RobinCravey

In the diner on the Texas Eagle

I’m sitting in the diner on board the Texas Eagle. We pulled out of Austin about 9:30 this morning (Saturday). I’ll be rolling into Providence, Rhode Island about 9:00 pm Monday night. It’s a relaxing way to travel, but it takes a while.

Outside my grand picture window, miles and miles of Texas are rolling past. This grand view is one of the things I love about train travel. A cup of whiskey sits on the table beside my macbook as I type. This is livin’.

I’m in the forward dining room, where ten booth tables line the center aisle. Behind me is the kitchen, and behind the kitchen is the café. The diner serves the sleeper (first class), and meals are complimentary. An adult beverage is included with dinner. The café serves the coaches.

After a while I go back to the counter in the café and order another drink. Christie, the café gal, serves it with good cheer. She’s busy.

I spend a lot of time in the diner. There’s always a table or two or three of crew members hanging out nearest the kitchen, jawboning about this train, other trains, this crew, other crews, management, and life in general. I learn a lot just eavesdropping.

I’m waiting for supper now. Todd, the diner man, came by my room while ago and took my order. I ordered the beef Burgundy, vegetables, and mashed potatoes with a glass of red wine. I’ve had it before. It’s pretty good.

Dining is one step below fast casual. The food is all packaged and heated in an oven, served on plastic covered with foil. But it’s decent—pretty tasty.

Hot food on the table — Beef burgundy, vegetables, and mashed potatoes. With red wine

Train crew stands outside train — Beef burgundy, vegetables, and mashed potatoes. With red wine

On board the Texas Eagle

The Texas Eagle is a short train, one engine and four cars. Behind the engine comes the sleeper car, then the diner, then two coach cars. It runs from San Antonio to Chicago, one train each way, daily. The train usually runs full.

It runs full, because there is not enough rolling stock to serve demand. They can’t put another car on, because they don’t have one.

Major stops are in Fort Worth, Dallas, and St. Louis, with about two dozen others. The train runs slow because the tracks are not very good. Cell service is strong along the whole route.

Now and then throughout the day, the train pulls onto a sidetrack to let a freight train slowly pass.

At one point, I look out and see that we are stopped across a street, and cars are stopped, waiting for us to pass. At first, I’m sorry, but then I remember how much cars have done to ruin transportation (and the environment) in America (and the world). Let them wait.

Tornado warning in Rhode Island.

My iPhone blared a warning—a tornado warning! It’s been raining all morning. So, first thing I did was to turn off all the computers plugged into the wall.

I looked at the iPad. Take cover! it said. So naturally, I stepped outside to take a look. The sky was medium gray, and the cloud cover seemed to be moving at a good clip. As I watched the eastern sky, a drenching gust from the west suddenly hit me in the back, soaking my backside. Sheets of rain were falling. I decided to go back in.

The wind held the storm door pushed open, and it took me some determined pulling to get it closed.

Now I’m inside. It seems calmer out, and I’d like to go out for another look, maybe get a picture, but sudden gusts are a little daunting. Maybe I’ll just wait until the tornado warning is over.

I do wish I had a little whiskey in the place.

Night and Day at McKinney Falls

Recently, I slept Sunday night in a cabin at McKinney Falls State Park. I call it camping.

I like tent camping better. But the logistics are more involved. I didn’t have time for that.

I was there on Sunday night, because that was the only night with a vacancy. And all the cabins were vacant.

Sunday nights can be unpleasant in tent grounds, because all the buzzards descend to scavenge the leftovers from the weekend campers. That’s not a problem in the cabin area.

The weekend had been rainy and the ground was wet. Rain was a chance, but it didn’t fall.

I cooked a simple supper (leftovers from the fridge at home) then I sat outside to watch the light fade from the eastern sky behind the trees. I let my mind wander through memories of my many camping trips there. At dark I went inside to write in my journal for a while.

At dawn I started getting ready to hike. It took a little while. I knew just where to go.

Starting from the cabin grounds I crossed the style to the dining hall grounds, skirted by the little amphitheater, and followed the path through the trees and brush down to the shaded long-grass lawn lining the creek.

