The train ride from Montreal nearly due south to Albany and on to New York could be comfortably described as scenic. It begins with the crossing of the majestic Saint Lawrence. I missed a photo of the crisp clean lines of the lock attached to the far bank which framed some complex industrial buildings and a massive Ferris wheel. But soon the scenery settled into farmland, mostly cornfields, with buildings nestled into them as though they’d grown there.

It’s just 50 kilometres to the border and this was how we had chosen to enter the United States. Some media reports suggested that there might be a fuss. I thought that was fairly unlikely, being as we are two elderly Australians without obvious terrorist tendencies. But I didn’t want there to be a fuss. I had made some modest adjustments to my socials. I had confirmed our ESTAs long before, had made copies blah blah blah. [ESTA = Electronic System for Travel Authorization, required to enter the US.] I had filled in and paid our I-94s in Lisbon, BUT the damn app wouldn’t let me make a copy which for a time drove me crazy. [I-94 = an electronic arrival record showing your visa status and permitted stay period. Cost: AUD 42.62] You know … these things … can’t be too careful. In addition, airports, the international version anyway, are never much fun. I thought entry via train might be lower key. Anything to ease the journey.

A brief digression: the day before in Montreal we had both received notifications on our phones that there was a shooter loose in Côtes de Neige a couple of streets over from where we were. This situation ended with two dead, so … you know. Things happen.

The train stopped at a major installation at what my phone says is Rouse’s Point. And it is in the U. S. of A.

I counted 12 men and women as they got off, 12 very heavily-armed men and women. But that’s just America. So, 12 very heavily-armed men and women got on and began their border control. It wasn’t a big train and there weren’t many people on it. It nonetheless took them 75 minutes to complete whatever it was that they were completing.

In our case not much.

They asked for our passports. Hard to argue with that. Asked where we’d come from and where we were going. The woman actually; the guy was mostly just there for colour. Why were we travelling? And then, were we married? And then, didn’t we get homesick travelling? Which brought in the big guy who told us he lived just over the hill in Champlain and that he’d hardly been anywhere else in his life and that suited him just fine.

No interest in our ESTAs, no checking our I-94s, just amiable and pleasant Americans. It had taken about three minutes.

Another 50 kilometres, we’re now travelling through mixed forest, and the line swerves across to the shores of the waterway we’re near. It’s the top of the Hudson Valley. At this point Lake Champlain seems like a vast expanse and, at this point, it is — about 15 kilometres across.

The waterway narrows but the track stays on the shoulder of the western shoreline, sometimes up on rocky outcrops — palisades they might call them here — and at other points, more often, gliding over bridges through swamp land.

At times the river, the Hudson in which the island of Manhattan is eventually embedded, got so narrow that it became a channel carved through rush and swamp grass. But that was before we came to Port Henry.

There weren’t many in our carriage: two young adults travelling for work, a family of four whose children were buried in books, another young woman, another family whose father spent at least some of his time on the train rolling joints. But it was quiet. There was the clack of the line and the regular warning noise the engine made whenever we came to a road crossing, fairly constantly as it seemed. We fell to trying to find suitable terms for it. It was certainly not a toot or a whistle or a siren or a blast. I decided a moan, a muscular bovine moan. Moowaooowooo. Distant. Cinematic. Lovely.

And then at Port Henry three more passengers got on. At first, and this is not to my credit, I thought it was a sort of joke. In France I would have been confident that it was un spectacle and they would do something and then ask for money.

Their hats were made for comedy. They were in such good order, cream straw cylinders on cream straw discs, symmetrical and probably not much fun to wear. And they were in uniform. Royal blue work shirts done up to the neck, pants and waist coats of a darker shade of blue, heavy black work shoes. Identically clad, the three of them, two adults and a 14 or 15 year-old. The adults had under-the-chin beards which I’ve never really understood. They took their hats off, each chose a window seat, and the two older ones started shouting to each other with the younger one joining in from time to time. I thought it sounded a bit like German, often long ‘yaaar’s. I consulted my phone. I was probably listening to Pennsylvania Dutch, with ‘Dutch’ being a corruption of ‘Deutsch’. Amish.

For a start they climbed up on their seats and gestured loudly at what we were passing, possibly identifying landmarks and land ownership. Someone suggested that this might have been their first time on a train as Amish usually do not travel this way.

