| Two weeks ago Avi and I took the train from Chicago to Seattle to visit Joe and Jenny. The train is called The Empire Builder, and the ride all the way to Seattle lasts almost two whole days, so we booked a bedroom in a sleeping car. If you get a sleeping car berth, it includes meals in the dining car. Since space in the car is limited, if your party is less than four people you are seated with other random passengers. So over the course of the two days we dined with a wonderful variety of people. We sat with ● Two librarians from towns near Madison, Wisconsin, who were on their way to the Shakespeare festival in Ashland, Oregon. ● A trans woman who was a DJ traveling with a large collection of records. ● A math professor from Michigan whose mother’s family are Sephardi Jews from Corfu. ● Two couples from very small towns, one from Minnesota and one from North Dakota We love the train and the views of America were beautiful and fascinating, but the best part was talking with all these people that we would never have met any other way. I was reminded of the dining car experiences a few days after we got home when I received an issue of Science magazine which included an article about the negative effects of remote work. The pandemic led to a great increase in remote work which has only partly receded. Working from home has been accompanied by a serious increase in isolation and associated mental health problems. It seems that contact with others, even incidental contact in the course of a commute and around the workplace, is vital to our well-being. Work, like the dining car, provides us with an opportunity to interact with people who would otherwise remain outside our orbits, and that is more important than we might imagine. In retirement I still get a lot of social contact between family, friends, and the synagogue. However, my daily hours in the coffee shop, surrounded by strangers, have also turned out to be an important part of my life. |
| Created on 16 June 2026, updated on 16 June 2026 by Samuel Ethan Fox |