John Winthrop, A Model for Christian Charity, 1630. Cities bloomed. Donate to Living on Earth!Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public service. That legacy is all around us, for example the ski chairlift, invented by the Union Pacific,[1] or the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications (Sprint), or Standard Railway Time, today’s time zones, adopted November 18, 1883,[2] or corporate personhood established widely 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. “Yeah,” I said. He bought EuroRail passes and while on leave traveled the continent, buying drafts in Dublin, shrooms in Amsterdam, and crystal in the Czech Republic. In contrast, President Lincoln didn’t ask — he ordered. [42] There was the Sears Roebeck catalog, delivered by USPS, and defended by US Calvary. In the decades that followed, they drowned. We wouldn’t had survived.”. They incubated technologies, especially communications and also in machining, engineering, organization, and finance. “We thought aliens from Mars were attacking. As recently as 1999, 71% of Americans were “satisfied with current direction of the country.” In 2014 but 25% are satisfied,[15] and nearly two thirds “think most children will grow up … to be worse off.”[16] Meanwhile, they say we’ve lost trust in each other, that we’re bowling alone, that we’ve given up on our most fundamental institutions. Mistrust and antagonism festered. She looked like a hippie, talked like a hippie, and was using a metaphor about Indians and settlers working together to advocate for unfettered corporate resource extraction. [18] There are tens of millions ricocheting between incarceration, marginal employment, and disability / food stamps. On East Coast one-night lines, Amtrak will eliminate its dining cars in favor of pre-packaged meals. On some, Amtrak has updated the sign to make it unisex and frequently a citizen has updated the updated sign by crossing out the male bathroom figure. I learned to like all that too, because it seemed so human. What’s that like? The Union Pacific has a market capitalization of some $90 billion. He was drunk. Ride their daddy’s magic carpet it’s made of steel. I don’t think we ever even exchanged names. Wasn’t as bad, these two tried to rob us. In 1880 Pittsburgh population was 156,000. Americans spend $400 billion annually to purchase, operate, and service cars. They formed up and 18 months later were deployed to Kuwait. There were world wars and rationing, starvation and internment camps. To be honest, I don’t think that’s true. She told me about her six kids, her bear gun, her life story. He wasn’t. I was tired. He paused. “This is why I take the train!”. It turns out there’s a few ways to fold socks and even more ways to organize a dinner. I had that tequila with a deer on it. You can fly across oceans. Yo, I had a job like that.”, A row ahead, two women, maybe 25 and 30, chat. People saying it’s fundamentally wrong, corrupted and sick. Today, it composes but 0.36% of intercity travel. In comparison can’t we survive tomorrow? And yet, he explicitly said he’d do it all again, the substance abuse, all the solo travel, the putting himself over a bomb for flag and country. I slept where I found myself, atop friends’ sofas, with family, in campgrounds, curled into seats of train, bus and waiting room. I remember one conversation I had with an Amish man about farming. At railroad junctions sprung towns, then cities, Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver. Amtrak is both funky and well-maintained. Why did I wake up? Some carriages have an unused baggage section. The cutbacks are part of a wider plan to reduce the railroad's annual deficit, which came to over $1 billion last year. You see container trucks lining to intermodal shipping facilities and coal trains two miles long going off to power cities. Nothing was even intended — we were just yelling past each other. You don’t call someone creepy. Follow the link to see Mark's current collection of photographs. We had just passed a mile long double stack container train, tracked by a constellation of satellites, likely express from Shenzen over ocean and mountain, meditated by computer analytics from Bentonville. [10] The BNSF railroad express trains move some 50 million packages in the holiday season. But also the railroads, mines, ranches, sawmills, banks, and even the homestead farms were capitalized from afar, often Europe via London and then New York. In America by weight about 26% of everything moves over rail. They go miles into the Earth, then miles sideways, pumping in sophisticated chemical blends, based on highly sophisticated computer modeling. After having Atlanta abandoned and burned, after bringing Georgia to its knees, General Sherman was ordered to subjugate the Plains Indians and he did. It’s the crazy frosting to this layered crazy cake. I don’t know. Thousands of years ago it was written that democracies inevitably fail as drunk on freedom and greedy for unnecessary pleasures, rich and poor come into argument, leading to conflict and accusations of oligarchy before lasting demagoguery and tyranny. I wanted to ask questions you can’t. I grew up with Swiss Family Robinson and the Box Car Children. It’s those words though that linger. A woman gives away the six bottles wine for her wedding anniversary, saying “I’d rather you drink it than my selfish f–king husband.” And then it’s a party! The Lakota warrior Sitting Bull who became a warrior, chief, activist, and, before being shot and killed by police, a circus performer. I slept where I found myself, atop friends’ sofas, with family, in campgrounds, curled into seats of train, bus and waiting room. One thing I don't understand is why the American labor institutions (primarily unions) were predicated more on conflict than, say, their German counterparts. “Yeah, we drill four miles down…” She’s brushing him off. We didn’t talk much. A thing or a mountain, they’re independent of people, but those, they are oaths. I saw some making every night a party. A puzzle! We talked more about how people today are lazy, how her grandson takes money from the government though he doesn’t need it, how her way of life is disappearing, and how nobody will even remember. In Pittsburgh they murdered twenty. In 1980, Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act, giving railroads back the freedom to set their own prices. “Oh!” He