Author: <span>Patrick Cumby</span>

Patrick Cumby is a science fiction writer who also blogs about exploring the real world. He's sharing his thoughts at PatrickCumby.com.

Images and impressions on a Moroccan train from Casablanca to Rabat teach me not to point out the mote in another’s eye while ignoring the log in my own.

In the Casablanca Train Station

There’s something about the collision of old and new, of tradition and progress, that makes the bizarre wreckage of Casablanca utterly irresistible. A gleaming new train station with flat-screen monitors, none of which work because nobody knows how to operate them. Luxurious first-class coaches where the air conditioner has probably never been switched on. State-of-the-art train platforms covered with blowing trash, apparently because nobody thinks it’s a problem. Internet-connected ticket machines that will instantly debit my bank in America, next to a bathroom with a filthy squat toilet attended by a smiling old lady in a burka.

Essays Travel

Here’s one for my friends in Edenton, North Carolina, the “South’s Prettiest Small Town.”  Situated on the peaceful shores of the Albemarle Sound, Edenton is just a few miles from one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the planet. It made me wonder: What would happen to the town if the disaster occurred today?

Sci-Fi