En route

Safely at Hatfield-McCoy, waiting at the gate in plenty of time.  Just as well to be here, not  Chicago, after all.  I ran into Jo Perez, heading to Honolulu. And someone from Sutherland at CHO, heading for San Francisco. You get to know people you have known in other contexts... Sat next to a young man Jacob's age doing just that thing I'd sent him an article about, getting Chinese students through the admissions process to American colleges--a new job, though he had taught in a tiny village for a year earlier.

The layers of clouds heading south were lovely. Like looking into an aquarium-- except that we live in two dimensions. Watching the layers move relative to each other and the plane was like bad computer animation. Varieties of textures, densities, and brightness. I wonder how I missed the pinky dawn clouds?  I should try a pastel drawing of that on the gray paper.

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Got out of Hatfield-McCoy with no fuss, now in Detroit. Looks like an airport. Animated Chinese being spoken, heavily accented compared to the tapes. Beautiful shiny red shuttle El rushes through the terminal intermittently like a 50s sf movie. No internet.