View from our motel window, near Interstate 80 in Milan, Ohio. Our car is the one with the canoe on it.
Category Archives: Sense of place
Driving
We’re at a rest area somewhere in upstate New York. The landscape is flat. I just heard a train whistle. The traffic whines past on the nearby interstate.
A bright yellow Volkswagen an, dating from about 1970, just drove out of the rest area.Bicycles on the back, a man and a woman in the front. She had an expressive face, was wearing purple pants, and had frizzy hair. He was obvously the calm, conservative one in the relationship, and was wearing a ball cap, a dark t-shirt, and conservative shorts, like a lawyer on vacation. I’ll bet the Volkswagen van belongs to her. He was also the only black man in the rest area.
Carol guesses that they are from New York City, headed out of the city for some time off.
Fireworks and egotism
The city of New Bedford didn’t have money for fireworks on Independence Day this year. Which they only announced a week before July 4. Within a week, mayor Scott Lang announced that some local people and businesses had donated money for a fireworks display, He put the money into a fund he named the Lang Community Fund, thus proving that politicians, like preachers, are prone to egotism.
By the time the Lang Community Fund had been established, July 4th had come and gone. So the city decided to have the fireworks tonight. Having no need to witness a display of egotism, I decided not to walk down to the waterfront so I could watch the fireworks display. I stayed in the apartment, doing some final cleaning.
But I couldn’t escape. With the first boom of the fireworks, the car alarm on the fancy-schmancy car parked right outside our apartment went off. The car alarm said, “Hear me, I’m important, this car is expensive!”. It continued to go off periodically during the forty minute fireworks display, a sort of egotistical echo.
Late July
With all the rain we’ve been having, with constant puddles in all the low-lying places, it almost feels like spring rather than summer. But in spite of the weather, I know
On our walk this evening, we saw Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) growing in a number of places in cracks in the piers and wharves along the waterfront, and the plants were in full bloom: umbels of pure white, gently rounded, looking like intricate lacework.
Other midsummer flowers are also blooming. One of the chrysanthemums that we planted two years ago in our tiny little garden has deep burgundy blossoms. Near the bridge to Fairhaven, I saw some Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) plants about four feet high, each with a couple dozen pale blue flowers.
First-year Herring Gulls are everywhere. They fight each other for food. They call piteously to adult Herring Gulls, hoping to be fed (the adult gulls mostly just ignore them). There is always an injured first-year gull wandering around looking forlorn — today, Carol pointed out one with a broken wing walking up the street. Within a year, 80% of them will be killed off, but right now they are everywhere.
I’m just starting to notice that the days seem a little shorter, the sun is setting a little bit earlier.
The Red Sox have slipped out of first place. They always slip out of first place in late July or early August, and then struggle for the rest of the summer to catch up to the Yankees. They are as reliable as Queen Anne’s Lace.
Summer rain
Our PODS moving container arrived at seven this morning. As I stood outside our building waiting for the truck to show up, the rain came and went — light rain, a quick heavy shower, drizzle, then no rain for a while. The National Weather Service tells us that a low pressure system is moving up the coast of New England. We’ve only had a quarter of an inch of rain so far today, but it has felt like a wet day.
Carol and I walked down to the Waterfront Grill tonight to have a good-bye dinner with Ann and Leo. While we were walking, we admired the lush gardens tucked between the road and State Pier, and the gardens in Coast Guard Park. The hostas were especially remarkable, with huge leaves and big, tall clusters of purple flowers.
“Look at those gardens,” I said to Carol. “They look much better than they did last year.”
“It’s all that rain,” she said. “All the plants are growing like crazy.”
More rain is forecast for Thursday night. The hostas will be happy.
Video postcard: The California Zephyr
A video postcard filmed on board Amtrak’s train no. 6, the California Zephyr. The postcard is of the segment of the trip from Green River, Utah, to Denver, Colorado.
Some background information as you watch the video:
- Ruby Canyon is a beautiful red-rock canyon near Green River.
- Glenwood Springs (photos of Amtrak locomotive and train) is a pretty resort town in the mountains. As its name implies, it boasts hot springs.
- Glenwood Canyon carries both the railroad and Interstate 70 (the bridges and roads you see in this stretch are I-70).
- The only way in to Gore Canyon is by rail or raft. The rafters like to moon the trains.
- As the train passes into the Moffat Tunnel, what you see is the infrastructure for the Winter Park Ski Resort.
- The Moffat Tunnel is 6.2 miles long.
- The “Big Ten Curve” goes through 270 degrees, giving a sweeping panorama of the sunset sky as the train slowly negotiates the turn.
- Denver’s Union Station has been beautifully restored. Today, unfortunately, only two trains a day use the station (plus a few weekend ski trains in season).
Home again
The train arrived in Providence right at the scheduled time of 11:27 p.m., and now I’m home. I have a cold that seems to have turned into bronchitis. The charger for my cell phone died, and until I can find a replacement for it, I have no cell phone. In spite of all that, I feel relaxed and re-energized by an amazing three-day train trip that covered three-quarters of the continent.
More later.
More local flavor from Salt Lake City
Lightning struck the glass tower outside the convention center today. It broke several windows in the tower. I just walked by the front of the convention center, and there were a bunch of city workers out there sweeping up the glass.
Behind the convention center, about three blocks away, I happened across the Salt Lake City Buddhist Temple. In front of it stand three amazing trees: some kind of pine tree with long needles and a delightfully convoluted trunk; a Japanese maple tree; and a tall mulberry tree covered with ripe fruit.
I took a walk this morning, and wound up walking past the local homeless shelter. Maybe thirty people were standing in front of the shelter or across the street. A block away there’s an upscale outdoor mall, complete with Abercrombie and Fitch and Gap stores.
Local flavor from Salt Lake City
Yesterday I found myself in Sam Weller’s, the oldest independent bookstore in Salt Lake City. It’s as good a bookstore as Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, which reveals something about the intellectual life of Salt Lake City. There was a television crew there conducting interviews, because Sam Weller, the owner of the store, had died that day. I overheard the interviewer asking a girl of about ten years old, “So what does Sam Weller’s mean to you?” Very eloquently, she told how important books were for her, and how much she likes to go to that bookstore. She sounded like a budding intellectual, with all that entails.
Later that evening, Rev. Tom Goldsmith, minister of First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, welcomed delegates to the first session of Plenary. Among other things, he said that some state leaders look askance at Salt Lake City, because of the intellectual ferment of the city. “They call it ‘Sin City’,” he said.
If you think of Salt Lake City as a dour theocracy, you’ve gotten a wrong impression of the city. In the neighborhood of the convention center, I have found not just Sam Weller’s, but also art galleries, a film center, ethnic restaurants, and more. After experiencing a little bit of Salt Lake City, my only surprise is that there are only two Unitarian Universalist congregations in the city.