J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Netherlands Under Construction & George R. Stewart

from Guido Goluke, Dutch translator and intrepid cyclist:
"These (first) two pictures intend to show that in the Netherlands a landscape (if we can speak of a landscape in my man made country)  is never finished. Trees that poke their shoots too enthusiastically into the air are cut back into shape. Ditches are deepened, widened, narrowed, straighened, bent, redirected or filled in.
   "The viaduct under construction must carry a six lane highway over this man made canal, right next to a bridge that also carries a six lane highway over this man made canal. Intersections are replaced by roundabouts, roundabouts by intersections. Sometimes a little patch of ‘nature’ is created to satisfy environmentalists and other troublesome folk. This gigantic ever growing network of highways and bridges is being laid over the old network of simple and slow roads down below, that now serves local traffic, and the cyclist.  Cars are more and more creatures that one has to look up to.
[AL: George R Stewart was one writer with a lot to say about highways dominating landscape: have you read his epic US 40: Cross Section of the United States" ?
"Road in early spring along the Zuiderzee...
"...but what was the designer thinking of, seeing that there...?"--GG

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