Train thoughts
I love this country. When I travel by train this becomes quite clear to me how genuine my love is. There is ugliness, of course. Visible poverty and excessive wealth, rusted skeletons of old industrial centres, infrastructure waiting another year before it finally crumbles. (I am grateful that I’ve yet to see from the windows of a train any Confederate flags, a sight that is even today disturbingly likely to pop up when travelling by car through the South.) But there are good things too. Expanses of forest blanketed by snow. Graffiti on walls. Old buildings from better times. People living their lives in America. And new infrastructure being built! Just a few weeks ago I saw a big beautiful bridge under construction for a highway right by the New Jersey exit of the North River Tunnels. The train I was on exited the tunnel, I see one end of the construction site running parallel to the tracks, and the train doesn’t reach the other end of this construction site for anot...