What Does This Commemorate?

Up early, I read two chapters of my Lenin biography.  Finish this slide deck for today’s presentation.  I’ll need to call someone in China about that.   Skype message someone else.  They get back quickly.  Then there is the sound of the we chat call and I start chatting with someone in Beijing.    “Yes.  It’s the same use case.”  By the time, I’ve hung up it’s clear that the whole area in the twenty-six floors below me is covered in snow.  It’s beautiful and intimidating.   A foot of snow has fallen.  The roads have yet to be ploughed.  Everything is still, except the falling snow. 

Later in the meeting there was a gentleman who’d driven down from Boston.  The two hour ride took him three-and-a-half hours.   He looked a bit shaken.  Everyone else seemed happy to be safely sequestered in the casino.  What  strange place casinos are.  Two women my age, whom I rode the elevator down with, were discussing meeting up later by their lucky slot machine.  I didn’t want to listen but I had to.  It's early in this trip and American conversations remain sharply penetrating during the first forty-eight hours back. 

I needed to leave early afternoon.  I had a driver who showed up a bit late and who had an odd condition with his vocal chords, so that he croaked, when he spoke.  He deposited me at the New London station.  I walked around the back and entered the building through the track-side entrance in the back.  I had just feasted on a lunch spread provided at the hotel.  Coffee?  Nah.  I want to go to bed.  A gangly young guy behind the Amtrak window confirmed that my train would be on time.  “A bird knocked down a wire in Old Saybrook, but I think it’s fixed now.  Should be ok." Turning, I notice the enormous mural on the wall of the station rendered in blue and white.

It’s a print of a scene depicting the crash of the clipper ship.  The boat is listing, sure to sink, set tantalizingly out at sea, but within full view of the artist’s eye. Someone has brought a woman on the shore and is trying to revive her.  People are lighting off fireworks to help provide light it seems, in the dark, rainy evening.  What does this commemorate?  Why has the city decided to place this painting so prominently here at the station?  I looked on line once and then twice trying to answer these questions but couldn’t find a thing. 

The train to Newark was comfortable enough.  I cuddled my big orange jacket and leaned against the warmth of the wall and soon I’d nodded off.  “Tickets please.” “New Haven will be next.”  I kept stirring awake and then drifting back off to sleep.  How quick this train journey would have been heading down the east coast of China.  Reluctantly I’ll admit that the Amtrak station at Newark Liberty Airport Station with its connection to the airport’s aged skytrain loop was rather convenient.  Certainly, neither La Guardia nor JFK have such a thing.  Reluctant because the airport skytrain is bouncy and uncomfortable and with its silly little mini cars looks like someone’s worn out vision of the future from back in the 1970s.  Before I check in I take off my enormous orange coat and put it into my luggage as it won’t be necessary in L.A. 

Tuesday, 01/30/18