Posts Tagged ‘trains’
After spending some time with family and friends in Los Angeles this summer, I headed for Denver and Boulder to visit more family and more friends. I decided to take the Southwest Chief, an Amtrak line that runs from Los Angeles to Chicago via Albuquerque and Kansas City. There’s no direct route to Denver on […]
Filed under: architecture, culture, history, literature, personal, politics, society, travel | 3 Comments
Tags: "I knew I should have made a left turn at Albuquerque.", 4th of July, Amtrak, anthropology, Bugs Bunny, Chaco Canyon, clouds, desert, Fourth of July, Independence Day, Los Angeles, memories, memory, mesas, Native American culture, Navajo culture, Petroglyph National Monument, petroglyphs, Route 66, sky, Southwest Chief, storm, train station, trains, Union Station, weather
This summer on my quasi-annual return trip to the United States I decided that I wanted to travel by train, rather than flying. This decision was partially to do with the fact that flying is one of the most carbon-unfriendly activities around, but equally due to the fact that I’ve come to despise air travel […]
Filed under: culture, daily life, drinking, economy, history, nature, personal, society, travel | 3 Comments
Tags: Amtrak, California, Cargill salt ponds, coast, Coast Starlight, CPR, defibrillation, Elkhorn Slough, EMT, farming, farmworkers, fruit picking, grapes, hidden landscapes, industry, insterstate highway system, landscape, Lompoc penitentiary, missile tests, ocean, salt ponds, train travel, trains, travel, U.S. military, view, wildlife preserves, wine, wine tasting
Valéry, who had a fine eye for the cluster of symptoms called “civilization,” has characterized one of the pertinent facts. “The inhabitant of the great urban centers,” he writes, “reverts to a state of savagery — that is, of isolation. The feeling of being dependent on others, which used to be kept alive by need, […]
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Tags: 15mm Heliar, 35mm Ultron, alienation, analog, analogue, civilization, film, Japanese trains, LOMO LC-A+, lonely, modernity, passengers, photography, public transit, rangefinder, trains, transit, transportation, Voigtlander Bessa R2A, Voigtlander Bessa-L, Walter Benjamin
There is something distasteful about the very bustle of the streets, something that is abhorrent to human nature itself. Hundreds of thousands of people of all classes and ranks of society jostle past one another; are they not all human beings with the same characteristics and potentialities, equally interested in the pursuit of happiness? . […]
Filed under: daily life, Japan, philosophy, photography, society | 2 Comments
Tags: 15mm Heliar, 25mm Snapshot-Skopar, 35mm Ultron, anonymous, Bessa R2A, Bessa-L, crowd, Friedrich Engels, in motion, Japan, LOMO LC-A+, lonely, passengers, photography, platform, public transit, train stations, trains, transportation, urban life, Voigtländer, Walter Benjamin
That the eye of the city dweller is overburdened with protective functions is obvious. Georg Simmel refers to some less obvious tasks with which it is charged. “The person who is able to see but unable to hear is much more . . . troubled than the person who is able to hear but unable […]
Filed under: daily life, Japan, personal, philosophy, photography, scraps and bones, society | 6 Comments
Tags: 15mm Heliar, 35mm Ultron, beautiful lonely, emptiness, 電車, 駅, Georg Simmel, Japanese trains, LOMO LC-A+, lonely, photography, quiet, silent, stations, stillness, tracks, train station, train stations, trains, Voigtlander Bessa R2A, Voigtlander Bessa-L, Walter Benjamin
Takeno Beach
Since autumn is here and I’m just about to start teaching again, I thought I would revisit the glories of summer. Sometime in July, Yo-chan and I took the train to Takeno Hama, which is on the Nihonkai (Japan Sea) side of the island. It was a pretty long train ride — three hours each way […]
Filed under: culture, daily life, eating, Japan, personal, society, travel | 4 Comments
Tags: かき氷, ホタルイカ, beach, coast, 竹浜, digging in the sand, 蛍イカ, fishing, inner tubes, Japan Sea, kakigoori, luminescence, Nihonkai, ocean, Sea of Japan, seashore, squid, summer, Takeno Beach, Takenohama, tetrapods, the glow, trains, 日本海, 池
Koya-san I: Funicular
My friend Jess flew out to visit at the beginning of May during my Golden Week vacation. Golden Week, which is pretty much like a five-day long Memorial Day weekend, is one of Japan’s biggest holidays and everything (including ATMs!) shuts down for the two official holidays that are the centerpiece of the five days […]
Filed under: culture, Japan, Kansai, religion, travel, writing | 3 Comments
Tags: Buddhism, 眞言, 真言, 空海, 高野線, 高野山, funicular, Golden Week, Kobo-Daishi, Koya Line, Koya-san, Kukai, Miroku Bosatsu, Mount Koya, Nankai Railway, rail, Shingon, train travel, trains, Wakayama, 南海線, 南海電気鉄道株式会社, 和歌山, 弘法大師
