An Amtrak Storify—STL to CHI/CHI to CLE/CLE to NYC, August 2014

Amtrak StorifyTo chronicle my recent Midwest August vacation, I’ve used Storify, the Web platform that lets bloggers incorporate social media posts in with their own writing. Once a piece is published on Storify, you can grab a handy embed code and paste it in at your websites, where it populates precisely as you’ve composed it. The piece is titled “By Train—STL to CHI/CHI to CLE/CLE to NYC, August 2014.” You may click here to read it at my page on Storify, or over at The Great Gray Bridge. I do hope you enjoy reading it, and if you also happen to enjoy writing sequential, diary-like narratives, I recommend you try Storify. It’s my second one, after “Great Music & Great Times in Toronto for NXNE, June 2014,” which includes travel and tourism info about Toronto, notes on restaurants, bookstores, shopping, and architecture, along with my music coverage of the NXNE festival, and which has now had more than 765 readers.

On the Rails Headed Home

Canadian train travelers, I’m sure VIA Rail gives you headaches at times, but consider yourself fortunate you don’t have Amtrak as your national passenger rail carrier. On our recent vacation, my wife and I flew to St. Louis, and after seeing family for a few days there, began voyaging back east on the rails. From St. Louis, we took Amtrak to Chicago, arriving almost ninety minutes late that night. After three days there we took a 9:30 PM train, the Lakeshore Limited, that actually left at 10:30, then arrived the next morning in Cleveland at 9:30, instead of 5:30. Following three days in Cleveland, we boarded the Lakeshore Limited again, a 5:50 AM train that left at 7:10. It arrived thirteen hours later in NYC, about two hours later than its scheduled arrival.

In the course of these trips we learned that Amtrak doesn’t really own the track its trains ride on, and is thus subject to the schedules of the freight haulers who do own the rails. I love train journeys, but Amtrak makes it really hard to love it at all.

En Route from St Louis to Chicago

On Vacation in St Louis


Having a great time on vacation in St. Louis with my wife Kyle, son Ewan, and his best pal, Nolan Marsh. Soon, my wife and I will be on our way to Chicago, then Cleveland.

A Week of Worrisome News about the Siberian Permafrost & Arctic Ocean

This tweet of author Robert Wright that I shared linked to a TIME magazine story about mysterious craters in Siberia, and an aerial video view of the holes in the earth.

Later, I read another story, in ThinkProgress, suggesting that the emergence of these holes in the earth may well be the result of permafrost melting in the Arctic tundra, auguring an accompanying release of tons of methane gas, a worrisome development that if correct bodes ill for its effect on the global climate. Here’s a screenshot from the article by Ari Phillips.

Ari Phillips story on Siberia The next day, I read Fred Barbash’s Washington Post article about the appearance of huge sea sells in the Arctic Ocean, where only ice has been seen before. These two discoveries leave little doubt in my mind that the coldest places on the planet are warming in ways that are having a dramatic effect on earth and sea.

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) July 30, 2014