Orange-vested Men in Port Authority Yell and Joke

It’s good to be back in the humid pea soup of a Western Mass. July. Of course, I step back in and all hits the fan, but I am confident we can fix the problems and get it all cooled off again.  It’s an exciting time, we’re hiring at the cafe.

Hiring for a cafe position is both thrilling and a pain. It’s fun to know we’re adding staff and that you can bring somebody in who might turn out to be a real ace. It’s tough too, because sometimes the applicants disappoint and you have to take someone who doesn’t wow you. I want to be wowed.

I waited at Port Authority for hours, just missing the bus that left minutes before I got there. I had debated about whether this was the right way to get down to JFK, and on last Monday’s trip, the bus broke down and I had to call my friend Esha to rush me to the Metro North train to get to the airport. So now the only problem was that I had hours to wait. In Port Authority, black men and women with orange safety vests yelled and joked at one another across the echoing hall. It was somewhat unnerving, and even a uniformed Peter Pan driver deigned to try and shush their raucous shouting.

On the bus I sat next to a woman who was coming to Plainfield MA from NYC for a week at Earthdance. She told me that she also planned on going to a seminar way, way up in Jonesport Maine. I showed her using the GPS on my iPhone how damn far that was from anywhere. It was a 9 1/2 hour car ride, or a tortuous route flying from Bangor. I think by the end of our trip she was reconsidering her Jonesport jaunt.