View From The Big Ride

摘要

In three years with the Big Read, I've had exactly two ideas. One was a blog, which seemed all cutting-edge and unfederal and state-of-the-art when we started it and is now more or less standard operating procedure at even the stodgiest institutions. The other was the Big Ride, a custom-wrapped hybrid car that could hopscotch from Big Read to Big Read, enabling me to see the program firsthand and maybe to pitch in by keynoting, or stacking chairs. As I write this, I'm about to embark on the marriage of these two minor brainstorms. Tomorrow I will steer Rosie (aka Arts Force One), our bright-red Ford hybrid Escape, out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and lay in a course to the Pacific and back. Along the way I'll sideswipe more than a dozen Big Reads, listen to some quintessentially American audiobooks-probably including Leaves of Grass, Lolita, and On the Road-and eat more road food than a man my age should safely risk.