Look, if a shout is a 7 they were probably on 5.3 to 5.6; but it was loud. And it went on. Not for 15 or so minutes but for several hours. It was a long trip. One would think of something and shout it over the seat to another person sitting a metre away. Then that person would shout back. Then they would shout together for some time. A lull. A shout, a shout back. Their obliviousness to anyone else on the train would suggest that it was an act, some cunning traducement, and then they’d be normal and say, ‘Ha! Like that? We sure tricked you!’ But no. No. They shared what I decided was a nasal braying drawl which, after some time, was like having a screw driven into your head.

And, here I am moving onto thinner ice, I became conscious of the way they smelt. As soon as you start talking about ‘smell’ there’s trouble. It becomes a pejorative and really it shouldn’t. But I can’t do anything about that. I have a keen sense of smell which usually provides me with a lot of pleasure, but these chaps smelt like chewed chewing gum. Stale spearmint? And that’s not necessarily an unpleasant smell. No disparagement intended. But they did. And somehow it added to the bother. Oh, and they ate crateloads of chips very loudly! Speaking all the while. They REAALLY gave me the shits.

Why didn’t I ask them if they’d mind being a bit quieter? I would usually. Was it because they were Amish? Maybe I felt I didn’t know how because of their difference. At the time it seemed to go beyond those apparently trivial markers to become an obligatory principle of de-association.

Our own Pauline Hansen had been in the news saying unpleasant things about people — genres of people, races of people, religions of people — she doesn’t like. Am I like her? I was at that point. Would I like to have those three forcibly deported? Then, yes. Would I act to have them forcibly deported? Possibly. Do I want them to live in a ghetto which is broadly inaccessible? (As they may. I don’t know.) That might be one solution.

How do people with quite radical differences of view and of cultural practice live together? At that moment I didn’t care. I just wanted them out of the carriage. I may have even hated them.

* * * * * * *

So, here I am entering America and already, a couple of hours in, absorbing some of the characteristics that the media, ours and theirs, feed on and spit out as normal.

Were we arriving in a country riven by cultural wars, where both sorts of extreme positions are sublimely stupid, and even the more moderate ones seem unnecessarily aggressive? Where the administration seems to be wanting to stamp out empathy and tolerance, and where the operative version of the Bible seems more focused on incarcerating your neighbour than loving them? Where anger is a marketable commodity, the more furious the more lucrative?

That was the eye I was looking with.

This may disappoint you, but most of the Americans we encountered were scrupulously polite or, better, cheerily warmly polite. They wanted to invite you into their world, if a superficial version of it. (Superficial’s okay; you’re only buying milk.) They were quite insistent about engaging with you and eagerly responsive if you showed interest. ‘You’re so very welcome’, would easily be the phrase we heard most commonly. Easily.

Even if it’s an idea and practice which can readily be challenged, the country lives off philanthropy. In the welter and complexity of philanthropic projects in America there are clearly generous and companionate instincts present. And, just as it happens, in each case the people we spent more time with were mentoring kids who were having a hard time in close and warm relationships. These things seemed commonplace but they’re often left off the scales when weighing Trump’s infamies. (And infamies they are, except, and let’s be clear here, someone has to do something about illegal immigration.)

It’s a big country.

* * * * * * *

You want to know what happened don’t you? In fact you want a look at the photos I took of them.

With 45 minutes to go they went off to the dining car. We got off at Albany. They didn’t.

* * * * * * *

Our accommodation in Albany was next to the Emmanuel Church and clusters of customers for the Food Pantry were often, in clouds of ganja smoke, just over the road. This sign wasn’t madly unusual, but it had an addendum which did offer something different. The church had recently taken ICE and the government to court to protect someone (named, but not described) and they had won. This person was no longer in custody. The church had done that not via the customary tools of rhetoric or a sermon, but by action, which in this case had succeeded.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Forces always come in pairs: One force is the action, and the other is the reaction.

* * * * * * *

Our very friendly hostess and the dominant figure at the cafe where we breakfasted in Albany was Venezuelan. The shocking earthquakes which had occurred the day before we arrived had had an impact on her family. She was glad Trump had kidnapped Maduro because she thought that meant the local rescue effort might be more efficient and successful. Her own citizenship status was uncertain.

* * * * * * *

At the Phillips Collection in Washington, housed in a mansion near Dupont Circle where this, at left, was the music room, it was thought appropriate to post this sign at the entry.

