This is just a quote, stolen from Esther ("from E. B. White, who is commenting on the centralization of schools and transportation to school via bus, in 1940"). I recently visited the Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, where one of their more frequently referenced exhibits is a 20-minute video on lobstermen narrated by E.B. White. It was a unique treat to hear his narration of the day in the life of a lobsterman. There is something so practical and simple in appreciating our daily work even though the work of others can seem exotic by virtue of unfamiliarity, habitat or culture.
"Whether the improvement is general nobody knows. Certainly there is something lost. One thing that is lost is the mere business of walking to school, which is something in itself. In my community scholars still get round on the hoof. They pass our house at seven in the morning, clicking along in a ground-eating stride. Some of them make a four-mile trip to school--eight miles in all....In all the time I've been driving these roads I've never been asked for a ride, which is almost unbelievable considering the distances that must be covered, often in zero weather or in storm. Walking is natural for these children, just as motoring is for most others....I enjoy living among pedestrians who have an instinctive and habitual realization that there is more to a journey than the mere fact of the arrival. If the consolidated school served by busses destroys that in our children I don't know that we are ahead of the game after all."
E.B. White, One Man's Meat, pp. 110-111
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