occasional posts by risa aratyr
Risa Aratyr Kansas City, Missouri lies smack-dab in the middle of the contiguous United States. Well, technically, “smack dab” is about two miles northwest of Lebanon, Kansas. The spot is commemorated by a small stone monument and plaque, and noted by the town of Lebanon in quintessential, low-key Midwestern style. KCMO is 260 miles/418 km southeast of … Read more From the Heart
I hit my limit months ago. I couldn’t take the incessant pounding, the non-stop barrage of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-environmentalism, war-mongering, collusion, nepotism, self-aggrandizement, and sheer idiocy coming out of the White House and Congress. I couldn’t keep bearing unblinking witness to each and every horrendous, scandalous, apocalyptic thing day after day – not … Read more Life in the Trenches
My Riding the Rails mini-series is apparently missing the mark. Either that, or riding better-run rails for their entire lives has my non-American readers so positively disposed toward train travel, they keep missing my salient points. I said the Silver Star was the best of the lot – my point being, we rode lots of … Read more Riding the Rails – A Comparison
Washington, D.C. was our entire holiday in microcosm: big fun, but over-ambitious. We lived in Baltimore when I was quite young, 1958-1960. DC was a day-trip. Of course our parents took us there, probably more than once. My sister, two years older, retains a vague recollection. But though I remember Atlantic City (Boardwalk, diving horse, … Read more A Day in DC
In the idea phase of our cross-country train trip, we had it in mind to go from Tampa-St. Pete to Houston, where our daughter and son-in-law live. Inter-city travel is why trains were invented, right? We knew Amtrak wasn’t on a par with Europe’s anywhere-to-anywhere rail services, but surely it could get us to the … Read more Riding the Rails – A Monograph