The Power of Blogs?

I live in New York’s 19th congressional district. The southern end of the district in Westchester County could vote for a Democrat. The 19th CD, however, sprawls north and west up the Hudson Valley into Putnam, Dutchess and Orange Counties. As a result, the Republicans have had a lock on the 19th. This year is different and people are asking, Do we really have to keep sending Republicans to Washington? While it’s a long shot, seeing the Take19 blog makes me think that it is not out of the question that we the people of the Hudson Valley could become part of the process of taking the country back from the dangerous and incompetent idealogues in Congress and the White House who have been destroying our democracy. [Photo: looking south from Storm King to Crows' Nest (right), Cold Spring (left), Hudson River and beyond.]

How Not To Teach Your Children

In the low-density suburb where I live the school bus doesn’t travel down the dead end subdivision lanes. Instead, it drops the kids off at the intersections of the main road with the subdivision lanes. Now, these dead ends are as long as one-half mile. One might think that this distance is not too long for a kid to walk, especially on a nice day. But rain or shine always finds the parental SUVs waiting at the bus stop so the kids can be driven the half-mile (or less!) home. This is sending our children a terrible message. We should be encouraging our kids to walk. It will cut down on childhood obesity and save energy. And parents, if you’re worried about the kids walking alone, you could walk with them and enjoy some of the benefits.

Waiting for the Train

While the Bush administration does its best to kill-off Amtrak and mass transit, the American public is coming to realize that rail, both passenger and freight, needs to be an increasing part of the transportation picture. A recent Harris Poll clearly demonstates these evolving opinions. And while we're on the subject, take a look at the National Association of Railroad Passengers' take on the benefits of inter-city passenger rail.

Times Endorses National Popular Vote Idea

The New York Times has endorsed the ideas put forth by National Popular Vote. In my initial post to this blog (Interim Times) I discussed this concept.

My Old School

I lived by the words of the Steely Dan song for almost 32 years but in April 2005 I broke down and returned to St. Louis. That's me in front of the Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis (photo by my wife).
Washington University has recently done a great thing, something that should be emulated by colleges and universities across the nation – it is providing free transit passes for faculty, staff and students. These passes are good on the entire bi-state metropolitan area system for both bus and light rail. Follow the links below to learn details of this innovative program:
http://transportation.wustl.edu/wustlmetro_chan.html
http://www.cmt-stl.org/NEW/new.html#wu
While such a program is probably fiscally and politically unworkable in old transit cities like New York, Boston, Chicago or Philadelphia, it could stimulate mass transit in the majority of US cities that allowed their transit systems to wither or, like some cities in the western US, never had them in the first place.

Light Rail, Heavy Rail

Above, Metro-North Poughkeepsie–bound local leaving Croton-Harmon (early 2002?). The locomotive is an FL9 which was built in the 1950s by General Motors for the New Haven Railroad. The FL9s have been retired. They’ve been replaced by Genesis-II locomotives from General Electric. At bottom , a St. Louis MetroLink train approaches Civic Center Station in April 2005. Future posts will discuss the light rail boom that is taking place across North America but is lagging in the New York Metropolitan region.

Hudson River Then and Now

I took these photos during one of the concerts by the Jazz Knights of the US Military Academy Band at West Point's Trophy Point. Compare the top view to The Hudson River, New York, which was painted by James Francis Cropsey in 1857-58.

Rails-To-Trails and Back

I developed a clear sense of place by age five or six. I was map-literate by the time I started first grade. I also liked trains. At that time we were living in the Crestwood section of Yonkers. Crestwood was a commuter stop on the New York Central Railroad’s Harlem line (now part of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad). Back then the Harlem extended all the way up to Chatham, New York where it met the Central’s line that ran east from Albany to Boston. In the late 1950s, long-distance trains still ran on the Harlem to Chatham and beyond. When they barreled through Crestwood I understood they were going far away. In 1976 service was halted north of Millerton in northern Dutchess County and by 1980 the line from Chatham south to Dover Plains in Dutchess County was abandoned. In recent years rails were again laid northward from Dover Plains but only for a few miles. In 2000 Metro-North resumed service on this extension, opening a station at Ten Mile River and a terminal at Wassaic. North of Wassaic, much of the old Harlem Line in Dutchess and Columbia Counties is now part of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail.

