Monday, July 26–seeing home care clients and the nurse’s aides who do the hands-on work.

First visit is off Plainfield Street, I’m coming in from across town. From Rt. 10 I can see the new building made from salvaged shipping containers. It’s all painted now, and I’d love to see it from the street side, or even from the inside if I can get on a tour. A quick turn off the bottom of the ramp reveals a neighborhood where the houses weren’t razed by the highway or urban renewal– it’s kind of a street that time forgot, near the corner of Pilsudski and Magnolia.

The route back to N. Providence takes me behind Olneyville, a stretch of road in a pure industrial landscape. There’s something so clean about it, maybe just that there’s more brick and stone than plastic. I’m not the only one, Lord knows, who sees beauty in the old mills. The Plant, on Valley Street, has a steel vine sculpture wrapped around the smokestack and is a rehabbed, green tech center. The Cuban Revolution serves soup on the ground floor.

My GPS guides me through Wanskuck, with its regal mill dominating Branch Avenue and a little cluster of mill worker’s houses off Veazie Street. They’re all built on the same plan, some brick, some shingle, some vinyl sided. They still retain an air of humility and industry.

The humidity has eased up, my tempermental car radio is working and I’m listening to the BBC analyze today‘s crises.

So much beauty all around, a half hour for solitude and things to think about. I don’t get paid for mileage, but the job has its compensations.