Sorry, but this is a bit of a rant

I went to the movies last night. I used to go to the movies a lot, even went to several film festivals, but we got out of the habit when the kids were little and haven't gotten back in the groove. It's important when you're at my stage of life, that being later middle age when the kids are kind of on their way out, to make sure that you don't just keep doing what became normal when you had greater responsibility for your childrens' moment-to-moment well being. Because ultimately you end up depriving yourself for no good reason.

The particular result of not going to the movies much is that I don't see many movies. I know, I know, but I don't particularly like watching them on TV, so I really never see them. I'm not sure how big a loss this is, but I know I used to enjoy it.

In any event, we went to a movie called The Artist. It was in black and white and I liked it except I couldn't hear a damn thing anybody was saying. But it's nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, so we went.

Seriously, it was a good movie and it was nice to see someone playing with the classic silent genre. But it got gimmicky at times and although it's unique I didn't see it as quite being worth all the fuss, except that so many major movies are just so downright dull that it looks like a masterpiece by comparison.

My perspective is clearly different now than when I was younger, but it seems to me that movies may be following a similar path as music. With music, you can clearly see that the mainstream is congealing into a soulless mush- stuff called R&B that has neither, whiny-boy rock that sounds no different from any other, Nickelback. Need I say more? At the same time, as it's become easier to produce and distribute music independently, interesting things are happening around the edges. But the general effect is that of a slow slide into mediocrity. Maybe the same thing is happening in movies.

It's easy to make the case that both rock music and movies are just plain tired. Rock has a fairly uncomplicated format and for the most part its output is limited to a bunch of 3-4 minute pieces. Maybe there's only so much one can do with an electric guitar, keyboard, bass and drums. And how many interesting ideas for movies could there possibly be? Are there an unlimited number?

What's interesting for me is that while the technology of delivering visual entertainment and music and any sort of popular art has advanced and dissolved and re-formed in sometimes revolutionary ways, the types of expression has changed very little. Yeah, 3-D movies, mashups, more realistic shooter games. But so what? There is clearly nothing revolutionary about that. It may not even be evolutionary.

 And yet the underlying themes are just as powerful as ever. I always thought movies were abut storytelling. And so is a good song. So are we out of stories or are we just being stupid about it? Or maybe lazy is a better word. I'm afraid the advanced technology is mostly being used to make it easier to make crap, rather than to expand horizons.

The Train Experience, Part 2- Conclusional

Or maybe delusional. It's hard to tell, at least on the train because I was by myself and had no way to know if anything I was seeing or doing was real. That isn't unique to train travel; anytime you're alone for an extended period you start to lose context for your life and you can become doubtful or confused. That's also part of the pleasure, for me at least. You have a lot of "wait, what?" moments. I'm always so moored in all the stuff of life that it's refreshing to be completely free of it. What strikes me is that being able to do this kind of trip requires one to be pretty comfortable with one's self. You spend the major portion of your time inside your own head, so you'd better be able to stand being there.

Before I go further, here are the routes I took:

Southwest Chief (Los Angeles to Chicago- you can click for more information if you want. I boarded in Flagstaff, AZ)

Capitol Limited (Chicago to Washington)

When I last took a long train trip, around 1980, it was much more solitary than it is now. In 1980, scientists were just demonstrating that cellular phone service could possibly work- the idea of being able to seamlessly move from one transmission tower to another was radical at the time. They weren't really available for several years and weren't useful outside of big cities until well into the 90's, so the only time you could talk to people not on the train was when they would stop to change crews or gas up (long distance trains run on diesel, they're only electric around a few big cities) and stay in a station for 20 minutes or so. So the time a flood washed out a bridge in North Dakota and my train from Seattle to Chicago had to back up 50 miles and reroute 100 miles south, it wasn't until we were in Minneapolis almost 24 hours later that I could call my friend and tell her not to bother trying to pick me up at 6 PM because we would be arriving around 7 the next morning. Now, of course, I could call home at most, though not all, times and update my progress.

The relative lack of solitude, though not ideal when the point was to get some quiet, didn't really bother me. What kept running through my head the entire trip was how everyone needs to get out and take a look around. There's lots of discussion about how technology and the flood of information makes us less able to concentrate, interferes with this and that, is ruining our children, blah, blah blah. I think the real danger is if it draws us inward and stops us from exploring outside of our personal bubbles. I like to stay in my comfort zone as much as anyone, but going outside that zone has provided many of the best experiences of my life, and if you're resourceful can expand it as you go. I used to be able to do that and I was glad to see that I still could.

