Vancouver's Chinese Garden

In 1989 when I made my first round trip cross-country by Amtrak, I spent two nights in Vancouver. I did not go there by train, but by bus. My sister and I rode with friends to the Monterrey Peninsula and toured there. Then she and I took a bus to San Francisco and toured that city. Each of us had been there before, but we enjoyed seeing the city again. Two days later, my sister took the bus back to Los Angeles, and I took the bus to Vancouver. So far as I can recall, there was no coastal Amtrak train in California at the that time, but I could be wrong.

My bus ride to Vancouver was an overnight trip. I left San Francisco about 3 p.m. and traveled all night, arriving in Vancouver about 1 or 2 p.m. I stayed at the YMCA there.

The first night I walked up to a park to listen a band concert. There were many people walking along the street, all headed to the band concert. I enjoyed the music, but just as much I enjoyed the sun that was still shining at 9 p.m. The sky stayed light until 10 p.m., whereas in Fitchburg, the sky is dark at 9 p.m. in mid July.

The next day I took a tour of Vancouver. One of the places we visited was the Chinese Garden.

I have been a writer most of my adult life. In 1989 I was a free-lance writer, writing for various magazines, most local publications. I remember that during the tour, the guide said the garden and the house were designed as a place where a writer might live. As we passed through one of the rooms, I remember the guide saying something like, “This is where the Writer would write.” It was a tranquil room, sparsely furnished with a desk, equipped with pens and inks and a scroll. Next we walked outside to the small lake (really more like a pond). I remember we passed through a moon gate. We looked out on the water, and it was a placid, dull green, with nary a ripple in the water. I don't remember seeing many plants or even koi fish. The guide said the green color came from the green clay that has been imported from China and used to line the small lake or pond. The purpose was to create a placid, quiet, calm environment where the writer could meditate.

I have never been able to return to Vancouver, although I do have hopes of going there again some day. But I will always remember the Chinese garden, particularly the pond. I am a writer, and I love to garden, so the Chinese garden appealed to me from several perspectives.

When I watched the Olympics on TV, I was hoping the Today Show would do a feature on the Chinese Garden. They did, or at some point NBC did, but the feature was a disappointment. A lot the images shown were dark and poorly lit. Maybe nothing could be done about that.

I was hoping they would show a panoramic view of the pond, but they didn't. I wanted to recapture what I had seen 20 years ago. The feature did have a wide view of the pond, but it was not really panoramic. All of the scenes of the garden and the house were rather cramped, as though taken with a narrow angle lens. I am not a photographer, so perhaps there were reasons

why the video was filmed this way, but it was a disappointment. Later, I looked up the Chinese Garden on the Internet, and I found the pictures were not much better. Maybe in my mind I have created a more panoramic view of the garden then I actually saw. I understand from what I have read that each time we remember an event, our memory changes slightly. So maybe that is what is at work. But I would love to return to Vancouver and see for myself.

Vancouver being the host city for the Olympic Games brought memories of my visit there 20 years ago back to me. That is one reason why I watched the Today Show each morning, hoping I would see the Chinese Garden and also more scenes of Vancouver.

One morning, I think it was this week, the Today Show promised a tour of the city of Victoria and high tea at the Empress Hotel. This, too, was a disappointment.

I had been to Victoria and Vancouver Island on the second day of my visit to the city of Vancouver. But the Today Show feature simply showed the Today crew tramping across a bridge to get to the airplane, which flew them to the island. Then it showed them walking through a reception line outside the Empress Hotel, and another cramped view of them eating high tea. There was nice shot of the table arrayed with pastries and tea sandwiches. Then the Today folks plunged into sampling the food, saying how delicious it was. There was very little information provided about the history of the hotel nor and the wide-view shot of the dining room showed very little detail. The room's features all looked very distant and not very distinct.

When I was there, there was a big ceramic elephant in the center of room, and tea was served by waiters dressed in safari outfits: khaki shorts , shirts and pith helmets. Of course, that was all to create an experience for tourists. The servers who waited on the Today Show staff were dressed in what looked to me like Victorian dresses. The camera did not show a close up of what they were wearing. Also I noticed that many of the camera angles faced into the light, so that the faces of the people being photographed were shadowed, and I, at least, could not see their faces very clearly as I watched them on TV. The feature was very short. It provided very little information and was far from being a travelogue. I was disappointed.

My own memories of Vancouver, the Chinese Garden, Vancouver Island and the Empress Hotel are much more vivid.

