Thoughts while on Amtrak, after Paris

We're almost in NYC and I'm staring at the infrastructure of NJ marveling at how uniformly ugly bridges and roads and the other things they put over lakes and hills and pastures are all over the world. I just saw the same scene in Paris, and you could repeat it in Hong Kong, Manila, Italy.

We are going past a bridge in New Jersey. How long will it stay up? When it is ready to come down in a century or so, will they take pictures of it? If they care enough about it I'm sure the city will send a photographer to take shots of it and a local historian to dig up stories about the bridge and make a whole show of it. Though when it really comes down to it, no one really gave a damn about that ugly old bridge until it came down.

Now I'm thinking about a foldable roof that collapses and expands over us like a gigantic bell jar, as wide and large as a town.