had a beard and a santa belly and basically introduced himself by saying, “When I was 22 back from Vietnam this trail saved my life.” Without prompt he would say things like, “Some might not say it, really we’re all Buddha.” He was gregarious and generous; when it came to other people, often he’d say, “You haven’t walked a mile in their moccasins.” I never told strangers who I was, but I told him who I was, homeless and living on Amtrak. You see the substrate of America, not just trains and rails, there’s tubes and towers too, pipes and piles, piles of tubes, piles of piles towering. Was it a joke? It’s an hour to midnight. In the mid-twentieth century, facing technological change, mismanagement, legendary nepotism and a regulatory straitjacket, the railroads stood still as airplanes, trucks and cars ran them over. Shasta, Mt. Among the endless wheat fields you see abandoned crumbling buildings caused by peaking productivity. My train was departing in a few hours. Several states are negotiating to save some of these trains, but most aren't likely to be revived. He showed me his business card. That hurt. Tagged: Frugal Living, Cars and Transportation, Travel, air travel, airlines, amtrak, bus travel, train travel Related and Popular The Pros and Cons of Refinancing an Auto Loan Some people get angry, others go buy beer or liquor, and some do both. That forces Amtrak to choose between running partly-loaded cars and less frequent service. Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Force, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, which interestingly use 8" floppy disks. I'm Steve Curwood. CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. An hour later and the woman’s phone is stolen. Readville, Massachusetts Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection, Wipers eating lunch. Nothing. Every corporate newspaper covered in figures of community reinvestment. And today, relatively few Americans ride the rails. Like Zeus you conjure light and electricity. One time, I went for a jog in San Francisco. The Confederacy was likewise on the vanguard of modernity, though half as populous, it had the third most miles of railroad. I'm simplifying here. Lo, soul! A peculiar group of Americans who choose to live apart, choosing America’s most peculiar form of transportation. The earth to be spannâd, connected by net-work, They cornered the militia in the roundhouse and set it on fire. They’re littered with abandoned intention. Even the cowboy existed to drive beef to cities. On a train delayed seven hours into Milwaukee, I witnessed strangers battle in jokes at one table and 9/11 conspiracy talk at another, because what else are you going to do. But that’s so silly. When I awoke, he was gone and I was alone, to the flickering landscape, to Ohio’s small towns and the rusting remnants of industry. [49]Masses gathered in Chicago and St Louis. The colors of crazy are vibrant. aboard The Crescent, Passengers would ask the train crew really helpful questions. It was too much. [7] In the 1920s, there were over 250,000 miles of track and 9000 intercity passenger trains daily. Friendship, marriage, community, these exist only in our imaginations. Home | Contact | RSS | Donate | Newsletter. I could climb over that fence.” Another passenger shakes her head in agreement and then says, “Haven’t had a cigarette in four hours. I’m back to the lounge car. But environmentalists like Doug Foy say these figures don't tell the whole story. Great cruise. During the war, those philosophical differences played out. Don’t people who say things like that end up in Gitmo? I wonder, instead of 1871’s money grabbing and self-aggrandizement, what if a leader had sacrificed mansion for compassion? Kissed his wife at the kitchen door So 1/4 of 1/2 of 156,000 is greater than 20,000. You wonder, do they think they’re above this history? “I only eat fish,” he said. Those Greek gods, Superman, Professor X and Harry Potter too, we define them by their powers, not what they own but by what can they do. I’ve found our diversity shocking. They subsidized the buffalo’s demise and they built Yosemite, Glacier, and Yellowstone. An enormous ecosystem of human necessitated structure constructed, and we each depend upon it. In Congress, without conservative Southern votes, the Republicans passed sweeping legislation, the Homestead Act, funding for the land grant colleges, the first federal income tax, and massive subsidies for railroads. If you like to drink — and we liked drinking — I would recommend it. As of April 2nd, a good deal of the US national passenger rail service will be history. Cold Weather, Vaccine Updates, Federal Covid-19 Relief, Masks on Public Transportation, Amtrak Settlement Thursday, January 4, 2021. I’ve met so many, anarchists to Pentecostalists, Ivy League and Cherokee. I’d camp out in small towns and visit old-time friends in far-off cities. But I’m not him. Woo woo woo To the cynical curmudgeons and doomsday pessimists I just want to shout out, Guys we’re doing okay. Professor Jose Gomes Ibañez is a transportation expert at Harvard University. “He’s got some Africans. Yeah, I said. One had a knife. He took a little trip to the promised land. “You know that group.” We did one, it’s called a booze cruise. http://money.cnn.com/2014/story-supplement/cnn-orc-poll.pdf, http://www.hopkinschildrens.org/Malnutrition.aspx, US Census. He didn’t bat an eye, more like he’d do it too. Here's your first look at Amtrak's brand-spanking-new train concourse in New York City, Moynihan Train Hall. Two zero axles zero faults, said the computer. Do you feel heroic? All aboard luxury on the Amtrak California Zephyr. He was drunk and they got in an argument, he said. We are a nation predicated on individual liberty and also a people wholly interconnected and interdependent. Actual successes aren’t a singular hero at a singular moment but regular people in multitude working together working tenaciously working working slowly steadily working working working working. Crossing Nebraska, I listened to two older men talking. I stumbled back to my seat, yet using the sleeping bag as a blanket. Joblessness is real. Whistle blow: Amazing CrossCountry HST train trip in England, delivered by USPS and. The three largest employers were General Motors, at each bust the financiers and management lived in relative.! 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