What is this blog about?

Jon and Susan have been walking the streets of Winston-Salem for about a year. They typically walk in the evening, after Susan has finished listening to Marketplace on WFDD. If you had asked them at the time why they walked, they would have likely said to have an opportunity to exercise and get to know each other. But after only a few evenings of walking and talking, it became apparent that the walks were less about exercise and friendly conversation and more about the opportunity for close observation of a city that can be impartially described as "unwelcoming to pedestrians." By mid-summer they were walking and talking several hours most evenings of the week (with the exception of Fridays, which are set aside for wine on a year-round basis).

These walks dispelled Susan's strong initial impression that she and Jon were utterly incompatible, as they revealed the following. First, both are easily bored, so that they tend to keep moving and hence cover a lot of ground; also, by mutual agreement, they rarely cover the same ground twice. Second, both are more curious about the commonplace and ordinary than the exotic. Their tacit motto might be "the unexceptional is not uninteresting."

Jon and Susan walked miles and miles in Winston-Salem last summer. In the course of their walks they learned much about the city's past and the city as it is today. They sometimes feel that they can glimpse the Winston-Salem of the future. Jon frequently took photographs, but overall they did an extremely poor job keeping a record of their observations. This blog represents their attempt to keep better records in 2009.

Jon takes almost all of the photographs. Susan will write most of the blog entries. Because Susan purchased as many maps as possible when she moved to Winston-Salem in 2004, she owns the street atlas that was used to track the 2008 walks. This year Jon is using the Path Tracker ap on his iPhone to record the routes - not to see in advance where they are going, but to look back at where they have been.

The cul-de-sacs of Winston-Salem are calling...