Welcome to my train

I love a good metaphor, and figurative trains and train journeys are among my favorites. This is because I have always been awed by the power of trains, which, especially here in the United States, have that old industrial oomph of huge gears, screeching steel and rumbling engines. Like the forces that guide our lives, trains are hard to stop once they get going. They run on tracks that (with any luck!) lead to a place we want to go. They are expected to run on time. Yet, they are relatively easily derailed (sound familiar?) by things much, much smaller than they are, things that are often impossible to see from a distance. Getting a train going again once it has stopped takes much more time than keeping it humming along through regular maintenance, a lot of foresight and a steady hand at the throttle.

We are all engineers of the metaphorical trains in our lives. By writing this blog, I'm inviting you to jump on my train anytime you want. It runs on the tracks of my main passions: urban education, books, art, language, travel and crossing cultures. But who knows where the tracks may lead? As we know, the best-planned journeys often veer off into places we never expected to go.

Ultimately, writing this blog is about reaching out and making connections about topics that can run any solo mind into the nearest ravine. I'm excited to begin and invite you along because being on someone's train is very different than watching from the platform; it is an active rather than a passive act, a 'standing with' rather than a 'standing by.' I hope that if you are reading this, you will feel free to add to the conversation by commenting or emailing me.

After all, at least for these moments, we are all on the same train.