What MARTA riders are reading

The train was very crowded this evening on my commute home. With more riders than seats I and many others were left to hang from the nearest ceiling bar or handrail and stand our way down the track. It wasn't so bad. It is really a form of low-impact exercise with the starts and stops requiring a careful shift of body weight and rebalance in order to stay upright. But even better than the free workout is the excuse to observe others various reading choices. Predictable selections included the AJC, Fulton Review Weekly, and the Bible. Classic texts such as "The Age of Innocene" and (a personal favorite) "Catch-22" were also ingested by reading riders. Current bestsellers such as "The Appeal" and "Texas Hold'em" were literally consumed and there were many other books being read that I hadn't heard of before: "Divine Nine", "Making Magic", "Tudor Colonists", and "Where Football is King."
I personally like to read magazines of various sorts and lean towards "Smithsonian", "Reader's Digest", "Ensign", and lately "TownHall". I usually read scripture for a few minutes in the morning on my bus ride from the park and ride to the train station. But I also dive into a book now and then. I recently finished "The Coldest Winter" about the Korean War.
What interests me even more than what people read is what they don't read--or do for that matter. Many people just sit, day after day, not reading, listening to music, or even sleeping. It is nice to relax for a few minutes but I cherish the quiet time to read and take in new ideas. Boredom has its qualities, but I'd rather do something.

My Daily Commute Atlanta--Background

Two weeks ago I decided to can the car commute and enter the keep-it-real world of public transportation. Various motives propelled me: a new job in the city, the rising price of gasoline, environmental effects of car emissions and the mind-numbing gridlock of Atlanta's rush-hour traffic. Indeed all of those things factored into my decision, but for me there was a different reason behind the change--something more intrinsic and internal. For me the reason for venturing off the well-beaten path of car comfort into the vast variable of buses and trains was driven by a deeper desire for human connectedness. I wanted to live more fully and deliberately. I wanted to live and breathe the world around me--the real world--not some packaged, temperature controlled, edgeless isolation that is the car commute. I wanted to ride a bus, train, and walk down the street towards a destination and back home again. It was that simple.

So thirteen days ago I parked my car at the nearest park-and-ride, approached the bus driver and asked him how I could pay for a bus/train fare into the midtown area of Atlanta. I couldn't get a fare-card there, he said, but he let me ride the bus without fare to the North Springs train station where I bought a fare card for 20 rides ($30 + one-time $5 card purchasing fee). From there I boarded the North Springs MARTA train heading southbound to the airport. I got off the train at Arts Center station and headed out the gate onto West Peachtree where I commenced walking a mile up and around Peachtree St. to my office building just south of 25th street. I had done it. And at the end of the day I did the same thing in reverse and went home. It was so simple, yet so profound. And it changed my life.

The purpose of this blog is to tell my story and in doing so, help me learn something about myself along the way. My commitment to any readers is that I will write something every day that is interesting, insightful, funny, inspiring, or thought-provoking. My audience is anyone that is living a contradiction of any type. Including but not limited to people like me that live part of their daily life in one place and part in another--and spend a chunk of their day getting back and forth. I don't know how many of you there are out there but one thing I know for sure is this: You are not alone.