This country is vast. Traveling even through fewer than a quarter of the states gives you a perspective that's impossible otherwise. Every place I passed through had intrinsic beauty. Clearly, the Southwest and Cumberland areas are especially scenic, but I don't accept that the flatlands of Kansas are not beautiful in their own right. A grassy hillside looks like nothing among soaring peaks, but if it's the only hill for a mile, it can be graceful and attractive and welcoming. I spent nearly every waking minute on a 55 hour trip just looking out the window, and feeling guilty for every moment I didn't. There is always something to see.

So should you do this? It depends. Going by yourself is not for everyone. It doesn't seem odd to me, but I seem to have a much higher tolerance for solitude than most. Going with a friend or child or grandchild? Could work. Don't get a Roomette for more than one person, they're too small; the bedrooms are much roomier, but someone's still gotta sleep on the upper bunk, which scarily drops down from the wall like the changing table in an airplane bathroom. Don't do it if you're fidgety, or perhaps more important don't do it if your companion is fidgety. There no escaping that or anything else that's on the train, though of course you do escape everything that isn't on the train.

Finally, I guess the question is did the trip serve its purpose, did it help clear my head? I'd have to say that it did. I was able to renew my sense of myself a bit and get back to the day-to-day. I got some quiet and didn't have to drive 2000 miles to get it. And I hope I have another chance to take another trip like this before too long.

The state of my life

If you want to know about my family dynamic, my wife got an iPhone and is doing custom ringtones for all of us. For my HS Junior, it's "I'm sexy and I know it;" for my 20 year-old classic rock fan it's "Baba O'Reilly." For me? "Sir Robin's Song" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The Train Experience-Part 1, Anecdotal

I continue to be inspired by my National Archives Experience brochure and will for the time being try to describe everything I do as an Experience. I think I will start with the random recollections and observations that didn't make it into the travelogue. And then I'll try to pull it all together in another post if that ends up being possible.

Although I mentioned communal seating earlier, I forgot to mention the main benefit for a solo traveler like myself. If I didn't sit at a meal table with other people, I could go for the 36 hours I was on the train without talking to anyone. Not that I have a problem with that. I know from past experience that it's hard to return to life where you do have to talk to people if you don't do any of that for a while. I was alone from Tuesday afternoon until Friday evening, so it could have been bad.

On a related topic, a couple of people asked me what I did with myself for that long a time. Part of the way I keep myself occupied is to talk to myself. I do this almost constantly. I have a running monologue going on in my head almost all the time that gets woven into everyday conversation. In this kind of situation, though, it's very much exaggerated and I feel the need to comment (to myself) on almost everything that happens and everything I do and consciously think. That and I look out the window.

I forgot to mention that I took a shower on the train. The larger sleeping compartments have their own very tiny showers, but the roomettes share a single shower on the lower level. I regret that I don't have a picture of it, but it's actually a fairly normal looking shower with decent water pressure and enough hot water. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who used it for the duration of the trip, which is a frightening thought. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not do this while the train was moving, but rather while we were sitting the station in Kansas City. This reminded of the train trip I did 30-something years ago, where the bathrooms all had prominent warnings not to flush the toilet while the train is standing in the station. This is because flushing was pretty much just opening a trap door. You could see the tracks going by down below. Some bathrooms were missing the trap door.

Since train travel doesn't necessarily attract the mainstream, you get a cast of characters who tend to appear and reappear in your small range of movement (Compartment, dining car, Observation/lounge car). Both trains had an extended Mennonite family, with several young men, a couple of young women and an extremely well-behaved baby. They pretty much kept to themselves in the lounge car, ate food they'd brought, played cards and dice and did embroidery. I did chat with one of them who was telling me about a Mennonite man who figured out how to use the stars to design a train tunnel such that you could start from both sides and meet perfectly in the middle. They got off in Pittsburgh to go to Lancaster. The Brazilians were more out and about, but nobody could understand them (one sat briefly at my lunch table and took his food to go). The rest of the train broke into 5 main groups: budget/student, fear of flying, retired couples chilling, natives of towns not served by airlines, and train junkies. I guess I fit best into that last category, though the real hardcores frame every reference in terms of a train trip they've taken.

One of my favorite characters that I didn't really have anything to do with was Philosophy Girl, 20-ish, tall, thin, mousy/pretty, bangs, big glasses, fuzzy clothing and boots, wool hat with pom-poms hanging down. She spent the entire Chicago-Washington run sitting at a lounge car table reading Hegel and occasionally writing something. One of the young Brazilian men (OK, I've held back for a long time but here goes: Presidential Aide: Three Brazilians were killed in a military exercise yesterday. GWB: How many is a brazillion? Sorry.) seemed to be chatting with her for a little while during the evening but otherwise I never saw her move or speak.

Saw some bald eagles out the window at various points. Also went by a plowed, unplanted field where many of the rows were filled with white birds just sitting together with more swooping in and joining them. My breakfast companions wondered what gulls were doing in a place like that and I blurted out, "Maybe they're free range chickens." They looked at me and said, "That fly?" Honestly, I wasn't serious but still.

