My very good friend and editor, David Crumm, is on an amazing journey. He and his son Benjamin are taking a 9000 mile driving trip around the country over the next 40 days. Well, now they’re down to about 34 days as the trip started last week. He is reporting, a la Charles Kuralt, from his journeys. Or perhaps more in the spirit of William Least Heat Moon whose 1982 Blue Highways is a masterful meandering along the American’s back roads.
Crumm is retracing a journey taken thirty years or so ago when he was a senior at the University of Michigan. And his son, now a college senior, is with him. That right there is worth the price of admission. I am green with envy at the thought of having that much car, travel, talk time with an adult child. He is endeavoring to give his readers the small snapshots of America as he traces not only paths to out-of-the-way places but the paths of people’s hearts, their values and what makes them proud to be Americans.
David, former religion editor for the Detroit Free Press, and I crossed paths back in 2003 when he came to the house to meet me and review my first book, This Jewish Life. I have written for his site — Read the Spirit— in the past and he has chosen me as one of Read the Spirit’s Jewish voices. David will be bringing out a new edition of This Jewish Life (now out of print) through DCMedia, the publishing house he runs in connection with the site, a vast and varied online community of all things religious and spiritual. We also have in the works a collection of my parenting essays, tentatively titled Walking by the Way: Universal Wisdom from a Real Jewish Mother. OK, enough self-promo.
David is a great guy, a fabulous journalist and good friend. His journey across America provides a moving slice of life of where we are today and what we value. So, bookmark the site and check it out each day with your morning latte. Or read it at night before you head to sleep. Dream of the open road and make your way with David and Benjamin as they crisscross this great country of ours.