Train to the Falls

Niagara it was this weekend - we took a train from Chicago to Buffalo, NY. It was a slow lumbering train, we passed through Toledo, Ohio and then Detroit in the night, and reached Buffalo on time. From there, it was something of a confusing run - take a taxi to the nearby Buffalo International Airport, and from there take the bus to Niagara Falls. Why not take the taxi to Niagara Falls, you may ask very reasonably? Well, the taxi all the way to Niagara from Buffalo was a huge $75+tip. One way, that too. So we took the $15 taxi to the airport, then the $2 bus to the Falls.

The whole day was just at the Falls. It was such a beautiful place. I never thought I would be so awed at seeing water falling - I am awed at the sea, the ocean but just water falling down from a height? How exciting could that be? I thought. But how wrong I was! It was just a mind-numbing sight - near one of the islands close to the falls, we turned around and saw the sky ablaze in this beautiful light.

Then it was the taxi back late in the night after seeing the night view too - no cheap options this time, since it was already past 10pm. The Amtrak train was late by just 30 minutes past midnight, so we reached Chicago on Sunday morning at around 9AM. Well, that was the easy part. After that, we lost our way in Chicago, from 9Am from the Union Station in Chicago, we spent 2 hours trying to find the nearest subway - which was like all things like these always are, just around the corner.

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words: Smitha Murthy (more & more)

The Double Fairlie

Maybe only the child in us loves dinosaurs
......but the child is not mistaken.
It sees the coelacanth is not an antiquated eyesore
......unless you drag it on the deck,
and it knows the dodo in its own right isn’t to be taken
......for a tragicomical buffoon. The locomotive
is a Double Fairlie. It’s a blend of how-the-hell and what-the-heck.
......It has two smoke stacks
and two boilers, and if you seriously fired up both, it looks as if
......it could tear itself in half
across the cab. It was designed to operate on a snaking track
......by bending in the middle,
and any competent mechanic knows the benefits are laughable
......compared to the work of up-keep.
But it isn’t to the mechanic in us that it talks; it’s to the riddle
......that life is trying to guess.
It’s to the jigsaw puzzle where every cockamamie shape
......is the piece that goes.
Whatever it is in us loves surprises, loves inventiveness,
......and its not the things time saves,
nor leaves forlorn behind, nor even saves for afterwards,
......but those enmeshed in it, the child within us craves.

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words: Nicholas Messenger, New Zealand (more & more)

Hartford, CT; June 2009

Before I went on the road trip, I was told that Hartford is "something of a hole," but the area around the state house is all open green space with monuments. In the foreground, the Corning Fountain. The spire in back is the Civil War Memorial Arch.

sky diary

overcast day on ground level.

then, some minutes after takeoff: blue sky.

.and below: the skeleton of a landscape -
and mountainssmountains, filled by clouds
an.ins,ilike by a river.

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DL (more skies: here )

Cartography

What is beyond our ken
our flight plan
.....................................we approach via kenning
.....................................and boarding passes
(sun-bearer
frequent-flier
salmon-eater
aisle seat, pretzel-sated)
.....................................Re: direct, say indirect: miles approximate
.....................................and maps thanks to flatness distort all ways.

The trip will take longer than you think
(it will).
.....................................For Baltimore to Tallahassee on the cheap,
.....................................introduce Atlanta. Sleight of land.

The effect on climate of grid lines. Near the equator winter evaporates
from poems. December's residual locale,
a relic
buried
in hot dirt.
.....................................Bacchanalia of abundant summer.
.....................................Matrix of three hundred warm days.

Lazy logic of if-then, crosswise: "close enough" permits miscalculation,
attendant skewed graphs.
Lines of demarcation and lassitude
of terminal latitude.
.....................................Sweep of margin punctuates a gulf
.....................................shown here in green.

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words: Amber Coady

Short Cuts

“Which would you rather have ­-

the experience or a postcard
of the experience?”

Long pause.

“Don't you think
we could send
postcards from that place?”

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words: Penn Kemp, Canada (about & more)
image: Rose Hunter, Mexico (blog)

new blueprintreview issue: shortcuts/detours

theme moving day!

the new issue of blueprintreview is out - and together with the review, this blog now shifts from "the missing part" to "shortcuts/detours".

here the shortcuts to the new issue:
- direct link to issue 21: "shortcuts/detours"
- about the new issue
- first feedback

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