Finally (for now, anyway) on the last leg of the trip, one entire car was filled with a bunch of girls, high school seniors or maybe college freshmen, on their way to New York to go to plays. I stood behind them on the snack car line and one asked the attendant, "Can I have a cup of coffee?" Then, "Do you have different kinds or just regular coffee?" The guy behind me and I started to chuckle and he said, "There's the Starbucks generation for you. Looking for a frappucino in the train snack car." I was tempted to ask the attendant the same thing but did not.

Be back later with conclusions.

End of the (rail)Road

 It’s 9:40 in the morning on Friday and we have stopped. Even though the train is over an hour late already, we have stopped to do a routine inspection. I could overhear the conductor telling her assistant to check every wheel- not just look but touch (I guess to see if it’s overheated or maybe just so the guy would know what train wheels feel like). This is a long train and it could take a while. It’s a safety thing, so tough to complain.  Five minutes later we started again.

The western train made a test stop as well, this one mandated by the track owners. Amtrak does not own any track except the northeast corridor. They lease most of it from freight companies. Those companies have the right to stop trains and make sure they’re following all the rules and that was some kind of signal check. That took almost half an hour, but they build so much slack into the schedule that they were able to catch up in the flats of Kansas.

No such luck this morning. We’re in the hills of western Pennsylvania, headed toward Cumberland, MD and the country is too rolling to give the people who build the railway much of a choice, they have to follow rivers, which with few exceptions proceed in a fairly orderly, though often curvy, right of way. The terrain limits what kinds of speeds you can attain. Trains are bad at hills and curves. 

We haven’t had a lick of cellular service for the last 45 minutes, so I can’t check my map to see where we are exactly. It’s very isolated and very pretty there are occasional rustic houses (with outhouses) and a road here and there, though I haven’t seen any cars today. It’s not the limitless expanse of the west, but beautiful and peaceful nonetheless.

Even after the stop we crawled for about a half hour. Apparently there was not one, but two minor derailments of freight trains here yesterday and there are still workmen around. As the conductor said, if we hit one of them we’d get delayed for another 2 or 3 hours minimum. At this point we started going through a series of tunnels, which I guess is another way of cracking the topographic challenges.

I had breakfast with an older guy who did not look in the best of health, but he was among the liveliest company I’ve had this trip. He seems to like to travel everywhere, or at least anywhere he can drive or take a train, and we spent a while talking about Alaska.

Spent most of the morning in the observation car, listening to the extended family of Brazilians chatter on in Portuguese. We were tracking along the Youghiogheny River (pronounced yokageny or yok for short), which heads north into the Monongahela at a place called, conveniently enough, Confluence, PA. It’s a very nice river, with lots of dramatic views. There’s also a bike/walking trail that runs along a converted railroad right of way.

The train was supposed to arrive at 12:40 so there wasn’t supposed to be lunch served, but since we were well over an hour late at that point, we were provided with a meal if we wished. My tablemate was another guy traveling alone. He had a slow, kind of reluctant manner, but ultimately was good company. He’s from Terre Haute, IN, says he owns a farm but doesn’t farm it, and has been an adjunct professor of a variety of miscellaneous subjects at nearby colleges. I never did find out what he did for a living or if he did anything. I said I knew there was someone famous from Terre Haute, and though he wasn’t originally from there, Larry Bird went to school there, of course.

The main attraction at lunch was sitting across from us, a set of twin old ladies, dressed identically, who were busy regaling their tablemates with stories of their travels. Apparently they’re performers of some kind, because I’d heard from a conductor that they had been dancing in the Observation Car. At lunch, all they did was sing along with synchronized hand motions, while the Brazilians took video of them. They were very cute and it appeared that that was what they did with their time, travel around, be cute, and maybe perform.  Nice work if you can get it.

After lunch it was time to clean up my little roomette and get ready to arrive in Washington. There’s a huge amount of slack in the last part of the schedule, so rather than arrive the expected 2 hours late, we were a mere hour and 20 minutes.

This gave me enough time to stroll around the lovely Washington train station, swinging through the food court, which I’d not seen before. It was truly impressive- almost every kind of food was available at the stands, ranging from Cajun to Indian to Jamaican to BarBQ to plain old pizza and deli. I was sorry I’d eaten on the train. If I’d know I’d have time I would have waited.

Finally got on my train northbound for the quick, routine hop up to Philadelphia, Or not. A few minutes out of the station we stopped, then began to back up. At first I was afraid there was a mechanical problem, which would force us all off the train. But instead it turned out that the train in front of us had had the problems, and we had to back up to a switch where we could get onto another track. From there on the trip was routine, Good trip. A few reflections later.

