Pablo’s train

Here is an annotation from earlier this semester.  I told J that I would post this one sometime, and 3am on a Thursday night is a good time, right?

But first, here is a picture of the Amtrak train in Rutland, getting ready to depart for NY city.  I took this photo one morning while walking to Price Chopper to buy cookie ingredients back when we were baking for the farmer’s market.  I rode on this same train, or one of its brethren (sistren?  are trains female like boats?), when I visited L in Brooklyn.  That was fun!  Also, a much less happy detail: it was right near where I took this picture that the knife-death over $40 happened.  I sort of furtively looked for bloodstains on the pavement when I walked by there yesterday, then felt silly and morbid.  I bet they cleaned up thoroughly anyway.

Now, on to the annotation:

Two Poems by Pablo Neruda   

hometown

Yesterday some dude in Rutland stabbed another dude in the Walmart parking lot, in broad daylight.  They were fighting about $40 one guy apparently owed the other guy.  Forty dollars!  Doesn’t seem worth it.  But I guess anger (and possibly drugs) can make you do crazy things, things you wouldn’t do in a calm, rational state-of-mind.  And I would theorize that the one with the knife didn’t mean to actually kill the other guy.  Still, this is like a two minute walk from where I live, and it happened in a place I walk through all the time to get downtown, right by the Amtrak station.  I think, technically, that we live on the “wrong” side of the tracks, although Rutland is a working-class town all over.  And I do like that about it here, that it’s not all touristy and pretentious.  Let’s just say that if some guy says I owe him forty bucks, I’m probably not going to get aggressive back at him, especially if I happen to be in the vicinity of Walmart at the time.  I’m going to run!

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071102/NEWS/71102006