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Community Corner

An Amtrak Ride to Inspire Change for the Future

Patch blogger heads to New York city to take part in a lecture about "Changing the Way We Eat." It may be a show you don't want to miss.

This week I am headed to Manhattan to do a TEDx Lecture

It will be my third trip to New York City. 

In 1964, the summer after my high school graduation, I traveled to the New York Word’s Fair with two buddies. One day we walked from Time Square to Battery Park. When we told our host — my friend’s Uncle Bieber who lived in Queens — he declared us “idiots” and pointed out we were lucky we weren’t mugged.  Sometimes it’s better to be oblivious of the dangers. Plus, what mugger is going to target three guys in their prime who probably don’t have any money?

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The second visit was about twelve years ago — in and out in one day.  I flew into LaGuardia, asked the cabby to take me to the UN, but instead he dropped me at the UN Plaza Hotel.  So I hoofed it eight blocks or so to the UN, did the job interview, lunched at a nearby diner, returned for a follow-up interview then grabbed another cab to LaGuardia and flew home.

The frenetic nature of that experience has persuaded me to take Amtrak this time. 

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I’ll get to sleep through the night and step off the train at Penn Station, two blocks from my hotel.  No worries about bad flying weather, and I can run through the presentation multiple times along the way.

I had a friend, Clinton Shedder, who traveled to and from New York city during WWII. He was a buyer for Schusters, a long-gone Milwaukee Institution. Clinton picked-up the 20th Century Limited in Chicago, carrying a suitcase packed with vacuum tubes.  He had a connection to the difficult-to-come-by electronic components on this end.  In New York, he exchanged them for silk stockings, and came roaring back to Milwaukee with them a few days later. I think it was the same train made famous in the movie “The Sting.”  Remember Paul Neumann engineering a rigged poker game? That train.

So, I am hell bent for adventure. A trip to New York is too good to race through.  This time I’ll be surrounded by “foodies”, plus several dinners are planned.  Maybe I will meet Anthony Bourdain? We can talk about writing and raw clams. I can regale New Yorkers with stories of forty-pound salmon and how they haven’t lived until they have tasted walleye. Maybe I’ll enthrall them with stories of driving on frozen lakes?

Who knows? 

If any of you are interested in the TEDx thingy, go to the website.  It will tell you who is speaking, when and how to watch it live Saturday (Jan. 21). It starts at 9:30 a.m. our time. The topic is “Changing the Way We Eat.”

World economies are shifting around. Manufacturers are able to move in pursuit of cheap labor, banks and money institutions go wherever they are unregulated, but the USA does agriculture and it is very likely to remain here. If you are worried about our future, you may wish to watch on Saturday. You will be inspired.

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