I walked down beside the creek. Tall trees edged the far side of the water. The water ran clear and deep. Far upstream, it flowed out of the limestone hills, then through the city, and now approached its escape.

At the downstream end of the lawn I stepped out onto the limestone shelf that drops the falls. Across the fall pool, a few herons woke up and started making their way downstream under cypresses, escaping around the bend. I watched the water fall and listened to the low roar.

Once, I thought I would escape this land. No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to escape. I just wanted to get away. And I did. But I came back. I always come back.

The Big Crash

My MacBook Air sits in a box in my study. It came back from the Apple repair depot about a week ago. I haven’t unwrapped it.

Normally, I would be in a happy rush to get the operating system set up, to get the applications installed, to load the documents, and to establish my file structures. Not this time. I’m dreading it.

I’ve already gone through those drills twice in two months. Those were the high points of hours and days and weeks of troubleshooting and emergency backups and Apple support chats.

On top of that, the MacBook was my main machine. So when I realized it was going down, I scrambled to set up an old Mac mini to take the workload. And then the MacBook did go down. So, I bought a new Mac mini. I set that up to serve as the main machine and made the old mini my backup machine.

So, I’ve done virtually the same setup and rebuild four times in two months. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

I had a Time Machine backup of the MacBook, so I planned to use Migration Assistant to smoothly move my entire MacBook setup to the new machine. But the Apple specialists suspected the problem with the MacBook could be in the software, so using the backup could move the problem to the new (and repaired) Mac. That meant I had to do everything one laborious step at a time.

Try entering four dozen passwords manually. Four times! (Don’t talk to me about iCloud Keychain.)

I had to extract the document files, and I made several emergency backups, buying several external hard drives to deal with all the files. Now, I have to sort all those out.

The trouble began with some keyboard entry errors. I decided to restart the Mac, so I started quitting applications. The apps refused to quit. Then the Mac went through a kernel panic, crashed, and refused to restart.

That was my first trip to the Apple Store Genius Bar. The specialist took it into the back and “blew the dust off the logic board.” Miraculously, it started up! He gave it back to me.

A week later I was back at the Genius Bar. The specialist kept it for a few days, erased the hard drive, and reinstalled the OS. He called that a software repair.

My first re-setup of the MacBook did not go well. I plowed forward through multiple system errors and crashes over two days to reach the point that I could migrate the documents and make an emergency backup. Then, it crashed.

My third trip to the Genius Bar convinced the specialists that this was serious. They shipped it to one of their depots, where serious repairs are done to seriously disturbed Macs. When it came back, the packing sheet listed a half dozen replaced parts beginning with the logic board. That ought to fix it.

I went through the laborious and tedious setup almost without mishap. The MacBook seemed to do fine for about a month.

I wasn’t using it much. I had shifted all my work to the Mac mini, and I wasn’t going to shift it back. I used the MacBook in my spare time for low-intensity chores like typing text and sorting through emergency backups. Then it showed a few warning signs. Then it had a kernel panic. I knew what was coming. Sure enough, the next day it was dead.

On my fourth trip to the Genius Bar, the Genius was just going through the motions. He kept assuring me about how they respected all the time I had put into this machine. (Sure.). They were going to send it back to the depot and fix it right, by golly!

One thing I’ll say: the repair depot is quick.

So here it is. I can’t get any enthusiasm for it. I don’t even need it now, really. I’m wondering how to calculate the mean time before failure. They still haven’t even diagnosed the problem. They just replace parts.

But, I can’t just let it sit in the box forever. I have to rebuild it again.

One evening on Broadway

At Julian’s. I walked over in sunshine, but as I walked the sun dropped below the rooftops, casting the streets in shadow. I’ll walk home in the dark, and that’s fine, but not as good as the sunlight.

That’s the trade off. I could have walked in the broad daylight, but I would have had to go back to work. Now, I get the fading light, but I’m free.

At last, the West awakens!

The Russian tyrant has gone berserk—
Sends armies out to murder and destroy.
He rallies the forces of evil.