High-speed Bullet Trains

I am very glad that President Obama in his State of the Union speech last week endorsed upgrading our railway system and developing high-speed bullet trains. The United States definitely needs this form of modern rail transportation, which many other countries already have.

An article, “US bullet trains to the rescue,” published in the January 31, 2010 print edition of The Christian Science Monitor points out that the technology for high-speed rail trains already exists. The magazine reports that “it‘s underrated, underutilized, and often overlooked.”

I think high-speed rail transportation represents the future. It can save oil, save people time, and get people from major city to major city fast and efficiently. Travelers will spend much less time getting from the city to the airport and waiting around the airport once they get there. ITrain schedules are also less likely to be disrupted by bad weather. Once on a train, a passenger can use the time to do work, read a book or newspaper, write letters or simply stare out the window, whatever he or she needs to do.

True, the President is allocating $8 billion for high-speed rail, and we need billions more. But this is a beginning. The Interstate highway system was not built in a few years but under President Eisenhow, the nation made a start. I am hoping that now under President Obama, we can make a big start in building a high speed rail transportation system.

The Old Fitchburg Depot

Fitchburg was once a rail center. Trains went through the center of town, right across Main Street, several times a day. I don't know just how often, but they were frequent. I went to Clark University back in the mid 1950s. I would take the train from Claremont, N.H., to Fitchburg, where I had to get off and wait for a bus to Worcester. I almost always rode the train. There were a few times, when I got a ride home with another student, and in May, my aunt and uncle, who lived in Worcester, would drive me home, along with all my stuff that would not fit into the big trunk that I shipped home. My aunt and uncle always came to Claremont to see my family and put flowers on the graves of my grandfather and grandmother (my uncle's and my mother's parents.)

When the train from Claremont arrived in Fitchburg, we would get out at the old Victorian train station. It was a magnificent building, weighted with atmosphere.

When I would visit my parents, of course, I would travel the same way, but in reverse. I would take the bus to Fitchburg and change to the train. There was usually about a half hour to an hour wait either way.

Whenever I was in Fitchburg, someone would always ask, “Are you Finish?” because I had blonde hair. This surprised me. Usually people would ask me I were Norwegian or Swedish. But in Fitchburg, people would always ask me if I were Finish. It was not until several years later, when I was married and we moved to Fitchburg to live, that I discovered the reason why. Fitchburg had one of the largest Finish populations in the United States, and they were mostly blonde-haired people.

Several times during my senior year of college, instead of going to Fitchburg and taking the train to Claremont, I took the bus to Springfield, where I changed and took another bus to Claremont. There was no direct bus from Worcester to Claremont.

The main reason for this change was that I had met the man who would later become my husband. He was a senior at American International College in Springfield, and he came from Easthampton. So I would try to see him on my way home.

In the summer of 1958, after I had graduated from college, I got a job working as a reporter in the Women's Newsroom of The Evening Gazette in Worcester. I had to work weekends, which did not bother me, because I actually had more time off that way. We got out early on Saturday, and I did not have to be back at work until Tuesday morning.

So on one Saturday in August, I decided that I would take the bus to Fitchburg and then take the train to Claremont. I was in for a big surprise, however. When I arrived in Fitchburg and went to buy a ticket, the ticket agent said there were no more trains to Claremont. Instead I would have to take a train to Greenfield, and in Greenfield change to a train to Claremont.

The train for Greenfield would not leave until 9 p.m. And I would have to wait in Greenfield for the train to Claremont.

There were no buses I could take, so I called my parents and told them I would not arrive in Claremont until about 1 a.m.

That was the first inkling I had that rail transportation in the United States was declining and would almost vanish, except for freight trains. Up until then I had taken it for granted we would always have railroad trains.

When I was a child, the family car was stored in the garage during the war. So whenever we wanted to travel —and it was only to Manchester to visit my mother's side of the family— we always took the train.

I had seen so many 1940's movies with glamorous movie stars riding on a train and having dinner in the dining car. I associated trains with glamour. I loved them. I always thought it was a delightful way to travel. And there was mystery as well as glamour associated with them. I read Agatha Christy's Murder on the Orient Express. I was enthralled.

But by the mid-1950s Americans owned cars, and the jet airplane had taken off. Who had need for or cared about the railroad train?

When my husband and I moved to Fitchburg in the fall of 1962, I looked forward once again to seeing the old Victorian depot with its tower. One of my first excursions in Fitchburg was to take a bus from Lunenburg (where we had rented a cottage) to downtown Fitchburg. I wandered about looking for the depot but could not find it. I was positive I was in the right section of Main Street, but I could see no depot. Instead there was a shopping plaza there.

