Too busy to post

Lovely breakfast at Biscuits Cafe with copperwise, tanuki_green, irismoonlight, her companion whose LJ I can’t remember, catamorphism, kr8vkat, and Alan. I meet the most interesting people online. Definitely need to spend more time in Portland. Topics of discussion included volcanoes, high tech, true crime, and much more.

Safe in the train station, suitcase checked. Now looking at dimly lit WPA paintings of Oregon sights. 12:21 PM Feb 16th

Possibly they are not WPA paintings, since I am having a hard time finding anything about them online. Painted in matte shades of indigo and ochre, or possibly just lit and faded into that palette. Portland has a lot of public art, including some stacks of flagstone outside the station and a sculpture that looks like a crashing meteorite just outside Powell’s.

This is not a criticism. I love public art, whether it’s the grand Beaux Arts fountains of Philadelphia or the silly and charming giant clothes pin, also of Philadelphia. Or the bizarre, hypnotic 42d Street Ballroom in the NY Port Authority bus station.

On our way to Oakland – 17 hours, then change trains for the last leg. Portland was lovely, but I want to go home. 2:58 PM Feb 16th

Ha.

This part of Oregon is lush: moss, vines, ferns, brush. It’s the abundance of surface water. Even the firs are succulent as grapes. 3:18 PM Feb 16th

Lush is a funny word to use in mid-winter, when the many deciduous trees are bare, and the world looks raw and unfinished. But lush it is.

Four great skeins of birds circle and merge into one vast flock. Beyond are dove-grey mountains two shades deeper than the clouds. 11:56 PM Feb 16th

A peaceful scene, but under the snow volcanoes drowse. In the fields three men with shotguns watch the birds. 11:56 PM Feb 16th

Fresh fish for poker players. Just overheard 3 people who were inspired to learn holdem by the movie 21. WTF? 12:44 AM Feb 17th

Everyone admires the Kevin Spacey performance and the daring and intelligence of the MIT blackjack team. I did not drop any names.

Observation car: an old man playing blues on acoustic guitar. Picking deftly in the dusk, untroubled by those who listen, those who don’t. about 12:48 AM Feb 17th

No power. Only emergency lights. It would be sweetly old-fashioned except for all the laptops, DVD players, cellphones, and handheld games. 1:38 AM Feb 17th

Somewhere in here, I had a fascinating two-hour conversation with my seatmate about web development, good and bad corporations to work for, copyright issues, and the comparative virtues of SF and Portland.

On a siding in Eugene, waiting for a new engine. I hope we can make up the time. To track our lateness check train #11 on amtrak.com 1:53 AM Feb 17th

2am, and I can’t sleep. Tired, itchy, restless. I’ve moved to the observation car so I don’t disturb my seatmate. 4:11 AM Feb 17th

Couldn’t sleep in the hot crowded coach car. Have enjoyed 3 whole hours of refreshing slumber stretched on the floor of the observation car. 5:13 AM Feb 17th

The most uncomfortable thing about train travel is assuredly the overheating of the coach cars. I understand that sleepers have individually controlled temps.

Did I complain that CA lacks surface water? Seems it heard. Drenching rains started the day I left. Now the earth is sodden to overflowing. 8:56 AM Feb 17th

And still it rained — which we desperately need.

North of Sacto I spotted a village of tents in a field near power lines. Migrant farm workers? Homeless encampment? Surely not Boy Scouts. 9:05 AM Feb 17th

mactavish informed me that migrant workers generally live in wooden shacks. I bet this was a homeless village.

Next stop Oakland. Since we’re more than 2 hours late, I’ve already missed my connection. So I’ll wait 2 more hrs for a 20-min train ride. 9:48 AM Feb 17th

I’d just take a taxi to BART, but Michele can’t get me until then anyway, and she has my car and my keys. 9:52 AM Feb 17th

Am on the connecting train from Oakland to Hayward. Michele is on her way to get me. Lunch, then home. Hallelujah. 12:51 PM Feb 17th

Fetched. Fed. Home. 2:39 PM Feb 17th

Home with a purring cat on my lap, amenity unavailable on Coast Starlight. Train has better view, but apt is not running 2 hours late. 7:42 PM Feb 17th

New Terry Pratchett interview.

“I think three different researchers wrote to me asking could I help them with work on analysing my style as the illness progresses, and I wrote back, ‘What I like about vultures is that they wait until the donkey is dead’.”

The interviewer seems to be an idiot:

His assistant Rob, who comes across on the film as his closest friend, says that Pratchett was always a difficult man, although an inspiring one. My impression is that his sense of humour mostly stops him saying the truly wounding things that he first thinks of.

Newsflash: A sense of humor can be used as a license to be nasty. Pratchett’s kindness or self-control or something else is likely to be what keeps him from saying vicious things.

The BBC did a two-part documentary called Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer’s. The first part showed on February 4. Second will show on February 11.

In reading that article, I spotted an organization straight from That Hideous Strength. “The government watchdog NICE” — haven’t these people read C.S. Lewis? Or are they hiding their purpose in plain sight?

Grief, at this stage, comes in gusts, brief downpours that drench and chill. Not the ice age of the first year, when we lay gasping, immobile, eyes frozen open, like goldfish in a winter pond. Not the unsheltered wretchedness of the years that followed, crawling through ice storms toward an empty house. Just the daily leaden skies that mask the sun, and the rain sometimes.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

~Richard Wright, American Hunger

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Amphibole. A word for a lizard with a forked tongue.

Public Service Announcement Every day once-popular words fall out of common usage. Gradually they become shunned and shabby, less and less acceptable in ordinary conversation. In the end they’re even dropped from the dictionary. These words are still strong and useful. They want to be employed again.

Now you can help. Adopt a word or two at the OED-sponsored Save the Words website. Do your part to keep these lonely words in the dictionary. Thanks to 14cyclenotes for the link. (Flashplayer needed, which is why I haven’t actually adopted a word.)

A poem on the word “if” — and not by Rudyard Kipling.

ktempest on Hour of the Wolf.

what horrors lie within?