I am a perpetual transplant. In the last ten years, I've lived in Colorado, Utah, Missouri and now Rhode Island. As I move from place to place I enjoy discoving the unique history and geography of a new backyard. In Rhode Island, I live in the Blackstone River watershed a stones throw away from the Moshassuck River. I can look across the street and see the Arnold House. About a mile away is the Peterson-Puritan superfund site. It is a place where the ancient rivers mix with the decaying hulks of industrial revolution and the filth of modern society.

The Blackstone river is a patchwork of stillness and turbulence. It gathers in dark pools above the mill dams and spills over into sworling foam. My data mind sees seasonal flows, flood events, and chaotic interdependence for all of the measureable properties of this fascinating ribbon of water. The flow creates the turbulence which churns up the silt residue of an old mill. The industrial wastes live on like ghosts and haunt each little curling eddy. They become parts per million with little vector velocities and little masses and perhaps get sampled to go haunt some scientists' dataset as little factors in some correlation. If my computer life is too still I can always reassure myself that the data is always dancing in the flowing water.

I can't fault the mills. They've earned a place in history and some even gained a quaint elegance. Slater's Mill overlooks the Blackstone and is considered to be the birth of the industrial revolution in America. It has even been afforded a kind of National Park status. I don't believe that this park status is just a sign of a pork-barrel government works project for another industrial armpit town.

The Blackstone is a juxtaposition. It cuts a slice of beauty into ugliness and outlives those that seek to tame it. It reminds me that there is beauty in contrasts and I'm sure has many stories to tell of the ghosts that wander its banks.