On board train no. 174, eastern Connecticut

The regional train service offered by Amtrak from New York to Boston travels right along the coast. From New Haven to Rhode Island, the tracks are especially close to the ocean, at times passing over salt water inlets via causeways. Twenty years ago, I rode a train from Boston to New York along this route right after a hurricane, and in several places boats had been pushed right up next to the tracks — that’s how close to the water you get. I’m riding train no. 174, one of several trains bearing the dull name of “Regional Service”; twenty years ago, train no. 174 was called “The Mayflower,” which reminded you that you were going back to New England.

I had my head in a book from New York’s Penn station to New Haven. After you leave New Haven, it always seems that the leaves are not so deep a green color as they are in the middle Atlantic states. The change was enough to make me look up from my book, and gaze out the window. The green of New England is mixed with a measure of gold, and the trees and bushes look lighter and even a little translucent.

We passed through the port of New London. Two ferries to Long Island were at their dock, with a few cars on board. The Block Island ferry was just a little farther along the waterfront, and here again I could look right into the car deck as we passed by. Beyond the ferries, I could see cranes reaching into a huge red ship, unloading containers. I saw only a few fishing boats. The far side of the harbor was dominated by the huge General Dynamics building — mysterious in its blankness, forbidding.

The train pulled out of the station. We passed through salt marshes with their peculiar green-gold color, the ocean disappeared and we passed modest suburban houses, suddenly we were on a causeway with the water lapping at the rocks not far below the tracks. A beach appeared, widened, people lay in the sun and splashed in the water, the beach got hidden by a dune and then by scraggly pine trees, a boardwalk with people carrying towels and floats and coolers, they headed towards an underpass going under the tracks.

The ocean disappeared, woods and houses, then a small inlet with just one mooring and one small powerboat tied to it, woods and houses again, then a fair sized harbor with two marinas separated by jetties. At the far side of the harbor, huge houses looked down on the water, in which they were reflected.

Another salt marsh, but here the phragmites had invaded, driving out most of the native plants.

We climbed away from the water and passed through woodlands. Many of the trees closest to the tracks had turned brown; or if they weren’t entirely brown, the side facing the tracks was brown. Through more woods, a beaver pond with standing dead trees provided a brief opening, back into the woods. The woods ended at a sewage treatment plant, and the conductor announced that the next stop would be Kingston, Rhode Island. And through it all, the woman sitting in front of me lay sprawled out across two seats; her feet, clad in thick black socks, propped up on the window; she was asleep and unaware of all that we had passed.

Written 14 August on the train, posted 15 August.

Not paying attention

Julius Lester, one of my favorite bloggers, published a post with an email message from me on his blog. Lester has been wondering why there are no big protests against the Iraq War, and thinking back to the big protests against the Vietnam War. A first post by Lester (link) prompted a response from a reader named Nancy Ewalt (link) which led to my thoughts about why there isn’t any organized protest against the Iraq War. (I guess I wasn’t paying attention, and didn’t notice when he posted this back on August 1.)

Even if you aren’t interested in the topic, you should still check out Lester’s blog. His thoughts about political issues from racism to war to media manipulation are worth reading, and his photos are pretty cool. Link to his blog.

Your thoughts on sin and evil?

I’m headed off to Washington, DC, for a couple of days, to stay with a Quaker friend. No, we’re not going to do any protesting against the Iraq War (we did that in March), we’re just going to hang out for a couple of days.

While I’m away, I’d love to know your thoughts on sin and evil. I’m really interested in any comments you may have on this topic. I’ll also share the specific questions I’ve been considering:

  • Is there a difference between sin and evil, and if so, what is it?
  • What feeling or emotions do you associate with sin? — with evil?
  • What is the worst sin you have ever seen or experienced (no personal revelations needed, you can speak in general terms if you like)?
  • In your opinion, what is the biggest evil that exists today (again, no personal revelations needed, you can speak in general terms if you like)?

Polished theological treatises on sin and evil are fine, but what I’m really hoping for is more in the lines of brainstorming:– raw ideas, feelings, thoughts, musings.

And here’s a special invitation to those of you who never post comments, an invitation to chime in, and write a little something. (This Web site averages more than 3,000 unique visitors a month, and less than one percent of you write comments!) If it’s your first time commenting, remember that your comment may be held for my review, so don’t panic if it doesn’t show up right away.

