Category Archives: Sense of place

Traveling companions

The last four presidential administrations poured money into highways and air travel, while starving passenger rail travel for funding. Indeed, the Bush administration made no bones about wanting to kill off passenger rail travel in the United States — not surprising when you realize that the Bush administration was run by oil company interests, and rail travel is the most fuel-efficient form of travel we have right now. So I was not surprised when the conductor announced that the dining car had to be shut down, but that they would get us sandwiches in Denver.

We had half an hour in Denver while they serviced the train, so I got out to stretch my legs. I wound up talking with Simon, and when the engineer blew the whistle and we trooped up to get our sandwiches, I followed Simon to the observation car to eat. Almost all the seats were taken, but there was only one person sitting at one of the tables.”Mind if we sit here?” we asked. He did not.

We introduced ourselves. He was Will, a high school student on the way to Salt Lake City with his family. He had a copy of The Two Towers, and we all got to talking about Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy. The train was rolling along and we sat there eating lunch and talking about other fantasy series we had read — Narnia, Harry Potter — and comparing them. From fantasy the conversation turned to education, and then to Australia (Simon was from Australia), and a whole host of other subjects.

Suddenly we realized that we were climbing up a steep slope via a series of switchbacks. We could look ahead and see the locomotive, look back and see the last car, and look down and see the last switchback we had just come up. We were going around the famous Big Ten Curve, ascending the Front Range of the Rockies. At some point, Will’s brother Wes joined us, and joined the conversation. When we passed by the most spectacular views, the conversation consisted of pointing out the beauties of the scenery through which we were passing; when we were in one of the many tunnels on the route, the conversation returned to more mundane matters.

After the Big Ten Curve, people started leaving the observation car. But the scenery kept getting better. We passed under the Continental Divide through the six-mile-long Moffat Tunnel, and into Glenwood Canyon, with thousand-foot canyon walls rising almost vertically on either side. We craned our necks back, and pointed out particularly marvelous rock formations to each other. And all this time, the conversation continued: two middle-aged men, and two young men in their late teens, carrying on an extended conversation that ranged from the trivial to the profound. Simon told us how he lost his leg, as a physician volunteering in Afghanistan in 2004 and Will told us about his artistic ambitions. We talked about what it’s like to be a man in contemporary society. We talked about other trips we had taken, or trips that we dreamed about taking. It turned out that Simon had never smelled sagebrush. Will, Wes, and I tried to describe the smell — an impossible task — and finally at one of the stops where they let us out to stretch our legs, I found some sagebrush, broke off a branch, and gave it to Simon.

At last it grew dark, and we saw the new moon rising over barely-visible buttes and mesas. Finally, at ten thirty, I said I had better get some sleep. We were due in to Salt Lake at three in the morning, and I needed to take a nap so I could be marginally functional when we arrived. Will and Wes said they were going to stay up until they arrived in Salt Lake. Simon, although he was continuing on to Emeryville, California, said he thought he’d go to bed, too. We shook hands all around, and went our separate ways.

Met while traveling

Written Monday, June 22, while on the train; posted Wednesday, June 24, and back-dated.

It’s what they call “community seating” in the dining car — they seat you with other people who come in at about the same time you do. Sure, you can take your food and go eat in your sleeping compartment, but it’s more fun to meet different people.

At dinner, I was seated with a family of three: mom, dad, daughter in mid-teens. They had been touring colleges on the East Coast, and were headed to Denver to visit colleges in that area. Upon finding out that I was from the Boston area, the dad turned to me and asked what I thought about Harvard College. I told him that I thought they were overpriced for what you got, unless all you wanted was the name on your diploma. “But,” I said, turning to the daughter, “it depends on what your filed is.”

“English,” she said, “writing, really.” So I asked what kind of writing she was interested in, and she said journalism and creative non-fiction. And then I asked what writers she liked, and she named Hunter S. Thompson and….

“Oh, New Journalism, huh?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, looking surprised that I knew what she was talking about.

So I told her that I love New Journalism, and besides my spouse, Carol, is a journalist, and my older sister has an MFA in creative writing, so like it or not I would know something about it. I told that Carol went to Newhouse School at Syracuse, and got good training in journalism; but what they told Carol at Newhosue was that you don’t need a degree in journalism, you mostly just need to write. So maybe it wasn’t so important which school she went to; maybe she should just find a college in New York City simply because it is the literary center of the United States. She had already thought about that.

Then the conversation meandered all over the place, and it turned out that the daughter had talked her parents into taking a side trip to drive past Woody Creek, where Hunter Thompson lived the last half of his life. Her parents didn’t quite roll their eyes, but obviously didn’t understand her passion. I love some of Thompson’s writing, especially Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, so I was far more sympathetic.