One way — in this stockpile of Rothkos, Braques, Van Goghs, Kandinskys, Pisarros and so on — might have been to take the work below and feature it. Well, that’s what they’d done anyway, and we liked and admired it. Friendly. Charming. Unusual media. Ethiopian. Bit out of the way. Great. Loved seeing it there.

‘Yediro Suk’ by Elias Sime, born Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 1968. Paint, ink, acrylic yarn embroidery.

But I don’t think that’s the answer to the question and its embedded assumptions. Privilege may offer more chances to encounter some forms of art or to be exposed to ideas about art, but it mightn’t have much to do at all with taste.

* * * * * * *

The Chase Bank, Washington, 600m from the White House. Which clearly has not been able to stamp out expressions of DEI. Or is it just clever marketing? Maybe chasing the pink dollar? Maybe firmly suggesting that you don’t say things like ‘chasing the pink dollar’?

* * * * * * *

A hoarding on a fence surrounding major new works in Forest Park, St Louis. I can’t see who is doing the yoga down below but there are no Caucasians on the terrace.

* * * * * * *

Food. Can food be political too? Well prima facie, no. It’s absence, yes. Bobby Kennedy would say, most certainly. What you choose to eat will help to define who you are.

MAGA-ites and Red Meat? Yes. Barbecued red meat, two-inch steaks. Rare. The smashed avo brigade? You know who I’m talking about. They’re drinking oat milk lattes. Felafal and hummus? Don’t get me started. Didn’t we just obliterate their nuclear stockpile?

The American supermarket may have something to say about cultural identity and conflict.

In Nashville we found the ‘Turnip Truck Natural Market, the city’s locally owned full-service natural and organic grocer, open daily from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM.’ We were looking for some breakfast, fruit still in the first fresh bloom of youth and cereal that was less than 85% sugar. Confoundingly even in the Turnip Truck we could find no natural yoghurt to accompany same. All the options were heavily interfered with.

I did find Love Crunch Dark Chocolate and Red Berries Premium Organic Granola, and as something you’d want to eat first thing in the morning was inclined to treat this less than seriously.

However in the process of aimless phone wandering I discovered this:

‘Dark chocolate and red berries provide a powerful boost of antioxidants, flavonoids, and fiber. When eaten together, this combination supports heart health, lowers inflammation, improves blood flow, and feeds healthy gut bacteria to protect metabolic health.’

That’s what AI says anyway. What would The Science say? What would Anthony Fauci say? (No not the bit about Barbra Streisand, or Joan Baez either for that matter …)

We didn’t purchase.

I was even less confident about these.

But they did sell fruit and vegs.

[A passing note: The really good Nashville breakfasts we found and most certainly the best coffee by many miles outside of Washington was at an ‘Australian’ cafe, Two Hands presumably a play on the Heath Ledger/ Bryan Brown film, which served ‘mindful meals’.]

* * * * * * *

There is a fundamental, inescapable and probably insoluble paradox at the heart of American cultural history which still instructs and shapes contemporary life: America as a beacon of freedom in thought, word and deed; and, a country founded on Western cultural norms which, when all said and done, shake down into a Judeo-Christian white republic. To some degree, this is the difference as an idea between 1619 when the first arrival of slaves from Africa in Virginia was recorded and 1776 when 56 ‘American’ men signed the Declaration of Independence.

It is desperately untidy, and is likely to remain so, because just what can you do about history?

* * * * * * *

As you would expect, the Missouri History Museum was celebrating the 250th. On entry, you will encounter a large statue of Thomas Jefferson, a permanent fixture. Prominently at his side when we were there is a display which is framed by the following text:

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776. In it, he made a stirring claim for the equality of men and the existence of inalienable rights. In the decades that followed, he sought to expand white American’s rights and opportunities while at the same time profiting from the enslavement of Black men, women and children at his Virginia plantation, Monticello. During his life, Jefferson enslaved more than 600 people. He also had six children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings — a relationship which began when Jefferson was in his 40s and Hemings was a teenager.

Apparently he didn’t think much of Native Americans either. In the same display it is noted that the only reference to them in the Declaration is to ‘merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions’.

This is followed by a quote from Frederick Douglass, a hero of the African-American civil rights movement.

‘A government founded on justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the Governments in the world, and to the narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.’ (1869)

* * * * * * *

In an article about America’s complex response to the 250th celebrations, and prompted by his experience at Philadelphia’s Museum, David Smith wrote in the Guardian (10/7/26):

‘The exhibition [at Philadelphia’s museum] is proof that, while the White House stages its partisan spectacles, the nation’s cultural institutions are engaging in a quiet, methodical resistance, wielding primary sources and complex story-telling against the the onslaught of the great man theory of history.’