See you again on August 15….

Autumn watch

Carol and I went for a walk this evening. We stopped at our tiny garden our in front of our building, and picked the deadheads off the cosmos. The cosmos are starting too look a little blowsy, the chrysanthemum is blooming already, and the aster is getting big. We walked down to the waterfront under dark clouds and occasional spitting rain. The cool air prompted me to zip up my rain coat to stay warm.

As we walked along, I noticed some brown dead leaves had accumulated in a small stairwell near the docks. Putting my own thoughts into words, Carol said, “Oh, it feels like fall.” Cool and rainy, the sun setting noticeably earlier, it did feel like fall this evening. I know perfectly well that we will have many more hot, humid days before summer is truly over. But this evening, we could feel that fall is on its way.

Art on the highway, part 2

On the way back from Maine, I stopped at the southbound rest area at Kennebunk to look at another of the William Wegman murals installed by the Maine Turnpike Authority. The mural is most definitely not what you’d expect to see in a highway rest area. At the end of this short (1:32) video, I ask myself a question that was implicit in a comment on the previous post on the Wegman highway murals….

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

On giving up

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

It stopped raining late this morning, and by early evening the sky was almost entirely clear. With clear skies and a light wind, the conditions on Saco Bay were the best they’ve been all week. I decided to try to paddle to Eagle Island, about a mile off shore.

By six o’clock, I was pushing the canoe into the light surf. I waded out up to my thighs, jumped in the canoe, and started paddling. There were a few large cloud masses off to the southeast which might become thunderheads, but they were well to the south and moving away from me. I felt a light offshore wind on my back, just enough to ruffle the surface of the water. I figured the offshore wind would probably ease off towards sunset, so conditions looked good all around. I started paddling for the island.

When I was about halfway there, I saw a Common Loon off the port bow. I fumbled with binoculars — an old pair with broken eye cups, which would be no great loss if they got soaked — and as I fumbled, I realized that the bow of the canoe was slewing to port just as a particularly big swell came at me. I let the binoculars drop on their cord, grabbed the paddle, and brought the bow into the wave. It was suddenly clear that I couldn’t stop paddling, for if the canoe drifted broadside to the waves, the waves had gotten big enough that it would be easy to go over.

I kept paddling, and the swells kept getting larger. They were getting big enough that I began to worry how I would turn the canoe around. At first, I hoped that if I got on the landward side of Eagle Island, I’d be sheltered from the waves and it would be easy to turn around. But the farther out into the bay I got, the bigger the swells got. When I rode up and over one particularly big swell — about two feet high, and steeper than before — I gave up on Eagle Island, and looked for an opportunity to turn the canoe. Several good sized waves, then a short interval with small waves — I turned the canoe as fast as possible, and began paddling for shore.

But I wasn’t ready to go back yet. Once I got back to where the swells diminished in size, I decided to paddle over to the mile-long jetty that protects the channel of the Saco River. Sometimes Harbor Seals swim along the jetty — seeing a seal would be a nice consolation prize. The offshore breeze began to stiffen. I got near the jetty, reached for the binoculars to look at some Least Terns flying overhead — the wind blew me right towards the jetty. I grabbed the paddle and dug into the water to pull myself away the sharp rocks of the jetty.

That was enough. I paddled for home. It was tough going. With only one person in the canoe, the bow rode high, and it was hard work to keep it pointed just off the wind. I had to push myself harder than I liked. I rode a wave up onto the sand, jumped out, and grabbed the canoe to pull it out of the water. Muscles from my thighs up through my shoulders were quivering from the hard paddling — I just couldn’t lift the canoe right then, so I dragged it up the beach out of reach of the waves. A few more scratches on the bottom of the canoe wouldn’t hurt.

Eventually I carried the canoe up off the beach. Marty, the fellow who’s leading a sea-kayaking workshop here this week, saw me. “How’d it go?” he said.

“Well, I got two thirds of the way to Eagle Island,” I said. “But when the swells got higher than the gunwales of the canoe, it was time to turn back.”

He just laughed, and continued to tie his sea kayak on the roof of his car. His kayak would have ridden those swells with ease, of course. If I had had another experienced person in the canoe with me, I might have tried for the island, and paddling along the jetty wouldn’t have been a problem. But it was just me, in a too-small open canoe, with waves that got too big, and wind that got too stiff — so I gave up.

