sort of part 1
Dec. 15th, 2025 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauradi7dwTo avoid two posts in a row about remembering dead parents, I will just give a little travelogue of West Palm Beach, FL. I flew there on Thursday. Almost everyone on the plane was white (except the flight attendants), many but not all were older than I am, and many whom I overheard seemed too privileged to me. Am I all of those things except older than myself? Yes, but my thoughts are my own. Then I left the airport and for the next 20 hours I only talked with Black people. I had chosen WPB because it looked from the map that one could walk from the airport to the Amtrak station. I thought for a bit and then decided that while in theory there would be enough time to do that part of the trip in a single day, one can't trust travel timing, so I went a day earlier than the train I wanted to catch and stayed overnight in a motel. As it happens, while distances are short, there are no sidewalks going away from the airport, and I didn't want to walk on the shoulder of I-95 (if that is even legal). This became immediately apparent, so I walked up to a person dealing with traffic by the terminal and asked to be sure. He said don't try to walk on the highway, take an Uber. I asked about a local bus instead. He pointed to the stop and gave a rough estimate of frequency. When the bus pulled up, I checked with by-sitters to make sure it was the right one. Yes. I asked the driver what it cost, and was told that I qualify for senior fare ($1) and that there were no transfers - just pay again on the connecting bus. At the Amtrak station (I decided to get a paper version of the ticket instead of trying to figure out why I was having problems with the app), I spoke to the security person on the platform to get directions to the Amtrak office (surprising to me, there is commuter rail service there). The I spoke to an Amtrak person. Bus to the motel (almost). As far as I could tell, every worker in the Best Western was Black, from desk clerks to cleaning people to the breakfast hostess. Walked to the Chipotle. Everybody there etc.
I did not go to Mar-A-Lago, which was less than 5 miles away, but I did wonder if famous white supremacist Donald Trump is aware that he might be a minority in his area. Or maybe it's just most people I saw and whole neighborhoods I walked through the next morning. What should have been a half-hour walk to the train, based on distance took more than twice that (as Apple maps had warned me), presumably because the streets were typical of many parts of Florida, with massive numbers of lanes and a long wait for the walk light at each intersection. I saw some iguanas, though. (near a canal, not at the crosswalk).
The train left about on time, but there was nearly an hour of delay between Plant City and Tampa (my destination), sitting still, waiting for a freight train to get out of the way. Train travel in the US, man. (this was worse than normal). There were whole farming areas of Florida I had never seen, noted as we passed. It would have been a good journey were it not for the delay. Then an hour in a Lyft to get to the relatives' house.
Update Dec 20th from person on twitter whose name I don't know - another Mar-a-lago neighbor the Trumps wouldn't like
Pope Leo XIV just appointed Fr. Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez — an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen in 2018 — as bishop of Palm Beach.
I did not go to Mar-A-Lago, which was less than 5 miles away, but I did wonder if famous white supremacist Donald Trump is aware that he might be a minority in his area. Or maybe it's just most people I saw and whole neighborhoods I walked through the next morning. What should have been a half-hour walk to the train, based on distance took more than twice that (as Apple maps had warned me), presumably because the streets were typical of many parts of Florida, with massive numbers of lanes and a long wait for the walk light at each intersection. I saw some iguanas, though. (near a canal, not at the crosswalk).
The train left about on time, but there was nearly an hour of delay between Plant City and Tampa (my destination), sitting still, waiting for a freight train to get out of the way. Train travel in the US, man. (this was worse than normal). There were whole farming areas of Florida I had never seen, noted as we passed. It would have been a good journey were it not for the delay. Then an hour in a Lyft to get to the relatives' house.
Update Dec 20th from person on twitter whose name I don't know - another Mar-a-lago neighbor the Trumps wouldn't like
Pope Leo XIV just appointed Fr. Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez — an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen in 2018 — as bishop of Palm Beach.
