All Aboard at the Conversation Station !

sketch by Flash
drawing by Flash Rosenberg

Humans are wired for social interaction. We want to work with people and have conversations with people. Laura Venderkam, Wall Street Journal Bookshelf (Aug 14th 2015)

Conversation stations can include: a Restaurant,  a Diner, a Café, a Park.

How about in a classroom? Among fellow students. Back and forth with the teacher. Or in class after the teacher leaves, even.

Waiting in/on line, waiting for a plane, waiting for your laundry, your coffee, your $$$ lottery winnings.

Okay, picture this: A crowded waiting room. “Everybody waiting…old man sleeping on his bags, women with that teased-up kind of hair…kids with the jitters in their legs and those wide wide open stares.” Joni Mitchell, Just Like This Train 

Like Joni, for good talk, I take trains whenever possible.

 

Train CrossingTrainCrosses

Why?

Folks are more appreciative on trains. Appreciative of things like TIME. Like lounging, reading, sleeping – folks on a train create a little neighborhood together.  It’s like The little neighborhood that never was. Except right now it exists while you are traveling together.  Where ya going? Through time? Hey, nobody leaves the room do they? Which makes them great places to appreciate conversation.

So get your convo on in the “Club” car, the “Dome” car, the “Sightseer” car.

Ever been?

Women in purple in dome car
Purple dresses in the dome car

It’s where Amtrak-Americans gather for observation, games, and opening up. As a folk journalist, I’ve gone coast-to-coast with a cast of characters thousands of miles and over eight-minutes-long for NPR. *

The youngest get excited about stuff like: “Look at the light rail track over there!” (Apparently little kids love light rail. Perhaps post-Millennial Gen Next will popularize mass transit!)

The oldest, who maybe dislike flying or the bus, know rail travel is more civilized. Amtrak was years ahead of the sharing economy: you are forced to share a table in the dining car. But you get to hear about lives. Ethanol farmers from Kansas, rodeo clowns from El Paso – each takes your mind off your laptop and phone, talking your ear off all the way to Union Station in Chicago, LA, Portland or Spokane.

You get to feel their strong handshakes afterwards.

 

Rob & Bob our guides about the Empire Builder
Rob & Bob, nature guides aboard The Empire Builder

I lucked out once and got seated for dinner while crossing eastern Washington into Idaho and Montana with two nature guides: Bob & Rob.  They came aboard to present a “Rails to Trails” talk.  Soon the history of the Cascades and a couple of Columbia River dams came alive as the apple capitals and pear orchards flying by. The tunnel we’d come through was the second longest in the world – longest being in B.C. just north of here—and by the time the full moon over Wenatchee rose, I’d learned all about Mt’s Baker and Rainier, and Snokomish, too, so I suggested the duo do a “Bob and Ray” routine because Rob was low-voiced calm and Bob taller and more high strung in his descriptions of vineyards and the delights of Washington cherries.

 

Cascades seen from Amtrak
Cascades seen from Amtrak

 

Of course, there are other times, a folk journalist will sit staring out a train window, thinking: “Man I have no life.” Then out the same window, passing Ventura, here comes a view of the Pacific Ocean, sea and sky and mountains and everything in between. And then he realizes: I have all of life! And soon I’m engaged in friendly confabs up and down the California coast again…

Working on the RR
Working on the RR

 

Suddenly I hear: “Lookit, Mom! Lookit!”

What is it?

”Bubbles!” the little girl shouts pointing at a polluted river winding down there below the tracks.

“Woo Woo!” goes the train, and all is well.

Williston ND Station
Williston Station, North Dakota

 

BACK POCKET BANTER

Where have you traveled on a train or by ship?

What kind of acquaintances have you made on a trip?

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen happen while traveling?

Did you ever learn anything new from conversations on a train, ship or plane?

What is the longest trip you’ve ever been on?

 

BONUS!

An additional conversation aboard Amtrak is how you are reducing your “carbon footprint” by taking a train instead of flying in an airplane. Which may lead to interesting places and a longer confab in the Dining Car.

