now. Glad I got the experiences but I would have happily curtailed it for planetary reasons.

In 2017, when i wrote my book, I did retroactively purchase triple carbon offsets for every single air trip that I can remember taking in my adult life, before I quit flying. But carbon offsets are by no means a perfect mitigative remedy.

Response to a comment from someone in the group who continues to take multiple transcontinental flights (and does not feel bad about it, feeling that industry and so on have contributed so much more):

I wish we could control what government or large companies do, but we cannot. And, we can’t invent a time machine to make our past selves more aware, but we do have the current awareness of what we know now.

I might feel more guilt because I am a Boomer, and furthermore a USA citizen. And therefore am part of the demographics that has contributed most to destroying the planet. Just by our willful obliviousness, if nothing else.

My heart goes out to you & other people who are living on separate continents from their families; this is a widespread artifact of our modern age.

What is your long-term plan, as far as possibly living within low-footprint ground-transport distance of your family? (When I was really young and going through the wild times, I thought maybe I was willing to never see my family again. But it turned out not to be the case so I’m glad I did not end up staying in Japan and have to face that dilemma.)

I try not to beat myself up for what I did in the past — same as you, we only know what we know at the time, but I cannot allow myself that same behavior moving forward.

And, there is a hard reality that at some point airline travel is going to become not an option. So it behooves us everyday people to reduce our vulnerability as far as being intercontinentally far away from our families. Unless we are willing to possibly not see our families again in this lifetime.

If you’re not yet familiar with Paul Wheaton / permies forums, I highly recommend this site. It is a vast universe with many little winding intricate pockets, but there is a search feature to help you navigate.

Topics: 1) low-tech; 2) deep sharing! (“public house” concept)

The low-tech section of permies dot com forums is a wealth of info! See screenshots for sample – it goes on and on like this.

“A new combine harvester that costs eighty percent less to build and can harvest wheat, rice and other grains could change the economics of grain farming on a global scale. The new “Simple Harvester” was built at an off-grid, renewable energy development center in Virginia called Living Energy Farm. It promises to make grain farming economical for small farmers who cannot afford large-scale, industrial harvesting equipment.

People everywhere rely on grain for food. Modern grain harvesting equipment is expensive and complex. Grain harvesting technology has evolved from one machine to the next. The term “combine” is derived
from the fact that modern machines ‘combine’ many machines that were historically separate. Each new innovation was added to old technologies, and combine harvesters grew very complex with dozens of moving parts. The Simple Harvester overcomes that legacy and harvests grain effectively with only a few moving parts. As the name implies, the Simple Harvester is dramatically simpler than any other combine harvester ever manufactured. The Simple Harvester is much cheaper to build, easier to maintain, easier to operate, and can harvest a wide variety of grains under a wide variety of conditions”

OH!! And see the last three screenshots, I found a real gem for anyone interested in making their home a bit of a public or community space. Honestly this is the aspect of Permaculture that really lights me up. Community, urban, neighborhood https://permies.com/t/263752/Accountability-thread-public-house-project#2619529 A homeowner in urban Montreal seeking to make part of their house available in a public or semi-public way.

And – Use this link to see the entire list of all of the forums at permies.com, it’s a vast universe in there! https://permies.com/forums

(Response to a comment in one of the “blue women” groups.)

Honestly, if I were a citizen of another country, I would be moving back there ASAP. I hope you are able to arrange that very soon. <3

I was born here and feel a deep responsibility to this place, the country of my citizenship, but we really don’t have much to offer, as far as what we think our bragging points are.

People from other countries have always mainly just come here (to the hotbed of capitalism) to make money, and now even that isn’t a very solid proposition. If I had a culture to go back to, I would be going back to it STAT!!

Especially could not live in a different country from my family. Long-distance travel isn’t something we can count on forever, and it’s becoming less reliable. Glad you got to visit your family for the holidays and hope you can make it permanent soon.

My job as a US citizen is to do my part to try to create a more bearable, livable, kind, mutual-aid environment for people here. In my neighborhood and city etc. And advocate for making reparations to the descendants of enslaved peoples; and advocate for #LandBack to the indigenous peoples.

All of the above notwithstanding, I love my country the USA in a deep way. Sounds contradictory, I know.

My pink sweatshirt with the cute little snowpeople is precious to me!! Even though it’s gotten stains over the years, I plan on keeping it till it’s totally worn out. My mom gave it to me some years back. So my plan is and was to add appliqué and embroidery over the stains as they happen.

But what ended up happening first, was that winter holiday season is drawing to a close. But I wanted to still wear the sweatshirt. Because I love pink, and a sweatshirt layer is handy for this weather. So, I turned it inside out so it would just be a plain pink sweatshirt.

But when I did that, it turned out that the back of the snowman appliqué embroidery showed through the fabric.

So what did I do? I sewed on a piece of fabric to conceal the backing, then sewed some hearts on over that. (The fabric pieces are various stretchy fabric from my fabric box.) Voilà, instant valentine sweatshirt! And really, hearts never go out of season, do they, so I have really extended the season of this loved sweatshirt!!

Pix here. (For as long as the will of zucc will allow, you know.)

PS. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but I edged the border of the light-pink concealment patch with some metallic white ribbon floss, from my famous multigenerational thread-stash.

Last two photos show more of the whole outfit. BTW my favorite homemade scarf (which i made of soft wool from an old sweater that i found in the trash years ago then wore til it was done wearing), also makes a nice turtleneck attachment, since it’s definitely turtleneck weather right now! I just wrap it around my neck and tuck the tails in instead of letting them hang down muffler-style.

The gloves are made of a pair of socks that were given to me but ended up being super super crazy tight around the ankles, so I turned them into long fingerless gloves. I haven’t even cut the thumb-hole yet, but they’re actually fine as they are.