Canadian Informal Poll of 1: Googly Eyes on the T
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/27
Traveling the entirety of the United States of America, visiting major cities and the like is a fun project, especially on the Amtrak train lines, I love it. Wandering around, you come across a wide range of individuals, cultures, architectures, dialects of American English, and… potential stories.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
I have been going to a collection of the great cities: New York, Boston, Washington (D.C.), Charleston, Atlanta, New Orleans, Illinois, Los Angeles, San Diego, Irvine, and Seattle. Lots of photographs were posted for free consumption. My iPhone camera seemed sufficient, a regular iPhone 14.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
Now, in Boston, Massachusetts, early in the trip, I was walking through a park. What did I hear and see? “Googly eyes on the T, googly eyes on the T!” a random mass of students and young people chanted. The local transit line in Boston is called the MBTA.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
These students were protesting and caught the attention of several media here, here [Ed. I may have photobombed this one.], here, here, and elsewhere. One of the main personalities behind the very serious movement is Arielle Lok.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
Lok – another charming British Columbian, Vancouverite playing the role of a stray Canadian, said, “I wouldn’t say I founded it. I am bringing the community together for something that we have all desperately wanted. And that is googly eyes on the T trains. The T train is our local train system of the MBTA, the Boston public transit system. The googly eyes are the eyes we want to stick on the front of them.”
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Dreamers: we can find them launching astronauts, cosmonauts, and sinonauts to the moon; making revolutions in electric transport, advancements to the mythical artificial general intelligence, solving Millenium Prize problems, making Nobel Prize winning scientific discoveries, as well, we can find doing crucial work we all desperately need – googly eyes on the T. Even though, it was my first time in Boston.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
I only rode on the T train once, myself, but I can see the inevitable contributions to humanitarian efforts and humanity alike with those darned googly eyes on the T.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
“It is something that we have been thinking about for a while. April 1st is when we all got together. We were like, ‘Wow – we have nothing up our sleeves. We should do something bigger than we usually do,’” Lok said, This is not a silly cause! This is a very serious cause! And we are serious people!… There is no sarcasm. We are serious people!”
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Lok and company are dreamers of the highest kind. And they made the chants serious to prove the point with no sound of silliness about it.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
“Orange line, red line, green line, blue. Stick those googly eyes on with glue! Our vision for the T, is to the T vision!” These “very serious” people have very not-silly demands, to give vision to the MBTA.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Another protestor – whose name I might be spelling wrong (sorry!) – Teryn, said, “Our cause here today is to put googly eyes on the T trains. We feel strongly that the T could use a bit more vision, and our vision is to give the T vision, and to make people’s commute even more joyful. My big message is imagine you’re getting on your morning commute and then you see the T, and it is coming. All of the sudden, there are googly eyes to greet you. That is the vision we are striving for.”
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Not only to be those who speak out of slogans alone. The MBTA googly eyes organizers have used sophisticated mathematical projections based on super serious data and hard work in the laboratory with flasks or something.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Protestor Dylan Roy said, “It is a simple scientific projection. If you put googly eyes on the T, it will send T ridership to the moon. To the Moon! It has been several years in the making.”
(Photo Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
After having left this harrowing show of faith and commitment to humanitarian causes in action, one can only hope these dreamers have theirs come true!
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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