Purposeful Walker
Yesterday’s walking thoughts were inspired by my friend who went to London. In between, I had a passing thought of Chris Arnade, a man who set out to see America from the forgotten places, but then turned it into a new career of global pedestrian vagabondage.
Per recollection, Arnade was a stock-market “quant”—one of the math/science whiz-kids with an advanced degree from a prestigious school who was hired by some Wall Street investment firm to figure out mathematical formulae and computer algorithms that generate gobzamoney. He got rich, didn’t like the lifestyle, and was something of a left-leaning capitalism skeptic. So after the housing crash, he cashed out his career and took to pursuing his passion, which was people. Working-class people. Lower-class people struggling to get by. Especially the Americans who were left behind by the waves of wealth and enrichment sweeping much of the country. He called them the back-row kids, as opposed to the front-row kids in school who knew all the answers and excelled at everything.
He went to moribund American rural towns and hung out at the local McDonalds where he would get to know the clientele, speak with them, let them show him their lives and tell him their stories. And he took their pictures—pictures of them, where they lived, how they lived, the people who mattered to them. Eventually he published a book of the pictures and his observations about them. The book was Dignity, and it came out in 2019.
Here, Chris told about his motivations and outlook:
Chris Arnade has always kept a lovely Twitter feed, full of his pictures and short blurbs about people he meets. I looked it up after thinking of walking. He attends to it, as well as a Substack, as it turns out. In his Substack he writes about and shares photos of his pedestrian journeys around the world. Above all, he seems like a nice guy, exploring the world and sharing his explorations.
I was glad to see that Chris was still out there, doing his unique thing.
On today's article "Tim Scott Hopes for a Republican Reversal," troll OldBoomer gets some pushback from other commenters about posting trollery.
(again Substack is being passive-aggressive about attempts to edit one's own post. Edited comments disappear entirely and the only thing you can do is cancel the attempt to edit, then do a new post and delete the old. Apparently we ARE the product here.)
Jonah report: He posts on Twitter that he is feeling and breathing better. Apparently there is stuff that gets removed a few days after the surgery and that is progress. Sounds OK on the treat video, despite an occasional cough, and comfort canines are still helpful. He's about to record a new Remnant. Some wag posted on the Twitter asking if all this is part of his plan not to sound just like Chris Stirewalt.