I am the yellow and the red lines

While Maureen Dowd is on leave at the Times, Sarah Vowell is filling in as guest columnist. Saturday’s column, “Our Faith-Based Train Rides,” in which she asks whether it makes sense for Wyoming to get more money per resident from the Homeland Security Department than New York, opens:

John is the A train. Robin and the other John are the L. Nicole used to be the 1 and the 9, but ever since they canceled the 9 she’s been just the 1. Geoff and Jen, Joel and Kate, Ted and Scott and, Joan — they are the F. Four months ago, I moved east of Fifth Avenue and became the N and the 6, even though there’s a part of me that will always be the C and the E.

It’s not just the New York subway map I think of as a refrigerator door plastered with loved ones’ snapshots. The Richmond BART line in California is Eli heading home to Berkeley; the orange line on the Washington Metro is Carson, reading her son a bedtime story in Arlington; the purple line in Paris is David, who moved there so he could smoke.

When I woke up on Thursday and turned on the radio to news of the London bus and tube bombings, the announcer said, “Piccadilly Line,” but in my head it’s just called “Nick.”

It’s good stuff. Check it out (link via Mike). Previously: “A Pat on the Back” (“Breaking news: Pat Robertson is sane”).