Life & Island Times: Tripping Northward


South Carolina Overnight Train Scene

Editor’s Note: We were going to run this tomorrow, but some inspired responses prompt an early go.

– Vic

Author’s Note: As promised earlier, here’s an installment of photos from and thoughts on our December journey out of CovidLand to, from as well as during our Big Apple stay.

Have a Merry Christmas!

-Marlow

Nighttime does funny things to our human perceptions. So also does it affect our modern high tech cameras. Creepy, no?


Somewhere in lower South Carolina onboard Amtrak’s Silver Meteor #98 December 8 2021


Potomac River dawn just south of Quantico Virginia December 9 2021

When I reviewed the next image upon our Savannah return, I found its composition to be suggestive of Thomas Jefferson wryly commenting on today’s faux emergency crisis du jour mentality.


From beyond the grave December 9 2021

W is utterly fascinated by water towers, so I photograph them when they look like good candidates. Here are two examples:


Water towers north of downtown DC (l) and Philly (r) December 9 2021

Trenton’s 1935 bridge across the Delaware River reminded me of the city’s once preeminent place in manufacturing during the world’s first Industrial Revolution. It was home to iron refining and metalworking like the wire rope company that became our nation’s largest iron company and whose rope products and innovative designs of suspension bridges were utilized in various projects like 1883’s Brooklyn Bridge promoted as the “eighth wonder of the world” as well as the America’s most prominent ceramics firm established in 1889 by Walter Lenox and Jonathan Coxon, later known around the world as the Lenox China Company. With today’s digital adjuncts, it and America’s citizens can do it again.


Yeah baby! — Trenton New Jersey’s bridge over the Delaware River

All I can say is Here’s Newark . . .


Newark New Jersey’s Amtrak Station December 9 2021

During our cab ride to the hotel from Penn Station, I saw some simple red lettered neon that expressed why I love NYC and, yes, New Yorkers.


Love NYC and it’ll love you back
Say yes to Wine and Pizza
December 9, 2021

Our fractious times briefly came home to me only two minutes later after we had passed by numerous, fully manned Covid testing tent sites on various Broadway street corners in Manhattan. Peak awareness occurred as our cab careened around Columbus Circle, when we saw America’s first white supremacy guy. I laughed a bit at the security measures he now has in place. Apparently, NYPD has been babysitting all of the five borough’s Columbus monuments with vehicles, barricades and officers since the spring of 2020.


Protecting Old Chris
December 9 2021

Despite the then unindicted ex-Governor Cuomo and some city council members kvetching earlier this year, these statues remain standing tall — upright, unvandalized, undefeated, and unredefined.

Gotta Love NYC and New Yorkers.

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