Seven Red

I’m still amazed by the transportation infrastructure. I hate to say this, knowing that so many experience problems traveling this time of year, but our trip was very smooth. We did the usual bus-train-plane exit from Chicago, and this time the plane actually left right on time, and actually got into LaGuardia early. Then, miraculously, there was no traffic at all on the BQE (not even at the Kozciusko Bridge!), and we were in Cobble Hill in about 15 minutes. Pretty remarkable, all things considered. It may just be the humantities background, but this whole thing continues to amaze and mystify me. I think of all the back-end behind the surface appearance of the transportation system – all the many people and blueprints and schedules and logistics that contribute to getting me from a corner in Chicago to the exact address in Brooklyn all in about 6 hours. It’s the proverbial system that seems so total that one can only begin to contemplate it. The old fascist justification of the “trains running on time” is of course reduced to a joke, but it’s when you’re traveling during the holidays that you start to see the fundamental attractiveness of the fascist trade-off. Some people worry about trading liberty for security, but the much better argument – as Mussolini seems to have understood – is trading liberty for a predictable ETA. The struggle between chaos and order is fought in the Gates of O’Hare.

Brooklyn: Stoop-sitting with the best of ‘em…

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