* * * * * * *

The Douglass quote is, in turn, next to a display about the Louisiana Purchase. [In 1803, the nascent US paid France $15 million for 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi, thereby doubling the size of the country.] The display asks:

‘Should the Louisiana Purchase be celebrated?

Should the United States have had the right to buy this land from France when most of it was already inhabited and controlled by Native Americans?’

Vexed and challenging questions to which the Heritage Foundation and Steven Miller (at right) would have answers. But here are the questions nonetheless, in public and in big stylish print, as the focus of the celebration of America’s founding moment, seeming to suggest that the correct answers might be ‘No’, and ‘No’, leaving contemporary Americans in a somewhat invidious situation.

What do you do if you say ‘No’ and ‘No’? What could the consequences and appropriate course of action possibly be?

* * * * * * *

In 1904, Saint Louis actually did celebrate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase by holding a thoroughly memorable world fair. It was a giant enterprise covering a good deal of what is now Forest Park and was designed to show off the world’s latest in industry and technology. More than 50 countries provided exhibits. It was also designed to show off the greatest: America and its progress. Forty-three of the then 45 states had exhibitions. (You may wish to compare this with Trump’s WORLD’S GREATEST fair for the 250th.)

As  President William McKinley said in his address to open the Fair:

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise, and intellect of the people; and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of information to the student.

The Fair ran for seven months and attendance was recorded at just under 20 million. 450,000 were there on its biggest day. Its 1,500 buildings were connected by 120 km of roads and walkways. The Palace of Agriculture alone, fitted out in Greco-Roman style, covered 20 acres. (It was the Big One.)

At right is a portion of the Palace of the Arts. It was a no nonsense affair architecturally anyway.

Wireless telephones, electric streetcars and X-ray machines were among the featured marvels. Helen Keller gave a lecture. George Ferris opened and ran his first Wheel. T.S. Eliot, a native of St Louis, wrote a paper on anthropology after his visit. Max Weber arrived hoping to gain some additional insights into capitalism. The Anglo-Boer War Concession re-enacted major battles from the Second Boer War twice a day. Several generals and 600 veteran soldiers from both sides of the war participated. After 2–3 hours the show would conclude with the Boer General, Christiaan de Wet, escaping by diving from a height of 35 feet (11 m) into a pool of water.

But the celebration of imperialism and conquest was a dominant theme. Today we might call it abject, unalloyed racism.

A number of groups of what we might call First Peoples (2600 individuals counted collectively) were pressed into service. They were arranged in clusters along ‘The Pike’, the road running through the main entertainment area, in a continuum graded from ‘Savage’ to ‘Civilised’.

[It might be noted that some of the participants in this ‘Human Zoo’ made a living this way. A ‘Canadian’ Inuit, for example, was born at the Chicago World’s Fair and lived in this way for decades while she and her family maintained a home on Coney Island.]

Various events were held to demonstrate the superiority of the white races. These sometimes took the form of the ‘experiments’ which in this febrile environment were very popular.

One of these was the ‘Anthropology Days’. The administrators paid indigenous peoples (already employed as exhibits in the ‘human zoo’ at the Fair) to compete in European-style sporting events like discus throwing and high jump, and collected data on their athletic performance in order to investigate the scale of white physical superiority.

“We have for years been led to believe,” said the official report, “that the average savage was fleet of foot, strong of limb, accurate with the bow and arrow and expert in throwing the stone, and that some, particularly the Patagonians, were noted for their great size and strength, and owing to the peculiar life that many had been called upon to lead they have been termed natural athletes.” The competitions were scheduled so that scientific observers could be present and, continued the report, the results “disprove these tales.”

The organizers ran hundred-yard heats for six groups, “Africans, Moros (from the Philippines), Patagonians, and the Ainu (Japanese), Cocopa (Mexican) and Sioux Indian tribes. The best time, by an “Americanized Indian,” was one “that almost any winner of a schoolboy event could eclipse at will.” The best shot put “was a ridiculously poor performance,” and other events were equally disappointing. The report did acknowledge that some of the competitors weren’t that interested. “With the pigmies, however, it is only fair to state that they entered into the spirit of this competition for fun and only became interested in the pole climbing and their mud fight.”

