Harmony on the Train

Impressions of Seattle: many buses, even on Sunday morning, with a “free zone”; lots of other- colored service people; about half the people are really friendly, others more remote; Whole Foods overwhelming, so many choices, so expensive, so crowded – like where's the Depression we keep hearing about?; protesters about gay rights and Jesus, but not about war; train station big, empty, deserted; that we can land people on the moon but cannot make a train station public address speaker work....The sound is both deafening and garbled.

Our train left right on time.... Not even crowded, not like I expected, after several days of suspended service. Nice gentle trip. The biggest difference between this trip and previous trips is that so many people have laptops and cell phones. People don't talk to each other much, but certainly spend lots of times yakking with friends on the phone in faraway places.

There's a guy across from us with a big drama. Took a job on a referral from his friend. Seems he came from far away and was staying with the friend's girlfriend in order to do the job. Within a couple of days, according to this fellow passenger, the friend's girlfriend was trying to seduce him, and so after a week he had to “get the hell out of there”. Now he's got $400 in his pocket, and that's all his money in the world, and he's headed for Reno, Nevada. He doesn't know why Reno. Doesn't know anyone there. It's just a destination that occurred to him. We heard the whole drama in excruciating detail, explained not once, but over and over ad nauseum.

There's always someone annoying nearby, it seems. (Sometimes it's us, no doubt, rattling plastic bags, or somehow disturbing the others in ways we are blind to.) Right now there's a family a few seats in front of us. The mother has two babies. One is very young, a boy. The older one is a little girl named Harmony. The mother continually barks orders at Harmony. Harmony, GET OVER HERE! Harmony, sit down! Harmony, stand up! Harmony, go to the bathroom NOW! She's got a really aggressive and nearly violent tone in almost every exchange with the kid. Once she referred to the child as Harmony May, and I explained to Ni that when we get a middle name used on us, it's time to run. The poor kid. Harmony is going to be a disaster area. I was telling Ni that it would be better parenting to just travel with a roll of duct tape. Joking, of course.