Return to Kerala

I wish I could give you the link to the full text of Rahul Jacob's article in the Financial Times, This Should Be the Age of the Train. But since I can't, I hope no one minds if I quote the final two sentences, "I remember returning by train to Kerala, where my grandmother had lived, with my parents 20 years later. Entranced by the sight of tracks bisecting preening paddy fields and barefoot girls running to school with hibiscus in their hair and the smells of breakfast emanating from a thousand wood fires, I wondered whether all tropical homecomings were so redolent that you 'had to select senses' (sight or smell or sound) for a day as Michael Ondaatje once put it. As the train trundled along, I stood by an open door for two hours to take it all in; the windows simply were't big enough." I'm reminded by this of the first time, at age ten, I rode the Long Island Rail Road main line to Greenport. The final stretch after Southold, where the tracks pull away from the road and cross the salt marshes with glimpses through the woody islands to the bay is also redolent of... of the end of the line, of the continent ending and the ocean beginning.

It'll All Work Out (Maybe)

I can’t make up my mind on Jane Jacobs’ Dark Age Ahead. Many of the things Jacobs says are insightful. On the micro level her perceptions are sharp and important. She clearly understands what makes a city or town livable. Her comments about the damage caused by an automobile-based transportation system resonate with me: "One can drive today through miles of American suburbs and never glimpse a human being on foot in a public space, a human being outside a car or truck… This is a visible sign that much of North America has become bereft of communities. For communities to exist, people must encounter one another in person. " And: “Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities. Highways and roads obliterate the places they are supposed to serve…"

I like Jacobs’ comparison of "organic" urban boulevards to destructive freeways. Her espousal of Brian Donahue’s idea of preserving at least one working farm in every suburb so that people do not become totally divorced from primary production makes a great deal of sense. But… I’m not sure that it all holds together at the macro level. Do all the problems Jacobs points out really lead to a dark age? I don’t think she ties the threads together and fully makes the case. I worry that she’s right but I’m not totally convinced. I do recommend this book to everyone.