Correct. Racism, pure as the driven white snow. But only in a country which already had profoundly racist foundations.

* * * * * * *

The relevance of the following story might not be immediately obvious. But maybe it is. It might tell you something important about the times. It wasn’t all X-rays and wireless telephones. You decide. Regardless, it’s a glorious story.

The burghers of Saint Louis strong-armed those of Chicago to allow the shift of the 1904 Olympic Games to the Fair, where they would become the first to be held in the United States. It was a mess as bits of the Games ran over five months and got very mixed up with the ‘Anthropogical’ events. Athletes from only 12 other countries participated; 523 of the 630 involved were American, many running for their club or state.

The marathon is famous.

The slowest ever at an Olympics by forty minutes (!), it was run in exceptionally hot weather through ‘normal’ life conditions so that runners were dodging pedestrians and traffic. One was hit by a trolley car, another chased by wild dogs and bitten. There was only one place on the course 12 miles from the start where athletes could officially get fresh water. James Sullivan, the chief organizer of the games, wanted to minimize fluid intake to test the limits and effects of purposeful dehydration, a common area of research at the time. 🤔😵‍💫🫣 The roads were so dusty (3-4 inches deep) that dust coated William Garcia’s aesophagus and stomach lining so completely it caused serious hemorrhaging. He was found unconscious by the side of the road and nearly died. 32 started, 14 finished.

Félix Carvajal of Cuba (in the centre of the photo above. Hicks is at the left, number 20), who travelled to St. Louis using money raised by staging various exhibitions in Havana, stopped in New Orleans and lost all of his money in a crap game. So he hitchhiked. He showed up on the starting line wearing heavy shoes, long trousers (which another competitor trimmed for him), and a long-sleeved shirt, and eventually finished fourth. He had taken a nap on the way and also eaten two peaches that he had stolen from a picnic and some rotten apples that he had been given. Two Zulu tribesmen who were part of the Boer War exhibition at the fair competed for fun. They came 9th and 12th.

First across the line was Fred Lorz. He was actually on the presentation dais with President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice anointing him with the laurel wreath when it was revealed that he’d become very thirsty during the race and left the course looking for a drink. He had then hailed a car and hitched a ride for 14 miles before getting out after the car broke down and running the last few.

The subsequently adjudged winner was T. J. Hicks from Massachusetts. When he asked his support team for water initially they just wiped his mouth out with a damp towel which had been soaked in distilled water. But then they gave him egg whites and in turn brandy and a tablet containing strychnine. He was also given a bath in warm water at the side of the track. When he was carried over the line by his handlers, feet in the air making slight running-like motions, he was hallucinating and asking if there was still 20 miles to go.

You’re laughing. I’m laughing. Every time I read it I laugh. In a context where these seemingly remarkable happenings are simply conventional behaviour, what do we think about casual or even institutional racism? How much really can we expect of human beings? Awkwardly, they’re just like us.

But we can be cruel, and we can be just stupid.

* * * * * * *

‘From 2014 to 2024, roughly 862,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, more than twice as many as the previous decade. Several studies have shown that addicts who shoot up at official injection sites are far less likely to die of overdoses than those who use drugs in, say, alleyways and parks. Over the past decade, however, overdose-death rates climbed sharply in nearly every city where the strongest harm-reduction policies were in place. …

[Newly appointed City President Sara] Nelson also asked pointed questions about what had become the received wisdom in Seattle, such as why the county government paid millions of dollars to supply kits to addicts with tinfoil, pipes, and instructions on how to smoke fentanyl. What harm was reduced, Nelson asked at a 2023 council hearing, by helping addicts get high? Amber Tejada, an employee of a health nonprofit that had partnered with the city, raised her hand to answer. “I know it can be a little controversial, but one of the key tenets of harm reduction that I see is that we want to be able to facilitate and champion the autonomy of people who use drugs.”’ (Michael Powell, ‘The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs’, The Atlantic 10/7/26.)

* * * * * * *

A contented, congenial, relaxed and very multi-cultural crowd, a few smoking dope happily but otherwise not appearing to take drugs, at a free concert (‘Kansas’: are you old enough to remember?) in Albany. The guy sitting in front of me has a T-shirt expressing an aspiration. If you can’t read it it says ‘Explore Goodness’.

Fair enough.

* * * * * * *

Meanwhile, on climate change …

Do you want to get off at Albany too?