The Tatler

Before there were blogs, there were other periodicals with writing that ranged from the profound to the distinctly ephemeral. In 1709, Sir Richard Steele brought out the Tatler. According the Lewish Gibb, his motives were far from idealistic, which led him to create something new in literature:

Steele brought out the Tatler because he wanted money, and the result was something new in literature. Not that a periodical publication was in itself a new thing, but this one had unusual qualities. In accordance with its motto it took the whole range of social activity — quincquid agunt homines — for its province. [The Tatler, Richard Steele, ed. Lewis Gibbs. London: J. M. Dent (Everyman’s Library), 1953, p. vi.]

I’m reading through Gibbs’s selection from the Tatler. It sounds surprisingly contemporary. There’s a short piece on what will happen to the news-writers if the war with France should end. Speaking of a news-writer named Boyer (who sounds as if he could be a pundit on Fox News), Steele says, “Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands, Boyer has slain his ten thousands….He has laid about him with an inexpressible fury; and made such havoc among his countrymen as must be the work of two or three ages to repair.” And so the war must continue in order to give the news-writers and pundits worthy subjects. Perhaps this is why on July 5th, 2007, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press didn’t question George Bush’s unsubstantiated claim that the Al Qaeda operating in Iraq today is the same Al Qaeda that leveled the World Trade Centers, as reported in Media Matters, for if the Iraq War should end, consumption of the news media would drop. Updating Steele for today’s world: “It being therefore visible that our society will be greater sufferers by the peace than the soldiery itself, insomuch that the New York Times is in danger of being broken, and the very best of the whole band of journalists of being reduced to half-pay; I would humbly move that proper apartments, furnished with laptops, Internet connections, and other necessaries of life, should be added to the Veterans Administration hospitals, for the relief of such decayed journalists and pundits as have served their country by reporting and commenting on the war.”

Of particular interest to the readers of this blog, the Tatler commented on the clergy of the day. Steele commented on a certain clergyman who spoke a little too harshly and gesticulated a little too wildly in the pulpit: “As harsh and irregular sound is not harmony, so neither is banging on a cushion, oratory; and therefore, in my humble opinion, a certain divine of the first order, would do well to leave this off; for I think his sermons would be more persuasive if he gave his auditory less disturbance.” Such sweet viciousness! Would that Steele were still alive to comment on early 21st C. preaching, which has sunk to lower levels than even early 18th C. preaching. But Steele commented on more than preaching, he also commented on the sloppy prayers offered by a certain vicar — “In reading prayers, he has such a careless loll, that people are justly offended at his irreverent posture; besides the extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their children to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures.” What would Steele have said about some of the Unitarian Universalist prayers I have heard uttered? –to think of it makes me shiver with delicious imaginings.

Art on the highway

The Maine Turnpike Authority decided to install works of art by William Wegman in several rest areas. When I was driving north today, I stopped at the Kennebunk rest area to check out one of those artworks. (0:42)

Press reports on the murals: The Portland Press-Herald reports that some turnpike authorities would have preferred “a picture of a lighthouse or Mount Katahadin” — whereas the Bangor Daily News offers a quote from a maintenance worker who likes the mural.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

A rockin book of poems

My favorite living Unitarian Universalist poet is Everett Hoagland. Everett’s poetry was featured in our denominational magazine in the March/April, 2000, and Spring, 2004 (with interview), issues. His poems have been published in magazines ranging from poetry journals like The American Poetry Review and The Iowa Review, to the general interest magazine Essence, to political publications like The Progressive and People’s Weekly World. Everett also does worship services based on his poetry.

Everett has just published a new book of poetry, and he’s donating all proceeds from its sale to Treatment on Demand, a non-profit here in New Bedford that does fantastic work in the areas of HIV/AIDS and substance abuse. So for ten bucks, you can get a rockin book of poetry, perfect for reading out loud, poems that will in turn make your blood boil and serve as a balm for your soul in these crazed times of war and injustice.

Keep reading for Everett’s words on where the money is going, and how to order this book. (Hey, why not buy an extra copy of this book for your church’s youth group.) Continue reading →