John Hockenberry is a fine storyteller, and he had a good story to tell. Delightful.

June Butler

I use a power wheelchair and am often in need of help, depending, as I do, on the kindness of strangers. My experiences of such community are numerous. May I add?

Mr Hockenbury is reporting on events and, thank goodness, he's a very good reporter. We know the venue, we can imagine the players in the archetypal strokes he uses to describe them. The venue and the social nature of the players is important.

A public conveyance is remarkable in the diversity of folks it brings together. This diversity produces a lovely eclectic sensibility of what's happening. Further, there are usually a significant number of folks aboard who are survivors of hostile social environments, and of folks who live independently of reading and writing. My experience is that such people attend to what is happening with hyper-alert sensibilities across all five senses.

There is a collective wisdom, a collective nose for authenticity within such a gathering that effectively weeds out learned helplessness and 'professional victims' and other such fly-paper for co-dependents. But the BS radar not only eliminates bogus calls to action: by so doing it saves the community unnecessarily prolonged vulnerability to one another and waste of its members' time and talent.

Of course the curtains re-closed right away! That's the means by which ad hoc communities may be at the ready to spring into action once again.

And they will. Trust me.

Susan O’Shea
Seattle