Civics and Culture

Introduction Last month, in Moustiers Sainte Marie, France, I watched several shopkeepers return a lost young bird to a part of town closer to its natural...

  I see her brighten the bus stop as I pull up. Third and Union southbound, some time before midnight. Hers is a smile which...

A few weeks ago, we ran a guest article by Michael Maddux in support of Proposition 1--the measure to fully fund park maintenance and...

  We won't tell anyone I took it for a test drive. As I pulled my 358 into the layover at Second and Main, I noticed...

  "Next one is Aurora," I announce from the 44 route. "Aurora Avenue, where you can get the E Line. That's the old 358." People get...

  A woman in her twenties with a terrific, full-bodied Afro boards, all smiles and legs. It's nighttime on Capitol Hill during Pride week. The...

  Josh is in his late teens, African-American and something else, tall but not too tall. In our youth we sometimes oscillate between dialects, particularly...

Not all of the conversations I have on the bus are the gleeful bastardizations of syntax which I often record– and which are no...