This is not my first try at a blog. I have had blogs previously, but they have all fizzled out. We will see what happens to this one. Looking back at my 2005 blog, I thought there might be some old posts worth re-publishing. Here goes one:

“Some years ago, Edie and I went to Houston. We went to see an exhibit of impressionist art from the Hermitage, which was at the fine arts museum, and we went because we hadn’t been there before. [We have been there a few times since then] We were pleasantly surprised at what a good tourist city Houston is; terrific world class museums, the Johnson Space Center, Galveston Island, good food, and a cousin we get to see rarely. [Sadly, she has since passed away] But the trip was flawed. Wanting to stay at an upscale hotel, we chose the St. Regis. It was very elegant and well located for touring, but it sits very close to a train track at a grade crossing, and the blare of the train’s siren kept us awake through most of the four nights we were in town. We wondered (still do) how the hotel manages, although a clerk told us simply “Some people don’t seem to mind”.

“We vowed never to let that happen again.

“But only about six months later, we found ourselves in the Theodore Roosevelt Badlands in Madera, North Dakota, staying at one of the spartan lodges run by the government. No sooner had we got in bed, but a familiar sound rang through the air, even louder and sharper than in Houston. This time, the grade crossing was only about 100 yards away from our first floor room. We left the next morning, moving to a nice motel in Dickinson ND, about 40 miles away.

“We vowed again.

“Yet here we were, earlier this week, at the central city Holiday Inn in Columbia SC, when, to our surprise, throughout the night, the blare of a train at a grade crossing woke (at least me) up the first of our two nights there, from 3:30 a.m. until about 7 in the morning. I counted nine trains.

“It got me thinking about other noisy disturbances at hotels that I have encountered, and it brought to mind the following:

“(1) Church bells in Albuferia, Portugal, in 1972, where the church chimed hourly throughout the night and, because of the geography of the town, my room was on an exact plane with the belfry, which was probably no more than 200 feet away. I left the room in the middle of the night to find another place. And then there were the church bells in Erie PA, where at least they don’t start ringing them on a Sunday morning until about 6 a.m., but once they started they kept going, very deep and resonant sounds, every 15 minutes. This was September 1960.

“(2) Parties and night spots. I remember our first night in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in February 1977, when the hotel’s night club sounded like it would never stop. And somewhere in Scotland in 1978, when a party was so loud that, like in Portugal, an alternative was sought out in the middle of the night.

“(3) Ship whistles. If you want to camp in Bremerhaven, Germany, don’t select the campground (it’s probably not still there) that my friends and I selected in 1962. It’s right across the Weser River from the port, and I can’t believe that any campers there ever close their eyes.

“(4) Noisy neighbors. Noises from the room next door can be all too common, from the raucous teenage party in the room next door somewhere in Pennsylvania Dutch country, to incessant and noisy lovemaking in San Juan PR and Shepardstown WV, to the noising drunk in Leningrad in 1972, to the man practicing his Torah portion over and over and over and over again in Westchester County NY.”

[In case you were wondering, now that I am 80, I don’t really need these noisy disruptions to keep from sleeping soundly. I have finally figured out how to do it all on my own.]