Three more random topics:

[redbird]

kaberett gave me "Haematite, trains, clouds."

I associate hematite with roadnotes, who had a necklace of hematite chips. She also had a similar-shaped necklace of myrrh; I have a necklace of amethyst beads of that shape, which I don't think I've worn in this century.

Trains certainly aren't something I don't know or care much about. I started taking the subway alone, daily, before my twelfth birthday, in order to get to school. Sometimes I stood between cars on the (#7) elevated trains (shown in this userpic), even when there was room inside the subway cars. People in their early teens don't have a good grasp of mortality, but I did stop leaning on the subway car doors after a few well-publicized incidents of doors opening while the train was in motion between stations. I have been to railroad museums on three different continents, including two or three in the United States (depending on whether the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, which I recommend, counts as a railroad museum). And this reminds me that I've been meaning to go ride on the Mattapan Trolley since before I actually moved to Massachusetts.

Clouds can be very pretty, and eye-catching even when they're not pretty. My favorite skies to look at lately are the bright blue skies of sunny days with a few white clouds shining against them. That somehow reminds me that one of the ways people on the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.fandom would reply to really out-there assertions was "what color is the sky on your planet?" And one day I realized that if I was asked that, seriously, the answer would be "all of them." Mostly shades of blue or gray during the day, and gray or black at night, but the sky contains all the colors of the visible spectrum, in all sorts of shades and combinations. (That's not a new discovery, of course, but it's not something most people think about much.) Come to think of it, the cloudy sky at night is different color than it used to be, since there are fewer sodium-vapor lamps.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

Heh. I've been thinking about riding on the Mattapan Trolley for ages, too. Never quite got around to it -- that long journey inbound from Davis, followed by the outbound to (??? can't remember stop name, but there's a flyover junction there) -- anyway, it feels like a long way to go just to get started.

Mind'ee, I did eventually manage to get off and then on again at every single public stop in the New York system, Staten Island included.

Plus I have been to Manhattan Transfer, in the middle of the Great Jimmy Hoffa Swamp.

[redbird]

That's more than I managed; having no particular business in Staten Island, I didn't ride the Staten Island Railroad until a year or two before I left New York, one summer afternoon when cattitude was in need of alone time and I wanted an arbitrary, inexpensive outing. I think I got off the ferry at St. George, walked the short distance to the next stop (Tompkinsville), rode all the way to Tottenville, walked around there, then took the train back to St. George. I may have gotten off at one or the intermediate stops, but not left the station.

The connection from the red line to the Mattapan line is at Ashmont, a station I have only used once. (This hasn't been a good week for the red line; they're using manual switching near JFK/Umass while they rebuild a piece of the signal system after a derailment.)

[maellenkleth]

One of the links on my personal home-page (yes, I still have one) is to the Universal Hub, whose rhyming coverage of breakdowns on the T is an endless source of amusement to Darling Spouse and myself.

Am thinking of a week-long holiday to Somerville and rural Connecticut sometime around the end of July. Might get that ride in on the Mattapan Trolley (if it's not broken down, as in 'that does not commute').

Raining here on Salishaan at the moment. It's doing a nice job of settling-out the forest fire smoke.

[redbird]

I like UHub enough that I sent Adam Gaffin a few dollars by Paypal; he surprised me with a thank you note that asked if there was anything I would like added to or changed about the site.

[snippy]

My main social media is moderated and would not allow "what color is the sky..." except on specific threads that aren't done as often as weekly but oh how I remember using that on Usenet!