Monday, April 14, 2014

Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Gambier to Mt Vernon to Marengo to Ashley to Delaware to Ashley to Marengo to Mt Vernon to Gambier





From Kensington to Frederick it's 31 miles, Frederick to Hagerstown 24 miles, Hagerstown to Hancock 28 miles, Hancock to Cumberland 37 miles, Cumberland to Morgantown 65 miles, Morgantown to Washington 43 miles, Washington to Wheeling 36 miles, Wheeling to Zanesville 70 miles, Zanesville to Gambier 40 miles (Zanesville to Nashville is 14 miles, Nashville to Fallsburg 10, Fallsburg to Martinsburg 10, Martinsburg to Gambier 6). I know this by heart. The halfway point between Kensington and Zanesville is the Bruceton Mills exit on I-68 six miles west of the Maryland border in West Virginia. The halfway point between Kensington and Gambier is the interchange of I-68 and I-79 in Morgantown. PennDot finally completed and opened the new flyover interchanged at I-79 and I-70 in Washington. I thought there was going to be a new soccer stadium in DC before that interchange was completed, and there will never be a new soccer stadium in DC.





   









ON INHABITING AN ORANGE

Josephine Miles

All our roads go nowhere.
Maps are curled
To keep the pavement definitely
On the world.

All our footsteps, set to make
Metric advance,
Lapse into arcs in deference
To circumstance.

All our journeys nearing Space
Skirt it with care,
Shying at the distances
Present in air.

Blithely travel-stained and worn,
Erect and sure,
All our travels go forth,
Making down the roads of Earth
Endless detour.



3 comments:

  1. I keep wondering if Maryland will ever finish the I-70 bridge over Conococheague Creek just west of Hagerstown.
    ~

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    1. And OhioDot that bridge over some road just west of St Clairsville.

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  2. Linkage much appreciated, as before, always. And serendipity indeed. A heresy: Revisiting the music in question, I now remember that I long ago started thinking of a lot of Beefheart's music as being like listening Howling Wolf being filtered through Partch. (Pardon my harsh reductivisms, but unfortunately I'm too prone to thinking in 2-3-4=part equations likes that. Not that I like that about how my earhole-oriented brain works, or that I don't recognize that it's a bit lazy and unfairly cold, but...ugh...it's a habit I formed early on and -- these many years later -- have yet to break.)

    But hope that you enjoy the delve into Partch. If you have access to a library that has a copy of "Bitter Music," you might find that the diaries from his hobo-jungle years during the Great Depression make for an interesting travelogue.

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