Converting abandoned rail lines to recreational bike or walking paths is a national phenomenon. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy lists1,359 such trails around the United States. In my area I enjoying walking and biking the North County Trailway , which follows the abandoned Putnam Division of the New York Central north-eastward across Westchester County and on into Putnam County. One day I would like to walk or bike eastward from St. Charles, Missouri on the Katy Trail which follows the abandoned Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad.

While I think rail-to-trail conversion of abandoned rights of way is great, I would add one caveat – that such conversions should be reversible. In my opinion, the highest use of these trails is for passenger rail. The day may come when the economic and environmental costs of automobile use will be such that “re-railing” becomes an attractive option. I can imagine tracks again being laid on these recreational paths. We should keep this option open.

Back to Concord

A confession dear blog-reader – I am a poor reader. I read with a painful slowness and only a modicum of comprehension. In high school, in the year we read American literature, we were supposed to read Walden and a number of essays by Emerson. Well, I managed to get through the Emerson (and remember enjoying it) but the Thoreau was impossible. So, after a mere 36 and a half years, I have picked up Walden and lo-and-behold it is worth the effort. Would that I had done my assignment back then.

Some words from Walden: But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
Of course this is so much more true today than in Thoreau’s day. Just think about how paralyzed we become when the electric power fails. And perhaps I have become a tool of this computer and this blog.
No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Is all the linking done in blogs allowing others to think for us? Maybe so. I will try to put down an original thought now and then.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attentions from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
What would Thoreau have thought of the Web or cell phones or instant messaging?
Finally (for today) I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.
This I know from experience to be true. I feel sorry for those who refuse to get out and walk.

The Meaning of "Topped"

Those who defend the indefensible - I’m speaking of our President – somehow think Bush is off the hook because he was warned the levees might be “topped,” not that they might be breached. So when he whined that nobody imagined that the levees would break he was not lying. Well, if this isn’t lying it’s pretty darn close. Clearly a topped levee is in imminent danger of being breached because water flowing over the top of a levee has incredible erosive power. The President is guilty of an incredibly bungled and callous response to hurricane Katrina. Yes, this was an unprecedented natural disaster but an even moderately competent administration would have mobilized a full-boar Federal response – especially with military assets – 48 hours sooner. Dozens of lives, at a minimum, would have been saved.

Winter Hangs On

Where: 41°15'N, 73°50'W
When: This morning, 07:57 EST

Favorites

Some favorite books by favorite authors: The Sportswriter and its sequel Independence Day by Richard Ford; American Pastoral by Philip Roth (honorable mention: I Married a Communist and The Human Stain); Black Box by Amos Oz (honorable mention: all of Oz’s more recent works of fiction starting with A Perfect Peace with the exception of The Same Sea which I didn’t like); The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Mercy of a Rude Stream (series) by Henry Roth.
Notes on the above: If you’re thinking of going to Israel read Amos Oz first. This will give you the layout of the mental geography that blows over the land more strongly than the wind off the eastern desert. The works written before A Perfect Peace are too dark and somber for me. While dark, the later works have at least a glimmer of lightness that somehow seems more real. The Henry Roth books are rough stuff and a difficult read but ultimately worth it.

Favorite poem: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman.
Favorite beer: Bass Ale on draught (honorable mention: Newcastle Brown Ale)
Favorite beer bottle (yes, the bottle not the beer): Rolling Rock Extra Pale.

A note on winter: The heart of winter (January and the first half of February) was exceptionally mild here. Only now that the sun is rising higher in the sky has the real winter begun. I suspect we have at least one more major east coast snowstorm to come.