Finally the realization began to sink in. The depot had been torn down.

Amtrak's Main Street

I took my first cross-country trip on Amtrak in 1989. Living on a train for a few days is similar to living in a neighborhood. Your seat is your home. The people around you are your neighbors. The aisle is like Main Street. This became obvious to me the first evening. The woman sitting next to me was en route to Oregon to attend a wedding. She had two children with her. As children do, they had met a couple of other children riding on the train, and they all became friends, playing games, talking, whispering secrets and giggling as children will. Every now and again they would scamper down the aisle to the other children's seat, but they would come back with their new-found friends—just like neighborhood kids do. About 9:30 p.m. the mother turned to her children and said, “Tell your friends to run along home now. It's time to go to bed.”

Her use of the word “home” caught my attention. Yes, home. That is what an Amtrak seat is while you are riding on the train. It is home. And children must “run along home” when it's bed time.

And the Aisle is Main Street.

We Always Changed Trains in Concord: Early train memories

I grew up in Claremont, N.H. My mother came from Manchester, N.H. and she had many friends and relatives living there, with whom she kept in contact. My family did not own an automobile. Well— we did actually. It was a 1929 Studebaker —but that's another story. But from about 1940 to the end of World War II, the Studebaker was kept in the garage. My father did not drive it. When we wanted to go to Manchester to visit my mother's side of the family, or to visit friends, we took the train.

I was about five years old when I took my first train trip. My mother and a friend and her son and I went to the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus. I remember that along the way we played word games. Very simple ones. For example, when we entered the town of Warner, my mother would ask, “Do you “warner” (want) a river?” because the Warner River flowed through the town.

Then the conductor would come by. The conductor was a short, stout men. He would say, “Warner, Warner. Next stop is Warner.”

We always had to change trains in Concord, the state capitol. When we got off at the station, the first thing which always caught my eye was the huge (to me) red, nineteenth century coach, —the Concord Coach. It has been over a decade since I last was in Concord. And it has been years and years since I was in the old train station there. By now it had probably been torn down, just the old Depot in Fitchburg was torn down sometime around 1959. What a shame!

But the Concord Coach has been preserved. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that the Concord Coach is now in a New Hampshire museum, but I don‘t know which one.

Amtrak and e-books

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

When I was traveling on Amtrak last summer, one of my fellow passengers was reading from a Kindle. I had heard and read about Kindle and seen pictures of it, but I had never actually seen one before. I asked the man how he liked using it and whether he had difficulty reading a book on a Kindle. He said he liked using it and had no problems reading it at all.

I wanted to ask him if he would let me hold it so I could read a page to see what it was like, but I didn't. I didn't want to take a chance I might lose his place —that is click on something that would require him to go back several pages to get back to where he was. Also I didn't want to bother him or invade his privacy. So I just looked at it and listened to what he said.

Recently, I was in Barnes & Noble in Leominster and they had their Nook on display. So I looked at it and read the excerpt they had on the screen —I don't remember now what it was. I was more interested in the Nook itself than I was in the literature on the electronic page.

Like many book lovers I find the possibility that books as we know them may eventually disappear from our lives to be devastating to contemplate. I love books. The traditional book. The book you can hold in your hand as you leaf through the pages slowly, feeling their texture and looking at the typeface and sampling passages here and there. I like book covers and the excitement and curiosity they generate. Also I think books are a very efficient device, even from a technological standpoint. You can go back and forth and up and down. The scrolling of electronic media is really very old fashioned. That's what the ancient Romans did. Unroll a scroll and read down or up, but they couldn't scan back and forth across. Also a well-designed book can be a work of art itself.

Recently I discussed the future of the book with a friend of mine, and she said she loves books, but the Kindle and other electronic books are coming. It's inevitable. Nothing can stop it. It's the future. The younger generation and future generations won't be fazed by them at all. She is right of course.

But will a child get as much pleasure from an electronic version of “The Little Engine That Could” as from the book version?

There are advantages, of course. One is you can download several books at once and store them on the Kindle or the Nook or any of the other e-books soon to be appearing on the market. And this is a great advantage. Imagine in a few years that the first group of pioneers heads out into space to colonize a distant planet. If they take a supply of e-books with them, they could bring the world's greatest works of literature with them very compactly, and the world's culture could be transmitted and preserved for future generations in the colony in outer space.

E-books also have their advantages for persons traveling by any mode of transportation. Instead carrying several books or magazines, you can bring one e-book stocked with a shelfful of books.