From the IWALLK Podcast: Life in the Second Class - An Interview with Alex Wall - Part 1

Episode 2 of the IWALLK Podcast!

PLEASE have a listen, share these podcasts with friends, click follow at my PodOmatic page (iwallk.podomatic.com), and make a donation if you are able, either through this blog or the PayPal button at the podcast page. I'd love it if you could leave a comment to let me know what you think!

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THE IWALLK PODCAST

EPISODE 2 - LIFE IN THE SECOND CLASS

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEX WALL
PART 1

Raw Intro...

Hello! And, welcome to the IWALLK Podcast. I am your host Alex Wall. This program is being broadcast on February 26, 2017. This is Episode 2, titled: "Life in the Second Class - An Interview with Alex Wall - Part 1."

Well, I guess any very modest beginning can claim one like on Facebook. And, yes, that was the reaction to Episode 1 which I published yesterday. It's okay though. The birth of something great is always attended by a little humility, or sometimes a lot. Ha, ha!

Today, as the title implies, will be Part 1 of 3 episodes covering an interview and wide-ranging discussion I had with a University of Southern Maine graduate seminar group who was interested to hear about my experience of having a medical emergency - namely a heart attack - and having to deal with the health care system, with no insurance.

The "Life in the Second Class" part of the title is a continuation of a recent series of posts which started at the IWALLK.blogspot.com blog. You can check that out by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and looking through the "Blog Archives" of the last couple of months.

I did not, and still do not have health insurance. I am still falling through the crack the our governor, Paul LePage, openned up for poor, single, childless males in the state of Maine, by rejecting federal funds to expand Medicaid in Maine when the Affordable Care Act was first being adopted. He did this for purely ideological reasons. In this talk, we discuss this and speculate as to why - based on such ideological stances - society (or maybe only one hald society) so often rejects logical and egalitarian answers in preference of more complicated ones.

In this talk I try to answer the following questions... 

Is the health care system purposefully complex, discouraging poor people from obtaining services? 

Why did I lose MaineCare (which is Maine's version of Medicaid)? 

Is there a bias against the uninsured? 

How was I treated or mistreated during my recent medical procedures? 

Did I ever try to get ObamaCare (aka, the Affordable Care Act), and why couldn't I? 

So, now with no further adieu, let's get on with today's episode...

Interview and Discussion...
[Sorry, there is no transcript for the talk yet]



Raw Outro...

There you have it! Part 1 of the interview and discussion I had recently with a group of graduate students from the University of Southern Maine. Stay tuned for Part 2, which might also get published this week if I can edit the program before next weekend. I wanted to give a reminder that your donations are all that keeps these podcasts alive and currently it is my only source of income. So, if you can afford to send a few dollars my way by clicking the PayPal Donate button it would be most humbly appreciated. Even if you can't make a contribution, please click follow, click the like button, do share these posts with friends and family!

For now, thank you so much for joining me here today on the IWALLK Podcast.


Until next time... Try to wear your soul on the outside!

IWALLK Podcasting Has Begun!

I'm very pleased to announce the birth of the IWALLK Podcast!

Join me at least once a week for a new episode.

There will be narrated essays, interviews, talks learned people, and much more!

PLEASE have a listen, share these podcasts with friends, click follow at my PodOmatic page (iwallk.podomatic.com), and make a donation if you are able, either through this blog or the PayPal button at the podcast page. I'd love it if you could leave a comment to let me know what you think!

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Raw Transcript...

THE IWALLK PODCAST

EPISODE 1 - INTRODUCTION

Hello! And, welcome to the IWALLK Podcast. I am your host Alex Wall. This program is being broadcast on February 25, 2017. This is Episode 1 - An Introduction.

So, finally I'm giving this podcasting thing a try. For years people have suggested that I do this. It's never really seemed like the right time, especially since I was traveling around so much in the last couple of years.

For listeners who have just discovered these IWALLK projects, I should refer you to my blog, IWALLK.blogspot.com. 

In October of 2014 I left Portland Maine with no money, just a backpack and an old laptop and crossed the country by ground--often walking, but also taking buses and 

trains. I reached the West Coast, eventually settling in Livermore, California in January of 2015, where I spent five months. I tried to blog almost every day during that Journey from East Coast to West Coast. The blog account was rather rough and I do hope to clean it up someday. I discovered that people were interested in this street life and travel. I was able to survive on donations alone.

I called that first crossing of America, "Manifest Destiny: America from the Bottom Up." One thing led to another, and when it came time to leave California, I decided to do a much more challenging project. I wanted to go back across the nation, but this time write one clean blog post to account for every single day, for one year. That turned out to be 367 consecutive posts! It was literally a 24/7/365 job. I decided to call that second crossing, "A Living Magazine."