Day two on the train(s)

When I woke up we had magically changed from half an hour late to half an hour early and we were in Kansas City. I’ve been in Kansas City before and like it. I’d like to go back. There are lots of places I’d like to go back to.

It was cold there, so I was forewarned for what Chicago might be like. We arrived a few minutes early, so I had a couple of hours to walk around, which pleased me greatly. I love Chicago. If you like architecture it’s a place where every place you turn is a new bit of eye candy. It is also unspeakably cold in the winter. I bundled up properly but forgot one thing, well, ten things, actually- my toes. I stupidly wore my sneakers instead of my more protective hiking shoes. I learned a couple of years ago at a baseball game that sneakers and extended exposure to cold do not mix.

It was 14 degrees with a slight but noticeable breeze, which made for a lively walk, punctuated with frequent ducking into lobbies and stores to ward off frostbite. The city is just glorious. I saw a building I’d never seen before- the public library, which although partially obscured by the El, was spectacular. 

Every building had some interesting design element. You think of Chicago was just blue collar and to an extent I guess it is, but the Fire left the city barren at a very rich time for architecture and building technology (skyscrapers, for instance, require such things as elevators), and a tradition of design ranging from thoughtful to spectacular was begun.

By the time I was done walking, I was fully refrigerated and ready to stay inside. Chicago’s Union Station is a maze and at rush hour a very busy one. There’s a decent food court that is hard to get to because during the evening rush all the escalators are running down and some portals have no stairs. I eventually found my way up there via a secret-looking escalator that I guess is there solely to run the opposite direction from what every other escalator is doing.

The train got to the station late and we were boarded quickly. The train began to pull out and suddenly over the PA system we hear “Judith’s not on the train! Judith’s not on the train!” Apparently, the dining car manager had gotten off to pick up some cash and the train started to leave without her. She still sounded out of breath when she called us for dinner 15 minutes later.

My dinner companions this evening are a couple from Baltimore. She doesn’t like to fly and he puts up with it. They’re slightly odd. They have salad dressing in packets and after she finished her salad she kept squeezing bits of dressing onto her finger and licking it off.

Nobody to talk to in the lounge car this time. Most of the people in there are Brazilian and barely speak English. I went to bed on the early side.

Intersections and diversions

Yesterday was the school ski trip. I've been chaperoning this trip for the past 6 or 7 years because I like to ski and it's a fun day, and in this case had the added benefit of allowing me to miss a day of meetings. This trip proceeded through the usual routine for most of the day. We loaded up the bus, left 15 minutes late, and had an easy trip up.

By the time everyone was checked in and ready to go it was around 11 AM and I got my skis on and headed up the mountain. It was decent snow, considering that there was no snow for 100 miles in any direction except for what was on the trails. I had new boots which hurt but I could tell were much better than my previous boots and which saved me from falling at one point because of their betterness.

As sometimes happens, I met up with a bunch of kids that I knew who asked if I wanted to ski with them. I never ask in because I don't want to intrude, but I'm usually happy to join, and I knew these were good skiers who I'd enjoy being with. We skied for a while and then decided to have lunch. Lunch can be a bit awkward in these cases, because I never know if the kids want a teacher sitting there with them, but in this case I put my stuff down on a table and everyone else did too.

It was fun sitting with a pretty big group with a good-sized age range. Lots of back and forth silliness a lot of laughing. I joined in (though not for the grosser stuff) and really enjoyed it. And as we were packing up to go back out a thought hit me.

I've occasionally pondered the relationship between teachers (me in particular) and students. Our lives intersect at various points, usually in class and occasionally on trips or other events as well, but we're not friends, no matter how friendly we are. We're never going to each other's house or going to the movies together. This is neither good nor bad; it's just the way things are. So I was thinking, here we are, a bunch of people who know each other pretty well,  doing the same thing together and all having fun. But our lives could hardly be more dissimilar. My perspective is necessarily completely different from theirs. At any given moment, even if we're sitting on a ski lift together, there is practically no chance that we're thinking about the same thing at any point.

So we were, in fact, sitting on the lift while I'm congratulating myself for this profound revelation, when I check my phone as part of my chaperon duties, and there was a missed call from the bus driver. I'm on the ski lift, what's up? I texted him. He texted back A kid is injured. He's at First Aid . I tell my companions that I've gotta go and I say to myself "Bingo! This is exactly what I was thinking." Not only is there no way any of these kids are getting that phone call, but none of them can even conceive of getting that kind of call and being expected to act on it.

So, my profound realization in hand, I head off to the first aid center and ultimately to a local hospital where the kid, who broke his arm but is otherwise fine, was treated and picked up by his father, who drove me home as well. Very full and interesting day indeed.

Happy New Year