Entries tagged with springfield

Current Music: Safara: Mi Rareza Mi Bellleza

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TITANIC WEEK, DAY 4

Today's question for Doug involves a resource in our area, the Titanic Historical Society. It was created in 1963 by Edward Kamuda, who back in the 1950s reached out to the survivors of the Titanic, asking them if they would be willing to share their memories. He created the first LP album recording of them sharing those memories. Various people also donated their souvenirs--including a square of carpet from the ship!

Have you been to the Titanic Historical Society's museum in Indian Orchard [a neighborhood in Springfield, MA]? If so, what's it like? What's the best part?

Doug's reply:

Yes, several times. I actually met the founder of the Titanic Historical Society, Ed Kamuda, a few years before his passing. The first time I met him, he gave me a little pop quiz on ocean liners, and I got them all right, and he said to my mother, "You got an expert right here." You never forget things like that.

I think the best part is that it was established in my hometown, and that’s something positive I can say about the city where I grew up. Also, two of Titanic’s passengers who died lived in Springfield. Milton Long, son of Judge Charles Long, a former mayor of the city, and Jane Carr, who was a third-class passenger whom I believe lived in nearby Windsor Locks prior to Springfield. Springfield has so much hidden history that one would be surprised to learn about.

Photos of Milton Long and Jane Carr

Link to Doug's book

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/910410.html

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why people confide in strangers

Sometimes things happen like this:

I and a couple of others were waiting for a bus of Japanese high-school students at the Basketball Hall of Fame. We were part of the group that was hosting them/showing them around. While we waited, a local kid (high school senior), hurried into the museum, followed a few minutes later by his mother, with money for lunch. She'd driven him there, but he'd rushed in without money, and she wanted him to be able to get food.

Her mission accomplished, the mom didn't leave, but struck up a conversation, talking about her kids' (the son and his younger siblings and older sister) experience of school, kids getting labeled as troublemakers, racism (she was Black), the difference between being African American and being Afro Caribbean (her husband's from Jamaica) and so on.

I really enjoyed talking with her. We talked for a long time--basically until the bus with the Japanese students arrived--and afterward I was pondering why people confide in strangers. Here are some thoughts:

We talk to family and friends about problems, but if the problems are intractable or complicated or long term, then our family and friends can eventually know them intimately. They can be fatigued hearing the same litany of stuff from us--but the problem still weighs on us and we can want relief, and for some of us, talking provides relief.
A stranger doesn't have years of experience with us that might undercut the story we're telling (at least in their eyes); they don't remember the times we failed to keep a promise or the time we were too terrified to get on the roller coaster or the time we hollered at our kids in a supermarket. If the stranger's willing to give us a sympathetic listen, they're likely to be totally in our corner.
A stranger probably won't make irksome suggestions, but if they do make suggestions, they won't come with a whole lot of historical baggage attached--not like when our parents tell us for the seventy-millionth time that maybe we should try using the envelope method of budgeting or our smugly relationship-ensconced friend gives us dating advice. It's much easier to consider a stranger's suggestion on its merits **or** to just dismiss it.

I haven't ever really talked at length about personal problems to a stranger in person, but I've done it online--for some of these reasons ... I don't do it anymore, in part because nowadays, in the places I'm active online, I'm not in the company of strangers anymore, and also I guess because the airing of problems doesn't give me relief or clarity in the way it once did.

What about you all, though? Thoughts on why people confide in strangers?

Current Music: Red Hook Ramblers: G Train Blues

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riding the Vermonter

Train tracks run behind my neighborhood, where I walk. I often see trains go by: long New England Central Railroad freight trains and the Amtrak passenger train--the Vermonter.

On Christmas I learned that in January, the route of the Vermonter will change--it will no longer travel the length of track near my house. We've often talked of riding it, but our chance was fast disappearing, so on Saturday, December 27,

wakanomori and I bought tickets to ride from Springfield, Massachusetts, to Amherst. Here are some photos of that journey (to see more in the series, or to see any of the pictures bigger, click through to Flickr):

In Springfield, waiting

Long evening light off the old mill buildings

Buildings in evening light, Springfield MA

( a river and a railroad crossing )

( ridiculously blurry photos of my haunts )

And here is a picture of the setting sun that Amtrak liked so much it asked to use it--I said yes.

passenger silhouetted against train window

And here we are in Amherst. I heard other people talking about how this was near to the last journey. Others were also commemorating it, as you can see.

Amherst Amtrak station, to be decommissioned

Then we drove home in the deepening sunset