In old Ukraine, the democratic leader stands.
Free people in their bravery stand and fight.
They are heroes of the West.

Western nations rush to arm Ukraine
And to hobble the Russian tyrant—
But not to fight.

The Hearts of all people rise with Ukraine.
If Ukraine falls, the hearts of all will fall.
We need their bravery.

The West must see. We can’t let bravery die.
We don’t have time for a Cold War.
We have a hot world to save.

Now is the showdown.
Deliver the ultimatum to the tyrant!
And if he defies, advance!

Let us mass in our might on the Russian line.
We say to the suffering Russian people,
We have no quarrel with you.

We have come for your tyrant.
Send him out.
Or stand aside.

Remember when then-President Trump embarrassed us in front of the Russian tyrant?

Emergence

All I can tell you is that I went through dislocations, international intrigue, misfortune, determination, friendship, relocation, and escape. Obstacles kept arising, and I kept stumbling over them, supported by loved ones.

When the surge of time became a flow again, I found myself here, in Rhode Island. I found some writers. We talk. We don’t really know each other yet, but I see possibilities.

These writers are putting on a public reading called Emergence. Local poets and other writers will read on the subject. I’ll be there. I’ll read.

As it happens, I have a poem that has been waiting quietly since 1979 for this moment. Forty years patient in the journal. Now it will emerge. I’ll have some printed folios for those who want one. Art added by Sean Haworth.

The reading will take place across the street from Blake’s Tavern, in front of a mural called Adventure Time. That’s Thursday, August 5, at 7 to 9 pm at Washington and Matthewson in Providence, Rhode Island.

This event is hosted by What Cheer Writers Club in partnership with The Avenue Concept and in collaboration with PVDFest. It was made possible by generous funding from the Providence Tourism Council.

Edited thanks to the Tilted Planet Editorial Board.

Climate Migrant

Last month I visited Providence, Rhode Island, getting to know the city. I plan to establish a summer home here next spring. I’ll keep my permanent residence in Austin, but I’ve had it with Texas summers.

I’m a climate crisis refugee. I was born and raised in Texas, and I’ve always been glad of my heat tolerance. I’m comfortable up to 95 degrees. But now we have two months of the year when the mercury shoots up past 100. I’m tired of hearing weather casters tell me not to go outside in the afternoon.

I’m not the first climate migrant. People fleeing drought and flood have been on the move for a generation. It’s global, but it has been mostly a third world movement. Now the first world is beginning to feel it.

It’s possible to ignore the rising heat if you live in air conditioned spaces. But you have to be content to give up summer afternoons. I’m not.

Ironically, that air conditioning that shelters us from the heat outside makes the heat outside worse. The air conditioners use power from plants that exhaust greenhouse gases. And the air conditioners themselves pump heat out to the air. It’s a positive feedback loop. The hotter the environment, the more we use the air conditioner. The more we use the air conditioner, the hotter the environment.

I’m moving away from that loop. Of course, there’s no real escape. There’s another effect. Providence is in the hurricane zone. And with the climate crisis, hurricanes are growing stronger and more numerous.

I took a riverboat tour on the Providence River. The captain told tales of hurricanes past, and he pointed to a gated flood barrier high enough to keep out the flood surge of the worst hurricane on record. But the storms are growing stronger. It’s only a matter of time until a storm surge overwhelms that sea wall. And then another. Then there will be a new wave of climate migrants. More people on the move.

But for now, Providence is a great little city.

(Photos by Robin Cravey unless otherwise noted).

Feature image above: Downtown Providence. Photo by Jeffee Palmer. The city seen from the river.

Around Providence

Downtown Providence. Photo by Jeffee Palmer. The city seen from the river.
Martinis at Venda’s. Photo by Jeffee Palmer. The martinis are so big you can’t pick them up until you drink some out. They pack a wallop!
The Point Tavern takes its name from Fox Point, east and near the mouth of the Providence River.
George M. Cohan was a native of Providence, and they’re proud of their yankee doodle dandy. His statue stands in the heart of Fox Point.