Adolph and I spent five days in Oshkosh last week, setting up an exhibit at UW-Oshkosh and giving talks and critiques. Adolph traveled there with a truckload of our artwork. Since I would have had to sit on the floor in the truck’s cab and look up only at sky and treetops for an hour and a half, I chose to take a bus.

I walked into Milwaukee’s new Amtrak Station almost two hours early for the bus to Oshkosh, and my nostrils curdled. The station isn’t new at all, it’s on its way to being new. Bus and train passengers have to wait in a construction site, overwhelmed by fumes. I went outside to breathe; the air was saturated with cigarette smoke.

This is nothing compared to what the people in southern California are inhaling, I kept telling myself. But then, we don’t have forest fires here. I’m sure an airport wouldn’t remain open to the public if its air were this toxic. Perhaps this is a class issue.

I asked a bus driver what the fumes were. “Glue,” he told me, “That’s why I’m out here.” He paused, then added, glancing at the solid glass walls, “The winds will blow right through there in winter. And it’ll cost a fortune to heat. They had the architects design it, didn’t want any input from the people like me, the people who use it every day.”

Another class issue, I thought. Bus riders, whether local or long distance, don’t count. Here we are, some voluntarily, some not, taking public transportation. We help in the fight against global warming, and Scott Walker wants to cut back local bus routes. He tried to get rid of the #15 of all routes, the East Side lifeline for those who don’t drive, the miracle bus that takes us from Bayshore to Bayview and beyond, never empty, never dull! Rather than Scott Walker, I’d dub him Scott Driver.