And, it was quite an adventure! Leaving on June 21st 2015, I headed the rest of the way up the West Coast, mostly walking, through Oregon and Washington where I was stuck in Spokane for a month. I slept only on a tarp at that time.

Eventually, from Washington, I took a train all the way to Minnesota, where I received a tent from a kind donor. Then, through a series of eight bus rides - one per week - I made my way down the eastern states of the Mississippi River. This included stops in Milwaukee, WI, Indianapolis, IN, Mephis, TN, Nashville, TN, Birmingham, 

AL, Montgomery, AL, Mobile, AL and New Orleans, LA. In each of those cities, I had to find a private place to camp outside. Then, for a week, I would walk around that particular city, getting to know it, taking pictures, making videos, and generally reporting on everything from the people, to the animals, architecture, the social scenes, businesses, and culture in general.

In December of 2015 I took a bus up to Athens, Georgia to begin what I called, the "Homecoming" part of Living Magazine series. For this East Coast leg I decided to travel only by walking until I got to Washington DC. I would travel any way I could through the Mid Atlantic states, then walk all the way up through Western New England to Vermont, then across Southern New Hampshire, then back down into Massachusetts and eastward until I ended up in Boston. 

So, on the first day of 2016 I started walking. I walked up through Northern Georgia, all the way through South Carolina and then North Carolina and Virginia. 

I took a train to Washington, DC from Fredericksburg, VA. Then, via bus and train I got to Poughkeepsie, NY, where I walked all the way through New England as planned, finally ending up in Boston. And, on the 366th day I took my final train from Boston to Portland, Maine.

When I got back to Maine, I had no money and no real prospects of finding a place to live. I had assumed a book deal or some kind of business opportunity would arise from all of my hard work in that past year. But, nothing of that sort came about. Let that be a lesson to anyone who assume hard work will lead to fame and fortune!

I was starving. So, in order to keep donations coming in, I decided to continue my Journeying by planning a walk up the Coast of Maine then back down through the middle of the state. I called this Journey "A Living Magazine - Grounded in Maine Journey." It was supposed to last from July 21st to October 21st. But I ended up having a heart attack midway up the coast after only 40 days. That was the unceremonious end of my Journeys.

At the bottom of the blog page you will see the "Blog Archives." If you click on any months in the time frames I've already described you can see exactly what I've been talking about. Also, feel free to join the IWALLK Group Facebook Page where we are reliving each of the posts from last year, by clicking the Facebook link at the blog.  

This brings us back to the reason for this podcast. The IWALLK blog itself has really slowed to a stop with the premature end of my Journeys, per se. I am stuck without an income. I am now a Second Class Citizen; a social situation whose related details will be covered in the next few podcasts.

Now I'm going to try to describe what the term "IWALLK" is meant to convey and what I seek to express by using it. 

Obviously, the term is a combination of my last name and the word, "walk." Originally, way back in 2011, I started the blog when I was no longer able to afford a car and had to begin walking instead of driving. Yet, IWALLK does not exclusively mean that I walk everywhere. 

At times this has been a confusing title. People saw that I was traveling by ground level and assumed that I must only be walking. As a description for my most common means of travel, it might be easier to say that I walk just about everywhere. I do not drive or ride a bike at this time. More importantly though, I want the term IWALLK to be equated with a philosophy of simplifying in every way possible. 

When I say, "IWALLK," I want it to mean that I believe - for example - in possessing only items that I need, spending as little as possible on shelter and travel, eating moderately--not focusing on what is eaten but how much, and proportionally making exercise a major priority for each day. It is about a lifestyle that honors the basics of living, without being ostentatious, superfluous, or overindulgent. IWALLK is an ideal. It is not necessarily something that I can pull off each day. 

But, it is something that I strive to do. When I think of the simplicity of traveling in the most natural and basic way, I think of walking. No mode of transport is more natural. And similarly, all activities in life might be pared down using walking as a metaphor.

Anyway, that is how I look at meaning for the name of this podcast and its associated blog.

The next three Episodes will feature yours truly being interviewed by a University of Southern Maine graduate seminar group. They were interested in my situation as a Mainer who has recently gone through a major medical emergency with no health insurance. They wanted to know what it is like to fall between the cracks of the System, and my thoughts about society in general, having been houseless for the last two years. Should be pretty interesting.

But, don't worry, not all podcasts will be about me. I just happen to have this material and it seems a very appropriate way to begin. I also hope to conduct interviews myself and publish talks by other people.

So, for now, thank you for joining me here today on the IWALLK Podcast. I look forward to meeting with you at least once a week from now on!

Until next time... Try to wear your soul on the outside!