“Sounds like a good trip,” I said to her. “Literary pilgrimage is a venerable tradition. In fact, now that you mention it, going to Woody Creek a literary pilgrimage I should make.”

As we finished desert, I couldn’t resist asking her, “So how many words a day do you write?” “Well,” she said, and then admitted that she didn’t write every day. But wasn’t she was writing letters about her trip to a friend back home, which counts as writing, and writing in her journal? I said she should post those letters on a blog. She said that maybe she might do that some day.

5 hours in Chicago

Off the train from DC at 8:40. Breakfast in the DePaul University Bookstore Cafe (crappy bookstore, great cafe). Quick stop at Performance Classical Sheet Music (a couple of blocks south of Symphony Center) one of the few sheet music stores still in existence — the best part about Performance Music is that you get to ride up to the ninth floor in an old-fashioned elevator with and elevator operator sitting on a stool, a wooden floor, the hand-operated doors.

By then the Art Institute was open. I visited the new modern art wing, which wasn’t open when we lived outside Chicago. Then, just wandering around, I wandered into a small show of work by Hong Kong artist Wucius Wong — incredible work.

Ran back to Union Station, and they just called my train to board….

Light

For a while in the mid-afternoon, it looked like we might have a thunderstorm: tall cumulus clouds loomed ominously in the west. But then the clouds dissipated, the wind shifted idly towards the northeast, and the temperature dropped. As I walked along Route 6 across Pope’s Island, limpid sunlight fell on the boats moored at the marina south of me. It seemed as though I could see every detail of every boat, and each blade of grass, and each bit of dirty flotsam bobbing in the harbor waters. Yet I could not see with complete clarity; the moisture in the air softened edges and slightly blurred the details into a more harmonious whole. The light along the New England coast in June is like no other light I’ve ever seen: the angle of the sun, the moisture in the air, the changes in the weather all combine to make the light soft and always changing.

House hunting

We’re here in California looking for a place to live. It is not a particularly pleasant task. You call about an apartment, and people don’t call you back. You talk to someone who says the apartment really isn’t for rent yet, but it will be soon, and they can’t show it yet, but they can show it soon, and it’s all very vague, and you realize that this person wants to make sure that only The Right People get to rent in this building, like probably only white people who seem “respectable.” You go to see an apartment in your price range, and it’s in a building that is well-maintained but was originally poorly built. We’ve always been lucky in the past, and have always found a good landlord renting a decent apartment at a fair price — but every time we go house-hunting, we realize that our experience is probably not the norm, which seems so sad.

What I’ll miss

As we get ready to move to California, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll miss. Of course I’ll miss my dad and sister, although they live just far enough away from here that I only see them about once every two months. Of course I’ll miss eastern Massachusetts culture and accents (that’s plural on purpose), since I’m used to cold undemonstrative people who speak God’s own English.

While I was taking a long walk today, I realized that I will also miss eastern Massachusetts birds. I’m used to the eastern Massachusetts ecosystems. I’m used to watching Common Grackles come back each year (no grackles in California). I’m used to hearing the song of Northern Cardinals (no cardinals in California, except a few feral escapees). It’s a whole different ecosystem out there, with completely different birds. It will be fun learning a whole new ecosystem, but I’ll still miss this ecosystem.

Changing neighborhood

T— told Carol that he’s going to sell his condo and move out of our neighborhood. It’s getting too noisy, he said.

There have always been bars and nightspots in the neighborhood, but in the past few months several new bars have opened. Fortunately for us, we’re three or four blocks away from the really noisy bars, but at closing time on Saturday night, even we can hear the hooping and hollering and revving of engines. We all wanted our neighborhood to have a little more life, but I don’t think any of us were hoping for a little more drunken noisy life after midnight.

One of the new bars that recently opened up is called Rose Alley, and at permitting time the owners implied it would be a place that would emphasize eating over drinking. Carol and I happened to walk past Rose Alley in the afternoon a few days ago, and Carol pointed out that they have already had to put a sign on the building: “This Is A Residential Neighborhood. Please Respect Our Neighbors.” The sign was placed right where the neighbors will see it when they walk past the building, but not where the clientele would notice it as they leave, drunk and noisy, at two in the morning.

You can’t blame the bar owners for wanting to attract lots of people to their bars. But it does seem hard on people like T—, who also have a financial investment at stake — and who actually have to live here, unlike the bar owners who probably live out in the suburbs where it’s quiet.