 

ACTIVITIES

Ever ask a diner woman or porter on board what’s their favorite song? They’ll sing it for you.

 

Williston North Dakota
Leaving Williston ND

 

* A folk journalist walks into an Amtrak 

http://savvytraveler.publicradio.org/show/rundowns/2003/20030516/rd20030516.shtml

Freestylers & Foreigners: Fear and Locomotiving on the Southwest Chief There are only three trans-continental trains in the U.S. And, with Amtrak planning on dropping some of its long-distance routes, you might want to put a choo-choo trip across the States higher on your travel to-do list. Hank Rosenfeld took this to heart when he boarded Amtrak Train #4 at LA’s Union Station with a cast of characters including golden-agers and their grandchildren, Central American tourists and ex-cons let out of Lompoc that morning. And all the while, on his 48-hour trip to Detroit, Hank experiences the romance of the rail.

TrainRouteSouthernPacificSunset copy

 

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Words to Get Going With? (Milton Berle said he spent the first 30 minutes of his act clearing his throat)

“In a world where the rules are breaking down, where the world is changing so fast in all directions that a lot of people have a sense of bewilderment. You don’t actually know what the rules are anymore.” Salman Rushdie

 

 

Clever Ideas Happen Here

Hello again out there, Hank here, welcome to you all, to “WalkyTalky,” which is what I am, really, my reason for being here as a human, because I walk around town and I talk to people as a folk journalist, listening to them. Conducting conversations for NPR, newspapers, magazines, sites for sore eyes.

Pretty much any electrical outlet in the storm.

Times are tough, right tough for folks looking for a good talk. Am I right?

Like my friend Kris in North Dakota says, “the thing is” technology connects us in so many new ways. At the same time things appear to be pulling apart everywhere we look. But just as a few fantastic discoveries have changed the world, I’m confident there’s enough time left to discover another.

Imagine the voice of the radio announcer, stirring up underneath himself such stirring music that aides him as he intones: And, as we find ourselves more and more forever facing books on computers and faces inside our phones…friends, do you tend to, in the face of it:

 1) Shut down and just say nothing at all?

2) Bark at it all from the outside you chirping tweety bird maddog blogging machine that you most wannabe?

or are you finding yourself

3) Disconnecting, into what Beatle John called, Iiiiiii…solation.*

4) Taking up an armful of words in order to fire back, and thusly: Engage!

Because here comes your chance to hitch a ride on the road to better handling a confusing world’s daily swirl of events.

How?

By using words to take action with!

People are always excited when I tell them I’m writing this web log. Because they see new conversations everywhere they look and work on their iChatty Cathy podcasting home-studio screens of some sort or another sort. They agree with me that modern youth’s socialization doesn’t prepare them for presenting one’s self well in the oldest form of the art: face-to-face conversation.

Another way of saying this is, Can we tawk?

WalkyTalky will present fun ways to forget your social fears and forge ahead, screenlessly happy again.

How?

By helping you converse – take part in actual conversations— by pulling from your quiver the sharpest words fireable — zing! fling! sing!– for any occasion. Perfectly useable at any appropriate (and inappropriate) time, by employing at-the-ready retorts, references from movies, songs, TV cartoons from 1964 and yes, by going even deeper (like that’s possible), you’ll win your life with words. Some of these things you’ve never heard before (thanks ghod!) but can one day utilize to your own delight, because I’m telling you folks, We’ve got a great big Convo and baby we’re gonna ride! [SING-A-LONG PARODY OF “CONVOY” FROM MOVIE “CONVOY” TK]

So let’s roll.

Why and why now?

Because as Beck sings, My time is a piece of wax fallin’ on a termite/who’s choking on the splinters.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/beck/loser_20015293.html

(If you have time, check out this hilarious video of it * *)

Yes, because time’s a-wastin’,  just say the word.

Words are the way to share time together, most excellently and well-played, sir!

And they’re surely some of the best ways to continue a conversation…

FolkJournalistInterviewAboardAmtrak copy

Fingerpuppet Freud interview amuses Amtrak passengers aboard Southwest Chief

 

*www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnls10DO1Y

 

* *

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